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Happy Monday!
Today, we're covering money laundering through crypto exchanges that continued even after guilty pleas, a Damascus neighborhood where residents finally revealed the smell of burning bodies they endured for years, how Pierce Brosnan saved James Bond when teenage boys thought he was "the guy my dad likes," and Elon Musk's obsession with keeping Dungeons & Dragons racist.
Grab your lunch. Let's go.
When GoldenEye was being developed in the early 1990s, research showed American teenage boys had either never heard of James Bond or said "that's the guy my dad likes." This Variety oral history reveals how producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson revived the franchise after a six-year hiatus, working with a $49 million budget, a TV actor (Pierce Brosnan) playing supporting roles, and a director (Martin Campbell) whose last three features had flopped. They cycled through multiple writers including Jeffrey Caine and Bruce Feirstein, who suggested the guiding principle: "The world had changed, but Bond hadn't." The film cast Izabella Scorupco as the Bond girl just two weeks before production started after a casting director flew to Sweden overnight. GoldenEye premiered at Radio City Music Hall in 1995 and grossed over $350 million worldwide, more than twice what the previous Bond film made, proving the franchise still had life and paving the way for the massively successful Nintendo 64 video game released two years later.
Elon Musk threatened to buy Hasbro last November because Dungeons & Dragons acknowledged that earlier versions of the game relied on racist and sexist stereotypes, like describing orcs as "swart" and "slant-eyed" or limiting what "races" could become. This Atlantic piece traces how D&D's racial logic flows directly from Tolkien, who modeled Middle-earth on the fall of Constantinople with "white civilization besieged by dark barbarity," and how that same fantasy racism now animates today's tech billionaires. Peter Thiel named his companies Palantir and Anduril, J.D. Vance named his firm Narya, and Musk posts about protecting Britain from immigrants like hobbits needed "hard men of Gondor." Meanwhile, D&D's actual audience has become more diverse through livestreaming shows like Critical Role, and the company removed "race" from the game in favor of "species," which is what sent Musk into a rage about buying it.
After President Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao for money laundering violations, the world's largest crypto exchange kept profiting from hundreds of millions in transactions linked to organized crime. This ICIJ investigation reveals that between Zhao's guilty plea and pardon, at least $408 million flowed to Binance from Huione Group, a Cambodian firm used by Chinese gangs to launder money from human trafficking and scam operations run out of grim call centers. Another major exchange, OKX, received over $161 million from Huione even after the Treasury labeled it a money laundering concern. ICIJ traced funds from North Korean hackers, Mexican cartels, and Russian money launderers all flowing through major exchanges while scam victims like a Canadian woman who lost her life savings were told by police not to expect their money back. Trump has since dropped enforcement against crypto firms and disbanded the Justice Department unit investigating crypto crimes.
A Damascus suburb became a mass execution site under Assad, where white minibuses delivered blindfolded civilians to pits filled with bodies and burning tires while residents smelled "burning hair" at dawn for years. This Guardian investigation reveals leaked video showing 288 documented killings, but locals say the massacres happened two or three times weekly from 2012 to 2015, suggesting thousands died. The main shooter, military intelligence officer Amjad Youssef, told researchers "I am proud of my deeds" and rode his motorbike through the neighborhood even after the footage went public. Now that Assad has fallen, residents are furious that Fadi Saqr, the former paramilitary commander who organized the shabiha death squads, is working with Syria's new government to negotiate weapons handovers and secure hostage releases. Meanwhile, one man who was forced as a teenager to burn bodies outside a mosque finally told his father what happened, and revenge killings against suspected regime members have begun.
From the Archives
2024: Chicago Magazine: A Knife Forged in Fire
2018: Longreads: The Difference Between Being Broke and Being Poor
That’s it for this today.
Really hope you enjoyed the selection of stories today. I am always interested in hearing from you. If you have thoughts on how I can make this email even better, do not hesitate to reach out.
Brett
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