Long Reads and Other Things

Best of 2012 long reads on the web, as chosen by various people I've never heard of.

Here is a not-so-long read containing this paragraph:

That isn’t to say, thought, that things weren’t weird. Because they definitely were. Like the time Neil Patrick Harris, old Doogie Howser himself, called our house to talk to Larry (character motivation, I guess). Or the fact that we all sat together as a family and watched that made for TV movie -- I’m pretty sure the dictionary definition for meta-surreal is something like "Watch the scene where Doogie Howser, playing your adopted brother, brutally kills his parents on TV, as the real killer, your actual brother, eats popcorn in your living room."

Here is a database for doctors of Things Not To Do.

Interview:

Why does the rise of digital technology have to result in the death of print technology?

Because Mr. Ford ate the last working horse, thus making room for the racing horse. Technologically, the horse is a skeuomorph, but symbolically its power is increased tenfold by its selectively bred descendent. What we call "book" now will also likely be a magical thing that was once common. They symbolic book of the future will be a deluxe object related only slightly to its current Random House ancestor. Current print technology is dying as a mass-tool and will be reborn as art. Art is the last stage of capitalism.

Crime hype!

Russian cybercriminals are proceeding with an ambitious assault on U.S. banks. A new McAfee Labs report claims that Project Blitzkrieg, a multiplatform mass theft scheme that has its own promotional YouTube videos, has been slowed down but is still underway.
Unlike most Internet-based, white-collar crime schemes, Project Blitzkrieg has embraced publicity and hype. The brains behind the assault are advertising their scheme on Russian Underweb forums and using social media to recruit accomplices. According to McAfee, a variant of the Prinimalka Trojan is being used to primarily target investment banks and national banks.

Cancelling the apocalypse?