Malpractice & The Good Traitor

Featured Articles

“Eat What You Kill”

ProPublica • 7 Dec 2024 • ~10650 words

Hailed as a savior upon his arrival in Helena, Dr. Thomas C. Weiner became a favorite of patients and his hospital’s highest earner. As the myth surrounding the high-profile oncologist grew, so did the trail of patient harm and suspicious deaths.

Sasich scoured Warwick’s file, thinking someone must have ordered a lung tissue biopsy, which would capture more cells and target the suspected origin of the disease. Where was the lab report that confirmed cancer and ruled out everything else? From 2009 to 2019, he found none. Then, finally, there it was — in April 2020, just a few months earlier — a report on lung cells biopsied. Sasich read and reread the pathologist’s conclusion: no cancer. “What the hell is going on here?” he whispered.

The Good Traitor

The Atavist Magazine • 1 Dec 2024 • ~10100 words

The Nazis feared journalist Carl von Ossietzky so much they sent him to a concentration camp. Could winning the Nobel Peace Prize save his life?

The suggestion first appeared in the pages of the Pariser Tageblatt, produced by and for German exiles in France. On April 16, 1934, editor in chief Georg Bernhard made the case that Ossietzky should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Days earlier, the Nobel committee had announced that there would be no winner for 1932. It had been a relatively common occurrence since 1914; in the chaotic years after World War I began, eight passed without a winner. But to skip another year without emphasizing the importance of peace, Bernhard ventured, would be a mistake. He urged the committee to look beyond the usual candidates: signatories of treaties, famous politicians, founders of influential organizations. If the prize was a metaphor for peace, who better to receive it than someone suffering for the cause—someone like Ossietzky?

Recommended Articles

How Madrid built its metro cheaply

Works in Progress • 5 Dec 2024 • ~4700 words

Madrid tripled the length of its metro system in just 12 years — faster and cheaper than almost any other city in the world. What can its expansion teach other cities? Related: Read Alon Levy’s criticism of some parts of this piece in Pedestrian Observations

As far as possible, stations were standardized, using copy-and-paste designs. This simplified the engineering and design work required, while construction crews would gain experience and efficiency in building stations. The new stations are simple and replicable and are also easy to navigate. Busier stations have sculptures and murals to add character, a far cheaper way to spruce up a station than building an architectural behemoth. While per-station costs aren’t available, even if the entire budget of the 1995–1999 program was only spent on stations, they would still be just £60 million each in 2024 terms, less than a third as much as London Bridge’s Jubilee line station.

President Emmanuel Macron Has Plunged France into Chaos

The New Yorker • 6 Dec 2024 • ~8350 words • Archive Link

Lauren Collins writes about the recent history of French politics and how it led to lawmakers toppling the government for the first time since 1962.

Macron will have to appoint a new Prime Minister—once again, of his own choosing. This time, he says, he will do it within days. If another government falls, however, calls for his resignation are likely to grow deafening, and he may have a difficult time justifying his viability as the head of an executive branch that changes Prime Ministers more often than many people see their hairdressers. In a recent poll, sixty-four per cent of French people indicated that they want Macron to resign, but he says unequivocally that he will finish out his term, which ends in 2027.

The historical traumas driving South Korea’s political turmoil

Financial Times • 6 Dec 2024 • ~2500 words

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s surprise martial law declaration prompted a swift response from protesters schooled in previous fights over democracy.

To much of the rest of the world, South Korea is one of the great economic and political success stories of the modern era. The country is more globally renowned for its vibrant popular culture and manufacturing prowess than for its traumatic past. But the events of the last week have demonstrated how South Korea is still shaped by the particularly brutal period of dictatorship and the subsequent troubled transition to democracy in the 1980s. Both the decision to try to impose martial law and the rapid response to the announcement were rooted in the political divisions, cold war rhetoric and personal experiences of those years.

What Alice Munro Knew

New York Times • 8 Dec 2024 • ~8350 words • Archive Link

The Nobel-winning author’s husband was a pedophile who targeted her daughter and other children. Why did she stay silent?

The family did what families often do after an episode of abuse: They carried on as if nothing happened. Munro took Fremlin back after just a few weeks, and for years Andrea continued to visit them. It was the arrival of her own children, twins born in 2002, that brought clarity to her emotional haze. Andrea told her mother she didn’t want Fremlin anywhere near them. Munro objected that visiting without Fremlin would be inconvenient, because she couldn’t drive. “I blew my top,” Andrea told a reporter for The Star. “I started to scream into the phone about having to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze that penis, and at some point I asked her how she could have sex with someone who’d done that to her daughter.” The next day, Munro called her back — not to apologize but to forgive Andrea for how she had spoken to her. It was the end of their relationship.

Exploding the Big Bang

Aeon • 7 Dec 2024 • ~4650 words

It was thought that science could tell us about the origins of the Universe. Today that great endeavour is in serious doubt.

The question of our Universe’s birth seems settled. And yet, despite how the Big Bang is portrayed in popular culture, many physicists and philosophers of physics have long doubted whether science can truly tell us that time began. In recent decades, powerful results developed by scientifically minded philosophers appear to show that science may never show us that time began. The beginning of time, once imagined as igniting in a sudden burst of fireworks, is no longer an indisputable scientific fact.

‘Mummy would prefer you not to do that’: how ‘no’ became a dirty word in parenting

The Guardian • 7 Dec 2024 • ~3700 words

The gentle, child-led approach to raising children has become popular with millennials – and one two-letter word has fallen sharply out of fashion. Is this progress, or a recipe for future disaster?

Whether, when and how to use the word no is an argument that divides generations. Does saying no to a child squash their self-esteem, or make them feel cared for? Does it inhibit their natural curiosity, or invest them with a sense of secure boundaries within which to explore? Is it an example of unfair adult authority, or simply another care-giving duty alongside heat, food and hygiene? Or is it just a basic part of keeping children safe? In the age of permissive, gentle, child-led parenting, the word has fallen sharply out of favour. Is this progress – or is there a no backlash on the horizon?

Sabotage as a Tool of Solidarity

In These Times • 5 Dec 2024 • ~2500 words

Workplace sabotage has historically been a powerful organizing tactic. Is the time ripe again?

Examples abound, when you look for them. Lizabeth Cohen showed how Chicago meatpackers who protested the Armour company’s refusal to recognize their union in the 1930’s called their “illusion that workers were producing normally” while shirking the company’s quotas the “Rizz-ma-tizz.” Postal workers resisting speed-ups in the 1970’s would record mail as lacking a zip code to clog the process up and enforce downtime, or send most of the mail from one overworked facility to another where workers were similarly sabotaging the system with wildcat slowdowns. Many authors have explored General Motors’ Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant, where its young workforce turned the state-of-the-art 1970’s facility into a case study of discontent. Despite generous and rapidly rising wages, the workers rebelled against an inhumanely sped up, “scientifically managed” assembly line. A wildcat strike in 1972, following an officially sanctioned one in 1970 did not slow down the pace of work, but sabotage did. Time magazine reported in 1972 that new cars at Lordstown “regularly roll off the line with slit upholstery, scratched paint, dented bodies, bent gearshift levers, cut ignition wires, and loose or missing bolts.” The discovery and remediation of these defects forced supervisors to halt the assembly line. It also turned Chevy’s pioneering “small car,” the Vega, into a notorious lemon.

How big data created the modern dairy cow

Works in Progress • 5 Dec 2024 • ~4700 words

Big data and modern genetics have dramatically improved dairy cow productivity in the U.S. by allowing farmers to select breeding bulls based on data rather than appearance. This has led to fewer cows being needed for milk production, but it has also resulted in increased inbreeding among dairy cattle. The industry now faces challenges, including the need for greater genetic diversity and efforts to reduce the climate impact of dairy farming.

No matter where you are in the world, there’s a good chance the milk or cheese you’re buying is the product of the US dairy industry. Even if it didn’t come from American cattle, the cow that produced the milk could well have been inseminated by an American bull. The United States has been the world’s largest supplier of cattle genetics since at least 1992. In 2022, the US exported $295 million in bovine semen, 47 percent of the world’s exports. Few countries even come close to this market share: the next biggest exporters are Canada at 14 percent and the Netherlands at seven.

These Doctors Don’t Know Anything

Electric Literature • 5 Dec 2024 • ~5450 words

Kate Schnur reflects on her experiences of hospital life after her mother has a stroke.

Tears streamed down my face with the weight of the unanswerable questions I had yet to consider. If this were any day before my mother’s stroke, I would have excused myself elegantly and found a private place to cry. But there is no privacy in this hospital.

He Mocked the Rich on TikTok for Fun. Now He Can Get $30,000 Per Post.

New York Times • 6 Dec 2024 • ~2600 words • Archive Link

Aris Yeager’s “European Kid” videos have been an unexpected hit. Wealthy people and luxury brands have noticed.

The popularity of hate-watching the rich has created a lucrative genre for Hollywood — and for Mr. Yeager. He is now striking deals with luxury brands that sponsor his shticks, being paid anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000 to collaborate on posts, he said. Mr. Yeager created The European Kid to mock the rich by pretending to be one of them — and now he’s getting rich doing it. How much has he earned? He says he isn’t counting. But there are signs the gig is paying off. “I recognize how preposterous it is,” he said, relaxing in the rooftop lounge of his Manhattan apartment building, which is equipped with a bowling alley, indoor golf simulator and cold-plunge pool.