Seeing Discolored Lawns, California Businesses Apply Dab of Green →

Jennifer Medina:

There are few people who see an upside to the record-setting drought in California, but Drew McClellan sees a path to business. Earlier this summer, when a friend began complaining about his browning front lawn, Mr. McClellan thought back to his childhood in Florida, where he often spotted golf courses using sprays to dye their greens. When a brief Internet search failed to show any local business offering a similar service, Mr. McClellan decided it was a prime opportunity.

And since he opened up shop in July, Mr. McClellan has been taking requests faster than he can keep up.

Stories like this, they’re a mirror. They reflect back the mindset that you bring to it.

Grover Norquist Went to Burning Man →

Grover Norquist:

A community that comes together with a minimum of “rules” demands self-reliance – that everyone clean up after themselves and help thy neighbor. Some day, I want to live 52 weeks a year in a state or city that acts like this. I want to attend a national political convention that advocates the wisdom of Burning Man.

What a joke. You can’t buy anything at Burning Man other than coffee or ice. Tickets (yes, there are tickets, which Norquist conveniently leaves out) cost $650 or $380, depending on when you buy them. And speaking of things he left out, here and here you can find the quite explicit, lengthy rules (not “rules” as he puts it) for coming to/surviving at Burning Man. Norquist did more than drink absinthe and smoke Cuban cigars if he thinks that the social mores of a week-long art festival for 70,000 people could even possibly apply to a nation of 314,000,000 that exists, you know, 365 days a year. But then again, that’s exactly the kind of in-a-vacuum philosophy that Libertarians like Norquist babble on about.

‘Fear was our main reason for living.’

Roma, a documentary by Sam Davis, “brings to light a community that has been somewhat forgotten.”

Hey, maybe TLC will include these stories in their next season of My Big Fat Gypsy Bullshit Reality TV Freak Fest Wedding. Yeah, probably not.

Scott Carrier’s ‘The Hitchhiker’ →

Rob Rosenthal:

I’m often asked “How can I get into radio?”  Typically, I respond with things like “Just start making stories. Take some classes then get an internship.”

What I don’t say is “Interview a lot of people then show up at a radio station and ask ‘Can you help me produce a radio story?’” That seems unlikely to work.

But, maybe I should give that advice because that’s how Scott Carrier got his start in radio back in 1983. Only instead of knocking on the door of a radio station recordings in hand, he went directly to the mothership — NPR.

Scott Carrier is my absolute favorite NPR voice, maybe even my favorite non-fiction storyteller/writer. I was so excited to see him get the HowSound treatment (a podcast that is most definitely worth your time) and to have it be his infamous first story ever produced was an added bonus.

And once you’re hooked, I’d recommend just about everything he’s ever done. You can get all of his contributions to This American Life here.

Oh, and since I’m all frothy at the mouth about this, in the piece, Scott Carrier mentions “The Kitchen Sisters.” Once you’re done with Scott Carrier, prepare to be bowled over by their work. You can start with their new Radiotopia show “Fugitive Waves.”

Holdout: The Story of Edith Macefield →

Roman Mars:

Around 2005, a Seattle neighborhood called Ballard started to see unprecedented growth. Condominiums and apartment buildings were sprouting up all over the community which had once been mostly single family homes and small businesses. Around this time, developers offered a woman named Edith Macefield $750,000 dollars for her small house, which was appraised at around $120,000. They wanted to build a shopping mall on the block where Macefield had lived for the last 50 years.

Macefield turned down the money. Developers went forward with the shopping mall anyway. The mall enveloped her house on three sides.

Really cool episode of 99% Invisible—in a lot of ways, it felt reminiscent of the “smaller” shows that they started off doing. This video, about the tattoo that Roman Mars mentions, is also pretty great:

The “Liberal, Freckle-Faced Slut” Behind ‘I Fucking Love Science’ →

Alexis Sobel Fitts:

Since it launched in March 2012, IFLS has attracted more than 17.9 million Facebook followers—more than Popular Science (2.7 million), Discover (2.7 million), Scientific American (1.9 million), and The New York Times (8 million) combined. Its following is larger than those of the world’s two most prominent science communicators: Cosmos host Neil deGrasse Tyson (1.8 million) and Bill Nye The Science Guy (3.2 million), both of whom are fans of Andrew’s page. Her empire has since expanded to include a website, IFLscience.com, which has a staff and publishes news stories, and a television show slated to start on the Science Channel this fall.

The only thing “new” about journalism these days is the insistence on making the story about the individual responsible for the story. Good for her.

The Twilight of Baseball →

Ben McGrath:

If Mike Trout walked into your neighborhood bar, would you recognize him? Let me rephrase: If the baseball player who is widely considered the best in the world—a once-in-a-generation talent, the greatest outfielder since Barry Bonds, the most accomplished twenty-two-year-old that the activity formerly known as the national pastime has ever known—bent elbows over a stool and ordered an I.P.A., would anyone notice?

Baseball is making money—there’s no denying it. But is baseball planting the seeds of another generation of fans?

/via Deadspin

The Strange Tale of the North Pond Hermit →

Michael Finkel:

Perkins-Vance called dispatch and learned that Knight had no criminal record. He said he grew up in a nearby community, and his senior picture was soon located in the 1984 Lawrence High School yearbook. He was wearing the same eyeglasses.

For close to three decades, Knight said, he had not seen a doctor or taken any medicine. He mentioned that he had never once been sick. You had to have contact with other humans, he claimed, in order to get sick.

When, said Perkins-Vance, was the last time he'd had contact with another person?

Sometime in the 1990s, answered Knight, he passed a hiker while walking in the woods.

"What did you say?" asked Perkins-Vance.

"I said, 'Hi,' " Knight replied. Other than that single syllable, he insisted, he had not spoken with or touched another human being, until this night, for twenty-seven years.

The best part of this is the juxtaposition of the whiffs you get of his conservatism and/or libertarianism (“‘Don’t mistake me for some bird-watching PBS type,’ he warned”) and the fact that he’s the epitome of the Welfare Queen caricature. You’ll laugh bitterly when you see his jail sentence.

Your Old Droog Isn’t Nas →

Jay Caspian Kang:

On a recent Saturday morning, a tall, slouchy twenty-five-year-old in a polo shirt, baggy jeans, and Timberland boots that, by his own admission, had gone “mad dusty,” showed up at a subway station in Coney Island. He admitted to being Your Old Droog, the previously unknown rapper, who, for the past two months, has been at the center of an ongoing conspiracy theory in hip-hop. This was the first time that Droog had shown his face—boyish, bearded, and permanently scowling—to a reporter. As we walked through the housing project where Droog spent much of his childhood, he seemed to have a more pressing concern on his mind than revealing his identity. After some idle talk about the dice game Cee-lo and some more idle talk about gambling problems, he came out with it: “So, did you think I’d be white?”

The last knot to cling to in this story is that Nas hired someone who could impersonate him and rap and then (for some reason unbeknownst to me) wrote him some great songs for him to perform. Rather than just—perform them himself? 

YOD was never Nas for a much easier reason to see—there’s no money to be made selling music.

All we’re left with is a new artist who perfectly captures the vibe and nostalgia of mid-90’s hip hop. And maybe that’s enough.

I Didn't Expect to Find Pornography in My 9-Year-Old's Web History →

Dave Eagle:

“Ossie,” I intoned, making clear the fact that he was speaking out of turn. "I know you did. For a fact, and lying to me isn’t going to make this any better.”

His eyes darted back and forth, as if looking for an escape hatch inside his own head.  He was formulating a plan, something to get out of this situation, and then he stopped. His brow furrowed.

“Wait,” he said, sitting back upright. And then he followed up with possibly the sweetest thing he ever asked me, given the context. “What’s porn?”

I couldn’t help but smile. His defense hadn’t been self-preservation so much as it was genuine confusion. “It’s videos and pictures of people having sex,” I told him. He slumped back into embarrassment. “Oh. Then, yes. I looked at porn.”

Good thing the internet is going to be like, the lamest thing ever by the time my baby is nine.

Oh, and make sure you read this at least until the point where you find out what Oscar thought a “bimbo” was.