Here’s more great reading for you: five stories we love from across all of WordPress.
Jake Threadgould
An account of one traveler’s stay in Iran:
On my second night in Iran I was invited to a party in a middle-class area of Tehran. Since we were a mixed gendered group with a foreigner (yours truly) in their midst, we had to be reasonably inconspicuous when we stepped out of the car and onto the street. As soon as we stepped over the threshold of the house, however, we were no longer in the Islamic Republic.
Alex French and Howie Kahn, Grantland
The full story of how Paul Thomas Anderson created his first masterpiece—and turned Mark Wahlberg into a movie star.
Marketplace
An examination of how the neighborhood of Highland Park in Los Angeles is quickly gentrifying. The team at Marketplace interviewed current and former residents, business owners, and investors and developers to paint a full picture of what’s occurring.
Jia Tolentino, Adult magazine
“I tell people all the time I never really drank the water, but of course that’s not totally true.” Recollections of a former cheerleader at a Texas private school attached to a Baptist megachurch.
Michael Rubino, Indianapolis Monthly
How basketball great Larry Bird almost walked away from the game.
You can find our past collections here—and you can follow Longreads on WordPress.com for more daily reading recommendations.
Publishers, writers, share links to your favorite essays and interviews (over 1,500 words) on Twitter (#longreads) and on WordPress.com by tagging your posts longreads.
Filed under:
Community,
Reading,
WordPress,
WordPress.com
Here it is! A new collection of our favorite stories from across all of WordPress.
As always, you can find our past collections here. You can follow Longreads on WordPress.com for more daily reading recommendations, or subscribe to our free weekly email.
Publishers, writers, you can share links to your favorite essays and interviews (over 1,500 words) on Twitter (#longreads) and on WordPress.com by tagging your posts longreads.
Grant Wiggins
“I waited fourteen years to do something that I should have done my first year of teaching: shadow a student for a day.” A high school teacher learns some sobering lessons about how kids experience a typical day — and the amount of sitting required.
Mehreen Kasana
The truth about being Muslim in America:
In the eyes of those perpetually seeking an apology from Muslims, I am a Bad Muslim. I don’t put hashtag-suffixed apologies online for what someone else of my faith does. When 9/11 happened, I was as shocked and terrified as anyone else was. We scary-looking Muslims experience human emotions, too. … We Muslims react to unexpected loss of life like any non-Muslim would. We cry, we mourn.
Richard Price, Guernica
A “subjective overview” of the history of public housing in New York City from the novelist Richard Price, framed through the lens of his own upbringing in the North Bronx’s Parkside Houses.
Kat Hagan, This Is Not a Pattern
How our behavior and language can have a harmful impact — and how we can fix it. “Small, simple changes will build the foundation for a better tech culture.”
Mike Kessler, Los Angeles Magazine
Kessler talks to survivors of child prostitution, as well as law enforcement officers, judges, politicians, and advocates working to prevent the sex trafficking of minors.
Linda Vaccariello, Cincinnati Magazine
A community comes together to help a family after a tragedy:
“The reality hit me like nothing I’d ever experienced,” McDonald says. “She had no one. I couldn’t imagine what that was like.” McDonald went to Ao, threw her arm around the sobbing woman’s shoulders, and said, “We’ll help you.”
Carl Schreck, Grantland
The story of Shavarsh Karapetyan, a Soviet swimming champion who dove into Armenia’s Lake Yerevan and saved dozens of lives from a sinking trolleybus.
Caitlin Roper, Wired
A profile of John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, whose intense focus on storytelling helped revive Disney’s animation studio with hits like Frozen and Wreck-It Ralph.
Sarah Kendzior & Umar Lee, Quartz
St. Louis is a city long on the run from itself. White flight has spread from suburbia to exurbia, while decades of black demands — for better jobs, better schools, better treatment—go unheeded. This is a region deprived of resources, forcing residents to scrounge for more fertile terrain.
Neima Jahromi, Bklynr
From the magazine Bklynr, a profile of the street artist behind some of Brooklyn’s most recognizable murals.
Photo: dystopos, Flickr
Filed under:
Community,
Reading,
WordPress,
WordPress.com
Here it is! A new collection of our favorite stories from across all of WordPress.
As always, you can find our past collections here. You can follow Longreads on WordPress.com for more daily reading recommendations, or subscribe to our free weekly email.
Publishers, writers, you can share links to your favorite essays and interviews (over 1,500 words) on Twitter (#longreads) and on WordPress.com by tagging your posts longreads.
Grant Wiggins
“I waited fourteen years to do something that I should have done my first year of teaching: shadow a student for a day.” A high school teacher learns some sobering lessons about how kids experience a typical day — and the amount of sitting required.
Mehreen Kasana
The truth about being Muslim in America:
In the eyes of those perpetually seeking an apology from Muslims, I am a Bad Muslim. I don’t put hashtag-suffixed apologies online for what someone else of my faith does. When 9/11 happened, I was as shocked and terrified as anyone else was. We scary-looking Muslims experience human emotions, too. … We Muslims react to unexpected loss of life like any non-Muslim would. We cry, we mourn.
Richard Price, Guernica
A “subjective overview” of the history of public housing in New York City from the novelist Richard Price, framed through the lens of his own upbringing in the North Bronx’s Parkside Houses.
Kat Hagan, This Is Not a Pattern
How our behavior and language can have a harmful impact — and how we can fix it. “Small, simple changes will build the foundation for a better tech culture.”
Mike Kessler, Los Angeles Magazine
Kessler talks to survivors of child prostitution, as well as law enforcement officers, judges, politicians, and advocates working to prevent the sex trafficking of minors.
Linda Vaccariello, Cincinnati Magazine
A community comes together to help a family after a tragedy:
“The reality hit me like nothing I’d ever experienced,” McDonald says. “She had no one. I couldn’t imagine what that was like.” McDonald went to Ao, threw her arm around the sobbing woman’s shoulders, and said, “We’ll help you.”
Carl Schreck, Grantland
The story of Shavarsh Karapetyan, a Soviet swimming champion who dove into Armenia’s Lake Yerevan and saved dozens of lives from a sinking trolleybus.
Caitlin Roper, Wired
A profile of John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, whose intense focus on storytelling helped revive Disney’s animation studio with hits like Frozen and Wreck-It Ralph.
Sarah Kendzior & Umar Lee, Quartz
St. Louis is a city long on the run from itself. White flight has spread from suburbia to exurbia, while decades of black demands — for better jobs, better schools, better treatment—go unheeded. This is a region deprived of resources, forcing residents to scrounge for more fertile terrain.
Neima Jahromi, Bklynr
From the magazine Bklynr, a profile of the street artist behind some of Brooklyn’s most recognizable murals.
Photo: dystopos, Flickr
Filed under:
Community,
Reading,
WordPress,
WordPress.com
I’ve never been a huge fan of the Animated Feature category in the Oscars, but I play along because that’s what all the cool kids do. This piece by Mark Harris on Grantland is a compelling argument though for why the animated feature category is, statistically speaking, silly and unnecessary. It’s such a thoughtful piece that I’m even willing to overlook Harris’s identification of animation as a genre, which we all know is incorrect..
At the very least, the Academy should consider Harris’s suggestion to cap the number of animated feature nominees at three. To date, there has not been a single year where more than three films have been worthy of the award. And it makes little sense to select five nominees out of a field of eighteen, when the Foreign Language category selects five from over sixty films. And those 60 films are already whittled down from a long list of contenders in each country. The dozen-and-a-half contenders in the feature animation category aren’t even preselected from a larger pool; films that nobody would ever think of rewarding like Mars Needs Moms and Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil are what make the category possible. Are animated films really that much better than live-action that every third film made is Oscar-worthy? As much as I like animation, even I’m not that deluded.
(Thanks, Chris)
Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation |
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3 comments |
Post tags: Academy Awards, Grantland, Oscars
Another great set of longreads
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A sumptuous list, yet again!
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Once again a great collection o long reads. I love the pictures and supporting video in the York and Fig article
The Science Geek
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Nice! thanks for sharing!
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