In Nashville, it’s become all too common for homeowners to find themselves on the receiving end of spurious fines for alleged code violations — an unnerving pattern rooted in the city’s policies, and weaponized by disingenuous (and gentrifying) neighbors. Radley Balko investigates, in a long and damning feature that embodies exactly why local journalism is […]
Peter Rubin
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Neil Gaiman Knows What Happens When You Dream
Ahead of the Netflix adaption of his seminal comic book Sandman, Neil Gaiman gamely sits down for a longform Q&A. The results are as probing and patient and polymathic as you’d expect. I would love to think that we are living in a world in which the story of progress, as in the original “Star Trek” […]
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The Secret History Of The Internet’s Funniest Buzzer-Beater
“[E]very so often, if you dig into a piece of internet ephemera, the context—the who, what, when, where, and why—have the potential to dramatically enhance your understanding of the freak accident that you just witnessed.”
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I Woke Up With an Allergy to Cold
How can someone become allergic — full-on, allover hives allergic — to cold? This essay from Alison Espach unfolds like a slow walk along a precarious ridgeline: You feel the discomfort, but you also trust the journey enough to enjoy it. There’s a practiced sense of pace here, an easy deliberation that pairs well with […]
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The High-Stakes Race to Engineer New Psychedelic Drugs
As the drumbeat of psychedelic drugs’ therapeutic impact grows louder, it’s little surprise that companies are looking for new compounds that can rival psilocybin and LSD — while also being proprietary and patentable. Enter Compass Pathways and their star chemist, Jason Wallach. As John Semley reports for Wired, Wallach’s mad-scientist act is a childhood dream […]
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Welcome to Alphaland, the Disney World for Bodybuilders
Of the many species of internet entrepreneurship that preys on vanity and shame, “fitness influencer” might be one of the most fraught. Yet, that’s exactly who Christian Guzman is courting with his massive gym in the Houston exurbs. Emily McCullar investigates the Oiliest Place on Earth. The line to buy day passes was steady, and […]
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Marvel Has a VFX Problem
If you’ve seen any of the recent movies coming out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you might have noticed something’s up — or, rather, down. That something is the quality of the visual effects: sometimes overdone, other times bordering on amateur. Don’t blame the artists, though; as Daniel Chin points out in this Ringer piece, Marvel […]
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The Haves and the Have-Yachts
There are plenty of things you might not want to read 10,000 words about. But the seafaring proclivities of the ultrarich — the 400-foot superyachts, the obsession with L.O.A. (“length overall”), the 3D-printed restaurants airlifted to a sand bar that will be submerged in eight hours — are something that, I promise you, you very […]
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I Shredded a 70-Mile Dirt Ride on a Folding Commuter Bike
If you’re ripping off 70 miles of off-road riding in a day, you’d probably go for a mountain bike or gravel bike. Maybe a cyclocross bike. Or you could, as Elena Lacey details in this joyous travelogue for WIRED, opt for a $5,000 titanium folding Brompton. Just don’t expect to clear any obstacles. As I […]
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The Feud Between a Weed Influencer and Scientist Over Puking Stoners
Regardless of certain recent viral tweets about “scromiting,” cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS) is a very real thing. But figuring out the root cause of the unfortunate condition gets a lot harder when a prominent CHS sufferer (and, yes, “weed influencer”) decides to waylay a burgeoning scientific study. Another banger from Amanda Chicago Lewis, queen of […]