Wes Anderson, the Wilson brothers and Bottle Rocket.

A technical explanation of the real program to sabotage Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Why Obama won’t rein in the NSA.

The rise of automatic number plate recognition and its real-world consequences.

The wild competition to be “worshipped” by Alaska’s most eligible bachelors.

On the dueling propagandists of Kiev and Moscow.

A surprising trip into the propaganda machine.

On (not) getting by in the gig economy.

Dick Cheney and the political history of warrantless surveillance.

On David Foster Wallace’s unfinished novel, The Pale King, and his legacy.

A reporter on his first time covering a disaster.

On why the Anthony Weiner story makes people more uncomfortable than simple cheating, the shifting meaning of faithfulness in marriage, and the relationship ideals espoused by Dan Savage:

In Savage Love, his weekly column, he inveighs against the American obsession with strict fidelity. In its place he proposes a sensibility that we might call American Gay Male, after that community’s tolerance for pornography, fetishes and a variety of partnered arrangements, from strict monogamy to wide openness.

Was Steinbrenner’s Partner the “Madoff of Memorabilia”? Inside a collector’s hoax.

The truth and consequences of reporting from a war zone.

An oral history of the Upright Citizens Brigade.

On the battles, both between humans and animals, in Africa’s overpopulated Albertine Rift.

On the life, legacy, and last days of Muammar Qaddafi.

On the privilege of being then-Vice President George H.W. Bush.

On the autopsy of a 5,000-year-old murder victim.

The story of eight young people who died in a New Orleans squat fire.

The legacy of Barry Levinson’s 1982 movie Diner.

Gentrification and its discontents in Paris, throughout the centuries.

On singer-songwriters Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman and Van Dyke Parks.

I get the sense that the labels' attitude toward these guys wasn't altogether different from a parent's attitude toward gifted children: Get them through the system, but make sure to give them a clean little corner to doodle in and pat them on the head when they show you what they've done, whether you understand it or not.

The infuriating tale of Muncie, Indiana: When public institutions fail.