“The true impact of activism may not be felt for a generation. That alone is reason to fight.”

On coming to see your home country the way the rest of the world does.

When Isis rounded up Yazidi women and girls in Iraq to use as slaves, the captives drew on their collective memory of past oppressions – and a powerful will to survive.

Life in Nucla, Colorado.

Inside the economics of scientific publishing, an industry that’s somehow nearly as profitable as film and has changed the course of science in the process.

A profile of philosopher Timothy Morton, who wants humanity to give up some of its core beliefs.

Two days with a group of white nationalists in Kentucky.

“This is Britain in 2017. A Britain that increasingly looks like a “managed” democracy. Paid for by a US billionaire. Using military-style technology. Delivered by Facebook. And enabled by us.”

The life cycle of a drilling platform.

Harmony smiles, blinks and frowns. She can hold a conversation, tell jokes and quote Shakespeare. She’ll remember your birthday, McMullen told me, what you like to eat, and the names of your brothers and sisters. She can hold a conversation about music, movies and books. And of course, Harmony will have sex with you whenever you want.

During my first weeks in Rogers Park, I was surprised by how often I heard the word “pioneer”. I heard it first from the white owner of an antiques shop with signs in the windows that read: “Warning, you are being watched and recorded.” When I stopped off in his shop, he welcomed me to the neighbourhood warmly and delivered an introductory speech dense with code. This neighbourhood, he told me, needs “more people like you”. He and other “people like us” were gradually “lifting it up”.

Excerpted from Notes From No Man’s Land

The story of Lisa S. Davis and Lisa S. Davis.

Traditions, feuds, and controversies in British pest control.

The city’s radical pro-democracy movement faces a stiff test from Mainland China.

She is venerated around the world. She has outlasted 12 US presidents. She stands for stability and order. But her kingdom is in turmoil, and her subjects are in denial that her reign will ever end. That’s why the palace has a plan.

At the age of 20, Christopher Knight parked his car on a remote trail in Maine and walked away. He had no plan. He had no tools. And he survived alone for 27 years.

“You revise your reader up, in your imagination, with every pass. You keep saying to yourself: ‘No, she’s smarter than that. Don’t dishonour her with that lazy prose or that easy notion.’ And in revising your reader up, you revise yourself up too.”

Computer scientist tycoon Robert Mercer is at the heart of a shockingly well-funded propaganda network.

The many myths of Vladimir Putin.

The double life of a KGB spy living in 1980s Manhattan.

Around 60 people in the world share a condition called “highly superior autobiographical memory.” They remember absolutely everything.

A team of researchers has a controversial plan to root fake data out of science.

How populism took a continent.

On living in dark times.

The impact of a life map and a stipend on those in the gang life in Richmond, CA.