Considering the screen saver.

Even when napping, the computer seems beset by iterative nightmares of a deadline. The pipes come to represent, rather than imaginarily suspend, the clogging of the task queue when one is away. When the screen has become as dense as Celtic knot-work, the entire image cracks and dissipates, as if burned out from its involute frenzy—before beginning again in the dark.

“Anna looked at the soul of New York and recognized that if you distract people with shiny objects, with large wads of cash, with the indicia of wealth, if you show them the money, they will be virtually unable to see anything else. And the thing was: It was so easy.”

On collecting books.

I have lived in books, for books, by and with books; in recent years, I have been fortunate enough to be able to live from books. And it was through books that I first realised there were other worlds beyond my own; first imagined what it might be like to be another person; first encountered that deeply intimate bond made when a writer's voice gets inside a reader's head.

Each year, thousands of people pay to play eighteen holes of golf at Angola, “the largest maximum-security prison in the country.”

Behind the tabloid story of the “murder orphan” in Queens.

On the culture of misogyny and abuse at one of the nation’s largest megachurches.

A self-published author of pick-up guides visits the “pacifist nanny state” of Denmark and finds the social safety interferes with his seduction strategies.

Exploring the vast underground world of New York City with three of the people who know it best.

On Baylor’s freshman basketball star Perry Jones and how the new era of one-season careers has changed the landscape of college basketball.

A study of the Mississippi River, its history, and efforts by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to hold it in place.

A profile of Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Body and The 4-Hour Workweek.

On the battle between Shaquille O’Neal and his former IT guy, who’s in control of much of O’Neal’s archived (and often damning) correspondence.

The story of a deadly collision on the D.C. Metro, told from surviving passengers’ point of view.

On the obsession with the sexual and social habits of American teenage girls.

The bloody reign of Rodrigo Duterte, who was elected President of the Phillipines in May.

After a cop walks into his station and confesses to murder, an investigation reveals the toll of lethal force on both sides of the gun.

Hundreds of pages of documents obtained by Motherboard show how Facebook is using the Menlo Park Police Department to reshape the city.

How a dating app helped a generation of Chinese come out of the closet.

Many young South Koreans were beginning to live in isolation years before the rest of the world joined them.

Each year, California’s child protective services agencies remove thousands of kids from their homes. The story of how some parents decided to fight back.

An ambitious new system will track scores of species from space—shedding light, scientists hope, on the lingering mysteries of animal movement.

On nostalgia for Communism.

How an obsessive New Age hustler brought the sound of the ocean to millions of home stereos.

A history of the first African American White House—and of what came next.