Weekly Filet #206: Rise and crash of a libertarian drug empire. And more.
New month, new guest curator in residence: I'm glad to welcome Gabriel Vetter, who will contribute one recommendation to each issue in May.
Gabriel Vetter is a slam-poet and writer from Switzerland. He is the head writer and one of the protagonists of a TV-series called «Güsel – Die Abfalldetektive» (literally: the trash detectives), which is so great you should actually learn Swiss German just to understand it. You can follow Gabriel on Twitter, at your own risk, of course.
1. The Untold Story of Silk Road (Wired)
The thrilling story of the obscure online marketplace Silk Road, often referred to as the Ebay for drugs. Created by one man in 2011, it created more than 1 billion dollars in sales before it was shut down by the FBI (but not before Silk Road's founder allegedly hired a hitman to kill one of his employees the FBI had tracked down). Great reporting, great storytelling. This is part one, part two will be released on May 14.
2. Walking New York (The New York Times Magazine)
A wonderful project by the NYT Magazine: New Yorkers share their favourite places to go far a walk.
3. The austerity delusion (The Guardian)
Paul Krugman's detailed explanation why harsh austerity in depressed economies isn’t necessary, and does major damage when it is imposed.
4. Guy Trading at Home Caused the Flash Crash (Bloomberg)
An instance of «well, that escalated quickly». One man's silly money-making-tricks make money-making-algorithms go crazy, stock market crashes, 1 trillion dollars vanish within minutes.
5. The days are long but the decades are short (Sam Altman)
I'm usually not a big fan of life lessons published anywhere, but these are actually quite good.
Recommended by Gabriel Vetter: 30 Poems / 30 Videos (Ross Sutherland)
Ross Sutherland is a writer and performance poet based in the UK. I met him at a poetry slam in Munich in 2003. Ross has advanced to be one of the most celebrated performance poets of the UK, and in his live shows he mixes the power and beauty of poetry with wit of stand up comedy and the possibilities digital and video arts in a rather spectacular way. Sutherland is a crucial part of the current UK avantgarde performance poetry scene, which is without doubt the most interesting and innovative place for spoken word theatre at the moment. In the month of April, Sutherland was the very first digital poet in residence at campus poetry school, creating 30 video poems, one each day.