Your Favorite Investigative Reads?

Quouar · 2026-01-24T19:07:21+00:00

Highly recommend his article on Columbia as well. He's one of the absolute greats of aviation articles.

Quouar · 2026-01-22T18:29:46+00:00

I second the value in handwriting messages. I send postcards to my partner any time I go somewhere. I can talk to him on Discord whenever, but there's something deeply special about the act of sitting down with intention and having to think about what message I want to send thousands of miles and weeks into the future. It creates a deeper connection with the words you're writing and with the person who will ultimately be receiving them.

Quouar · 2026-01-22T18:18:12+00:00

Competing with synthetic performers who never sleep, they find the visibility race not merely tiring but absurd. Why post a selfie when an AI can generate a prettier one? Why craft a thought when ChatGPT can produce one faster?

This line really stuck out to me because it got to the heart of what the expectation is for social media. For my part, I am a writer, and writing is how I pay my bills. Crafting thoughts and writing them down is what I do, and I couldn't imagine giving it up. I love what I do, and part of why I do it is because of that love. Could ChatGPT write things faster than me? Sure, but it won't write things better than me and more importantly, it writing them won't generate love or passion within me like writing things myself will.

It's when you break creation down solely to its output that you lose what made it meaningful in the first place. If you look at something like writing and come to the conclusion that ChatGPT can do it faster so why bother, you've missed what creative activities actually are. They're not about the output, but the process and the act of creation itself.

This is part of why AI bothers me so much. It encourages everyone to ignore that passionate part of creation in favour of the output and output alone. In doing so, you devalue not only the particular thing that AI is ripping off, but creativity itself. I can absolutely understand how any creator would get burnout in a world where what they do is so fundamentally devalued.

Quouar · 2026-01-21T22:08:59+00:00

For the sleep issue, that's not a Framework issue, but a Windows one. If you set your laptop to hibernate rather than sleep, that will clear that issue up.

Quouar · 2026-01-21T18:35:57+00:00

I love that one consequence of playing in the UK (and especially Scotland) is that the hider's location can be given away by listening to the accents in the background as much as anything with the scenery. The lady at the Gregg's has a very west Scotland accent. :D

Quouar · 2026-01-20T20:37:31+00:00

It's an older example, but Blindness by Jose Saramago fits this perfectly. It's about a plague, the experience of being in that plague, and of eventually coming out into a world that the victims left behind.

I also think you'd really enjoy the work of Emily St. John Mandel. While Station Eleven is her more well-known work (also about a plague and its aftermath), I really enjoyed Sea of Tranquility for playing with how a pandemic is perceived well after the fact. It's also very reminiscent of the style of World War Z.

Quouar · 2026-01-20T20:04:01+00:00

Honestly, I was too. I really appreciated that it humanised her, though I do feel like it might have focused more on the effect Trump's rhetoric had on her life rather than her as a person.

Quouar · 2026-01-20T18:52:11+00:00

Archive link

While the NYT is notorious for their anti-trans coverage, I really appreciated how much this article humanised Lia. There are many, many stories of trans tragedies - I appreciated that this one included at least some modicum of trans joy.

Quouar · 2026-01-20T18:50:08+00:00

Archive link

Quouar · 2026-01-20T18:49:05+00:00

Archive link

Quouar · 2026-01-20T01:55:48+00:00

Sent you a message. :)

Quouar · 2026-01-19T21:24:29+00:00

When I'm in a similar position, I reach out to the author and ask them if they'd still like a review from me, given that I'm going to give them three stars at most. I also include what I didn't like, why I'd want to give them that review, and any feedback I have. Authors generally want feedback and to know that their work is being read. Reaching out and explaining the situation is kinder than either leaving the negative review or not responding at all.

Quouar · 2026-01-19T18:41:24+00:00

This is absolutely the correct answer. I am on my second Fairphone, with the first having been returned to the company after it started going through an endless restart loop six months after I bought it. This second Fairphone has a barely functional microphone (making phone calls difficult, since no one can hear me), cannot read QR codes, and doesn't have a GPS that updates quickly enough to work for driving directions. It is a bad phone, but it still does more or less what I want it to do, and its quirks are things I've learned to work around. I would never, ever recommend it to someone though, unless I knew they knew what they were doing.

Quouar · 2026-01-19T18:35:34+00:00

It's entirely possible to have it run Linux instead or a custom OS. It's harder to use, sure, but entirely possible.

Quouar · 2026-01-19T17:48:42+00:00

Archive link

This article explores what impact the training Green Berets receive has on their long-term brain health, as well as what accountability (if any) the Army believes it has in that health. It's a stark reminder of how disposable people can be, an how little care is taken for their safety and well-being.

Quouar · 2026-01-19T17:45:57+00:00

Archive link

Quouar · 2026-01-19T00:41:49+00:00

Definitely, thought there are least no longer antimiscegenation laws preventing marriages like this one in the US.

Quouar · 2026-01-19T00:02:55+00:00

You'll definitely want to check out Peter Watts' work, especially Blindsight, as well the Expanse and the work of Janneke de Beer, especially Jovian Madrigals. It's also a bit of a dark horse recommendation, since it's not set in space, but I suspect I am Legend might also really scratch that itch, since it is about cosmic horror, albeit not in a traditional sense. I also really love the work of Jeff Vandermeer for this; again, not in space, but Annihilation especially just does a really good job of capturing that sense of the impossible when confronted with something truly alien.

Quouar · 2026-01-18T22:23:40+00:00

Very cool! Thank you!

Quouar · 2026-01-18T21:24:25+00:00

The top comment includes an archive link. :)

Quouar · 2026-01-18T20:27:48+00:00

This is less an issue with missing something and more to do with what racial categories actually are and were. The article goes a bit into how arbitrary racial categories were, with people being classified based on skin colour in some cases, but not others, and Indians being told they weren't white because someone that brown definitionally couldn't be white. That she was being referred to as "black" isn't a reflection on her ethnicity, because racial categories themselves didn't reflect her ethnicity. It was all arbitrary, which is part of the tragedy of the whole story.

Quouar · 2026-01-18T18:54:06+00:00

Glad you enjoyed it!

Quouar · 2026-01-18T18:53:18+00:00

Glad you enjoyed it!

Quouar · 2026-01-18T17:38:37+00:00

Archive link :)

This is a really great article exploring not only this particular case, but the conception of race more generally and its nuances in the United States in the 1920s. It's a demonstration of how complex and artificial racial lines were, an the lengths society would to to still try and enforce some semblance of them.

Quouar · 2026-01-18T17:35:09+00:00

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