Your Labor Day Reading
Some longreads for the long weekend
My weekends just aren’t complete unless I’ve depleted my Kindle’s battery by at least 50%. Long holiday weekends often afford me the opportunity to dive further into some of the best non-fiction storytelling available. So, here are some recommendations collected over the past few weeks.
Before We Get Started
A quick aside, though. I’ve been encouraged by the backchannel response I received to my post about my crisis-of-crypto-conscience coming out of the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville. To the two editors who were mildly irritated at me for not submitting it to them for consideration, I thank you for your support and encouragement to seek a louder microphone than this Substack. At least one of you has dibs on the next one.
But I should also underscore that I am not an expert in the metaphor that anchors the piece, that is, Somali customary tribal law! I do find it fascinating, though, and an effective construct through which we might evaluate crypto’s stated core value of decentralization and how we might defend it. If you’re interested in exploring this topic further, here’s another article I uncovered.
Okay. Enough of the throat-clearing. On to the reads.
Recommendations
“The Problem With Erik: Privilege, Blackmail, and Murder for Hire in Austin,” Texas Monthly, July 2024 — This magazine makes it into this newsletter regularly and for good reason, that is, the stories are really, really engrossing even when — especially when? — they are lurid as hell.
At first glance, Erik comes off as a spoiled heir missing a moral compass, who in trying to outwit a blackmailer wound up guilty of murder. As you look closer, a striking feature of the story is that Erik and many others involved, culprits and victims alike, were trying to chase away their demons with fantasies and desperate schemes—until all these delusions collided, leaving two people dead.
“Harvard, the human remains trade, and collectors who fuel the market,” WBUR, June 13, 2024 — Speaking of lurid, I’m not sure why I’m on such a true crime kick lately. I think it comes from a recurring interest in criminal justice reform, which I consider a topic where you can get the American political right and left to agree on most things.
The crimes themselves were shocking, as was Harvard’s failure to secure its morgue. And the scandal exposed a not-quite-underground market for human remains, where the ethical lines are murky.
“He Was Convicted of Killing His Baby. The DA’s Office Says He’s Innocent, but That Might Not Be Enough.” ProPublica, July 11, 2024 — Oh, hell… I’m just going to keep going. I’ve been hearing lately about how “shaken baby syndrome” is on a fast track toward "garbage-diagnosis” status, especially as advances in medicine can surface more-likely causes.
Nevertheless, shaken baby syndrome and its presumption of abuse have served, and continue to serve, as the rationale for separating children from their parents and for sending mothers, fathers and caretakers to prison. It’s impossible to quantify the total number of Americans convicted on the basis of the diagnosis — only the slim fraction of cases that meet the legal bar to appeal and lead to a published appellate decision. Still, an analysis of these rulings from 2008 to 2018 found 1,431 such criminal convictions.
"Abolish Grades,” Yascha Mounk, August 29, 2024 — For a lot of reasons, our children’s education has been decidedly non-traditional. For one thing, they have yet to receive a letter grade in any course. At the same time, they’ve grown to learn for learning’s sake, which is a valuable skill to have.
Sometimes, a system becomes so irredeemably broken that the least bad option is to give up on it, at least for the time being. The grading system at American universities has now reached that stage. Imperfect though that solution may be, it’s time to bin the whole damn thing. And perhaps, in ten or thirty or fifty years, that will allow us to start from scratch.
“How To Speak Honeybee,” NOEMA, Nov. 2, 2022 — And to think that I lose my car in the Costco parking lot.
As a lead bee dancer waggles, she orients her body relative to gravity and the position of the sun. By making subtle variations in the length, speed and intensity of her dance, she is able to give precise instructions about the direction, distance and quality of the nectar source. In so doing, she teaches other bees in the hive, who use the information they have learned from the waggle dance to fly to a nectar source they have never before visited.
“Ukraine’s death-defying art rescuers,” The Guardian, July 30, 2024 — Timely, as I was recently reminded of The Monuments Men, about a WWII team of soldiers and civilians tasked with preserving art. Here is a more civilian-led effort in Ukraine.
The soldiers had no idea of the name of the village: what they did say was that they had found the icons after breaking through enemy lines, just that morning. Meaning: they were now in what was still, officially, Russian-held territory. No one was in a mood to linger. They stacked the paintings – some from as early as the 17th century, assessed Marushchak – into the van around a bronze, bespectacled memorial to Sergey Prokofiev that Marushchak and Yatsenko had rescued from the village where the composer was born in the Donetsk region, the previous day.
“Beatles or Stones?” Believer, June 1, 2007 — Among other things, this article made me approach The Beatles’ “Revolution” in a whole new way that reflects the current cycle of Ché t-shirt activism and corporate cause-washing.
Though Lennon says he shares the goals of many radicals (‘We all want to change the world’) he disavows the tactics of ultramilitants (‘When you talk about destruction / Don’t you know that you can count me out?’) Elsewhere, he expresses skepticism of the New Left’s overwrought rhetoric (‘Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright?‘) and says he’s tired of being pestered for money for left-wing causes (‘You ask me for a contribution, well you know / We’re all doing what we can‘). The final verse amounted to an endorsement of the apolitical counterculture, and a toxic kiss-off to Movement radicals: ‘You say you’ll change the Constitution, well you know / We all want to change your head / You tell me it’s the institution, well you know / You’d better free your mind instead / But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao / You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.’”
“A Wife’s Revenge from Beyond the Grave,” The Free Press, July 6, 2024 — I like to think that the Phil Gomes I present on social media is more or less the one you get in real life, though even I — somewhat known as I am in my trade — probably have a blind spot or two. Here is an… extreme… expression of this idea.
This is the longest piece we’ve ever published, and it’s well worth your time. Because it isn’t just a story about one family’s ugly domestic dispute, though that story is a wild one. It’s equally a story about how social media can distort our perceptions, reflecting complicated human beings in a funhouse mirror that bears little relationship to who we really are.