Edition #115: Longform Profiles

This edition features the first trillionaires, the Texan dad who got deported to Laos, radioactive rhinos, the man who broke into jail, and more.

Spotlighting outstanding longform stories and the journalists who bring them to life. Did you receive this email from a friend? Subscribe here.

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Credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

🕺 Raves, Debt and Deaths: How a Wall Streeter Came to Own New York’s Biggest Club

Alexander Saeedy | The Wall Street Journal

But when two people were found dead in the nearby Newtown Creek after showing up at the Mirage in 2023, the whole thing started to come apart. On social media, electronic-dance-music fans wondered if a serial killer was stalking ravers who had left the venue. Overzealous security guards, higher prices and overcrowding at parties also alienated longtime fans. DJs who played there stopped booking new shows, ticket sales nosedived and just as fast as the Mirage had boomed, it was heading for a bust.

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🛰️ This Is the Worst Thing That Could Happen to the International Space Station

Rebecca Heilweil | WIRED

A controlled deorbit requires the use of several core systems, including those for communications, power, and avionics. Some of the ISS machinery was not specifically certified to perform in a depressurized environment. (NASA believes that critical systems would remain operable, based on technical analyses, and emphasizes that many of these systems are already used in vacuum.) Another thing to worry about: the ISS losing control over its orientation in space. The spacecraft could start tumbling, flipping the station’s solar arrays away from the sun, taking the primary source of power with it.

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💵 What the First Billionaire Reveals About the First Trillionaire

Ben Steverman | Bloomberg

A person this rich isn’t like other wealthy people. Conspiracy theories aside, billionaires and multimillionaires rarely agree on anything, even tax policy. In politics, business and everything else, they’re often at odds. But as an individual’s wealth soars past a certain point, constraints and countervailing forces fall away. They win a unique ability to reshape the world, though as Rockefeller’s story also demonstrates, they are not all-powerful. Their pervasive influence can spark a backlash from the general public so ferocious that politicians feel they must respond.

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✈️ He was a Texan dad who had never left America. Then he got deported to Laos

Timothy McLaughlin | 1843

When he was eight they were approved for resettlement in Sacramento, where the pastor who sponsored their application lived. After a tough start with a new baby in a crime-ridden neighbourhood they moved to Amarillo, where they had relatives. Paneboun’s parents got jobs at a beef-packing plant and gradually built the foundations of a middle-class American life. They made sure Paneboun and his three siblings didn’t completely forget their Laotian origins, occasionally taking them out to catch locusts, a popular delicacy in South-East Asia. But the kids wanted to be as American as possible. Paneboun’s older brother enlisted in the us Army, where he went on to have a decorated career. Paneboun was drawn to other aspects of American culture: gangsta rap, Tex-Mex food and fast cars.

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🦏 Why Conservationists Are Making Rhinos Radioactive

Matthew Ponsford | MIT Technology Review

Poachers will kill a rhino for even a small amount of horn, which can fetch $60,000 per kilogram as an ingredient for traditional medicines. Adding isotopes, though, renders the horns potentially unsafe to consume, and it’s hard for smugglers to reverse: “It’s almost impossible to remove isotopes unless you are a skilled radiation protection officer who knows what they are looking for,” Larkin says. Even so, he’s tight-lipped about the compound the pellets are made from and what they look like: “I don’t want to help criminals,” he explains.

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💰 How I Make Money Writing 💰

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🎰 How to Win Slots and Influence People

Cecilia D’Anastasio, Olivia Solon, Leon Yin | Bloomberg

Drake had now navigated to Speed Roulette, on Craven’s earlier advice. It wasn’t long before his luck shifted. A few spins in, he placed chips on 12 and spun the wheel. The ball settled in on 12, and he won $800,000. Craven added $500,000 more to Drake’s balance, telling the rapper to lock in and get those wins. Then he had some advice for Kick’s most watched American influencer, Adin Ross, a sparky bad boy who’d gotten popular streaming the video game series NBA 2K: “Get those clips viral, you know. Have a few of them with the Stake logo really clear and really f---ing big.”