With the help of Grand Funk Railroad, Rob Horning collates some recent attempts to grapple with the nature and possibility of being authentic on the internet, in politics, and in politics on the internet.
2019
Posted inEditor's Pick
No Place Like Home
A slew of new shows timed perfectly for new year’s resolution purges help us pare down our possessions, keeping us focused on stuff instead of, say, systemic housing inequality.
Posted inNonfiction, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Tressie McMillan Cottom, Kashmir Hill, R.O. Kwon, Jaime Lowe, and Steve Edwards.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Story
The Laws of the Awards Podium Protest
Stars are increasingly using Hollywood awards podiums as sites of protest, but few of them are men, and even fewer are white men.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Whitest News You Know
If there’s one clear moral to adduce from the horrifically prostrate coverage of the Trump movement’s white-nationalist profile in the mainstream press, it’s that the white-dominated media simply doesn’t care about changing in any meaningful way.
Posted inEditor's Pick
What it Felt Like When ‘Cat Person’ Went Viral
A personal essay in which Kristen Roupenian writes about the experience of having “Cat Person” — her fictional short story about a young woman who goes through with sex she’d rather not have at the end of a bad date, published in the New Yorker in 2017 — go viral, become the subject of much […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Elwood, Illinois (Pop. 2,200), Has Become a Vital Hub of America’s Consumer Economy. And It’s Hell.
In 2002, developers made a deal with the people of Elwood, Illinois: they’d bring high-paying jobs in the growing warehousing and logistics industry to the centrally-located town in exchange for two decades of tax abatement. Seventeen years later, temp agencies in the region are flourishing, but full-time jobs are few and far between. Meanwhile, tens of […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
I Was Pregnant and in Crisis. All the Doctors and Nurses Saw Was an Incompetent Black Woman
“It might seem that the culture’s perennial strong woman would also be competent. But incompetent and superhero do not actually conflict in the context of essential notions about gender, race, class, and hierarchy.”
Posted inHighlight, investigations, Nonfiction, Quote Posts, Quotes
“Welcome to the House of Horrors”: When IP Address Mapping Goes Wrong
John and his mother Ann, who live in a house in Pretoria, South Africa, were two victims of faulty IP address mapping — and the U.S. government played a big role in the mess.
Posted inEditor's Pick
How Cartographers for the U.S. Military Inadvertently Created a House of Horrors in South Africa
John and his mother Ann, who live in a house in Pretoria, South Africa, were two victims of faulty IP address mapping — and the U.S. government played a big role in the mess.