Author: British Day

No one is safe from a well-crafted scam, not even the CIO, CEO or even the CISO. The story of Wayne Johncock, former CIO of Centrica and MOSL, illustrates this well: a chance encounter turned into fraud and betrayal, costing him and his wife Nicky more than £400,000. As part of October’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we’re featuring Wayne and Nicky’s story. “The pitch seemed perfect,” he says. “A good Samaritan-like neighbor, a senior executive at Bank of America, wanted to invest in my dream and passion: an edtech startup called SuperLearning Series.” Wayne met fraudster Rajesh Ghedia at a local…

A disturbing children’s psychiatric hospital. The city of Cairo is changing. Optimism about the superiority of AI. The mystery of Cookie’s disappearance. And 51 happy years spent at the Smithsonian Zoo’s Panda House. Margaret Talbot | The New Yorker | September 25, 2023 | 14,695 words Margaret Talbot’s story about Evi Mages, a woman who was confined as a child in a mysterious psychiatric hospital in Innsbruck from 1973 to 1974, was the first work I fell in love with earlier in the week. -And I’m still thinking about it. In recent years, Talbot has spent the last few years…

Kevin Sampsell | Longreads | September 26, 2023 | 23 minutes (6,342 words) This essay deals with suicide and suicidal ideation. If you or someone you know is suicidal, please, contact your physician, go to your local ER, or call the suicide prevention hotline in your country. In the United States, call 988 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. In September 2019, I lost my close friend, Arthur, to suicide. In summer 2020, I began writing a book that centered our friendship. In May 2021, every folder and document vanished from my computer. This mass disappearance included the unfinished book…

A fearless investigation into child migrant labor. Reenacting the tragic murder of an activist. A journey back to the place I once called home. An examination of the character disguised as a plumbing mystery. A new take on an old metaphor. All that and more in this week’s article. hannah dreier | new york times magazine | September 18, 2023 | 7,705 words Last week was all about quality investigative reporting.wired Lying to Elon Musk’s claims about Neuralink lab monkeys, propublica Revealing How Columbia University Protected Predatory Doctors — But studies like Hannah Dreyer’s, which exposed child labor on chicken…

I came to librarianship the way most other librarians do: I fell into it. After a full-time job that had thoroughly burned me out, I found a student job in the college library; this one was part-time and entailed reshelving large academic books and sitting at the big circulation desk with a stamper, ready to land that perfectly placed due date. It came with a lot of quiet and a lot of time to read—excellent for repairing burnout, terrible for teaching me what working in libraries was actually like.  People who do not work in libraries tend to have a…

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In this edition, we recommend the following: A journalist’s essay about her childhood and finding her voice through words. The story of a life-saving drug overdose prevention hotline operator. Examining whether it is possible to communicate with whales using AI. A portrait of Louisiana and singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams. Get a glimpse of sumo, a sport that is growing in popularity in America. Jenisha Watts | The Atlantic | September 13, 2023 | 11,129 words Journalist Jenisha Watts grew up in Kentucky with her mother, Trina Renee Watts, and her grandmother. Once upon a time, Trina was an up-and-coming track star.…

Gyasi Hall | Longreads | September 12, 2023 | 21 minutes (5,698 words) The seventy-first issue of MAD Magazine, cover dated June 1962, contains a noteworthy entry in Antonio Prohías’ Spy vs. Spy, a comic strip depicting Looney Tunes-style espionage between two pointy-headed, monochromatic secret agents. This particular installment isn’t the series’ best strip: it’s not the one with the most elaborate explosions, the most clever ending, or the one that’s most exemplary of Prohías’ precise and peerless art style. But it is, for me, the most Spy vs. Spy strip ever, the one that best distills the already simplified…

Wilson M. Sims| Longreads | September 7, 2023 | 16 minutes (4,665 words) My watch vibrates, my cell phone chimes, and my computer monitor signals a new notification. It’s the quarantine phase of the pandemic and I fidget with a highlighter; I pop the top and recap it. Pop and recap again. There’s a brief message in the body of the email and a six-digit figure in the subject line. I can hear the microwave venting in the kitchen. I can smell frozen taquitos defrosting. The number in the subject line is a client ID and the message informs me…

Robert Kolker | Atavist Magazine | August 2023 | 1,183 words (5 minutes) This is an excerpt from the issue. 142, “Dead Reckoning” This noise will occur. To a Navy captain, that might be the worst sound imaginable. It could be worse than the sound of artillery fire, the whistle of a missile, or the whoosh of a torpedo. The noise is like metal being hammered into rock for a long time. That, simply put, is the sound of everything going wrong. Edward Howe Watson was sitting in the cabin just below the bridge of a U.S. Navy destroyer when…