“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.

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

“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.

A visit with John Berger, author of Ways of Seeing, which “changed the way at least two generations responded to art,” just before his death.

In the beginning, they were known as die Dönermorde – the kebab murders. The victims had little in common, apart from immigrant backgrounds and the modest businesses they ran.

In 1936, a school group from south London went on a hike in the Black Forest. Despite the heroic rescue attempts of German villagers, five boys died. Eighty years later, locals are still asking how it happened.

The intricate dance between highly organized ultras fan organizations, the teams they support, and the mafia for control of the center of curva and the lucrative ticket-touting opportunities that come with it.

Travels through post-election America.

An annual re-enactment drags America’s history of racist violence into the light.