Global Comment

Where the world thinks out loud

Must reads: True crime, grifts, facial recognition, rescue animals, Manson family

two snow geese in flight

Welcome back to our weekly reading roundup!

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A Manson Murder Investigation 20 Years In the Making: ‘There Are Still Secrets’ (Zan Romanoff for Longreads)

The documentation was the most important thing to me. That’s what kept me going, saying, ‘I want to do justice to these papers.’ If I hadn’t found them, maybe somebody else would have. But if no one ever found them, then people got away with it.

Amazon’s Facial Analysis Program Is Building A Dystopic Future For Trans And Nonbinary People (Anna Merlan and Dhruv Mehrotra for Jezebel)

Those shades of grey are often disregarded outright in building new technologies. Scheuerman points out that AGR, with all of its problems, is the continuation of a vastly oversimplified classification system that’s existed for a very long time, one that sorts people into “male” and female” and has very little room for any other identity.

Homeward Bound (Kathryn Miles for Down East)

“It literally takes a whole damn village to save these dogs,” Hobby says, laughing as she loads Gracie and her puppies into their crates. Gober coos and preens over Tink, promising the little dog she will soon find her “forever home.” But Hobby cuts this short. She has little patience for sentimental goodbyes, and for her, this drill is routine — last year alone, she brought more than 600 dogs to New England, most to Maine or Rhode Island. And with 25 dogs now loaded and complaining loudly in her van, it is definitely time to go.

A Murder on the Rappahannock River (Marisa Kashino for Washingtonian)

Not everyone in Lancaster was willing to help Enright. When she knocked on the door of a retired sheriff’s deputy, she says, he berated her and cornered her on his porch. “There was a time when that would have menaced me,” says Enright. “Now I’m old and I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

The Brazilian Healer and the Patron Saint of Impossible Causes (Leigh Hopkins for Longreads)

Peggy told us that the week before, “Medium João” had appeared on stage and performed several visible surgeries. He administered anesthesia by waving a hand over the afflicted area, and then in full view of the crowd, he used his bare hands to perform brain surgery.

Photo: John Brighenti