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LUNCH BREAK READS

01 • 17 Minute Read
WIRED Matt Burgess
British Police Built a Sprawling Crime-Prediction Machine. Some Results Couldn't Be Trusted.
Since 2016, Avon and Somerset Police built at least 23 machine-learning models to predict who in Bristol, England, would commit burglary, go missing, or be victimized at home. A WIRED investigation, conducted with Liberty Investigates and the Bristol Cable, found that at least two models were quietly scrapped after council staff deemed them untrustworthy, that one burglary prediction model ran below 10 percent precision for more than three years, and that the source code for the abandoned tools cannot be found. The officer who built the program now leads a national body rolling AI tools to all 43 police forces in England and Wales. Half a million Bristol residents were scored. Most never knew.
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02 • 24 Minute Read
The Atlantic Sean Flynn
The 10,000-Year Flood
The Guadalupe River ran 33.6 cubic feet per second at 1:55 a.m. on July 4. By 4:30, it was moving 106,000. Sean Flynn traces what happened when two remnant tropical systems stalled over the Texas Hill Country and dropped an estimated 1.8 trillion gallons in roughly four hours. Twenty-five girls and two counselors drowned at Camp Mystic. A father carrying two small boys was almost across a footbridge when the second surge took him. At least 135 people were killed, Texas's deadliest flood in more than a century. Whether the Guadalupe basin can or should be rebuilt the same way is what nobody along the river has yet answered.
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03 • 23 Minute Read
Alta Journal Lydia Horne
The Vegans Bought a Cattle Ranch
Mollie Engelhart built Sage Vegan Bistro into a four-location Los Angeles empire once valued at $31 million. Her father and stepmother, Matthew and Terces, founded Cafe Gratitude, which served more than 10,000 meals a day across California. Then Matthew ate a hamburger from a cow named Flower, and the family's break with veganism began. Lydia Horne visited Sovereignty Ranch, the 200-acre Texas cattle property where Mollie now raises 40 head and drinks raw milk instead of food for Lent, carrying millions in debt. Her brother Ryland is a MAHA leader and RFK Jr. confidant operating alongside her. Whether Texas will absorb the Engelharts the way California once did is what Mollie has not yet worked out.
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04 • 27 Minute Read
ProPublica Emily Cureton Cook
An Oregon Law Lets One Wealthy Region Turn the Desert Green. When Drought Hits, Farmers Pay the Price.
A century-old Oregon law determines who gets Deschutes River water based on who claimed rights first. Emily Cureton Cook, reporting for ProPublica and Oregon Public Broadcasting, found that the Central Oregon Irrigation District holds rights to more than half the river and that during the drought, only one in four gallons it diverted was absorbed by crops. Upstream, an 80-acre estate turned desert scrubland into a lush compound that sold for $4.8 million; the Phil and Penelope Knight horse ranch was among the district's largest water users. Downstream, Chris Casad stopped growing potatoes, watched a neighbor spiral into depression, and now drives a school bus. His kids use the old potato harvester as a slide.
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