Friday Links!
This is a magnificently written, heartbreaking story: The Paperboy’s Secret.
Perhaps linked to the scam center story I posted a few weeks ago: WOW: My Visit To Laos’ Creepy, Lawless “Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone”.
This is horrifying and demands to be read, as well as winning a prize for journalism in Europe (the "accept cookies" dialogue box is in Dutch, but click through and the article is in English): What the wounds are telling us: Doctors in Gaza observed a disturbing pattern: children with a single gunshot wound to the head or chest, a sign that they had been deliberately targeted. This emerges from research by de Volkskrant, which spoke with the doctors who are among the last international eyewitnesses.
Another fantastic piece of reporting from Pro Publica, this one about a raw milk farm and the inevitable disasters: The Milkman.
A riveting and heartbreaking story: My mother was forced to give me up for adoption. But when we finally met decades later, it was far from a fairytale ending.
This is remarkable: Some ancient microbes frozen with Ötzi the Iceman are still growing.
I grew up right next to here: Corpus Christi’s Water Crisis Sparks a Fight With Its Neighbors.
Animals keep getting smarter as we think of smarter ways to study them: Bonobos enjoy pretend tea parties and chimps think rationally: why apes are more like us than we ever thought.
From John S., a fantastic story: Scientists make sourdough bread using yeast found in 5,000-year-old mummy.
From Wally, and "real horror" certainly describes this country right now: These Fantasy and Sci-Fi Novels Are Full of Real Horrors.
Common Ground
I talked to someone in the locker room before swimming today.
He tends to be dressing after his workout just as I get to the locker room, and we're often only a few lockers away from each other, so we chat a bit.
The thing about this guy is he looks great. At seventy-fix! Super fit. And I've learned over the weeks that he works out two hours a day M-W-F and an hour T-T.
I told him how much I respected his routine, because I struggled with motivation, even though I always showed up. "It's not hard for me," he said, "because I made working out a religion."
"It is for me, too," I said, "except it's the Inquisition."
The Sleepers
The exhibit that made the most lasting impression on me last week at the MOMA was Sophie Calle's
The Sleepers.
Here's a description from the MOMA's
page for the exhbit:
Sophie Calle probes the boundaries between public and private life. In 1979 she began following people around Paris to give structure to her days. For The Sleepers, one of her earliest projects combining image and text, she shifted this practice of surveillance from the street to her bedroom. Over eight days, Calle invited 29 people—friends, acquaintances, and strangers—to sleep in her bed in consecutive eight-hour shifts, keeping it continuously occupied. When someone failed to arrive, Calle hired a bedsitter or filled the spot herself. She photographed the sleepers at regular intervals, took notes on their gestures and habits, and served meals and changed sheets. “I have an attraction, not to know somebody’s life,” she remarked, “but to know details, for example, which way he sleeps, on which side of the bed.”
It's an oddball, creative idea, and her execution was creative as well. She took roughly five photos of each person, usually while they were sleeping, and along with the photos was a bit of typewritten text about what they said and did while they were there.
It doesn't sound like anything special, but with three sleepers a day over eight days, and four to six pictures of each person, she wound up with enough photos to ring three walls of a long room. The cumulative effect become more and more pronounced as I went along the walls, studying the images and text.
This was my favorite one, and it was the last one in the exhibit:
The text read (in part):
Then I accompany Daniel D. to the door. I thank him for coming. He answers: "In the end all these people disgust you profoundly. Thanks for having been able to stand us."
A Progress Update
The book formerly titled This Doesn't Feel Like The Future which now (temporarily) has no name is moving along.
I finished the rewrite of part three on Sunday.
The second section is essentially finished, or almost there, so that leaves the first section, where there are multiple issues I need to fix. I think I can complete the changes by early August, though.
That would leave about four months for refinement and polishing, and then a couple of weeks for formatting, etc.
The end of the year publishing date is a possibility again.
A Carnival
There was a carnival in Astoria last weekend.
I have many fond memories of carnivals as a kid, of walking about half a mile to an empty field near my school every year and stepping into a magical world.
I had a neighbor on my street who worked for much of his life in a carnival (his wife, too). He taught me how to speak carny, a language used by the workers to talk amongst themselves without customers knowing what they were saying.
For a kid living in a town with just over 7,000 people, it was fantastic.
This carnival was not that.
It still had all the same elements (they haven't changed that much over the years), but the space was far too small, and there were twice as many people as the space could actually support. It was chaos, generally, and not fun at all.
Still, though, just walking around and seeing the rides and the food trailers, it brought back so many special memories.
One thing has changed over the years, though: the prices.
Check this out as an example:
That's the basketball game, the bog-standard one where they use smaller rims and it's almost impossible to make a shot. You might need to click on the image to enlarge it to see the prices, but to have a chance at a jersey, it was $10 a shot.
You could also try to win a crappy stuffed animal and it was "only" $10 for three balls, but I didn't see many people going for that. Almost everyone wanted a jersey.
Here was the incredible thing: I saw multiple people pay $10 for one shot and not even reach the basket. Far short, in some cases. Grown-ups! Always men, too. What a disconnect between the illusion of athletic skill and reality.
MOMA!
We went to the MOMA today and I am fried beyond belief, for some reason. Here are some random pictures from today with very little explanation.
First, the city itself, with a view I've never noticed before today:
The choice of background color is remarkable in this next work. In person, it makes the image almost three dimensional when you're viewing from the right distance:
This is an absolutely stunning photograph:
This painting was magnificently dark, but it also had many different shades of darkness:
This was, according to the artist, some kind of cathedral to birds or air or something. Unfortunately, that's not what I saw. I saw the repressive totality of the authoritarian state (potato, potahto).
Conundrum
I like salmon, but C doesn't seem nearly as keen.
"I was going to pick up some salmon, but I don't think you like it as much as I do," I said.
"I do like it," she said.
I've only seen you eat it at Hamido," I said. "Never at home."
"I like salmon," she said. "I just don't like it undercooked or overcooked, which are the only two ways I prepare it."
Pablo Torre Finds Out finds Mamdani
I believe I mentioned a few weeks ago that Pablo Torre won a Pulitzer for the investigative reporting in his podcast
Pablo Torre Finds Out.
Almost no one does sports journalism anymore, but he does, and he's terrific when he does it. What he's also great at, though, is being goofy. Somehow he switches back and forth seamlessly between the two.
He interviewed NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani this week for his podcast, and the entire segment is so funny and genuine. Mamdani is one of the most engaging politicians I've ever heard, and he so clearly embraces life in a way that other politicians (most of whom always seem entirely miserable) just don't.
Vampire Crawlers (completed)
I made it to the end of the existing Vampire Crawlers content today and it's an incredible value at $9.99.
It would have been an incredible value at $19.99, too.
It's a fantastic card game, one of the funnest card games I've ever played, and it fits perfectly into the Vampire Survivors universe.
Highest marks, and if you have a chance to pick it up, I don't think you'll be disappointed.
Red Bull
I believe I posted a link to the Wired story when this originally happened earlier this year, but new circumstances warrant an update.
In January 2026, Wired published a story about "Red Bull," a young man who went to Laos ostensibly for a job as an IT manager. Instead, his passport was taken and he was forced to work in a major romance scam operation until he repaid his "debt" (which would, of course, never be repaid).
What made Red Bull different was his willingness to provide an enormous amount of documentation about how the operation worked, including thousands of WhatsApp messages in spite of the risk of being discovered. Even underperforming workers were physically abused, so it was incredibly courageous to expose the operation.
It was, in fact, at risk of his life.
The original Wired story (non-paywalled) is here: He Leaked the Secrets of a Southeast Asian Scam Compound. Then He Had to Get Out Alive.
He did get out alive, but he's still not safe. Instead of work in a computer field, he's waiting tables and lying low. What an awful reward for bravery.
Jonna H-F, a longtime reader, followed this story and contacted the Wired reporter (Andy Greenberg), who connected her with Red Bull, and the result is a GoFundMe to help him settle in a safe country where he can continue his education. He needs to enroll in a university to get a student visa, and there are complications and expenses involved.
This is an extraordinary individual who is entirely worthy of help, and it's a modest fundraising goal (26k).
Here's the link to the GoFundMe, and thank you for considering it: Help Scam Compound Whistleblower Rebuild His Life.
It Certainly Wasn't Flawless, part two: The Return
I forgot to mention a few things yesterday.
One was the train from Grand Central to White Plains had the squeakiest wheel in the history of the NYC transit system. The subway cars can be shrill shrill, at times, but this train took it to several more levels. There was also a screaming toddler that redefined the phrase "Armageddon."
Most importantly, I forgot to mention that the path we took to White Plains was actually Plan D, after plans A, B, and C had all failed.
This is how the trip from White Plains back home went.
The Uber picked us up in one minute. We got to the train station and went for a quick breakfast sandwich (I hadn't eaten for six hours) at a Tim Horton's right by the platform. I tossed the wrapper in the trash, we stepped on the platform, and the train arrived two minutes later.
It was an express train, so we made one stop (instead of fifteen) before we disembarked at Grand Central.
A musician with a violin was playing as we walked up the stairs. I looked at C. "Are you kidding me?" I asked. She laughed.
We needed to take two subway trains to get home. They both arrived within thirty seconds of us stepping on the platform.
On the way home, a man with a guitar stood up and serenaded us (quite nicely, too) for one stop.
"The universe is just *ucking with us now," I said.
It was all impossibly, unreasonably perfect.
Time to get to White Plains? Almost two and a half hours. Time to get home? An hour and thirty minutes. With violin.
