Tracing Raymond Chandler’s early days in L.A.
juliawick
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Exorcism and the Catholic Church
Dan Shewan writes about the business of exorcism for Pacific Standard.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Early Days of Midnight Movies
Prior to the ’70s, midnight shows were the realm of the occasional horror release and exploitation distributors who used the slot to attract night owls to seedy fare. But the midnight movie as we know it — as a Friday- and Saturday-night staple featuring cult films — came into its own as the ’60s turned […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
David Axelrod Could Have Created This Guy in a Laboratory
Andrew Romano writes about Eric Garcetti—the Instagramming, jazz-loving, bilingual Jewish mayor of Los Angeles.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Ethics on the World’s Highest Peak
The climber’s code of ethics, issued by the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation, specifies “helping someone in trouble has absolute priority over reaching goals we set for ourselves in the mountain.” Most take this to heart. “Saving one life is more important than summiting Everest 100 times,” says Serap Jangbu Sherpa, the first person to climb all […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Word ‘Allergy’ Didn’t Exist Until 1906
Writing for The Boston Globe, Neil Swidey makes a compelling case for how the rising tide of food allergy fakers may endanger actual sufferers, as restaurants begin to take “allergy” requests less seriously. But his piece is more than just an anti-faker missive, it’s also a fascinating history of food allergies in America, and their place in the restaurant world. […]
Posted inAuthor Notes, Nonfiction
How the ACLU Came to Publish a Powerful Piece of Investigative Journalism
“Out of the Darkness” chronicles how two psychologists teamed up with the CIA to devise a torture program and experiment on human beings.
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How a Good Bookie Sets Odds
A good bookmaker will set up odds so they appear enticing to both sides of a bet: if Arsenal plays Stoke in the Premier League, the bookies want an equal amount of action on both clubs, the better to spread risk. (This isn’t how they make money, however. They do that by designing the odds so […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Why Greenlanders Don’t Have Epitaphs on Their Gravestones
Nothing is set in stone, except of course your epitaph. In a recent essay for Aeon, Tom Pitock mused on the difficulty of writing his own father’s epitaph, and why we etch words on tombstones to remember people we loved. But not every culture uses epitaphs, as Pitock learned in Greenland: It took real effort to find the cemetery […]
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Using Technology to Fight the Power
In a new story for Wired, Bijan Stephen looks at how the Black Lives Matter movement uses social media to organize and fight for change. As Stephen writes, “any large social movement is shaped by the technology available to it,” tailoring their goals and tactics to the media of their time. For the nascent Black Lives Matter […]