Ranching, SEO Therapist & Barking Dogs

Featured Reading

The Panhandle Is Burning. Can Ranching Survive?

Texas Monthly • Published on 2025-02-03 • ~8800 words
By Emily McCullar

Emily McCullar reports on the aftermath of the Smokehouse Creek wildfire in the Texas Panhandle through the stories of rancher Adam Isaacs and his family. The fire destroyed hundreds of thousands of acres, killed thousands of cattle, and caused significant economic losses. This leaves the ranchers in the region facing many challenges, as they must now rebuild their livelihoods amidst existing economic hardships and the looming threat of future wildfires.

Adam and Aubrie desperately hoped to raise their son on the family ranch. They wanted Theo to be the fifth generation to run cattle on the property, if that’s what he wanted for himself. But as the months passed, their optimism wavered. Would they be passing down a family business, a way of life? Or a bunch of expensive, increasingly flammable land and inevitable heartbreak?

It’s never been easy to make a living as a cattle rancher, but it’s become particularly difficult in recent decades. A few generations ago a single family could live off a cow-calf operation with fewer than a hundred cattle. Now you need upward of five hundred to make the numbers work.

This Therapist Is Not Who She Seems to Be

Allure • Published on 2025-01-22 • ~4500 words
By Ashley Abramson

Meet Sophie Cress, a licensed marriage and family therapist with over 8 years of experience, with a master’s degree and additional certifications. Except, there is a very good chance that she, and some of her colleagues like Aliyah Moore and Dainis Graveris, don’t exist at all, except for online marketing purposes. This sends the journalist Ashley Abramson exploring the slop created to gamify search engine algorithms for more traffic.

For journalists, already professionally obligated to be skeptical, that mistrust has to extend to potential sources. Of course, anyone could always claim to be anyone … But AI programs make it so incredibly, terrifyingly easy to generate a chunk of text that seems, at least at first skim, like it was written by an expert in any field you can think of.

AI doesn’t have to be involved for slop to be created. Humans are perfectly capable of producing low-quality content and spreading misinformation.

500 dogs barking: Autofiction in and out of Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s Dog Days

The Comics Journal • Published on 2025-02-04 • ~7500 words
By Zachary Garrett

Zachary Garrett ruminates on Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s comic book Dog Days, a rare example of autofiction used in this form. His writing weaves in personal experiences, explores similar work both in comics and other formats, inevitably discusses dog farming and consumption in South Korea, as well as animal commodification in general.

Though these stories are arranged in chronological order, and though the individual tragedies that befall each of her family members and friends are each compelling and upsetting in their own way, they all feature little mediation that might bind them together thematically or into some larger narrative. Similarly, while there is some degree of escalation and successive revelations in Dog Days, there is minimal build of character or plot across its chapters, producing a feeling that each slight story is its own island. A dog appears and then it’s gone, and the nearby chestnut tree isn’t going to fill us in on what happened.

There’s a sincerity to Gendry-Kim’s work that also positions it as part of autofiction’s response to postmodernism. Little levity or playfulness alleviate the misery. Her dogs’ food-based names seem like darkly ironic choices until you learn that they’re just real names. Autofiction’s advocates argue that the kinds of societal traumas that Gendry-Kim’s work addresses, like the atrocities of Japanese imperialism, and present-day emergencies, like the resurgence of fascism and accelerating climate change, demand not grand fictional narratives employing pastiche and parody but, instead, real witnesses.

Recommended Reading

Guardians of the glacial past

Canadian Geographic • Published on 2023-12-28 • ~2450 words
By Brett Huson

Brett Huson explores the significance of the spirit bear (‘maas ol’) to the Gitxsan and Kitasoo Xai’xais First Nations. Indigenous oral histories suggest that the spirit bear's white fur is an adaptation to the environment during the last glacial maximum. Huson highlights the importance of preserving Indigenous knowledge and its role in understanding ecological change and fostering sustainable practices.

The story of the white bear exemplifies how oral histories preserve a particular historical moment and the teachings that travel with the story. Those stories are attached to a specific name and then bestowed upon different members within each nation. Those individuals are responsible for understanding the story and its teachings, just like today’s academic scholars become experts on observable ideas. Through my work on Indigenous knowledges, I’ve been guided to the story of ‘maas ol. Connecting the dots historically has allowed me to expand on what the story of ‘maas ol means in this era of climate change.

Inside the Bust That Took Down Pavel Durov—and Upended Telegram

Wired • Published on 2025-02-04 • ~4850 words
By Darren Loucaides

Darren Loucaides writes about Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, and the events that led to his arrest. It contrasts Durov's public image versus his actions, and how Telegram’s relationship with governments and its approach to content moderation shifted significantly over time.

Durov seems to have been unaware how close to the sun he was flying. One senior former Telegram employee reflected that, while the arrest was not inconceivable under strict European legislation, it was still startling.

The case that culminated with Durov’s dramatic arrest on multiple charges began with a single investigation the previous winter. It was a covert operation pursuing a suspect on Telegram who investigators said had pressured underage girls to send him child sexual abuse material and had admitted on the platform to raping a young girl. According to a document seen by Politico.eu, when investigators made a request to Telegram to reveal the suspect’s identity, the company refused.

The Do No Harm dilemma

New Statesman • Published on 2025-02-05 • ~3000 words
By Hannah Barnes

Hannah Barnes explores the difficult and often conflicting responsibilities of doctors when it comes to prescribing valproate, a drug used to treat epilepsy. It is known to be extremely risky for pregnant women, but they weren’t properly informed, which turned into a scandal. This caused a big swing to the other direction. After speaking to practitioners, “What they cannot understand” writes Barnes, “is why valproate is being restricted in men at all.”

It’s clear that both women and men with epilepsy are being poorly served. Women who were so badly let down by not being told of the risks of valproate are still being failed. Women who continue to take valproate through pregnancy are not routinely followed up with unless they are part of a medical study. Research into the effects on men is even further behind. Little is known about the other anti-seizure medicines, and whether they too might prove harmful.

Gaming Is Becoming More Diverse, Opening a New Front in the Culture Wars

New Lines Magazine • Published on 2025-02-04 • ~2500 words
By Tim Brinkhof

Controversy surrounding a new title about a Black samurai in feudal Japan points to a growing split between players and developers.

… some online critics of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows have attempted to reinvent themselves as experts on the history of feudal Japan, proclaiming that many of the books and articles written about Yasuke’s life are not only inaccurate but part of a calculated attempt by left-leaning academics to rewrite the past in their own image. Yasuke, they asserted, wasn’t really a samurai, but has been retroactively turned into one by people who want others to remember him that way.

‘Crisis communications’: emails show how NFL’s Saints and NBA’s Pelicans helped New Orleans church spin abuse scandal

The Guardian • Published on 2025-02-03 • ~8800 words
By Ramon Antonio VargasDavid Hammer

A The Guardian investigation reveals extensive and previously undisclosed involvement by high-level executives from the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans, professional sports teams, in managing the public relations fallout of the Catholic clergy abuse scandal.

Yet what remained hidden until now are more than 300 emails, amounting to more than 700 pages, many emblazoned with the NFL and NBA logos, showing that the teams’ officials were more involved with some of the church’s operations than they ever admitted. They expose how extensively the sports teams’ leaders intervened in their local church’s most unyielding scandal.

‘It was very hard to contain the emotions’: on the road with the meteorite hunters

The Guardian • Published on 2025-02-04 • ~3900 words
By Helen Gordon

When a rare meteorite falls, it springs amateur sky-watchers, scientists, and professional meteorite hunters into a treasure hunt. This piece by Helen Gordon adapted from her book focuses on the excitement surrounding the Winchcombe meteorite, and the scientists that employe methods akin to detective work trying to find the celestial debris.

Not only was there a meteorite in the bag, it looked to be a very, very unusual one: a carbonaceous chondrite. Comprising only about 4% of all meteorite falls, these are among the most primitive and pristine of space rocks. They are also rich in water and organic material. Some scientists believe that carbonaceous chondrites were responsible for delivering the first water to our planet. Without meteorites, so the theory goes, there would be no rivers or oceans, lakes or streams. Some also believe that the organic material they contain – amino acids and other prebiotic molecules – could have combined with simple molecules, such as ammonia and carbon dioxide, to create the first proteins and RNA molecules: the blueprint to build and operate every living entity on Earth.

The Mediterranean diet is a lie

POLITICO • Published on 2025-02-03 • ~2700 words
By Alessandro Ford

A Mediterranean Diet, for most of us, is associated with healthy eating. That may not be entirely true, however. At least in its current form, which has been shaped by marketing and politics, it’s quite far from the original research that coined the term. Today, it’s still being repeated enough, intentionally, to influence policy decisions.

The European Commission also wanted to establish a bloc-wide food label to help consumers make better choices. The top contender was France’s Nutri-Score, which provided shoppers with a simple, five-color nutritional rating from green to red. Meloni denounced it as “crazy,” arguing it favored French products and unfairly penalized Italian staples, like salami, Parmigiano Reggiano and olive oil ... Lobbies like Coldiretti and Confagricoltura had a solution though. Researchers had amassed evidence that the Mediterranean diet (the all-but-vegetarian one) was among the world’s healthiest. Italy’s money-spinning meats and cheeses were still in its matrix, no matter how minimal. Why not just say the Nutri-Score clashed with the unassailable Mediterranean diet?

Compare modern Italian eating with the original idea of the Mediterranean diet and you reach an unavoidable truth: The Mediterranean diet is dead.