LOOKING TO JAPAN
- How to kill a fish (Topic) - Why and how we should kill fish more humanely (as they do in Japan?), for animal rights, taste, and commercial reasons (fish who die by asphyxiation on ice release more lactic acid, so taste worse and can keep for up to 1 month less before going bad).
- Japanese Rent-A Family Industry (New Yorker) - I didn’t know this was a thing (and has been for decades), but in Japan, you can rent actors to pretend to be your family member, boss, or significant other - for all kinds of reasons that at first seem crazy but also kind of genius.
IMMIGRANT DREAMS, IMMIGRANT LIES
- The Great high school impostor (GQ) - The GQ features desk consistently churns out some of my favorite long-form. This one is no exception. The story of a heartbreaking double life, a failed protagonist, the optimism of youth, and indiscriminate international border laws.
- Germany’s refugee detectives (The Atlantic) - Inside the secretive department in charge of vetting whether someone gets refugee status, where simple lies can reveal truths, and a machine can detect your true native language(s).
BIG TECH // TECH BUGS
Palantir knows everything about you (Bloomberg)- The obligatory article about the dangers of building big data based on human flaws, and the arrogance of big tech / Pieter Thiel. The part about the gang member repository just slays me.
POLITICAL GAMES
- The Gamblers betting against Donald Trump (The Ringer) - There are people who bet on political outcomes, as their full time jobs - particularly exploiting the news/political bubbles that drive people’s (namely Trump supporters’) incorrect expectations of the future.
FARM MURDERS AND SOUTH AFRICAN VIGILANTISM
- Midlands (book) - An old one (from 2000), but shockingly little has changed since then. Journalist Jonny Steinberg follows the story of the unsolved murder of a white farmer’s son, in a town on the geographic edge of the white/black divide in KwaZulu-Natal. A depressing read in which everyone is morally culpable and also totally understandable.
- A more updated and perhaps uplifting story: Give Back The Land (BBC The Documentary podcast). Would have liked to hear a bit more about other models of redistribution (eg profit share) - but I think the protagonist does a good job explaining the dilemma from the perspective of a liberal white South African: I know I should not keep stolen goods (it IS actually that simple), but I also can’t bear to get rid of it.