Every Thursday, we highlight the longform articles from the past week that we think you shouldn't miss.
How The Founder Of Blackwater Tried To Start A Private Air Force
Erik Prince, the head of Blackwater — America's primary mercenary firm — apparently wasn't content with a force of ex-soldiers with guns. Jeremy Scahill and Matthew Cole shed some light on Prince's crazy (and very illegal) plan to start a private air force.
The Pot Church Of Indiana
In 2015, Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed the controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It was intended to allow, for instance, a wedding cake baker to deny service to a gay couple. It was not intended to allow the creation of the First Church of Cannabis. But that's exactly what it did.
The Woman Without Memories Or Imagination
Susie McKinnon can do a lot of things. Among the things she can't do, however, are remembering any of her life experiences or imagining her future. Susie suffers from severely deficient autobiographical memory and because of it, she — in a much realer sense than anyone has ever meant by this phrase — lives in the present.
How The Center Of The US Was Turned Into A Digital Hell
In 2002, Maxmind — a company that allows people to search for the physical location of an IP address — set the coordinates 38°N 97°W as the center of the US, such that if someone queried an IP that could only be located as "in the US," it would return those coordinates. Which was fine and good, except for the family that happened to reside precisely at those coordinates.
How Do You Moderate The Internet?
Comment moderation dominates discussions of free speech on the internet. But what about the content itself? Platforms like YouTube and Facebook yield unprecedented levels of power in terms of what people see or don't see — a video from a protest might show graphic violence, but is it ethical for YouTube to block it? And why should YouTube have all that power? Catherine Buni and Soraya Chemaly dive into the murky, complicated world of deciding what stays and what goes on the internet.
The Past And Future Of Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk was concerned with the future. Now that that future is becoming our present (at least, in some ways), what does cyberpunk have to say about our new future?
Click here for more great long reads, and for more stuff from Digg, check out our Originals archive.
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