// WORK YOUR BRAIN OUT WITH OUR 5 FAVORITE LONG READ THIS WEEK //
1
I DID RUTH BADER GINSBURG'S WORKOUT. IT NEARLY BROKE ME (Politico)
In the early hours of Nov. 9, as stock markets began to rally on the news of Donald Trump’s upset win, there was another dramatic spike afoot. Interest in the bone density and cholesterol levels of an 83-year-old woman from Flatbush, New York, was also soaring.
Many people wanted to know whether two-time cancer survivor Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the oldest and perhaps the most liberal justice on the Supreme Court, had enough gas in the tank to outlast the Trump presidency, or whether Trump would get a chance to fundamentally alter the balance of the court by replacing her, a possibility he dangled successfully to entice wary Republicans to vote him.
As it turns out, the answer to that question lies largely in the hands of a staffer in the clerk’s office of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Asked earlier this month about the most important person in her life, Ginsburg, who was widowed in 2010 and lost a close friend with the 2016 death of Justice Antonin Scalia, responded, “My personal trainer.”
2
OUR LADY STRAYS (Outside Online)
The world's greatest dog sanctuary is on a small farm in Costa Rica, where hundreds of canines run wild over the land—eating huge piles of food and slobbering happily on Lya Battle and her small band of dedicated volunteers.
"Incredibly, every dog has a name. Everybody’s different, clownish and hilarious: fuzzy splats of happiness, skeletal shells of wincing eagerness, buoyant lumps of grinning muscle, the faltering and the withered, the robust and the dignified, dogs like pieces of frayed rope with legs and head, senatorial dogs like Boris, old and wise and reposed, a seeming mix of corgi and Bernese mountain dog that resembles the 30-pound butt of a half-smoked cigar. Blanquita is a dirty-white floor mop who has betrothed herself to Ronney, one of the workers, and cries inconsolably from the minute he leaves the compound until his return the next morning. There’s a sweet little dog I of course call Stumpy, his right front leg hacked off with a machete by his owner after a long night drinking at the cantina. And there’s Milu, one of the precious cohort Lya calls her “walking dead,” who came to her with distemper a couple of years after she opened the Territorio in 2008. To save a dog from distemper is no small task, and now Milu, in his dotage, weighs less than a fart and walks like a drunken tarantula."
3
YOU MAY WANT TO MARRY MY HUSBAND (New York Times)
This is not a long read at all. But one I will remember for a long time.
"Want to hear a sick joke? A husband and wife walk into the emergency room in the late evening on Sept. 5, 2015. A few hours and tests later, the doctor clarifies that the unusual pain the wife is feeling on her right side isn’t the no-biggie appendicitis they suspected but rather ovarian cancer."
4
THIS OSCAR PHOTO IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS (The Ringer)
5
I'M RENTING A DOG? (Bloomberg)
I hope the man behind Wags Lending is wrong and we're not leasing everything in twenty years.
“I asked them: ‘How in the heck can I owe $5,800 when I bought the dog for $2,400?’ They told me, ‘You’re not financing the dog, you’re leasing.’ ‘You mean to tell me I’m renting a dog?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah.’ ”
Mental Yoga Sunday :: 5 Favorite Long Form Reads This Week 3.5.17 ~ Fin.
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