Rules of Misbehavior
How Dan Savage became America’s leading ethicist.
How Dan Savage became America’s leading ethicist.
Memories of the author’s teenage years, when his father pulled up stakes on a comfortable life in Baltimore to reinvent himself as the head of a S&L bank in Los Angeles.
Eric Puchner GQ Mar 2011 20min Permalink
Inside the most ubiquitous distraction of its era.
Tom Cheshire Wired (UK) Apr 2011 20min Permalink
An oral history of the Strokes.
Jonathan Garrett Pitchfork Mar 2011 20min Permalink
Passengers get a free ride. Drivers get a passport to the HOV lane. Nobody pays, nobody talks. On “slugging,” the DIY commuter system in D.C. that’s being used by 10,000 people a day and taking thousands of cars off the road.
Emily Badger Pacific Standard Mar 2011 20min Permalink
Stuck between the Taliban and the U.S. Military, Afghanistan’s farmers risk their lives both when they grow, and when they refuse to grow, fields of poppies.
Robert Draper National Geographic Feb 2011 20min Permalink
Thoughts on the current era of online anonymity.
Tess Lynch The Morning News Mar 2011 Permalink
On Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and their new Broadway musical about Mormons, which “may just be their highest artistic achievement yet.”
Carl Swanson New York Mar 2011 15min Permalink
Prison rape is an epidemic; but the bulk of abuses are not by prisoners themselves, but by guards and other prison workers.
David Kaiser, Lovisa Stannow NY Review of Books Mar 2011 15min Permalink
A series of first-person essays on a reporter’s relationship with his city. Excerpted from the upcoming Detroit: An American Autopsy.
Charlie LeDuff Fox 2 Detroit Feb 2011 30min Permalink
A crusading minister has built a forested Utopia for the itinerant and destitute. But is a social experiment what they’re looking for, or just a place to live?
Alex Morris New York Jan 2010 20min Permalink
After nearly 15 years in a Peruvian prison, an American woman convicted of aiding a Marxist terrorist group finds parole in Lima full of contradictions.
Hollywood makes bad movies because “rotten pictures make money.”
Pauline Kael New Yorker Jun 1980 25min Permalink
The definitive story of a ubiquitous software. PowerPoint’s origins, its evolution, and its mind-boggling impact on corporate culture.
Ian Parker New Yorker May 2001 20min Permalink
On who will bear the burden of the financial crisis facing cities across America. “Will it be articulated in terms of bond defaults or larger kindergarten classes—or no kindergarten classes at all?”
The decades-long saga of Miami’s Take Once Cocktail Lounge, where you might get shot, your money will definitely be laundered, and everybody will know your name.
Gus Garcia-Roberts The Miami New Times Feb 2011 20min Permalink
A profile of Jack Dorsey, co-founder (and displaced CEO) of Twitter. Dorsey’s latest venture, a mobile credit card system called Square that only officially launched in February 2011, already processes more than a million transactions per day.
David Kirkpatrick Vanity Fair Apr 2011 Permalink
What did $3M paid to a US consulting firm get Qaddafi? A glowing profile in The New Republic, written by a Harvard professor, who travelled to Tripoli to interview him. On the consulting company’s dime. Which he failed to disclose.
David Corn, Siddhartha Mahanta Mother Jones Mar 2011 10min Permalink
“While its source remains something of a mystery, Stuxnet is the new face of 21st-century warfare: invisible, anonymous, and devastating.”
Michael Joseph Gross Vanity Fair Apr 2011 30min Permalink
Best Article History Tech Media
The challenges facing the historians of the internet.
Ariel Bleicher IEEE Spectrum Mar 2011 15min Permalink
Kansas City’s most powerful political journalist is a 36-year-old blogger who resides in a porn lair in his mother’s basement, posting rants on local government and bikini shots 24-hours-a-day.
A profile of Alex Jones, who draws a bigger online audience than Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh combined.
Alexander Zaitchik Rolling Stone Mar 2011 15min Permalink
Relative to the total national income, American corporations are making more money than they have since 1947. The connection behind soaring profits and stagnant unemployment.
Harold Meyerson The American Prospect Mar 2011 15min Permalink
The comedian and veteran of MTV’s The State on a peculiar brand of stardom. “Often people would be like, I’m such a big fan of your work. I think you’re amazing. I want to have a career like yours. And I’m like, great, can you buy me a slice of pizza?”
David Wain, Toph Eggers The Believer Mar 2011 15min Permalink
A profile of the (now former) director of the House of Dior, John Galliano.
Michael Specter New Yorker Sep 2003 30min Permalink