“At exactly 1:05pm, the Prius was outside my Airbnb, as was Chuck, in a pressed white shirt and pastel turquoise shorts. He treated me to a tuna sandwich at a nearby bakery. We then drove back and sat down for three hours of conversation in the secluded bamboo-walled yard, which happened to be right next […]
Peter Rubin
Posted inEditor's Pick
It’s Triller Night, Marv!: Trump’s 9/11 MMA Fever Dream
“What do I care for seeing these legends (insofar as MMA even has “legends”), in a sport not their own, at ages that seem criminally old? It’s sadder than any strung-out rocker strumming bloated and hoarse-throated to a braying audience. You can’t, in good conscience, want these men to play their hits again.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Meet the Fearless Women of the Lone Star Mower Racing Association
“Sammie Neel, 62, has seen plenty of crashes, bruises, and burns in her twelve years of racing. She once raced around a track at a monster truck show in the tiny town of Leona, where she flipped and wound up pinned beneath her mower, which she nicknamed ‘Love Mowtion No 9.’”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Sid Meier and the Meaning of “Civilization”
“Like many talented programmers at the time, he preferred to disappear into a fugue of coding and return with a gleaming piece of software.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Ebooks Are an Abomination
“Agreeing that books are a thing you read is easy enough. But what it means to read, what the experience of reading requires and entails, and what makes it pleasurable or not, is not so easy to pin down.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Revolt of the Delivery Workers
“For Cesar and many other delivery workers, the thefts broke something loose. Some started protesting and lobbying, partnering with nonprofits and city officials to propose legislation. Cesar and the Deliveryboys took another tack, forming a civil guard reminiscent of the one that patrolled San Juan Puerto Montaña, the small, mostly Indigenous Me’phaa village where they […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
OK, Seriously: Teen Vogue‘s Complicated Political Transformation
“The anxieties that Teen Vogue seems to awaken in the general public have proved to be analogous to how America sees teen girls, so frequently flattened into either Greta Thunberg–like saviors or overly woke children who need to be saved.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
“Is This My Life Now?” Justin Foster’s—and My—Struggle With Long-Haul COVID
“From our first conversation, we connected about what it was like to suddenly no longer be yourself, and the constant self-doubt that came with it. If we can’t do the things we used to do, then who are we?”
Posted inEditor's Pick
It Was One Wet Hot Vax Summer at Seacrets
“Ocean City has about 7,000 year-rounders but sees some 8 million visitors a year. Of all the Delmarva beach towns, it may be the most spectacular study in contrasts. Families come to play on its gaping-wide beaches while barely legal kids who visit to get hammered are escorted out of beachside bars before 5 o’clock.”
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Pokimane Has Done Enough—and Has So Much Left to Do
“As a master reactor, Anys knows the rules of manufactured controversies over manufactured selves. She could have engaged the drama YouTubers who went after her in mid-2020, taking ownership of her centrality in that day’s attention economy. She could have immediately made a response video and clocked a couple million YouTube views. She could have […]