December 26, 2022 Hello, Insiders. Hope you’re having a great holiday season! Happy Boxing Day to those who celebrate. Full disclosure: We’re off today. So I’m trying to stay away from Slack, take some time to relax, enjoy living in the moment with my family, and catch up on reading.   So if you’re also on the hunt for fascinating stories, you’re in luck. We’re sharing some of Insider’s most popular stories of the year. From what it’s like to be a Las Vegas bottle girl to billionaires’ quest for genetically superior kids, we’ve got some great reads for you.   — Nicholas Carlson

Top reads Brandon Bell/Getty; DorianGray/Getty; Anna Moneymaker/Getty; Drew Angerer/Getty; joebelanger/Getty; Mike Kline/Getty; Anna Kim/Insider “Red, White, and Gray”: Inside America’s gerontocracy. We explored the costs, benefits, and dangers of life in a democracy helmed by those of advanced age, where issues of profound importance to the nation's youth and future — technology, civil rights, energy, the environment — are largely in the hands of those whose primes have passed. What happens when the government grows old? Insider assembled the most comprehensive database of transgender homicides to date. This year, we spoke with friends, family, and communities across the country to uncover stories of people killed from 2017 to 2021. We dug into the history of police and transgender communities, and cases that have gone unsolved. See our investigation in its entirety.  A “bottle girl” describes working at a Las Vegas nightclub. The 28-year-old model cocktail waitress works at Omnia Nightclub in Caesars Palace, and said she can make thousands in tips each night — but that the job is a lot grosser than people realize. See what it’s like to work at a club where tables can have $30,000 minimums. Billionaires like Elon Musk want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids. When the longevity craze hit Silicon Valley in the 2010s, titans like Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, and Larry Ellison poured billions into trying to defy death. Now, there’s another movement taking hold: “pronatalism.” Followers believe it's their duty to fill the earth with their children — and some are funding new technologies to make it possible. Read our full report.  “I made $200,000 last year ghostwriting tweets for superstar VCs.” Twitter is Silicon Valley's most important social club, and top investors pay ghostwriters big bucks to make them look good in 280 characters. We spoke with a tech startup founder turned ghostwriter, who can bring in $100,000 for a single thread. Inside the booming business of ghostwriting tweets. Eleven Madison Park went vegan. It’s been an understaffed, chaotic mess since. In June 2021, Chef Daniel Humm reopened the restaurant — named the best in the world — as a meat-free institution. The year that followed was “just, to put it very simply, a shit show.” Current and former employees gave us a look inside the restaurant’s chaotic year. A former employee of Elon Musk shares what it was like to work for him. Jim Cantrell worked at SpaceX during its earliest days in 2001 and 2002. He told Insider that there was good Elon and bad Elon: One who was funny and charming, and one who would yell and call employees at 3 a.m. What it’s like to work for Musk. Summer 2023 could be the time to buy a house. Jonathan Miller, a veteran in the real-estate industry, laid out the drivers behind the US real estate market slowdown and explained why next summer might be a good time to jump back into the market. Here’s what he said.