Who wants to run 26.2 miles in Maine in the middle of December? And who really believes that doing so will make a difference for a mill town on the ropes? This guy.
michelleweber
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Curse of the Bahia Emerald, a Giant Green Rock That Ruins Lives
Meet the schemers, investors, and dreamers who were bewitched by a big green rock that might not actually be worth anything.
Posted inBusiness & Tech, Nonfiction, Quotes
We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Screen: On the Addictive Escapism of Video Games
In Vulture, Frank Guan, an avid gamer himself, digs deep into the appeal and addictive qualities of video games in an effort to understand the psychology that undergirds hard-core gaming — and whether it has an impact on or can predict our politics.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Keepers of the Light
New Orleans’s complicated history with the Mardi Gras flambeaux — the (usually black) torch carriers who, for years, lit the way for the festival’s (usually white) parades.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Why Ever Stop Playing Video Games
Many Americans have replaced work hours with game play — and ended up happier. Which wouldn’t surprise most gamers.
Posted inCurrent Events, Essays & Criticism, Nonfiction
‘I felt dirty, a lesser person somehow than when I had left a week before.’
Rafia Zakaria’s essay in The Baffler on flying while Muslim is an important read that exposes a long list of things that most white, non-Muslim Americans never have to worry about while traveling.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
They’re Good Dogs, Brent: Meet Costa Rica’s Stray-Dog Whisperer
In Outside magazine, Bob Shacochis profiles Lya Battle, creator of Costa Rica’s Territorio de Zaguates, an open-air shelter home to hundreds of dogs.
Posted inHistory, Nonfiction, Quotes
How the Burning Brigade Broke Free
In the village of Ponar, in present-day Lithuania, occupying Nazis shot nearly 100,000 people, then exhumed and burned the bodies in an effort to remove all traces of the atrocity. The prisoners forced to dig up and burn the bodies of their countrymen knew there was only one way to get out alive: escape.
Posted inEditor's Pick
De-Muslimization
Writer Rafia Zakaria reports back on flying while Muslim after the U.S. travel ban.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Quotes
Screw You, and the Icelandic Pony You Rode In On
Novelist Nell Zink, in n+1, takes readers on a rambling but sharp journey through writers and novels of the 20th century in the name of exploring realism, compassion, and justice in fiction.