Seattle Met's 5 Most-Read Longform Stories of 2022
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Image: Seattle Met Composite
The Twisted Life of Clippy
By Benjamin Cassidy
In the ’90s, Microsoft created an annoying paperclip that it quickly retired. Its developers never imagined the virtual assistant would become a cultural icon.
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Image: Michael Byers
The Scientific Methods of J. Kenji López-Alt
By Allecia Vermillion
He interrogates the chemistry of smash burgers and probes the elements of wok cooking. But outside J. Kenji López-Alt’s Seattle kitchen, one of America’s most influential home cooks gets a little more reactive.
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Image: Mike Kane
The Race to Free Washington's Last Orca in Captivity
By Benjamin Cassidy
A southern resident’s violent capture off Whidbey Island was the original sin of a now-defunct local industry. Decades later, a Lummi-led effort to bring her home is on the verge of an improbable breakthrough.
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Image: Ellie Lillstrom
Let This Be the Last Time
By Allecia Vermillion
Fire took everything they owned. When Ijeoma Oluo and Gabriel Teodros rebuilt, they filled their new home with memories and meaning right from the start.
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Image: Jonathan Bartlett
The Ancient Spirit That Settled in Small-Town Washington
By Allison Williams
An hour south of Seattle, JZ Knight channels a god-like warrior named Ramtha. To outsiders it can look like a cult, a religion, a 40-year-long fake. Clearly, something otherworldly has come to a sleepy corner of Thurston County.