How the magazine industry’s identity crisis is playing out on its front page.

“The dirty secret of American higher education is that student-loan interest rates are almost irrelevant. It’s not the cost of the loan that’s the problem, it’s the principal—the appallingly high tuition costs that have been soaring at two to three times the rate of inflation, an irrational upward trajectory eerily reminiscent of skyrocketing housing prices in the years before 2008.”

Yemen on the brink of hell:

In a sense, south Yemen itself offers a grim cautionary tale about the events now unfolding in Taiz and across the country. Until 1990, when the two Yemens merged, South Yemen was a beacon of development and order. Under the British, who ruled the south as a colony until 1967, and the Socialists, who ran it for two decades afterward, South Yemen had much higher literacy rates than the north. Child marriage and other degrading tribal practices came to an end; women entered the work force, and the full facial veil became a rarity. It was only after Ali Abdullah Saleh imposed his writ that things began to change. When the south dared to rebel against him in 1994, Saleh sent bands of jihadis to punish it. The north began treating the south like a slave state, expropriating vast plots of private and public land for northerners, along with the oil profits. Tribal practices returned. Violent jihadism began to grow.

David Headley helped plot the Mumbai terror attacks. Now his best friend is on trial for conspiring with him. The prosecution’s key witness: David Headley. The story of an informant trying to save his own life from the witness stand.

The editors of N+1 recap the revolution that is/was the internet with pit-stops to survey the Bolshevik Revolution, the NYT’s messy relationship with tech, and the value of an ad.

The urban legend about the guy who hooked a rocket up to the back of his car and drove/flew it into a mountain? The anonymous author claims the story is about him and some of his small town high school buddies.

Midtown Manhattan. The highest concentration of showbiz havens and hangouts in the whole entire world. The Chorus Girls. The Drunk Newsmen. The Jazz Hepsters. The Mob. They converge with the force of a fly against a windshield. This is where American popular culture is born. Its influence permeates the nation. Walk the streets and weave through the hustlers, the gangsters, the bookies, the rummies... and somewhere among that crowd - you'll walk past a nondescript artistic genius or twelve, indiscernible from the dregs, biding time until they transform the American landscape. And high-above the loud, syncopated beat of Midtown you can hear... The Comedians.

LGBTQI groups found rare freedoms online, but this year, many were shut by censors. It feels like slowly being sanded down, said one member.

Ashima Shiraishi is the most talented rock climber in the world. She’s also 14.

The California coast is disappearing under the rising sea. Our choices are grim.

Tucker Carlson: The bow-tie is gone, but the moxie remains.

The Department of Energy is in chaos and it is putting the world at risk.

The organization’s leadership is focused on external threats, but the real crisis is of its own making.

Perhaps you didn’t know that in addition to being a very funny writer, Kafka’s life yields a lot of comedy too.

Space is only getting weirder.

With Osama dead, U.S. intelligence is zeroing in on the remaining most dangerous terrorists alive, and one man is at the top of the list. Of the eighteen terror attacks attempted in the United States over the past two years, Anwar al-Awlaki’s fingerprints are on eight of them. The moderate turned radical is eloquent, he is popular— and he’s American.

What is the defining achievement of Barack Obama?

How dangerous is the media company that Steve Bannon called “the platform for the alt-right”?

The W.N.B.A. is putting on some of the best pro basketball in America.

Smell is often dismissed as the least important sense. But it’s the funk that draws us together.

Cases of COVID-19 are rising fast. Vaccine uptake has plateaued. The pandemic will be over one day—but the way there is different now.

The musician, producer and archivist is driven by one thing: a mission to spread the joy of Black music.

Putin's daughter Katerina has been attending college under the surname Tikhonova and is one of the top "acrobatic rock'n'roll dance" competitors in the world.

She is the also the rumored spouse of the son of one of Russia's richest bankers. While Putin reported only $119,000 on last year's tax return, his daughter's fortune could now stretch into the billions.

Why everything is getting louder.

The British and Irish have coined some fabulous terms to describe nature and landscrape. “Doofers” is the Scots’ term for horse-shit; “clinkerbell” means icicle in Hampshire.