
The Plague Year
The mistakes and the struggles behind America’s coronavirus tragedy.
Great articles, every Saturday.
The mistakes and the struggles behind America’s coronavirus tragedy.
Lawrence Wright New Yorker Dec 2020 2h Permalink
Genetic analysis of human remains found in the Himalayas has raised baffling questions about who these people were and why they were there.
Douglas Preston New Yorker Dec 2020 25min Permalink
A humble Scotsman saw something strange in the water—and daringly set out to catch it—only to have lecherous out-of-towners steal his fame and upend his quest.
Paul Brown Narratively Dec 2020 25min Permalink
A found diary holds a love story—and a mystery.
Christina Lalanne The Atavist Magazine Nov 2020 30min Permalink
COBOL is a coding language older than Weird Al Yankovic. The people who know how to use it are often just as old. It underpins the entire financial system. And it can’t be removed. How a computer language controls the financial life of the world.
Clive Thompson Wealthsimple Magazine Nov 2020 25min Permalink
Henry Orenstein survived three years in concentration camps before creating Transformers and poker cameras.
Abigail Jones Newsweek Dec 2016 25min Permalink
Twenty-five years ago this month, “superpredator” was coined in The Weekly Standard. Media spread the term like wildfire, creating repercussions on policy and culture we are still reckoning with today.
Carroll Bogert, Lynell Hancock The Marshall Project Nov 2020 15min Permalink
On revisionist architecture.
Looking at the statues here, or anywhere, makes one wonder: Is abstraction simply the cardinal feature of any war where the loss is so much greater than whatever can be described as victory?
Jack Hitt Virginia Quarterly Review Sep 2020 30min Permalink
In 2005, Vanessa Mitchell moved into her dream home, a former medieval jail where England’s witches waited to hang and burn. When paranormal phenomena forced her to flee, she became convinced it was possessed by evil spirits.
Jeff Maysh Medium Oct 2020 25min Permalink
How political science understands voters.
Lous Menand New Yorker Aug 2004 Permalink
A bizarre 1970 Arctic killing over a jug of raisin wine shows that we need to think about crime outside our atmosphere now.
Dutch astronomer, mathematician, and inventor Christiaan Huygens’ early work on probability paved the way for his very modern evaluation of what alien life might look like.
Hugh Aldersey-Williams The Public Domain Review Oct 2020 20min Permalink
Long before the likes of Kim Kardashian, Marie Bashkirtseff sought to secure celebrity through curation of “personal brand.”
Sonia Wilson Public Domain Review Sep 2020 20min Permalink
Inside the bizarre, secret meeting between Malcolm X and the Ku Klux Klan.
Les Payne, Tamara Payne Politico Oct 2020 25min Permalink
My main purpose in this address is simply to convince you that this desire is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action... Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the first day on which you enter your profession until the day when you are too old to care.
C.S. Lewis Jan 1944 15min Permalink
The history of civilian internment camps.
Andrea Pitzer Lapham's Quarterly Dec 2014 15min Permalink
“The conditions in America today do not much resemble those of 1968. In fact, the best analogue to the current moment is the first and most consequential such awakening—in 1868.”
Adam Serwer The Atlantic Sep 2020 30min Permalink
The author visits the 9/11 Memorial Museum, 13 years after his sister’s death.
Steve Kandell Buzzfeed May 2014 10min Permalink
In 1944, an eighteen year old boy became famous for throwing eggs at Frank Sinatra. Then he disappeared.
J.P. Robinson Medium May 2019 15min Permalink
A patriotic parade, a bloody brawl, and the origins of U.S. law enforcement’s war on the political left.
Bill Donahue The Atavist Magazine Aug 2020 40min Permalink
The role of money plays a two-sided role in Borges’ artistic life. On one side of the coin’s face, Borges was blessed with the most privileged, ideal life for a burgeoning literary genius. Educated in Europe, raised by his father to become a serious writer, Borges devoted his entire life to literature. He did not take a full-time job for nearly 40 years. But on the coin’s reverse side, we see that young Georgie Borges did not actually write his great fictions until after his family lost their money.
Elizabeth Hyde Stevens Longreads Jun 2016 Permalink
A look at Chicago’s DJ culture in the ’90s.
One day in 1997, Sneak promised his friend and fellow Chicago DJ Derrick Carter a new 12-inch for Carter's label Classic, then spent hours fruitlessly laboring over a basic, bustling four-four beat. Finally, Sneak gave in and smoked the J he'd had stashed for later in the day. When he came back inside, he carelessly dropped the needle onto a Teddy Pendergrass LP, heard the word "Well . . . ," and realized, "That's the sample, right there." He threaded Pendergrass's 20-year-old disco hit "You Can't Hide From Yourself" through a low-pass filter to give it the effect of going in and out of aural focus, creating one of the definitive Chicago house singles.
Michaelangelo Matos Chicago Reader May 2012 30min Permalink
Decades ago, a marketing stunt promised Philippine soda drinkers a chance at a million pesos. But an error at a bottling plant led to 600,000 winners—and to lawsuits, rioting, and even deaths.
Jeff Maysh Bloomberg Businessweek Aug 2020 20min Permalink
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League did everything it could to keep lesbians off the diamond. Seventy-five years later, its gay stars are finally opening up.
Britni de la Cretaz Narratively May 2018 15min Permalink
The remarkable stories of the nine other women in the Harvard Law class of ‘59.
Dahlia Lithwick, Molly Olmstead Slate Jul 2020 40min Permalink