"To eat in modern America is to participate in not-knowing. We encounter the meal on our plates, yet behind that, much is kept hidden from us: how the animals were treated, how the land was farmed, who processed the bodies, and who butchered them."
David Cook for Oxford American: https://longreads.com/2025/04/11/know-your-burger/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
Our Top 5:
• Rediscovery without reckoning
• How an icon becomes a man
• The instant that takes its time
• Life lessons from the hive
• The wicked wit of Withnail
“The thing about this virus is, every time we think we know what’s going to happen, it does something totally unexpected. And that’s the only consistent thing I can say about it.”
Bird flu's origins stretch back to the 1990s, and key events paved the way for the outbreak we’re seeing today.
Everything you need to know about bird flu: https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/health-disease/2025/scientific-facts-about-h5n1-bird-flu
"We talk about ageing and how it feels. He asks me how I deal with it. I tell him I don’t have anything done and have always naturally gravitated towards younger people. 'So you’re a vampire then,' he says." —Vassi Chamberlain for The Times
https://longreads.com/2025/04/10/richard-e-grant-love-again-im-not-looking-for-it/
#running #arhletics #trackandfield #sports #longreads
“This is the grim and persistent pattern that so many #women can now face. While their male counterparts are often praised for their strength, power and performance, #female #athletes are routinely reduced to their physical appearance. The focus shifts from their achievements to their shape and size, creating a dangerous environment that fosters harmful stereotypes”
The Dark Forces of #Female #Athlete Body Shaming
https://athleticsweekly.com/featured/the-dark-forces-of-female-athlete-body-shaming-1039998968/
https://www.europesays.com/uk/6453/ The Quantum Apocalypse Is Coming. Be Very Afraid #apocalypse #ArtificialIntelligence #computer #computers #Computing #FrontiersOfComputing #longreads #Quantum #QuantumComputing #Security #Technology #UK #UnitedKingdom
https://www.europesays.com/uk/6437/ Hot New Thermodynamic Chips Could Trump Classical Computers #algorithms #ArtificialIntelligence #computer #computers #Computing #FrontiersOfComputing #longreads #Physics #Technology #thermodynamics #UK #UnitedKingdom
"That instant film could live on as both image and object...made it an ideal future archive. A message in a bottle. This was it, it said. This was the end for me."
Mike Scalise for The Georgia Review: https://longreads.com/2025/04/09/polaroid-death-machine/
"I came to understand that behind the struggle between bears and people in Lake Tahoe lay a deeper struggle between people and other people, over bears."
Jordan Fisher Smith for Alta: https://longreads.com/2025/04/09/the-battle-over-black-bears/
"The stock handlers represent the ancient tradition of animal and human working together to move what feels like literal heaven and earth across harsh terrain, forging lifelong bonds in the process."
https://longreads.com/2025/04/08/the-horses-and-mules-that-moved-mountains-and-hearts/
"Our world should be at its most analyzable, explicable — but still it can feel like sorcery."
Eric Boodman for New York magazine: https://longreads.com/2025/04/08/does-luck-exist/
#Longreads #Luck #Chance #Probability #Philosophy#Superstition
“It just felt very American. Great beauty and great stories. And also, great tragedy.”
Kori Suzuki for High Country News: https://longreads.com/2025/04/07/the-murder-the-museum-and-the-monument/
"Since the race’s inception, nine pilots had perished from mountainside crashes, unexpected plummets, or rogue lightning storms."
An excerpt from the new Atavist Magazine story, "The Balloon That Fell From the Sky," by Nick Davidson: https://longreads.com/2025/04/03/balloon-race-belarus-disaster/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
"Where the Van Beuningens had pictured a garden, or maybe a swimming pool, there was now only a series of mounds. The final body count was staggering: 128 people."—Nicholas Casey for The New York Times.
https://longreads.com/2025/04/03/unburying-the-remains-of-the-third-reich/
"Camacho has a choice to make: either continue dominating New York’s amateur running scene as the nonbinary athlete they are, or race internationally as a woman. And Camacho has never been a fan of the either/or."
David Alm for Runner's World: https://longreads.com/2025/04/02/the-incandescent-rise-of-sofia-camacho/
"When formula-using parents and breastfeeding parents are pitted against each other in the realm of the environment, I yearn to point to the hands that build the arena of our conflict to begin with."
Nina Li Coomes in The Margins: https://longreads.com/2025/04/01/breastfeeding-during-a-heatwave/
"What scientists learn might even change the way we think about the animals sharing our space—and our relationships with them." —Betsy Mason for bioGraphic
"The font becomes a sign of life on the verge."
Nicole Rudick for Broadcast (Pioneer Works): https://longreads.com/2025/03/31/barnabys-futura-fantasy/
"Did he consider himself guilty of the deaths of John and Keitha? Did he have any comprehension of what had motivated him?" —Stephen Harrigan for Texas Monthly
https://longreads.com/2025/03/31/something-went-wrong-the-double-murder-that-austin-nearly-forgot/
In this new Longreads essay, Aaron Rabinowitz writes about survival, identity, and the inked and invisible scars that history leaves behind.
