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 […]
Peter Rubin
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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 […]
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Waymo Cars and Honey Bears
Gentrification has no shortage of first-order sins: displacement in the name of “progress” is bad enough. But after the displaced have been pushed to the margins, what’s left in their stead is a stunning homogeneity — not simply demographic, but dystopian. Anna Wiener’s latest “Letter From San Francisco” sums up the vague malaise that comes […]
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What Went Wrong With Substack Local
A little more than a year ago, newsletter darling Substack announced a million-dollar initiative to help fund local journalism. How’d that turn out? As Andrew Federov reports for the (non-Substack) media newsletter The Fine Print, not great. In some instances, Substack did step in to offer business support. “Substack put up a round of Facebook […]
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The Cause of the Crime Wave Is Hiding in Plain Sight
When crime goes up, divining the root of the problem is usually as ideologically fraught as it is practically impossible. But this probing feature from Alec MacGillis eludes both traps. Instead, it examines two American cities and comes to a conclusion that’s all the more compelling for its obviousness: stop letting people rot in jail. […]
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Patrick Radden Keefe Gets to the Bottom of It
If you’re a sucker for hearing how great journalists report and structure their work — and who isn’t? — this Q&A with New Yorker write-around specialist Patrick Radden Keefe makes for a perfect Monday read. It’s always the same: It starts with a series of big beats. If it’s an article, it starts with eight […]
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Deep Time Sickness
“In Mexico, people who are ‘tocado’—’touched’—reveal that geological traumas, like earthquakes, can destabilize our concepts of health, identity and even time.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
More Than Pony Patrol: The Park Rangers of Assateague Island
The best nature writing doesn’t just evoke the outdoors; it makes you want to get up from wherever you’re reading and go be there too. You may not drop everything to go see the wild horses and undisturbed beachfront of Maryland’s largest state park, but the next time you’re nearby you’ll think of the people […]
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Gary Smith, Master of the Sports Longform, Left at the Very Top. Why?
The latest in SI‘s “Where Are They Now?” series covers longtime staffer Smith, arguably one of the finest profilers the journalism world has ever known. His portraits of Mike Tyson, Andre Agassi, and other icons cut through the insularity of sports fandom to become the stuff of magazine legend. Now, Joseph Bien-Kahn heads to South […]