“At six feet four and 260 pounds, he fills up a room without meaning to, though he never wastes time trying to merge with his surroundings. He’s funny and profane and could charm a lampshade off its base with his whiskey-sour drawl and Harley swagger. Small wonder that even strangers at the Quik Mart call […]
Peter Rubin
Posted inEditor's Pick
Searching for Susy Thunder
“Susan has an aptitude for the plausibly outlandish: the more far-fetched something sounds, the more detail she’s able to provide. It’s not lost on me, as she tells these stories, that I’m on the phone with a phone phreaker or that I’m attempting to tell the true story of an expert deceiver. When she tells […]
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Reading Detroit in a Season of Mourning
“It was during the lockdown bike rides that I started to register this language of landscape as expressed in Detroit. There is a power in these markers of non-instrumental processes, which metabolize what was, and give it new life and new form. It is all beautiful, yes, and the forsythias in April were everywhere and […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
On the Insanity of Being a Scrabble Enthusiast
“Oliver Roeder navigates the highs and lows of his stint as a competitive player.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
He Was in Witness Protection in Maine. But His Harlem Life Kept Calling.
“Even in death, a coherent picture of Mr. Martinez’s double life — which was once the subject of a Hollywood movie — proves elusive. He was both a loyal confidant and one of the most infamous turncoats in New York lore. He was a kind friend and an admitted, ruthless killer; a selfless neighbor and […]
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The Assassination of Drakeo the Ruler
“Drakeo was 28 with an incandescent future ahead: He was supporting his son, mother, and paying his sister’s college tuition. Whoever bears responsibility for his murder did more than kill one man. They’ve deprived hip-hop and pop culture of a rare creative vanguard pushing sound and style forward in a landscape glutted with pastiche and […]
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The Radicalization of J.D. Vance
“As he runs for the Senate, the Hillbilly Elegy author has gone from media darling to establishment pariah. Is his new, fiery, right-wing persona an act? Or is something more interesting going on?”
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Pit Viper Made the Perfect Sunglasses. Then the Alt-Right Fell in Love With Them
“Here’s how the company fought to get its identity back from extremists.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Twisted, Stolen Legacy of the ‘Matrix’ Red Pill
“The story of how the Wachowskis’ philosophical-crossroads moment was co-opted by bad-faith actors and a political movement is a complex tale about semiotics, the internet, and modern pop culture.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Escaping Into the Crossword Puzzle
“Part of the appeal of a young woman crossword constructor is that she is focussing her intelligence on a frivolity; she is making her smarts unthreatening and benign. Of course, nothing about my story, neither its reflection of cultural misogyny nor its origins in my willful self-destruction, is benign. Surely this is not what the […]