Prince Andrew: Banished · Alec Baldwin vs. Everybody

I’m pretty sure Eve and I Slacked about the murder of Moriah Wilson when it happened earlier this year; we’re too cheap to get the pro plan so I can’t confirm it, but I can confirm that The New Yorker’s longread on the case, the world of “gravel,” and the narcissist point of the love triangle that got Wilson killed (…allegedly) is worth your time. Ian Parker does a fantastic job with the context, building the world for the reader in which this all went down — and in infusing the account with that trademark verrry faint but unmistakeable New Yorker tartness, the civilized-prose equivalent of a single-stroke jerk-off motion. Here’s Parker describing what happened when he met up with a source at a race:

Then a rider waiting for the next race walked up, confirmed that I was a reporter, and angrily told me to leave. When I asked him who he was, he said, “My name is Fuck You, Bro.” Later, it was easy to identify him—a real-estate agent who is a friend of [Colin] Strickland’s. The man asked me why sexual infidelity was newsworthy. His ill humor was understandable enough, but it was striking that a woman’s murder had registered to him primarily as a challenge to Strickland’s well-being—a story about being caught out. Minutes later, as I was talking with the cyclist I’d arranged to meet, the real-estate guy shouted that I was a narc. The other cyclist apologized and rolled his eyes.