“After 9/11, Barrett believed that she’d never encounter another event that would have such a profound and widespread influence on dreams. Now, as the new virus spread and the world began to shut down, she realized she had been wrong. Like her dream-self in the library, she was living through a storm — what she […]
Peter Rubin
Posted inEditor's Pick
Homegrown and Homeless in Oakland
“Leonard ‘Pumpkin’ Ambrose lives just down the street from the house where he grew up. Derrick Soo lives 2 miles from his former family home, Delbra Taylor is a mile from hers and Gwyn Teninty can walk the distance in 15 minutes. All four grew up here, in Oakland. And they succeeded in their own […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Nation’s Last Uranium Mill Plans to Import Estonia’s Radioactive Waste
“On a warm July evening, Yolanda Badback described the noxious fumes that haunt the air where she lives. Unlike the fragrance of sagebrush or the sweet scent of juniper and piñon, the odor is astringent and sulfuric, hard to breathe. Sometimes it forces Badback and her family of eight to stay indoors. At its worst, […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Many Lives of H. Rap Brown
“In his story, there’s a crescendo to this question of guilt or innocence. Did he or didn’t he? But after a full examination of his life, a more pressing question emerges: What did Jamil Al-Amin do to piss America off so much?”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Sexfluencers
“What is new is how seamlessly a DM slide can become a business arrangement, how influencers of the Instagram-lifestyle variety and regular people alike have used this as a meaningful stream of revenue. Thanks to a pandemic that left many people at home substituting screens for IRL intimacy and the rise of platforms that merge […]
Posted inReading List
A New Leaf: A Post-Legalization Cannabis Reading List
Five stories demonstrating how the green rush nurtured the best and worst that U.S. capitalism had to offer.
Posted inEditor's Pick
When Your Mother Is a Ghost Hunter
“On the hunt with TikTok star Brittany Broski and her mother Heather Long, lead investigator of the Texas Ghost Gals.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Neal Stephenson Finally Takes on Global Warming
“His superscience this time isn’t a metaverse or a space colony. It’s engineering to address an imminent threat. After a few years of unrelenting wildfires, hurricanes, disease outbreaks, and other natural disasters linked directly or indirectly to climate change, the idea that the world’s preeminent technologists might take up the cause where policymakers seem to […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
“I Don’t Know That I Would Even Call it Meth Anymore”
“Soon, tons of P2P meth were moving north, without any letup, and the price of meth collapsed. But there was more to the story than higher volume. Ephedrine meth tended to damage people gradually, over years. With the switchover to P2P meth, that damage seemed to accelerate, especially damage to the brain.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Jim Crow–Era Murder. A Family Secret. Decades Later, What Does Justice Look Like?
“Today, the official records of these older killings are often inaccurate. If they aren’t corrected soon, the true stories may never come out; many witnesses to the crimes of the Jim Crow era are aging and dying.”