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Great stories on deck for you this Monday lunch break. I hope you enjoy.
High Country News: Why a Green Beret who blew up a Cybertruck outside Trump's Las Vegas hotel was never called a terrorist
The Dial: The secretive Paris Club, and how it controls whether poor countries can afford food and medicine
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The Atlantic
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Ashley Parker
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Ashley Parker's father, Bruce, was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia at 70. For more than a decade before his death at 82, she watched the disease amplify his worst traits before stripping away his best ones: his vocabulary, his gregariousness, his love of people. Parker writes with clear eyes about family conflict over his care, her guilt about visiting too rarely, and the strange math of grieving someone who is still alive. When he finally died on Valentine's Day, the finality hit harder than expected, even after years of bracing for it.
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High Country News
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Leah Sottile
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On New Year's Day 2025, decorated Green Beret Matthew Livelsberger detonated a Cybertruck outside Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, then died of a self-inflicted gunshot. Journalist Leah Sottile retraces his route and those of other veteran-bombers to examine why their violence rarely gets classified as terrorism. She finds a pattern: the government's definition of terrorism bends toward political convenience. Experts point to male supremacist ideology, "operator syndrome" in special forces veterans, and a normalization of hyper-violent online content as converging factors nobody wants to name.
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The Paris Club is an informal group of 22 wealthy creditor nations that has quietly restructured over $863 billion in sovereign debt since 1956, for 102 countries, with almost no public oversight. Financial historian Sven van Mourik traces how debtor nations, sitting alone across a table from dozens of creditors, have repeatedly surrendered economic sovereignty to access basic imports. The IMF programs that accompany Paris Club agreements have gutted manufacturing, slashed social services, and triggered mass protests across the Global South. The cycle, briefly interrupted before COVID, is now accelerating again.
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The New York Times Magazine
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Anna Peele
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"Love on the Spectrum," Netflix's docuseries following autistic adults navigating dating, has won seven Emmy Awards and a massive global following without using any of reality television's usual cruelty. Director Cian O'Clery built the show around patience, psychological support, and genuine affection for his cast. The piece profiles cast members across four seasons, along with the production decisions behind how their vulnerable moments are handled. What keeps viewers returning is not spectacle, but the rare experience of watching people articulate, without performance, exactly what they want from another person.
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