Automattic

[Three-part series] The firsthand account of a prisoner detained in Guantánamo: “Suddenly a commando team of three soldiers and a German shepherd broke into our interrogation room. [ ] punched me violently, which made me fall face down on the floor, and the second guy kept punching me everywhere, mainly on my face and my […]

Meet The Section—session players whose work in the studio fueled some of the biggest hits of the 1970s, from James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Carole King, and more: “To critics, Taylor, Browne, and Crosby, Stills and Nash personified everything tame about Seventies rock, and the musicians who accompanied them were inevitably guilty by association. ‘We were […]

A look back at the movie “Kids,” two decades later: “The kids were a crew of about sixteen, maybe forty if the outer circle was around. The core clique was all in Kids, with roles ranging from starring to un-credited. Their surrogate parents were Rodney Smith, Eli Morgan Gesner and Adam Schatz, the then twenty-something […]

The writer visits a farm in the town of Lyme, Conn. with a group of biologists to learn what’s driving the population of pathogen-laden ticks: It’s startling to look at the graphs of tick-borne diseases over the past few decades. They’re mostly going in the wrong direction. The research on Lyme disease is fairly recent, […]

A history of standardized testing in Texas, where the accountability movement began: “Like Jihad and skateboarding and small furry animals, high-stakes testing has given rise to a new genre of YouTube video, a kind of inspirational training film meant to be viewed just before the testing season begins. Some are slickly produced, while others are […]

The director confronts the economics of moviemaking, and whether there’s hope for independent film: “But let’s sex this up with some more numbers. In 2003, 455 films were released. 275 of those were independent, 180 were studio films. Last year 677 films were released. So you’re not imagining things, there are a lot of movies […]

We asked Washington Post reporter Dan Zak how he stumbled upon “The Prophets of Oak Ridge.” Here’s his account.

A victim of domestic violence escapes an abusive situation: “She led the kids to the Houston bus station’s loading zone, where only ticketed passengers could sit. She’d already turned off her cell phone so he couldn’t call her. Their bus didn’t leave for hours, though, and Krystal was getting nervous. She told a police officer […]

Three peace activists—one of whom was an 82-year-old nun—penetrated a U.S. nuclear-weapons facility. The story of what happened to the trio, and those involved in the incident: “When told that Sister Megan thinks he saved her life by not escalating the situation — that, in fact, he was her salvation — Kirk is speechless. His […]

An investigation into the underworld of labor brokers or “raiteros” in Chicago, who are used by some of the nation’s largest temp agencies and charge temp workers significant fees: “The system provides just-in-time labor at the lowest possible cost to large companies — but also effectively pushes workers’ pay far below the minimum wage. “Temp […]