This is an important article detailing how public corruption mechanically works.

Selected excerpt:

[Kao] courted politicians using something he called “the method,” as ProPublica detailed in September.

Navatek would open an office in the state or district of a powerful member of Congress and partner with a local university to concoct a proposal for federally funded research. Then, aided by a well-connected lobbyist and the sheen of credibility from its association with the university, Navatek would approach the member for federal research funding.

Kao told the FBI he would strike deals in small, face-to-face meetings with the members or their trusted staff. Navatek — through executives, family members and lobbyists — would make generous campaign donations. In exchange, the member would add detailed language to the defense budget to fund the company’s work.

That legislative language would not name the company. But it would describe specific work that Navatek was already planning to do behind the scenes, making it the only logical choice for the eventual government contract. The lawmakers’ staff would also backchannel with the Navy after the bill was passed to make sure contracting offices knew to direct the money to Navatek, emails seen by ProPublica show — even though the contracts were in theory competitive.

“As a 61 yr old consumer who has eaten Reese’s as long as I can remember,” wrote one man, “I knew it wasn’t the same. Everyone said oh your taste buds have changed nope, the candy changed.”

EDIT: I love that Brad Reese is in the comments replying.

Wanted to kick off a thread for haunted/unsettling/spooky reads this autumn! Curious to see what comes to mind for other people, especially anything published this year. Below are a couple of my favorites:

They Came in Through the Bathroom Mirror, Steve Bogira for the Chicago Reader, 1987. "Ruthie Mae McCoy was the type who talked to herself and cursed strangers on the street. When she called 911 to report that someone was coming through the medicine cabinet of her Abbott Homes apartment, she might have been hallucinating. But she wasn’t." https://chicagoreader.com/news/they-came-in-through-the-bathroom-mirror/

Who Walks Always Besides You? Benjamin Hale, Harpers, 2023.
"Twenty-two years ago, a six-year-old girl—my cousin—got lost in the Arkansas Ozarks, prompting what was at the time the largest search and rescue mission in the state’s history. Her disappearance would eventually connect my family to another story, a dark and bizarre one involving kidnapping, brainwashing, murder, and a cult that believed in the imminent end of the world, laced with the kind of eerie coincidences or near-coincidences that cause perfectly rational people to question what they think they know about reality." https://harpers.org/archive/2023/08/who-walks-always-beside-you/

One of the mothers in this case posted to Reddit a number of years ago to ask what to do about fraudulent paternity tests – she recently shared this exposé on the biological father in r slash LegalAdvice

London Book Reviw

Is the archive site down for anyone else? I get a "too many requests" error