The Litigious 'Inventor Of Email,' And Other Great Reads
Every week, we highlight the longform articles from recent days that we think you shouldn't miss. Here are this week's picks:
How The US Triggered A Massacre In Mexico
A must-read account of the night in 2011 when members of a drug cartel killed dozens of men, women and children in Allende in retribution for a leak — which had made its way back to the cartel's leaders thanks to a questionable decision by the US Drug Enforcement Administration. The first-person stories of people who survived the atrocity will devastate you.
[ProPublica and National Geographic]
Remembering The Murder You Didn't Commit
You've probably read about people giving false confessions under coercion from interrogators. But this story about people who are still haunted by memories of a crime they didn't commit years after they were exonerated by DNA evidence will destroy any last shreds of faith you had in human beings' ability to remember things objectively.
History By Lawsuit: After Gawker's Demise, The 'Inventor Of Email' Targets Techdirt
A fascinating profile of Shiva Ayyadurai, who insists he invented email despite all evidence to the contrary — and will sue anyone who says otherwise. Writers Joe Mullin and Cyrus Farivar ably explain the technical history of email and paint a nuanced portrait of an individual who you might otherwise dismiss as one-dimensional.
The Secret Origin Story Of The iPhone
This excerpt from Brian Merchant's new book, The One Device, will make you appreciate anew how incredible it is that we all carry around computers in our pockets now. It will also make you glad that you weren't one of the people recruited to help develop the iPhone, who were told they had "to work harder than you ever have in your entire life" and gave up any semblance of a social life for years on end.
Pulse Nightclub Was My Home
There were many moving tributes to Pulse Nightclub on the first anniversary of the deadliest mass shooting in American history, but this one is particularly essential. In it, writer Edgar Gomez teases out the parallels between his own life as a queer man of color growing up in a conservative community and the life of shooter Omar Mateen.
