pritheworld:

Lingering in indefinite pre-deportation detention in York County prison in western Pennsylvania while their asylum cases and ensuing rounds of appeals were pending, a group of the Golden Venture survivors began creating intricate paper sculptures, including this model of the ship. (Photo: Katja Heinemann)

Click here to read Golden Venture: 20 Years After a Tragic Voyage

The Snakehead by Patrick Radden Keefe is a really excellent book about the Golden Venture and Chinese Immigration to the US via New York City’s Chinatown.

Highly recommended.

Cannot stop reading this book!

If you were a regular reader of NYMag.com, TheAwl, or Gawker in the fall of 2009, you might vaguely remember the breathless coverage of all the bloggers and writers who went on the Thrillist/JetBlue Junket where the most notable thing that happened was Obama Girl getting mildly injured by falling lighting equipment.

Gawker stirred up a kerfuffle over the attendance of a freelancer for the New York Times.  The Times first defended the freelancer, saying he wasn’t on assignment, then reversed course and terminated his services.

Later, Gawker reversed course and criticised the Times for the firing.

The freelancer, Mike Albo tells the story in his own words in The Junket. Let’s just say that the revenge is sweet.  Here’s a couple of excerpts to whet your appetite:

This story needs to be told without much fictionalization or Allegory, from my point of view. It’s not like I want to do it this way. I wish I could transmute my middle-aged gay pain into some teen vampire drama. But I do need to bend the truth a bit or i will get into even more trouble. So think of this as a memoir with a fictional $3000 sheer Thai silk veil lightly draped over it.

and

Let me explain: If you haven’t been to Manhattan in the last ten years, you should know that it no longer trades in durable fungible goods except for artisanal cheese and celebrity cupcakes. These days, the city is a marketplace of intangible ideas and the internet efforts that promulgate them. Now people make millions by crowd-sourcing, aggregating, and hedging funds.

You can get the kindle Single for $1.99 here. It’s absolutely a must-read if you are interested in journalism, media, or great writing.

amandalynferri:

buzzfeed:

[First Official Photo Of Gale And Peeta From The Hunger Games Movie]

PEEEEETA!!!!!

I just started reading the Hunger Games Trilogy on Amanda’s recommendation and it is OUT OF CONTROL good so far. 

I just finished Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein. It’s written by an American guy who managed to land a job at the Yomiuri Shimbun, the biggest and most prestigeous Newspaper in Japan. He became a crime reporter, covering the red light district in Tokyo and getting himself on a Yakuza hit list.

It’s a great read, especially if you’ve ever been a gaijin in Japan.

Here’s a link to the amazon page, and here’s a link to a fresh air interview with Jake Adelstein from last year.