The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
August 16, 2024 at 03:30PM
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In this week’s edition:
• Nature’s overlooked computers
• The wonders flitting around your porch light
• A manuscript mystery for the ages
• Broadway’s newest diva
• The dreamwork that made the team work
1. From Silicon to Slime
Willa Köerner | Dark Properties | August 5, 2024 | 2,879 words
Ever since reading this Ferris Jabr story about subterranean microbes, I’ve kept thinking about Earth’s tiniest organisms: simple life forms that are incredibly complex, doing invisible yet powerful work. It’s easy to overlook life that emerges and unfolds at a smaller scale. This illuminating conversation between Willa Köerner and Claire L. Evans on the growing overlap between biology and computing is a nice follow-up to Jabr’s piece. Evans, a writer we’ve featured in previous Top 5 lists, has written about science fiction, ecology, and technology—the work of an interdisciplinary mind with an inspiring view of the future. Here, Evans challenges our outdated notions of computation; she says that every living thing processes information, or computes. “At some point,” she tells Köerner, “I think we’ll fully realize that what’s happening in the natural world is more computationally efficient, inventive, and resilient than anything we could create from silicon.” Could a tree, roots and all, be a computer? An ant colony? Is imagination a form of computation? What would be possible if humans looked to nature for more sustainable solutions that are cooperative rather than exploitative? This thought-provoking dialogue makes one thing clear: computers of the future won’t be made of metal and plastic. —CLR
2. More Than 4,000 Moth Species Flit Across Texas. One Scientist Photographed 550 in His Yard.
Robyn Ross | Texas Monthly | August 7, 2024 | 1,555 words
Robyn Ross’s short but sweet profile of moth enthusiast Curtis Eckerman hit all my reader buttons: it introduced me to a human with a deep fascination; it educated, stoking wonder and curiosity about an often overlooked winged creature; and it inspired me to look a little closer to better appreciate the world around me. Eckerman is a herpetologist with a love of insects. Realizing he could not identify all the moths he encountered, he began to study them, and has since photographed 550 species of moths near his garage light. With Ross in tow, Eckerman embarks on a mothing expedition in South Austin, Texas, where he wraps a tree trunk in white cloth, sets up an ultraviolet light in a low branch, and waits for moth magic. Why does he love it? “It’s the idea that you get to see something that somebody normally doesn’t see,” he tells Ross. “You feel like you’re exploring a world that others are not exploring, even though it’s around them all the time.” Pollinators in general are struggling for a variety of reasons; moths, specifically, are disoriented by artificial light, and if they lay eggs under a light instead of on a plant, the larvae won’t have anything to eat. TIL. Tonight, I’m going to make sure the porch lights are off before I turn in. —KS
3. An Intoxicating 500-Year-Old Mystery
Ariel Sabar | The Atlantic | August 8, 2024 | 5,375 words
Even before fare like National Treasure and The Da Vinci Code, uncrackable codes have had a way of attracting the peanut gallery, and the oddity known as The Voynich Manuscript is no exception. Yet, as you learn from Ariel Sabar’s fascinating feature, the spurious interpretations may finally be giving way to progress—spearheaded by the very woman who once prided herself on fending off the would-be Robert Langdons of the world. —PR
4. Cole Escola’s Great Day on Broadway
Julian Lucas | The New Yorker | August 2, 2024 | 2,954 words
Ever since I saw Oh, Mary! off-Broadway a few months ago, I’ve had trouble describing it to people. It’s too simplistic to call it hilarious, or bawdy, or fun. It’s also vicious, heartfelt, and utterly bananas. The play, much like its creator and star, Cole Escola, is singular. (For the uninitiated, the premise of the show is that, on the eve of her husband’s assassination, a petulant, alcoholic Mary Todd Lincoln seeks to recapture a niche cabaret career that she gave up when she married Abe, who happens to be sexually attracted to men.) I’ve never seen anything like it, or like Escola. In this profile of the star, Julian Lucas captures the darkly quirky, sometimes deranged, and unapologetically queer humor that Escola specializes in. There are searing one-liners from Escola, including a kicker that elicited a guffaw when I read it. From Lucas, there are deft treatments of various chapters of Escola’s life, including a stint in sex work. “They had briefly considered pastry school, based solely on their enjoyment of the show Barefoot Contessa,” Lucas writes. “But the expense of tuition made them realize that becoming a tart might be easier than selling them.” My only complaint about this profile is that it isn’t twice as long, because time with Escola is time well spent. —SD
5. How to Start a Professional Sports Team, Win Games, and Save the Town
Dan Moore | The Ringer | August 13, 2024 | 8,467 words
It wasn’t that long ago that Oakland was a major-league sports mecca. The Warriors and A’s enjoyed dynasties in basketball and baseball, and despite recent irrelevance, the Raiders boasted one of the most committed fanbases in American football. That has changed drastically over the past five years; now, only the A’s remain, and they’ll be gone come October. Regardless of your feelings about sports, you can imagine the effect this mass emigration has had on folks in The Town—and as one of them, I’m here to tell you your imagination’s not lying. That’s likely why I was so charmed by Dan Moore’s story about the birth of the Oakland Ballers. The baseball team is the latest in a series of community-minded clubs that have popped up in multiple sports across the country, but you can bet that none of those other teams went from an idea to Opening Day in the space of nine months. On paper, it makes no sense. Two childhood friends just . . . make a team? They win the trust of city council, community leaders, and cultural ambassadors alike? They secure a contaminated public park and manage to clean it and erect a stadium in less than five weeks? Thankfully, Moore was there to chronicle the entire against-all-odds process, and his admitted homerism is part of what makes the piece so appealing. He, like Ballers founders Paul Freedman and Bryan Carmel, grew up an Oakland sports fan. He knows the heartbreak. He also has no illusions about the impact a minor-league sports team (a sub-minor-league team, if you want to be brutally accurate about it) can reasonably expect to make on a city’s psyche. But when you get to that first game, Moore sitting in the stands with the other 4,200 fans, high on the sense of possibility, you’ll probably react like I did: heading straight to the Ballers’ website to score some tickets. —PR
Audience Award
What was our most-read pick of the week? The envelope, please.
Her Dad Was the BTK Killer. Their Daughter Was Gabby Petito. Why Would They Ever Agree to This?
Luke Winkie | Slate | August 14, 2024 | 4,513 words
The true crime industry—what a phrase—is both vast and lucrative, spanning from docuseries to podcasts to books to conventions like CrimeCon. But those conventions don’t simply connect fans with investigators and journalists; they’ve become a tour itinerary of sorts for crime victims’ family members, many of whom bare their souls for years on end. For Slate, Luke Winkie visits CrimeCon to ask one simple question: why? —PR
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/08/16/top-5-longreads-of-the-week-527/
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