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2019 is drawing to a close, and our team of editors here at Digg have read thousands of articles over the course of the year. Below, we each selected two articles: the one we thought was the best of the year, and the one that was a personal favorite. Enjoy.

And if you're interested in reading more about our favorite stuff on the internet in 2019, you can read it here.

THE BEST ARTICLES OF THE YEAR




The Day The Dinosaurs Died

newyorker.com

Douglas Preston's in-depth profile of paleontology's kid wonder/bad boy Robert DePalma for The New Yorker has literally everything you could ask from it: intrigue, brilliant writing and, most importantly, a scientific hook that absolutely delivers. The irony of working at Digg is that I read short partsof tons of longform pieces, but rarely have time to read the whole thing — Preston's piece is one I immediately made the time for. — Dan Fallon




A Million People Are Jailed At China's Gulags. I Managed To Escape. Here's What Really Goes On Inside

haaretz.com

2019 was the year when the atrocities happening in the internment camps in Xinjiang, China really began to receive wider Western media coverage. Last month, hundreds of pages of leaked documents offered us an unprecedented look into the bureaucratic machinations behind the crackdown of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities by Chinese authorities. But earlier than that, an article written by David Stavrou offered us the chilling first-hand testimony of Sayragul Sauytbay, a teacher who escaped from the camps in Xinjiang, about what really goes on in the "re-education camps" in China. It's heartbreaking to read this article, which recounts the torture, assualts and medical experiments that have transpired and likely continue to exist in the camps, but it's also an essential read. — Pang-Chieh Ho




Is Bruce Hay The Most Gullible Man In Cambridge?

thecut.com

Kera Bolonik's bonkers 7,000-word exposé on a paternity scam involving Harvard Law School professor Bruce Hay, described as a hapless patsy taken advantage of by two women who subsequently briefly took away his house(!) and got him placed on indefinite suspension at the university, is an incredibly bizarre and jaw-dropping rollercoaster ride from beginning to end. A triumph in reporting, Bolonik tells the astonishing tale of how Hay, who taught a course on "Judgment & Decision-Making," had an unbelievable lapse in (a-hem) judgment in falling for a random woman who approached him at a hardware store and told him he was attractive. — James Crugnale




My Rapist Apologized — I Still Needed An Abortion

nytimes.com

This piece by Michelle Alexander is a moving story about how she finally talked to her daughter about her abortion. It captures the nuances inherent in so many such stories: that women's rapists are more often than not someone they know; that saying no doesn't mean she will feel free of the complex guilt around her victimhood; that having said no doesn't even mean she will be believed as a victim of rape. Most importantly, just as women feel differently about rape and abortion, they heal differently. For Alexander, her rapist apologizing to her — something so few women get following sexual assault of any kind — allowed her to process what happened to her and move on, but a huge part of what was necessary for her to heal was the abortion itself. A woman can't choose whether or not she's assaulted, and she can't choose how it will affect her, but in this one significant way, she can choose whether or not it will change her life. — Molly Bradley




The Crisis In Kashmir Has Started A Conversation I Don't Know How To Have

buzzfeednews.com

I'm usually a hater when it comes to personal essays; but this one did a number on me. I share a similar upbringing to the author, Scaachi Koul. I too learned about India's complicated history through friends, and books, rather than it being taught in school or told to by my parents. Most of adulthood is about unlearning the biases we inherit along the way and this essay is a beautiful story of the emotional toll it adds as we undertake that journey. — Adwait Patil

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OUR PERSONAL FAVORITES OF THE YEAR




The 2010s Have Broken Our Sense Of Time

buzzfeednews.com

As my coworkers and friends could tell you, I've recently been harping on the fact that my brain has lost all sense of what happened when in the last 10 years. The moment that made me realize how broken my sense of time is came in August, when I came across, in quick succession, a 5-year retrospective of that U2 album that appeared on everyone's iTunes, and a 10-year retrospective of Kanye interrupting Taylor Swift at the VMAs. Had you asked me beforehand, I would have sworn on my life that the timing of each was reversed. Which brings me to Katherine Miller's piece for BuzzFeed, an incisive assessment of how the 2010s have broken not just my brain but all of our brains when it comes to keeping track of the passage of time. The internet has warped everything about the way we live and experience the world, so that "we operate inside a technological experience that moves forward and back, and pulls you with it." It would be great to get my sense of time back, but I'm not sure that will ever happen. — Dan Fallon




I Think About This A Lot: The Time Robert Pattinson Blatantly Lied On The 'Today' Show

thecut.com

This year, I thought a lot about the installment of The Cut's "I Think About This A Lot" series about Robert Pattinson lying to Matt Lauer about having seen a clown die in a clown car explosion at the circus when he was a child. That's it, that's the whole story of this piece. But as writer Dana Schwartz points out, there are no casualties as a result of Pattinson's lie: it is nothing more than a baffling (and darkly sort of hilarious) thing to have lied about. "All Pattinson really did was trivialize being interviewed by Matt Lauer," Schwartz writes, which is true — but the fact that Pattinson told the lie not as a troll but in a moment of genuine flusteredness is so human as to have endeared Pattinson to me as a celebrity and simply as a person, capable of both sublime acting (see: The Lighthouse) and of putting his foot wholly in his mouth. Who among us, indeed? — Molly Bradley




Birding Like It's 1899: Inside A Blockbuster American West Video Game

audubon.org

Back in January, Nicholas Lund wrote a delightful story for Audubon magazine about the extraordinary level of attention to detail given in the video game "Red Dead Redemption 2" to the simulated natural environment circa 1899. Lund explores the game's hyper-realistic pixelated birds of the Wild Wild West in the "pre-conservation era," which he describes as "exist(ing) in a time where humans mainly viewed birds—and all of the natural world—as ripe for exploitation rather than appreciation." It's a wonderful examination of how advanced video game technology has gotten to present gamers such a comprehensive virtual ecosystem that you can inhibit, giving you the freedom to enjoy a historical snapshot of nature through the lens of the game. — James Crugnale




Pleasing

gay.medium.com

When Mary Milstead's mother was 19 years old, she was kidnapped by an escaped convict who murdered her boyfriend and abducted her for several hours before letting her go. Milstead's essay "Pleasing" recounts those excruciating hours and how her mother managed to endure. "She didn't fight him, or try to jump up and wave down a car. She did exactly what he said," Milstead writes, all the while pondering whether or not the impulse to be pleasing, even to one's abductor, is a feminine strength or weakness. It's an article that packs a punch emotionally: not only because we're reading a tale about a killing and abduction, but also because Mistead offers thoughtful musings into the fact of how women are often socialized to please and how that socialization is connected to the very real issue of survival. — Pang-Chieh Ho




Sports Illustrated's Sportsperson Of The Year: Megan Rapinoe

si.com

Two cool things happened this year. The US Women's national soccer team cemented its GOAT status in American soccer history and I experienced a World Cup winning parade for the first time. I started playing soccer nearly two decades ago because of Mia Hamm (shoutout to AYSO) and to see this team become World Champs was special because along the way they fought for equal-pay, the right to play on grass; not turf, and stood by other athletes, like Colin Kaepernick, all while dominating the tournament in France. — Adwait Patil

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