Tens of thousands of people every year are packed into vans run by for-profit companies with almost no oversight.
In July 2012, Steven Galack, the former owner of a home remodeling business, was living in Florida when he was arrested on an out-of-state
warrant for failing to pay child support. Galack, 46, had come to the end of a long downward spiral, overcoming a painkiller addiction only to struggle with crippling anxiety. Now, he
was to be driven more than a thousand miles to Butler County, Ohio, where his ex-wife and three children lived, to face a judge.
Like dozens of states and countless localities, Butler County outsources the long-distance transport of suspects and fugitives. Galack was loaded into a van run by Prisoner
Transportation Services of America, the nation’s largest for-profit extradition company.
Crammed around him were 10 other people, both men and women, all handcuffed and shackled at the waist and ankles. They sat tightly packed on seats inside a cage, with no way to lie
down to sleep. The air conditioning faltered amid 90-degree heat. Galack soon grew delusional, keeping everyone awake with a barrage of chatter and odd behavior. On the third day, the
van stopped in Georgia, and one of two guards onboard gave a directive to the prisoners. “Only body shots,” one prisoner said she heard the guard say. The others began to stomp on
Galack, two prisoners said.
The guards said later in depositions that they had first noticed Galack’s slumped, bloodied body more than 70 miles later, in Tennessee. A homicide investigation lasted less than a
day, and the van continued on its journey. The cause of death was later found to be undetermined.
“This is someone’s brother, father, and it’s like nobody even cared,” said Galack’s ex-wife, Kristin Galack.
GQ asked its favorite new authors to dunk on the classics.
We’ve been told all our lives that we can only call ourselves well-read once we’ve read the Great Books. We tried. We got halfway through Infinite Jest and halfway through
the SparkNotes on Finnegans Wake. But a few pages into Bleak House, we realized that not all the Great Books have aged well. Some are racist and some are sexist, but
most are just really, really boring. So we—and a group of un-boring writers—give you permission to strike these books from the canon. Here’s what you should read instead.
…
Personally, I quite enjoyed at least two of the books on the “books you don’t have to read” list… but this list has inspired me to look into some of the 21 “you should read
instead”.
Far Cry 5 had the potential to say something interesting by setting the game in America, but its murky story and
themes do more to taint the game’s fantastic and playful open world than to give it purpose and meaning.
The goofy world and the serious story never line up, making this one of the rockiest entries in a series that has already delved so deeply into action tourism. It’s yet another mainstream game that
takes crisis or tragedy and builds a Ferris wheel on top of it, while intimating that you’re bad for wanting to take a ride.
…
Having just completed Far Cry 5, this review echoes my feelings perfectly. So much potential, falling so far short. Still fun, but not the masterpiece it could have been.
Dwitter is a community of <canvas> artists who write Javascript programs of no
more than 140 characters to produce beautiful graphical output. Some favourites: Bluer waves, d/3697, d/4388. If the demoscene were invented
today, this is what it might look like.
I see a lot of ideas online for things to do with your child, but most of them are a lot of work. Many of them involve an unnerving amount of craftiness and/or require going out to
buy things. Almost all of them involve moving around which, many days, is fine, but some days can be pretty rough. N…
I see a lot of ideas online for things to do with your child, but most of them are a lot of work. Many of them involve an unnerving amount of craftiness and/or require going out to
buy things. Almost all of them involve moving around which, many days, is fine, but some days can be pretty rough. Not that I don’t love getting down on the floor and playing with my
kid (I love it a great deal) but I’m an adult in my mid-thirties. I can pretend to be a dinosaur for about 90 minutes (something I happily list on my professional resume) but after an
hour and a half, all bets are off. And given that many days I’m home with my son for over eight hours, things can get a bit dicey.
I’ve taken the liberty of brainstorming some fun child/parent activities in which your child can be adventurous and creative and you can lie on the sofa reading a book. Here’s my list
so far.
Julianne Aguilar | Longreads | February 2018 | 14 minutes (2,894 words)
Once upon a time, in 1999, when the internet was small, when it came through your phone and not just on your phone, when the first browser war had not yet been won, when you had to
teach yourself a few lines of code if you want…
Once upon a time, in 1999, when the internet was small, when it came through your phone and not just on your phone, when the first browser war had not yet been won,
when you had to teach yourself a few lines of code if you wanted to exist online, when the idea of broadcasting your real name for anyone to see was unthinkable — in those early days,
before Twitter revolutions, before Facebook Live homicides, when the internet was small and most people didn’t understand it, and only the nerds hung out there — even
then, it was already happening.
Hi, I'm Tom Scott. These are some of the things I've made and done. They'll probably come back to haunt me in a few years' time. (Want to get in touch about …
