A meditation on the “out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant.”

On the legacy of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The Inglewood rapper has survived the death, deportation, and displacement of his family and friends.

The author travels to North Korea in the years after Kim Jong Il’s succession. He also gets a haircut:

But suddenly the whole chair starts vibrating and I find myself surrendering to her, as she begins to knead the acupressure points on my forehead and neck. Next it's ginseng unguent all over my face. Gobs of pomade smelling like bubble gum go on my hair. Then, like a true daughter of the revolution, she upholsters her blow dryer and begins combing in the pomade and sculpting my now subdued hair. The pungent aroma of heated pomade, like fat frying in a pan, fills the room. My stylist gives my hair a little twist with the comb. It feels like she's making a Dairy Queen curl on top. Then she fries it in place with the dryer. Another dab of pomade. More mincing motions with the comb. Another blast of hot air. Suddenly I feel a moist breeze around my ears. She's taken out a can of imported aerosol spray and is cementing her creation in place. She's delicately patting my new coiffure now the way a baker taps a loaf of bread to see if it's springy to the touch. She murmurs something. I'm breathless with expectation. I open my eyes and gaze into the mirror. Magnifique! It looks like I have a loofah sponge on my head! I am reborn -- a cross between Elvis and a 1950s Bulgarian hydrology expert! At last I have become a true son of Pyongyang!

One possible (if depressing) conclusion to take from this is that strategy is just an illusory abstraction that we have invented to give meaning to that which has none. We use it as a retrospective framing device to explain a complex series of events (of our own making but mostly of external provenance) that we do not understand. So maybe strategic theory is really just an gussied up form of conspiracy theory. We need to impose order on the world and believe that someone, somewhere, knows that the hell is going on.

Buddy Cianci, former Providence mayor and convicted felon, is running for the city’s top office. Again.

The poet died when he was hit by a car in 1965. Everything else about his demise is a mystery.

On returning to Britain, which is no longer home.

They’re floppy, relaxed, and they come when you call them. Is the Ragdoll a genetic miracle, or just one very cool cat?

Why is life in this country so hostile to single people?

A report from the KKK’s 2012 Faith and Freedom conference in Arkansas:

It's quite disconcerting in this modern age to be in a room full of white people who are all spouting the most vile racist slurs that one can imagine, openly, while everyone else laughs and applauds it. There is a Twilight Zone feeling to it, as if you'd stumbled into a secret clubhouse where white people can say those forbidden things—the Valhalla of dumb racist jokes.

The lonely death of a godfather of the conspiracy theory movement.

The beginnings of the best-selling video game, from a chapter of David Kushner’s new book on the subject.

The remarkable stories of the nine other women in the Harvard Law class of ‘59.

“This is a story about an entertainer named R. Kelly. It is a story about the remarkable, but also very strange, pop talent he has. It is a story about the difficult places he came from and the ways they may, or may not, have shaped who he has become. It is also the story of a man who has been publicly accused of multiple sexual offenses with underage women, and who stood trial for making child pornography. He was eventually acquitted of that charge, and his career has continued uninterrupted, but for the most part he has evaded even the most basic questions that might help people understand what is true about him. For this story, R. Kelly agreed to speak about his whole life without restrictions.”

One famous critic (Adler) takes another (Pauline Kael) to task for a collection of reviews that is “without Kael- or Simon-like exaggeration, not simply, jarringly, piece by piece, line by line, and without interruption, worthless.”

What is the sickness that leads inhabitants to sleep for days?

The first epicenter is coming back to life, but not as anyone knew it.

The story of H.H. Holmes, America’s first serial killer.

The sole survivor of a 1966 shipwreck tells his tale.

The tale of the first conviction overturned on faulty arson science.

The rise and fall of the “fact crime magazine.”

A profile of the most powerful woman in the world.

A profile of the talk queen.

The daily life of Saddam Hussein.