The Gene Weingarten Archive
Legendary birthday clowns, tragically neglectful parents, and a dogged search for the armpit of America — Weingarten on Longform.
Showing 25 articles matching physics of music.
Legendary birthday clowns, tragically neglectful parents, and a dogged search for the armpit of America — Weingarten on Longform.
Before he died, Sun Myung Moon, cult father to massive Unification Church (known better as the Moonies), sent 14 Japanese “national messiahs” deep into the Paraguayan jungle to build an utopian “ideal city.” Thirteen years later, the author catches a trading boat down river in search of their hidden town.
Monte Reel Outside Feb 2013 20min Permalink
The Livingston Awards honor the year’s best work by journliasts under the age of 35. Finalists in local, national, and international reporting were announced today—see the full list.
Edith Zimmerman is the founding editor of The Hairpin and a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine.
"I never wrote anything myself or ran anything from other people that was needlessly negative. It wasn't some false grin plastered all over it — we addressed dark things too, and poked fun at things. But I didn't want there to ever be a tone of yeah, let's really just deflate this. Because ultimately you're just stabbing at a ghost among friends. And then at the end you've all just fallen on the floor and the ghost is gone. You're not really doing anything constructive."
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Jul 2013 Permalink
Shortly before leaving Goldman Sachs, Sergey Aleynikov downloaded around 32mb of source code from their high-frequency stock-trading system. Even as he was sent away for an eight year bid in federal prison, no one seemed to fully understand exactly what he did.
Michael Lewis Vanity Fair Aug 2013 45min Permalink
“In the computer age, it is not hard to imagine how a computing machine might construct, store and spit out the information that ‘I am alive, I am a person, I have memories, the wind is cold, the grass is green,’ and so on. But how does a brain become aware of those propositions? “
Michael Graziano Aeon Aug 2013 15min Permalink
After acting erratically and trying to skip out on a dinner bill, she was detained briefly in Malibu before being released in the middle of the night. Twenty-four years old and in an unfamiliar area, she had no car, no phone, and no wallet. A year later, her body was found in a nearby canyon. On the search for answers.
Mike Kessler Los Angeles Jan 2012 40min Permalink
Nick now claims that he was searching for methamphetamine for his entire life, and when he tried it for the first time, as he says, ''That was that.'' It would have been no easier to see him strung out on heroin or cocaine, but as every parent of a methamphetamine addict comes to learn, this drug has a unique, horrific quality.
David Sheff New York Times Magazine Feb 2005 25min Permalink
All violence is not like all other violence. Every Jewish death is not like every other Jewish death. To believe otherwise is to revive the old typological thinking about Jewish history, according to which every enemy of the Jews is the same enemy, and there is only one war, and it is a war against extinction, and it is a timeless war.
Leon Wieseltier The New Republic May 2002 15min Permalink
Richard Nixon, Elizabeth Taylor, Idi Amin: a collection of our favorite obits ever written. At Slate.
“What we’re doing in writing is not all that different from what we’ve been doing all our lives, i.e., using our personalities as a way of coping with life.”
George Saunders New Yorker Oct 2015 15min Permalink
In November 2012, Salvador Alvarenga went fishing off the coast of Mexico. Two days later, a storm hit and he made a desperate SOS. It was the last anyone heard from him—for 438 days.
Jonathan Franklin The Guardian Nov 2015 20min Permalink
Feature Writing, Reporting, Essays and Criticism, Public Interest — a full list of the articles nominated today, including work by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Pamela Colloff, John Jeremiah Sullivan and more.
Dayna Tortorici is the editor of n+1.
“You can't fetishize conflict so much. Because conflict does generate a lot of good work, but it also inhibits a lot of good work. I think people do their best work when they feel good. Or at least don't feel like shit. ... So I've tried to create a culture of mutual encouragement. Especially when you're not paying anybody, that's all you can really offer.”
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Mar 2015 Permalink
Nearly 20 years ago in a remote California town, a 16-year-old named Karen Mitchell disappeared. The case went cold, but last month local law enforcement started looking at it again after the arrest of a former resident: Robert Durst.
Michelle Dean The Guardian Apr 2015 15min Permalink
“What’s it like to be kidnapped and held for ransom, not as a political prisoner but as an economic one? What’s it like to live in the Ecuadoran jungle for 141 days? What’s it like not to sleep, to be bound in chains, to have your body invaded by living things, to waste away to the point of death?…What’s it like? This is what it’s like.”
Over four months, a methane well in southern California’s Aliso Canyon leaked Lebanon’s equivalent of yearly emissions into the atmosphere. No one knows what the long-term effects will be.
Nathaniel Rich New York Times Magazine Mar 2016 15min Permalink
It started as simple teenage rebellion but ended up tearing Syria apart, setting in motion events that continue to rock the Middle East — and the world. The boys behind the graffiti would become unlikely revolutionaries and reluctant refugees. Not all of them would survive the upheaval they helped unleash.
Mark MacKinnon The Globe and Mail Dec 2016 55min Permalink
“A unicorn, a monster, a phoenix, a machine, a heavyweight fighter, an astronaut, a superhero, a thoroughbred, a home-run hitter, a waitress juggling ‘16 entrees, 42 starters, 16 desserts,’ a jazz virtuoso, LeBron James, Magellan, Snuffleupagus. The actress Laurie Metcalf has been compared to all of these things.”
Willa Paskin New York Times Magazine Feb 2018 15min Permalink
“Tiffany Haddish may, in fact, be too good at being Tiffany Haddish. Too good at seeming like one of your friends who became famous. At times, she treats her new fame like she is on a group text with the world.”
Caity Weaver GQ Mar 2018 20min Permalink
Published across three consecutive issues and later adapted into the book (and mini-series) Generation Kill, the story of bullets, bombs and a Marine platoon at war in Iraq.
Evan Wright Rolling Stone Jul 2003 1h55min Permalink
Our founding ideals of liberty and equality were false when they were written. For generations, black Americans have fought to make them true.
Nikole Hannah-Jones New York Times Magazine Aug 2019 30min Permalink
Clint Lorance had been in charge of his platoon for only three days when he ordered his men to kill three Afghans stopped on a dirt road. A second-degree murder conviction and pardon followed. Today, Lorance is hailed as a hero by President Trump. His troops have suffered a very different fate.
Greg Jaffe Washington Post Jun 2020 15min Permalink
Amidst a historic shortage at sperm banks nationwide, a new means of donation is on the rise: Facebook groups. Elaine Byrd got involved in the community first as a moderator, then as a recipient. That’s how she met Ari Nagel, aka the Sperminator, a superdonor with nearly a hundred biological children and counting.
Rachel Monroe Esquire Oct 2021 Permalink
Lisa Belkin is a journalist and the author of four books. Her latest is Genealogy of a Murder: Four Generations, Three Families, One Fateful Night.
“I didn’t experience it as luck. It—and this is going to be a little woo woo—but it really felt like these people had been sitting there for 100 years saying, Well, it took you long enough, because everything just fit together. I didn’t have to manipulate anything.”
May 2023 Permalink