Literary fiction these days is crap, isn’t it? It might be better if the problem were just that most books are worthless – they are, but that’s always been the case; you always need a few decades to let the dross sink. There’s still good stuff out there; the blame must be placed squarely with you, the readers. Because somehow, even with your lives constantly probed and perforated, shokushu-like, by digital text, you people have forgotten how to read.
When the Florida Supreme Court made the call to allow cameras into a courtroom for the first time to film the 1979 trial of serial killer Ted Bundy, they couldn’t have known what they were starting.
Chicago police have assigned a team of detectives to review the deaths more than a year after the Tribune first brought to light that at least 75 women ranging in age from 18 to 58 had been strangled or smothered between 2001 and 2017.
In 1979, the American discourse on serial killers was irrevocably changed. Ted Bundy’s serial-murder-and-rape trial, which was nationally televised, ushered in a new era of live entertainment. Fifteen years later, O. J. Simpson’s trial became the next national obsession. Today, the true-crime genre reached new heights with the podcast Serial. The proliferation of successful murder-centric content that followed is indicative of a public obsession.
Why do serial killers inspire such fervent intrigue among Americans? A new video from The Atlantic investigates.
ohn Arthur Getreu of Hayward, Calif., was arrested Nov. 20, 2018, in connection with the 1973 murder of Leslie Marie Perlov. On Thursday, he was also charged in the the 1974 killing of Janet Ann Taylor. (Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office)
A former Stanford University worker was charged Thursday in the decades-old slaying of the daughter of the school’s former athletic director, marking the third time the man has been linked to a death as cold case investigators continue to search for more victims.
This zine explores anarcho-surrealist imagination in midcentury and current-day USA, with particular emphasis on the Chicagoland scene. If folks are nearby Chicago, there will be a reading group on this text on May 21 (details here).
Dreams of Arson & the Arson of Dreams: Surrealism in ‘68 (Don LaCoss)
The Psychopathology of Work (Penelope Rosemont)
Disobedience: The Antidote for Miserablism (Penelope Rosemont)
Fishing nets and ropes are a frequent hazard for olive ridley sea turtles, seen on a beach in India’s Kerala state in January. A new 1,500-page report by the United Nations is the most exhaustive look yet at the decline in biodiversity across the globe.
WASHINGTON — Humans are transforming Earth’s natural landscapes so dramatically that as many as one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, posing a dire threat to ecosystems that people all over the world depend on for their survival, a sweeping new United Nations assessment has concluded.
In 2001, a smugglers’ yacht washed up in the Azores and disgorged its contents. The island of São Miguel was quickly flooded with high-grade cocaine – and nearly 20 years on, it is still feeling the effects.
