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Recommended Writing

All longform pieces recommended on The Slow Scroll

Big Battle on the Little Wichita
Texas Monthly28 Jan 2025 • ~2550 words

A North Texas city wants to build a new reservoir to blunt the effect of future droughts. But many local ranchers say it would destroy their way of life.

The Case for Kicking the Stone
Los Angeles Review of Books28 Jan 2025 • ~2600 words

Philip Ball finds Nicholas Carr’s “Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart” disturbingly compelling.

Are You Lonely? Adopt a New Family on Facebook Today
WIRED27 Jan 2025 • ~4950 words

A goat farmer in rural Minnesota, estranged from her biological children, finds new purpose as a surrogate grandparent.

The Mountain West’s Mega-McMansion Problem
The Nation27 Jan 2025 • ~4650 words

The rich have turned the region into “ultra-exclusive enclaves,” creating hazardous living conditions for everyone else.

What Happened When America Emptied Its Youth Prisons
New York Times28 Jan 2025 • ~6200 words

Lessons from a radical 20-year experiment and a quiet triumph of public policy.

How Fanum Built an Empire Streaming Much More Than Video Games
GQ27 Jan 2025 • ~4150 words

He got big streaming videos of his gaming exploits. He got huge (like, millions-of-fans huge) streaming videos of his offline life. Now, one of Gen Z’s wildest success stories explains his plans to revolutionize the rest of the media landscape.

The Lost City
Intelligencer27 Jan 2025 • ~6450 words

City workers and celebrities, teachers and tycoons talk about what they lost in the Los Angeles fires — and how they’ll rebuild.

A Montana town is waging war on its unhoused citizens. One shelter is fighting back
The Guardian27 Jan 2025 • ~3050 words

Kalispell, Montana, has blocked residents from using the bus and parks, but a federal injunction has stopped it from closing a shelter.

They Saved 54 Horses From the L.A. Fires — But Lost Their Farm
Rolling Stone27 Jan 2025 • ~2173 words

Cha Cha Jago Levinson’s life’s work, Jigsaw Farms, was consumed in the blaze that ravaged the Pacific Palisades.

Who Really Took the Famous “Napalm Girl” Photograph?
Vanity Fair26 Jan 2025 • ~4900 words

A new Sundance documentary, which questions the provenance of a Vietnam War icon, has set off a pitched battle between photojournalists and the filmmakers.