The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

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A close look into a Texas murder. The annotators who train language models. A profile of the man who rode this year’s biggest wave. A personal essay that deep dives into the wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, and an ode to U.S. Army’s new tactical bra.

1. Everyone in Stephenville Thought They Knew Who Killed Susan Woods

Bryan Burrough | Texas Monthly | June 20, 2023 | 15,736 words

Looking back over the past couple of years, I realize I don’t often recommend true-crime investigations. Make no mistake: I like a killer-on-the-loose podcast or docuseries as much as the next media omnivore, but the explosion of the genre has sent a lot of true-crime writing into that uncanny valley of journalism that I internally call Please Option This Story and Make Me Rich, Hollywood. All that said, Bryan Burrough’s lengthy cover story for Texas Monthly falls into no such traps. It’s a curveball that you know is a curveball, yet still dips and weaves and otherwise stymies your expectations. There’s not much I can say by way of synopsis that distills more or reveals less than the story’s headline, so I’ll leave it there; however, know that part of the piece’s excellence lies in its reserve. Another writer might have made Susan Woods’ murder more lurid. Another magazine might have tried to tell the tale in half the length, robbing the characters of their depth. And another form—like the aforementioned podcast or docuseries—might have overweighted the narrative with ominous music cues or hacky video transitions. (Don’t worry: the story also exists as a podcast.) Instead, you get what true-crime journalism can and should be: unsparing, revelatory, and human. A monster’s death doesn’t undo the damage they inflicted, but Burrough’s reporting manages to wring a measure of redemption from the unseemly proceedings. —PR

2. AI Is a Lot of Work

Josh Dzieza | The Verge / New York Magazine | June 20, 2023 | 7,123 words

I love my work: There’s a singular thrill in discovering excellent writing and/or a new writer and sharing that work with others. It’s like stumbling on a secret. (A former colleague once told me that within 10 years I’d be replaced by a bot able to evaluate great writing at a far faster pace than any human ever could. Then I was skeptical, but now I’m not so sure.) What is certain is that with the rise of AI, jobs are changing. You need actual humans to train the bots so that the bots can become more proficient at what they do. The problem with this work—mostly identifying things in photographs, a process called annotation—is that it’s dull, repetitive, and extremely low-paid. What I loved about Josh Dzieza’s piece at The Verge (in partnership with New York Magazine) is that Dzieza just doesn’t talk to annotators for the story, he becomes one to experience the job for himself. What emerges is a very satisfying read about a particularly unsatisfying aspect of AI’s ever-changing influence on humans and their work. —KS

3. Casual Luke Rides the Big Wave

Gabriella Paiella | GQ | June 13, 2023 | 5,175 words

Gabriella Paiella opens her profile with, “The most remarkable day of Luke Shepardson’s life started in traffic. So much traffic.” With that, Shepardson becomes instantly relatable. We’ve all been there. Most of us don’t beat traffic into work and then go on to win The Eddie, the most prestigious big-wave competition on the planet. Shepardson won it during his breaks, still working his job as the beach lifeguard. This down-to-earth approach suffuses Paiella’s heart-warming piece. While her tender accounts of Shepardson’s family life do not shy away from reality—the family struggles to make ends meet on the expensive North Shore—the focus is on the joy they take in each other. She delights in finding that Shepardson truly appreciates what he has, and remains content with his present successes rather than continually searching for his next big thing. Many of us could benefit from a day at the beach with Casual Luke. —CW

4. The Day the Lake Took the Edmund Fitzgerald

Martha Lundin | Orion Magazine | October 25, 2022 | 2,874 words

When I originally stumbled across Martha Lundin’s piece, I had been hoping for a mention of the late Gordon Lightfoot. The celebrated Canadian musician wrote an epic song to commemorate the wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, which went down in a storm on Lake Superior on November 9, 1975. Lightfoot gets no mention but this piece does not disappoint. Lundin turns Lake Superior into a character by deftly weaving facts and observations about the lake and the ship’s many ill-fated portents, clove-hitched together with the often foreboding female nomenclature used with ships and sailing: “There were omens from the start. At the christening, Elizabeth Fitzgerald had trouble with the champagne bottle. She swung and swung and the bottle would not break. Then the Fitz refused to launch.” What you get is one part education, one part lyrical personal essay in which all hands will find something to savor. —KS

5. Is the Army’s New Tactical Bra Ready for Deployment?

Patricia Marx | The New Yorker | June 19, 2023 | 3,735 words

Who wouldn’t be grabbed by this title (combined with its cartoon illustration of a female soldier hanging from the air by her bra straps)? I certainly was, and Patricia Marx delivers on the promise of fun with her slightly tongue-in-cheek account of all things female military uniform. I could not help but envision Edna Mode (superhero fashion designer from The Incredibles) as Marx heads into the Design Pattern Protype Shop at the Soldier’s Centre in Massachusetts. After all, the designers she meets are in “chic black civvies,” there are areas designated to the Tropics and to the Arctic, and projects “have included a uniform that can change color and one that would enable troops to leap over twenty-foot walls.” These projects make a fire-resistant bra seem a touch tame, but the designers are as earnest about this brassiere as they are reluctant to let Marx squeeze herself into a prototype. (Spoiler: She persuades them.) Marx intermixes her snoop around the center with a deep dive into the history of military uniforms—which is surprisingly fascinating, full of bizarre (and sexist) tidbits such as the fact that in 1943 “[t]he government asked Elizabeth Arden to concoct a lipstick to match the red piping on women’s Marine Corps uniforms.” Neither clothes nor the military usually captures my attention, but I am glad I got sucked into this piece: A thoroughly entertaining read. —CW

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