“Nawabshah, home to more than a million people, has the untidy, nondescript feel of just about any other small Pakistani city: tangled power lines, tacky roundabouts, squat buildings. It has one consistent claim to national fame, however: its dry, punishing heat, the suffering of which residents flaunt with pride and masochistic smugness.”
Peter Rubin
Posted inEditor's Pick
Ghostwriting
“When you buy into the myth of the singular genius, it becomes unseemly that a brilliant writer might need an equal partner in an audio producer to coherently package and adapt their thoughts for a new medium. It’s why we experience a twinge of distaste when we find out a prominent figure worked with a […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Writing from Home: Lessons from a Novelist-Slash-Small-Town Newspaper Columnist
“Small towns around Wisconsin are depopulating, the main streets emptying and shuttering. An American way of life is disappearing, and with it, an exchange is made. If there is no future for small-towns, what about local media like the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram? Who will report on the illegal acts of multinational corporations polluting the countryside? […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
How a McDonald’s Knockoff Became the Immigrant Dream
“Chances are you’ve never heard of Burger Baron unless you grew up in Alberta, Canada, in which case it’s a cultural icon.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Critical Race Fury: The School Board Wars Are Getting Nasty in Texas
“A small-but-loud faction of parents and activists is making life miserable for local school officials—and shouting down the kids who speak in favor of lessons about the history and persistence of racial discrimination.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Vegan Food Wars of DC
“A crew of innovator chefs and entrepreneurs have turned Washington into a hub of plant-forward dining. But they have all kinds of competing ideas about what meat-free fare should be.”
Posted inReading List
Deeper Than Pixels: A Reading List on Video Games
Five longreads on the culture and creativity that games have spawned.
Posted inEditor's Pick
What Iowa Is Losing as My Hometown Newspaper Crumbles
“Readers noticed the paper’s sloppiness first—how there seemed to be twice as many typos as before, and how sometimes the articles would end mid-sentence instead of continuing after the jump. The newspaper’s remaining reporters are overworked; there are local stories they’d like to tell but don’t have the bandwidth to cover. The Hawk Eye’s current […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
At Heritage, Pokémon Cards Are the New Bitcoin
“At an auction in January, a card from the game’s first edition, which depicted the golden dragon Charizard and was graded in perfect 10.0 condition, sold for $300,000. The most expensive cards from the ‘Unlimited’ edition wouldn’t fetch quite that much, but a lucky buyer could still find himself with a card that would buy […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Did I Want Tony Stark—or Want to Be Him?
“When I think about the time before I ever uttered the words ‘I am a lesbian,’ I don’t think about a closet. I think about a costume trunk.”