The Rise of Food Allergies and First World Problems – Pacific Standard
“If you have spent any time inside an elementary school classroom over the past few years, you have likely noticed signs banning peanuts or other types of food. The bans, which can apply to individual classrooms or entire school systems, are relatively new, especially in their widespread use. Teachers, aides, and other administrators are now frequently trained in the use of EpiPens, an auto-injector that can deliver a life-saving dose of epinephrine to a child.”
The Shadow Commander – The New Yorker
“Suleimani took command of the Quds Force fifteen years ago, and in that time he has sought to reshape the Middle East in Iran’s favor, working as a power broker and as a military force: assassinating rivals, arming allies, and, for most of a decade, directing a network of militant groups that killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq. The U.S. Department of the Treasury has sanctioned Suleimani for his role in supporting the Assad regime, and for abetting terrorism. And yet he has remained mostly invisible to the outside world, even as he runs agents and directs operations. “Suleimani is the single most powerful operative in the Middle East today,” John Maguire, a former C.I.A. officer in Iraq, told me, “and no one’s ever heard of him.””
If He Hollars Let Him Go: Searching For Dave Chappelle Ten years After He Left His Own Show – The Believer
“When the dust settled, and Chappelle had done interviews with Oprah and James Lipton in an attempt to recover his image and tell his story, two things became immediately apparent: Dave Chappelle is without a doubt his generation’s smartest comic, and the hole he left in comedy is so great that even ten years later very few people can accept the reason he later gave for leaving fame and fortune behind: he wanted to find a simpler way of life.”
The Elvis Impersonator, the Karate Instructor, a Fridge Full of Severed Heads, and the Plot 2 Kill the President – GQ
“How else do we explain the dream of the poor hillbilly born in a shotgun shack in east Tupelo, who invented rock ’n’ roll and changed the world and died on the toilet at the age of 42? How else to understand a man like Kevin Curtis, one of northeastern Mississippi’s preeminent Elvis impersonators, whose life was nearly ruined by the sight of a severed head on a refrigerator shelf? How else to make sense of the story you are about to hear, the tale of Mr. Curtis and Everett Dutschke, two men who might have shared a lovely friendship but instead had a weird feud that ended in the attempted poisoning of the president of the United States?”
The Secrets of Bezos: How Amazon Became the Everything Store – Bloomberg
“Amazon.com rivals Wal-Mart as a store, Apple as a device maker, and IBM as a data services provider. It will rake in about $75 billion this year. For his book,Bloomberg Businessweek’s Brad Stone spoke to hundreds of current and former friends of founder Jeff Bezos. In the process, he discovered the poignant story of how Amazon became the Everything Store.”
Why Are So Many Westerners Homeless in Thailand? – The Independent
“Steve is homeless. The 59-year-old isn’t living rough on the streets of London or his home town of Manchester though. He’s sleeping rough thousands of miles away in Thailand. For most people, spending months on a Thai beach sounds too good to be true. But the dream has turned sour for some foreigners in this popular South-east Asian destination.”
Why Are Swedes So Quiet? – Slate
“I had heard of this unspoken custom before moving to Sweden a couple of years ago. This untranslatable ethos is called lagom (pronounced: law-gum) and it permeates all facets of the Swedish psyche. Often misconstrued as indifference, or the stereotypical Scandinavian “coldness,” lagom is loosely translated from Swedish as “just the right amount,” “in moderation,” “appropriate,” and other such synonyms. For example, a common usage would be: The water is lagom hot, or the coffee is lagom strong.”
