Showing 25 articles matching avon-online.

Notes From An Emergency

A talk from the re:publica conference in Berlin:

The good part about naming a talk in 2017 ‘Notes from an Emergency’ is that there are so many directions to take it. The emergency I want to talk about is the rise of a vigorous ethnic nationalism in Europe and America. This nationalism makes skillful use of online tools, tools that we believed inherently promoted freedom, to advance an authoritarian agenda.

Meth, Murder, and Pirates: The Coder Who Became A Crime Boss

How a brilliant self-made software programmer from South Africa single-handedly built an online startup that became one of the largest individual contributors to America’s burgeoning painkiller epidemic. In his world, everything was for sale. Pure methamphetamine manufactured in North Korea. Yachts built to outrun coast guards. Police protection and judges’ favor. Crates of military-grade weapons. Private jets full of gold. Missile-guidance systems. Unbreakable encryption. African militias. Explosives. Kidnapping. Torture. Murder. It's a world that lurks just outside of our everyday perception, in the dark corners of the internet we never visit, the quiet ports where ships slip in by night, the back room of the clinic down the street.

Keeping Up With The Times

How New York Times is clawing its way into the future:

The main goal is... to transform the Times’ digital subscriptions into the main engine of a billion-dollar business, one that could pay to put reporters on the ground in 174 countries even if (OK, when) the printing presses stop forever. To hit that mark, the Times is embarking on an ambitious plan inspired by the strategies of Netflix, Spotify, and HBO: invest heavily in a core offering... while continuously adding new online services and features... so that a subscription becomes indispensable to the lives of its existing subscribers and more attractive to future ones.

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.”

Thanks to TinyLetter and Wealthfront for sponsoring this week's show.

Sponsor: Nate Anderson's Guide to Internet Crime

This guide is sponsored by </i>The Internet Police: How Crime Went Online, and the Cops Followed</b></a>, the new book from Ars Technica Deputy Editor Nate Anderson.</p>

A excerpt from </i>The Internet Police is available on Longform. Already read it? Here's a collection of Nate's all-time favorite internet crime stories.

Sponsor: Zinio

Whether you are looking for exceptional longform journalism, dazzling photography, or a new way to explore your passions, Zinio has you covered. Zinio is the world’s largest digital newsstand with more than 5,500 magazines from 35 countries. Read your favorites online or off; Zinio has apps for iOS, Google Play, PC, and Mac.

This week, Zinio recommends “In a Dangerous Place,” an amazing article from Elephant about the trials and tribulations of acclaimed artist Marcus Harvey.

Read it for free on Zinio.

Emma Carmichael, a former editor at Deadspin and The Hairpin, is the editor in chief of Jezebel.

"Online feminism has more and more rules lately. There are only so many things you can say. And while our opinions are getting more constrained online, personal feminism and face-to-face conversations are looser and more complicated and don't go by any rules. ... The ideal with Jezebel is getting to a point where you can say, 'This is what I think, so who gives a fuck.'"

Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode.

Sarah Nicole Prickett is the founding editor of Adult.

"I'll admit to being resistant to the 'by women for women' label that Adult had before because I saw it as being just 'by women,' period. That’s way more feminist than making something for women, which is very prescriptive and often comes in various shades of pink."

Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode.

Alice Gregory has written for GQ, The New York Times, n+1 and Harper's.

"If you don't have a real story with a beginning, middle and an end, you owe it to the reader to kind of serve as their chaperone."

Thanks to TinyLetter and EA SPORTS FIFA WORLD CUP for sponsoring this week's episode.

What's Your Favorite Soccer Article Ever?

The latest edition of our favorite video game, EA SPORTS FIFA 15, is out today! To celebrate, Longform is teaming up with EA SPORTS to create a guide to the best soccer writing of all-time. And we need your help!

All you need to do is nominate your favorite soccer article and you'll be entered to win a free Xbox One, plus a copy of EA SPORTS FIFA 15. Any article is allowed, so long as it is available online. New, classic, doesn't matter — we're just looking for the best of the best.

Submit your article and enter for a chance to win!

New on Longform Fiction

Every weekday, our editors recommend one short story from across the web on Longform Fiction. Three picks from this week:

Mexican Manifesto
Roberto Bolaño • New Yorker
A series of mysterious, dangerous interactions in a Mexican bathhouse.

Babushka
Sarah Gentile • Vol. 1 Brooklyn
A baby born in New Jersey grows and takes on the characteristics of a headstrong Russian woman.

Stan's Report
Glen Pourciau • AGNI
Tension between two co-workers turns into a complicated game of lies and intentions.

Find more stories on Longform Fiction or delivered directly in the Longform App.

Mac McClelland is a human rights reporter for Mother Jones.

"There's a lot of strength and resiliance even in the worst stories ever. I mean, you do get bogged down by how much evil so many people are willing to perpetrate in the world. But I guess the little beam of sunshine that you're looking for, that hits me in the face in the morning, is just the character and intergrity of the people who are involved. "

Sponsor: Aeon Magazine

Our sponsor again this week is Aeon, a new digital magazine of ideas and culture. Aeon publishes an original essay every weekday, several of which have been picked for Longform. Here is a trio of recent favorites:

Luddite Love
Claire L Evans on why old relationships should fade like a photograph, not haunt your social networks forever.

Earth's Holy Fool?
Michael Ruse on the Gaia paradox — some scientists hate it, the public loves it, and they may both be right.

World Enough
John Quiggin on the emerging opportunity to simultaneously end poverty and protect the environment.

Read those stories and more at aeonmagazine.com.

Sponsor: Contents Magazine

What can be salvaged from publishing? What does it mean to write for the 50% of US adults who have trouble reading? What happens to crime reporting when you cover every victim, every suspect, every murder with the same care?

Contents publishes open-source editorial ideas for new journalism, digital publishing, content strategy, and everything in between. Always free, always online, fresh each week.

We recommend their latest piece, "House of Cards" by Robin Sloan.

For information about sponsoring Longform, click here.

Jay Caspian Kang is a writer and editor at Grantland.

"That's one of the things I've been learning: sometimes if you just sit there, they forget that you're there, so they forget to get rid of you. I'm very quiet and I try not to ask them a lot of questions. ... Generally I just observe. I feel like because I'm a fiction writer, the story will tell itself through the narrative of the person's movement through their daily life."</i>

Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode!

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Ashlee Vance covers technology for Bloomberg Businessweek and is the author of of Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future.

“To be totally clear, I don’t cover them (apps). I like people who try to solve big problems. Wherever I go, I try to run away from the consumer stuff. I love writing about giant manufacturing plants that make stuff and employ tens of thousands of people.”

Thanks to this week's sponsors: TinyLetter, Trunk Club, QuickBooks, and The School of Continuing Education at Columbia University.

Steven Levy covers technology for Wired, where he is the editor of Backchannel.

“It’s about people. Travis Kalanick’s foibles aren’t because he’s a technology executive. It’s because he’s Travis Kalanick. That’s the way he is. There is a certain strain in Silicon Valley, which rewards totally driven people, but that is humanity. And advanced technology is no guarantee—and as a matter of fact I don’t think it’ll do anything—from stopping ill-intentioned people from doing ill-intentioned things.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Audm, Rover, and Babbel for sponsoring this week's episode.

PJ Vogt is the co-host of Reply All.

“Every radio story is broken. Everything is missing some piece it’s supposed to have. Everything has some weird interview that didn’t go the way you thought it was going to go, or you thought you had an answer but you were wrong.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, and Blinkist for sponsoring this week's episode.

Carol Loomis retired last summer after 60 years at Fortune. She continues to edit Warren Buffett's annual report.

“Writing itself makes you realize where there are holes in things. I’m never sure what I think until I see what I write. And so I believe that, even though you’re an optimist, the analysis part of you kicks in when you sit down to construct a story or a paragraph or a sentence. You think, ‘Oh, that can’t be right.’ And you have to go back, and you have to rethink it all.” 

Thanks to TinyLetter and SquareSpace for sponsoring this week's episode.

Kyle Chayka is a freelance writer who writes for Businessweek, The Verge, Racked, The New Yorker, and more.

“I love that idea of form and content being the same. I want to write about lifestyle in a lifestyle magazine. I want to critique technology in the form of technology, and kind of have the piece be this infiltrating force that explodes from within or whatever. You want something that gets into the space, and sneaks in, and then blows up.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Audible, and Texture for sponsoring this week's episode.

Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of the essay collection Trick Mirror: Reflections of Self-Delusion.

“I feel a lot of useless guilt solidifying my own advantages at a time when the ground people stand on is being ripped away. And I feel a lot of emotional anxiety about the systems that connect us — about the things that make my life more convenient and make other people’s lives worse. It’s the reality of knowing that ten years from now, when there are millions of more climate refugees, that you’ll be okay. It makes me feel so crazy and lucky and intent on doing something with being alive.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Time Sensitive, Substack, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

Gideon Lewis-Kraus is the author of A Sense of Direction.

"My best friend, who is a fiction writer, she once said to me that she saw a lot of the things I was doing as 'wring tenderness from absurdity.' That wouldn't have occurred to me to put it that way, but that does seem to me [what] I like to do ... I am someone who can very easily be dismissive, or even contemptuous. And one of the things I like about reporting a story, particularly reporting a story that is ultimately, counterintuitively, positive, is that it gives me a chance to work through that, and be the more tender, sympathetic person that I would like to be in real life."