"So often, the Salton Sea is referred to only as a disaster. But perhaps there was some value to the devastation. Maybe living next to a dying sea made it harder to live in denial." Ash Sanders for @thebeliever.net: www.thebeliever.net/the-last-res...

“‘The first thing that happened when the regime fell is that the mobile phones started working again!’ It was, maybe, a good omen.” @emilywither.bsky.social for @restofworld.org : restofworld.org/2025/syria-t...

In this week's #LongreadsTop5 ⬇️ • Purple mountains’ math-esty (National Geographic) • A labor trafficking nightmare (@propublica.org) • Fanning the flames (@wired.com) • After the flood . . . goblins? (@oxfordamerican.bsky.social) • Some like *really* hot (@slate.com) longreads.com/2025/09/19/l...

"And as he stood there in the Sierras, he couldn’t help seeking an algorithmic explanation for his awe. 'Is there a way to measure this?' he wondered." Gordy Megroz for National Geographic: www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/ar...

“A Map of Radical Bewilderment” by @daeganmiller.bsky.social is featured this week on @longreads.com, in a Reading List on cartographic power and possibility. A good reminder to return to Miller’s essay, which makes the argument that we can wander in a landscape without insisting it be profitable.

"She was sold the American dream with a farmworker visa. She ended up in a nightmare." — @maxblau.bsky.social & Zaydee Sanchez @propublica.org

"We keep being told that the robots are going to take over. I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the one I’d let into my house." —Arwa Mahdawi for @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

"But the most telling detail in Klein’s column was that, for all his praise, there was not a single word in the piece from Kirk himself." Ta-Nehisi Coates for @vanityfair.com: www.vanityfair.com/news/story/c...

"Six million antelope swarm across an area the size of Illinois, a mass movement of mammals triple the size of the Serengeti wildebeest trek, the go-to migration for TV nature shows." —Michael M. Phillips for @WSJ.com wsj.com/world/africa...

"I had been living a life that was pretty stacked with stuff for a long time, and what was important to me post-'Vanilla Sky' was to let life in." David Marchese for @nytimes.com: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/m...

"All that has an undeniable hold on me still, but putting together this list, I found myself drawn to essays from diverse worlds that challenge how we think about maps and mapmaking." longreads.com/2025/09/16/r...

Gave me so much joy to see one of my favorite writers, Hanif Abdurraqib, post a layered, well-developed, and intentional long form piece about LB and this project for its 20th anniversary. If anyone is interested, here’s the read:

"Determined to cater to the region’s avid readers, Beirut’s surviving literary businesses have come up with inventive ways to stay afloat over the past few years." Amelia Dhuga for @newlinesmag.bsky.social: newlinesmag.com/spotlight/in...

"The sauna, historically society’s most sedate and lizardlike locale, went wild. So did I, even though I had no idea what I had just watched." —Pat Cassels for @slate.com slate.com/life/2025/09...

"I was sucked into a twilight world of deadly codependency that leads to insanity, suicide, murder." —Joelle Fraser for @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

"A nice cup of tea, whatever the time, whatever the day, wherever you are. That kind of energy." —Oliver Franklin-Wallis, Rebecca Dolan, Jack King, Mike Christensen, Jessie Atkinson, and Josiah Gogarty for @gq-magazine.co.uk.web.brid.gy

"No roadside goblin sightings have been reported of late, and Gwen has asked us not to go bothering them. Tim tells me he thinks the goblins came to help us recover." —Lora Eli Smith for @oxfordamerican.bsky.social oxfordamerican.org/magazine/iss...

In this week's #LongreadsTop5 ⬇️ • A Banksy restoration (@oxfordamerican.bsky.social) • A bank investigation (@nytimes.com) • Alaskan importation (@highcountrynews.org) • A soupy dissertation (Taste) • A bayou pest vexation (@harpers.bsky.social) longreads.com/2025/09/12/l...

"For a long time, many skeptics believed it never even happened and claimed that it was a hoax on a vast scale. Now, almost everyone agrees that the B-Thing took place, but opinion is split on what it means." — @kylemacneill.bsky.social for @rollingstone.com

"'The Minstrel Show' is an album made by three people who knew how good they were, yet found themselves in the sometimes unbearable position of being deeply respected but not beloved." The great Hanif Abdurraqib on a great album. longreads.com/2025/09/11/l...

"We tell so many stories, and many of those stories are told not even for their own sake, but to lead us back to what we already believe about what is possible. Recursive stories to run out the clock." Read Drew Johnson's essay on the assassination of James M. Hinds

"In the past quarter century alone, the nutria has ingested more than forty square miles of Louisiana." —Nathaniel Rich on the Louisiana Nutria Rodeo for @harpers.bsky.social

"I didn’t expect any of this, and I’m unsure what to make of it. But I wonder if the emerging threat of AI is restoring a sense of vitality to the humanistic mission." @simonlewsen.bsky.social for @thelocal.to: thelocal.to/humanities-i...

"Perpetual stews are junk drawers in liquid form, made from bits and bobs. The people who slowly whisk these brews are part Dr. Frankenstein, part alchemist."—@johndevore.bsky.social for Taste Cooking tastecooking.com/stew-kids-on...

"The failure of Reconstruction feels like the origin story for much of American life as we know it now. And it’s a story we’ve told, time and again, without James M. Hinds." #longreads

"Colombo’s deafness wasn’t much of a handicap—drowning swimmers don’t typically scream." Lea Konczal for @texasmonthly.bsky.social: www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/...

"No one remembers the assassination of Congressman James M. Hinds. What do we risk by making it just another part of American history?" #longreads

"The feed no longer surprises but sedates, and in that sedation, something quietly breaks, and social media no longer feels like a place to be; it is a surface to skim." @jamesosullivan.bsky.social for @noemamag.com: www.noemamag.com/the-last-day...

"The list of potential obstacles that Alaska’s incoming food must clear before it lands on anyone’s plate was dizzying." @evaholland.bsky.social @highcountrynews.org www.hcn.org/issues/57-9/...

It's Seabird Sunday, our weekly round up of interesting links shared by users on the Seabird app (which you should join too!). Starting with an apt read for late summer, Olivia Potts on the history of the ice cream truck for @longreads.com: longreads.com/2025/08/26/i...

In our Top 5: *The doctor is always in @restofworld.org *The good boy @nplusonemag.com *The pathway of pigment @emergencemagazine.bsky.social *The shame of Mary Oliver @yalereview.bsky.social *The wealthy on water @vanityfair.com longreads.com/2025/09/05/t...

"Kate Hudson pole dancing to thumping DJ music as Leonardo DiCaprio bobs to flashing purple lights with his 27-year-old girlfriend, Vogue cover model Vittoria Ceretti." —Joe Hagan for @vanityfair.com www.vanityfair.com/style/story/...

"Dirigibles promised the Navy omniscience, dispelling the fog of war with blasts of helium fuel." Read the introduction of the @atavist.com's fascinating new story by Robert Weintraub, about the crash of a Navy airship: longreads.com/2025/09/04/z...

"I have lost myself on my map." Congrats to Leyton Cassidy! Her @longreads.com story on hiking mysteries, "Death of the Hiker," is included in the new edition of THE YEAR'S BEST SPORTS WRITING. longreads.com/2024/05/07/d...

Read Devin Kelly's @longreads.com essay "Stumbling Can Be Lovely," included in THE YEAR'S BEST SPORTS WRITING 2025: "I have learned, as an adult, less about what I am capable of and more about the opposite." longreads.com/2024/03/07/s...

"You meet people who have stories that you can’t look away from." —Arundhati Roy to @lulugn.bsky.social for The New York Times Magazine

"She asked follow-up questions and requested guidance on food, exercise, and medications... She uploaded her ultrasound scans and lab reports. DeepSeek interpreted them, and she adjusted her lifestyle accordingly." — @violazhou.bsky.social for @restofworld.org

"The next clue came from an unexpected place. In fall 2023, Michelle Vanek visited Beebe in a dream. 'She told me she wanted to be found by a team of women,' he says." @hhansman.bsky.social for 5280 Magazine www.5280.com/she-disappea...

“Since I had tasted only the inside of my mouth for three weeks, the white cranberry juice was electrifying.” Life without eating isn’t living, but for one great writer with Crohn’s Disease, it would have to do. Read the award-winning story at @longreads.com. longreads.com/2024/04/18/c...

"Seemingly innocent, these Pied Piper chimes have, in fact, always harbored an element of subversion."

"Bone black is the presence of an absence." Stephanie Krzywonos for @emergencemagazine.bsky.social: emergencemagazine.org/essay/museum...

"He had a lot of worries; he could be arrested for theft. Then again, the blocks could be worthless, which might be a relief—at least then he wouldn’t be thrown in jail for taking them." Ivy Knight for @oxfordamerican.bsky.social‬: oxfordamerican.org/oa-now/savin...

"It’s not just suburbs and the exurbs beyond them that require car travel, but many American cities – even in their downtown cores – have no form of public transportation. . ." @joannapocock.bsky.social @orionmagazine.bsky.social orionmagazine.org/article/grey...

"Disney’s ethos began to change in the 1990s . . . but only after the economic shock of the pandemic did the company seem to more fully abandon any pretense of being a middle-class institution." —Daniel Currell for @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/o...

"Mayhew documented up to 20 street vendors selling ice cream in London—a pittance compared to the 150 hawking pickled whelks and 300 touting cooked sheep’s trotters."

99 Problems: The Ice Cream Truck’s Surprising History, by Olivia Potts in @longreads.com. From crime panics to TikTok, summer’s favorite vehicle has driven a bumpy road longreads.com/2025/08/26/i... #IceCreamTrucks

“When you run ice cream vans, it takes over everything. The job is dictated by the weather; it’s not a job that anyone can decide they’re going to do set hours at.”

"For women, as for men, the best way to avoid death by celibacy was to get married and have regular, Church-sanctioned intercourse with one’s spouse." —Katherine Harvey for @aeonmag aeon.co/essays/getti...

Joni Mitchell "used my father’s name in one of the album’s lyrics—she calls him 'Freddie'—and, in the liner notes, thanked him for 'rekindling my desire to make music.'" @nancywalecki.bsky.social @theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

"A scalloped, hinged wafer dipped in mallow and chocolate, with desiccated coconut at the edges, piped full of vanilla soft serve and squiggled madly with monkey’s blood (OK, raspberry sauce)."