This week’s top 5 long reads

Take a quick look at this week’s list:

• Forcibly evicting the Maasai in the name of “conservation.”
• The death of an Alabama pastor and the grief of the community he left behind.
• We study the small brown bats of Alaska.
• Dissemination from a conference on artificial intelligence.
• remember Shaun of the Dead20years later.

Stephanie McCramen | The Atlantic | April 8, 2024 | 8,385 words

The pastoral, semi-nomadic Maasai people have lived in northern Tanzania since the 17th century. However, under the guise of protection and modernization, the Tanzanian government is resettling tribes, destroying their properties and seizing their cattle. In other words, their traditional way of life is being erased. This paves the way for ecotourism, carbon offsets and conservation initiatives that are said to work towards the goal set by world leaders to protect 30 percent of the Earth’s surface by 2030. . However, this is a violent displacement of the indigenous people who have maintained the Serengeti ecosystem. Does such environmental progress require that green grassland over a long period of time? Setting aside this land for “protection” still means selling a romanticized version of Africa, catering to the demands of billionaire trophy hunters, and the Dubai royal family (whose land was annexed to It also means stimulating a lucrative safari industry that is affiliated with powerful foreign interests, including the United States. private hunting playground). This story is eye-opening and upsetting, and Stephanie McClammen’s reporting deserves praise. She balances the big players, far-reaching action, and power dynamics with details and quietly telling moments. But what works best here is the emotional story woven into Songoyo, a Maasai man navigating the terrain that was once his homeland. You probably come to this work to understand the larger humanitarian crisis that is unfolding, but McCramen’s work centers around the journey of one pastoralist who feels and watches his community and culture disappear. I’m stunned by the wonderful writing. —CLR

Mark Warren | Esquire | April 3, 2024 | 11,242 words

I don’t mean to mince words. This story hurts. Because it carries great pain: the pain of Bubba Copeland, the Baptist pastor who took his own life after his personal secrets were exposed to the world, and the pain of the grieving community he left behind. It hurts. It is painful to see the infuriating hypocrisy of the self-righteous trolls who led Copland to decide he could no longer continue. And it is a stark reminder that right-wing pseudo-media threatens more than democracy, so they go to great lengths to publicly shame those they see as enemies of conservative values, and privately. It also threatens the lives of people. “The internet narrative is that tribes are hurling stones from beyond the horizon at invisible targets, causing untold damage,” Mark Warren writes. In this feature, Warren does a heroic job of rescuing Copland’s story from the clutches of evil. 1819 news, I’m not going to link to his reporting on Copeland. He approaches his projects with such strong respect that it is visible. You can feel it in the way Warren writes about Copeland and his family and friends, especially in his depiction of the careful and considerate process of approaching subjects who, for obvious reasons, are reluctant to speak to journalists. I can do it. You can feel it in Warren’s writings about faith, tolerance, mistakes, and forgiveness. If you wash away your wounds, blessings await you on the other side. —SD

Trina Moyles Hakai Magazine | March 12, 2024 | 3,100 words

one of the things i love hakai magazine It’s about how we use awe and wonder to make the science of nature and wildlife accessible to a general audience. As the piece begins, Trina Moyles places us on a viewing platform above a rushing river. In the photo below, salmon fly upstream to return to their spawning grounds as giant bears compete for fresh fish. “The 350 kg male sank into a bubbling pool below the waterfall and surfaced with the salmon 10 seconds later,” she wrote. “He grips the fish with his two paws as if praying, then skins it whole.” This scene is direct and visceral, but this story, albeit much smaller, spends the winter lethargic. It’s about another brown Alaskan mammal, a small brown bat that weighs 10 grams. Jessica Reimer is a chiropterologist who wants to better understand the interactions among Alaskan bat colonies. You might wonder why she is leading the world’s first gene flow study to examine where bat colonies hibernate to manage and protect their populations. Aren’t bats pests that transmit rabies? It turned out that they did not deserve their bloodthirsty reputation. There are 1,400 recorded species, ranging from “giant fruit bats the size of a small human child to tiny bumblebee bats weighing just 2 grams.” Each species occupies an “ecological niche, pollinating specific flowers, distributing fruit and tree seeds that help maintain and regenerate forests, and regulating insect populations.” This is just a small portion of bats’ contributions to the planet, yet we sit back and watch as white-nose syndrome threatens bat populations across North America. But if you think we don’t have much in common with bats, consider our hands and wings. The human hand has 27 joints. Reimer became interested in bats, often ignored by conservationists, as an off-the-beaten-path scientific path. “I want to ask questions that haven’t been asked yet,” she says. As a reader, she appreciates her curiosity and awe for these little flying bears. In the end, I learned that when it comes to bats, it’s not what bats can do for you that matters, but what you can and should do for them. —K.S.

Laura Preston | n+1 | April 10, 2024 | 8,200 words

There are few subgenres that are as reliable as the “Writer Visits Industry Conference,” a type of subculture work. Similarly, few topics offer as fertile ground for combating the moment as artificial intelligence. Combine these two, spice it up with some insightful, sarcastic writing, and you’ve got Laura Preston’s visit to a conversational AI conference. What’s important here is that Preston was invited to the conference as an “honorary contrarian speaker” based on an article she wrote. n+1 About real estate chatbots. She is aware of the trap, but she also sees the paycheck, so she is willing to step into it. Her decision benefits us all. The conference’s focus on avatars provides an important preview of how the AI ​​industry is turning chatbots into pseudo-humans, and Preston’s impeccable note-taking (and constant appreciation for good quotes) ear) reveals the unpleasant energy underlying each interaction. Conference attendees pay lip service to avoiding ethical and cultural pitfalls, but every use case she encounters here sounds like an express train to dystopia. A medical advice avatar wearing a stethoscope to encourage disclosure, but not a doctor. A customer support avatar convincing people to euthanize their pets. A nursing home avatar designed to ease the darkest days of dementia patients. A service that promises to diagnose your mental and physical health based on snippets of your voice. “What really frightened me,” Preston writes, “was the future of mediocrity they suggested: inescapable screens, app-encouraged antisocial behavior, the assumption of progress as knowledge; Above all, a collective delusion formulated at the top and disseminated to the general public.” All of this has given them an easier life. ”This week’s news that Meta and her OpenAI aim to develop AI that can remember and reason makes me want to look to the future and see eradication, just like her Lyft driver in Preston. I am tempted. Thankfully, Preston infuses the film with plenty of all-important gallows humor. She has never felt so necessary to laugh to keep from crying. —PR

Jack King | British GQ | April 9, 2024 | 2,522 words

It took me a while to forgive Jack King for making me feel so old in this interview.20 years have passed since then Shaun of the Dead Freed. yes, 20 years That’s because a motley group of Brits choose to survive a zombie apocalypse at a local pub. (A plan I’ve always admired.) A bastion of understated humor, the film still has plenty of quotable lines. Until now If a zombie bites me, I’m going to say, “It’s okay, Barbara, I did it under cold tap water.” Director King gathered the film’s stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, as well as director Edgar Wright, to talk about the making of his first-ever zombie romantic comedy (Romantic Comedy), a film about his 20th anniversary. I praised the moon. . There’s some interesting insight into how this film was commissioned and also spawned his two parodies, especially the discussion about which record to throw at a zombie’s head, and the aforementioned scene where Sean’s mother plays a stream. I really enjoyed learning about real tears. Barbara – turned into a zombie and died. Pegg and Frost are just as baffled by the passage of time as I am, remarking how strange it is that actor Bill Nighy is almost the same age he was when he made this movie. I am. (They describe Nye as the “Obi-Wan Kenobi” of the movie. Imagine being Obi-Wan’s age.) But the trio I remember it vividly and warmly, and the feeling of dryness has not diminished over time. The humor they share. While reading this, I felt like I had wandered into Winchester for a beer and a chinwag with Sean and Ed. I didn’t want to leave. —C.W.