Trump's Act of Terror

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Hi 👋 

Another Monday, another Lazy Reader reading list ✨

It’s been quite the week, hasn’t it?

I had something else planned for this week’s newsletter (a series, which will be coming your way next week!), but one investigation became massive last week. And I typically don’t let virality influence my choices, but it turned out to be an incredible story in its own right, and one that I think is very illuminating of how the world works.

So here we are, with a list assembled last-minute. Incredibly proud of how it turned out though!

In any case, if you missed last week’s email, here are a few choice picks:

• Losing $62,000 to an heiress.

• A trip to Antarctica gone wrong.

• The mystery of the French fry.

As always, please let me know what you think of the list this week by voting in the poll below.

Happy reading and see you again next Monday!

PS - Thanks to Pacaso for supporting this week’s email! And thanks to you for considering to click their ad link after the fold below. It’s free, easy, and a really good way to help me out!

This story went mega uber viral last week. And while, as a rule, I avoid sharing recently published and highly popular stories (because I know you’ve probably seen those, and I want to recommend pieces that you might have missed), I feel like this one was worth an exception.

If you haven’t read this story yet, definitely do. It’s wild. It details an astronomical tactical failure of the U.S. that, if things had gone just the slightest bit more wrong, could have triggered a full-blown nuclear war. That’s not even an exaggeration, I’d say. It shows the frightening degree of risk and harm that these types of missions put the rest of the planet in.

Then this story also shows how easy it is for governments to just sweep massive missteps like these under the rug. The mission here happened in 2019—a full six years ago—and we’re only being told about it now. In fact, the only reason it’s coming to light is because some of those involved felt compelled, out of some tug of their conscience, to come out with it. That is, it wasn’t some official mechanism that brought these revelations to light. The government would have been perfectly fine to have this catastrophic mistake languish in obscurity for as long as it could.

Something else to point out: Props to this piece for getting this story out there, of course, but I just couldn’t help but notice how breathlessly it talked about the operation as it were. Like it was painting this mission—sans the failure—as a crucial strategic necessity for the U.S. As if it wasn’t just outright invading and interfering with a sovereign country (an authoritarian one, for sure, but sovereign nevertheless). But maybe that’s way too much to expect from the NYT.

How the US Created a World of Endless War | The Guardian, Free

This one makes for good a companion read to the above story. Pretty dated, but it addresses an unfortunately evergreen problem, which is that the U.S., through policy and technological groundwork established by Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden, has normalized war. As if bombing innocent people, in the off chance that some unknown terrorist specter is taken out, is normal.

What really gets me, though, is that this is true regardless of presidential rhetoric. A man in a suit can say all the right things but still turn around and authorize a drone strike, signing off on the murder of hundreds of black and brown people in poor countries.

The Doomsday Scam | The New York Times, $

Since we’re on the subject of war and specters: This story follows the rumor of red mercury, an allegedly miracle substance that is simultaneously highly trafficked but never really obtained. Its existence has been debunked over and over again, but the myth persists. And that’s for good reason, too, because it apparently promises unmatched destructive powers.

Two Brothers Have the Same Genetic Disorder. Their Insurance Only Covered Life-Altering Treatment for One of Them | The Independent, Free

Painful, heartbreaking and, unfortunately, a common story. The U.S.’s healthcare system is so messed up, and it’s leaving so many people like Noah and Hunter in the lurch. This story does an amazing job at giving a human face to the suffering caused by excessively expensive medicines and inconsistent, heartless insurance rules.

Always a reliably good read from Mr. Patrick Radden Keefe.

This one is about the Troubles. And I admit—going into this (and coming out of it), I didn’t know much about that particular event in Irish history. But I am intimately familiar with this story’s core themes: enforced disappearances, independence and sovereignty, and resistance.

That last one—resistance—in particular, is something that I spend a lot of time thinking about. It’s a very thorny thing. There is often a very real and legitimate reason driving it, but then it also tends to leave a lot of destruction and loss and pain in its wake. It aims to move the needle toward progress, but is it worth it?

History has valuable lessons and answers for us, I’m sure, but as this story shows, those aren’t easily gleaned.

This is a heavy piece. And I have to say, I’m not totally onboard with how it was so micro-focused (on the individual people driving history, as opposed to the broader history that was being driven). But I get it. Much blood was spilled. And the people who fell and were left behind deserve their flowers, too. This piece does that brilliantly.

The Great Paper Caper | GQ, $

Fun crime story—a weird thing to say, I know, but there’s just something about this. Maybe it’s the relatively low stakes of the crime (the writer himself doesn’t seem to take it too seriously), or maybe it’s the way the main man here carries himself. Or maybe it’s because I used to watch this show called White Collar some years back. I loved it, and this story is very reminiscent of that.

Prose here is incredible (I am a serious Wells Tower fan) and the research is good, too, given that he had to rely mainly on the accounts of the criminal. There’s some painfully absurd failures of law enforcement here, and it doesn’t help their case that they refused to talk to a journalist about it.

The Hyde Park Rapist | Texas Monthly, $

Content warning: Some graphic descriptions of physical and sexual assault, as well as stalking.

This story ran in1991, which is why it so casually uses the word rapist in its headline. That was a thing back then. I will say: as someone who’s also been sexually assaulted, I appreciate how this story doesn’t tiptoe around the subject. It uses language that today we’d normally replace with euphemisms. And while I understand the value of that, I can’t help but feel like it softens the blow of what is an indisputably heinous act.

I’d also argue that this story was way ahead of its time. It doesn’t blame the victims, but instead makes an honest critique of the community that tries to sweep sexual assault under the rug for the sake of, of all things, property prices.

How Fringe Stem Cell Treatments Won Allies on the Far Right | WIRED, $

Science denialism in the health space never really fell out of fashion, but in the worst way possible, this story has become timely again. No less than the top leader of the U.S. Health Department is a flaming skeptic, and he has used his power and influence to undo many of the most important advancements in medicine and healthcare over the past few years.

I understand being skeptical of pharma. Hell, I don’t trust them all that much, too. But there has to be some level-headed middle-ground between being wary of Big Pharma’s tactics and maneuverings and whatever the hell Kennedy Jr. is doing right now. This is especially true for people like him, who have a lot of sway, because they can put thousands of lives at risk.

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Been putting this off for a couple of months. It’s been at the top of my TBR pile for a while now, but I just kept on putting other stories before it, though I don’t exactly know why.

Now I’m kicking myself in the behind because this is such a good story. Awful and infuriating and deeply troubling, but that’s what makes this one good.

The moral here is that there are no winners, it seems, California’s justice system. Not the victims, who are subject to unimaginable pain and loss but fail to see a lick of justice because of inept prosecutors. And not the alleged criminals, who aren’t actually criminals but are victims in their own right when they don’t get a fair trial because the state won’t invest in investigators.

Thanks for reading! Please, please reach out if you have feedback, suggestions, or questions. Alternatively, you can fill out this super quick survey form. I promise it won’t even take five minutes of your time, and it’ll be a HUGE help!

ALSO: I know some of the stories I recommend might be behind paywalls, and maybe I can help you with access to those. Send me a message and let’s see what we can do 😊

Until next Monday! 👋