Recent editors’ picks

The Wrong Stalker

Matthias Gafni | The San Francisco Chronicle | May 18, 2026 | 12,160 words

“He was locked up for a dangerous infatuation. Nothing was as it seemed.”

I’m a Normie. Can Normies Really Vibe Code?

Chris Colin | Wired | May 18, 2026 | 2,327 words

“Apparently anyone can vibe code anything these days. So Claude and I tried to make a database for tracking the petty grievances of the masses.”

Are We There Yet?

James Wade | Texas Highways | May 1, 2026 | 3,479 words

“A family trips and stumbles across 3,000 miles of Texas.”

The Prehistory of A.I. Slop

Jill Lepore | The New Yorker | May 18, 2026 | 3,589 words

“Before ChatGPT, there was the Plot Robot, Auto-Beatnik, and a century’s worth of schemes for automating authorship.”

Traversing the Mahjong Multiverse

Nicole Wong | Coyote | May 18, 2026 | 2,578 words

“As mahjong grows in popularity, can the diverging fanbases come together?”

Roadside Attraction

Zoe Kurland | The Offing | May 8, 2026 | 4,423 words

“The desert has a changeling effect, transforming lights into magic, desert into space, visitors into lovers, me into something apart from what I actually am.”

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Stories from Mina Tavakoli, Lindsey Adler, Joshua Jackson, Ben Tarnoff, Paloma Karr, and Jon Greenaway.

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Recommending notable reads by Lauren Collins, Gabrielle Bruney, Gregory Barber, Sally O’Reilly, and Jeffrey Arlo Brown.

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

This week we are celebrating writing from Paul Collins, Daniel Lefferts, Mitch Therieau, Joseph Bullington, and Hanif Abdurraqib.

Recent editors’ picks

Whither the Nerd-Bully?

Ben Tarnoff | The New York Review of Books | May 7, 2026 | 4,428 words

“Bill Gates was the monopolistic father figure who Silicon Valley’s young founders rebelled against—and, in so rebelling, became.”

Meet the Sad Wives of AI

Alessandra Ram | Wired | May 13, 2026 | 2,404 words

“Are you married to a man who’s obsessed with AI? I’m so, so sorry.”

Consider the Sister

Lindsey Adler | The Small Bow | May 11, 2026 | 4,690 words

“Amy Wallace has spent two decades guarding the human her brother was—against a world that prefers David Foster Wallace as a puzzle.”

The Chinese Whiz Kids of Silicon Valley

Viola Zhou | Rest of World | May 11, 2026 | 4,161 words

“Chinese-born tech workers have fueled Silicon Valley for decades. In the AI era, they’re superstars.”

Reality Check

Kai Kupferschmidt | Science | April 30, 2026 | 4,325 words

“AI-generated images have left us questioning what is real. But the godfather of digital forensics, Hany Farid, is not giving up.”

The Banal Horror of Jimmy Fallon

Jon Greenaway | Current Affairs| April 20, 2026 | 2,120 words

“Under the sterile blue lights of his studio, Fallon laughs endlessly at the same pseudo-jokes, rubs elbows with Trump and Sam Altman, and ushers in the death of culture.”

Wish You Were Her

Mina Tavakoli | n+1 | May 5, 2026 | 7,596 words

“Aboard the celebrity impersonators’ cruise.”

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