The Daily Beast’s Best Longreads, July 26, 2014
From the last hours of MH17’s victims to the history of autocorrect, The Daily Beast picks the best journalism from around the web this week.
The Daily Beast
A Kiss, a Prayer: The Last Hours of MH17’s Victims
Kristen Gelineau, The Associated Press
Flight 17 took off around 12:15 p.m. on what should have been an 11 hour and 45 minute flight. It lasted two hours.
The Secret Government Rulebook for Labeling You a Terrorist
Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux, The Intercerpt
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The Obama administration has quietly approved a substantial expansion of the terrorist watchlist system, authorizing a secret process that requires neither “concrete facts” nor “irrefutable evidence” to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist
Evan Osnos, New Yorker
A former chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the veep has been visiting Eastern Europe since the nineteen-seventies, and he was tapped to be Barack Obama’s running mate in 2008 partly to compensate for the candidate’s inexperience abroad. Last year, Biden said that the President “sends me to places that he doesn’t want to go.”
The Fasinatng … Frustrating … Fascinating History of Autocorrect
Gideon Lewis-Krauz, Wired
Despite the inadvertent hilarity, the real marvel of our mobile text-correction systems is how astoundingly good they are.
Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy League
William Deresiewicz, The New Republic
Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose.
Dude, Where’s My Frontal Cortex?
Robert Sapolsky, Nautilus
The teenage brain is unique. It’s not merely an adult brain that is half-cooked or a child’s brain left unrefrigerated for too long. Its distinctiveness arises from a key region, the frontal cortex, not being fully developed.
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