Tim Murphy

Veteran HIV/AIDS reporter and Christodora author Tim Murphy’s devastating recollection of a drug addled love affair he had with an older gay couple in the wake of 9/11.

The effect an HIV-treatment pill is having on the gay community: “For some men, Truvada’s new use seems just as revolutionary for sex as it is for medicine. ‘I’m not scared of sex for the first time in my life, ever. That’s been an adrenaline rush,’ says Damon L. Jacobs, 43, a therapist who has chronicled his own experience with the drug on Facebook so enthusiastically that some assume Gilead, the drug’s manufacturer, must be paying him.”

Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder wanted an unobstructed view of the Potomac River from his Maryland mansion, which would require cutting down trees in a park designated a national historic site. Snyder’s desire for that view ended up wrecking a park ranger’s career:

It was a small concession in the grand scheme of things, the kind that the rich and powerful frequently wheedle out of government, especially back then, during the presidency of George W. Bush, when such favors were flowing like booze in a skybox. But its discovery set off a decade-long campaign of bureaucratic retribution over two administrations that nearly sent an innocent man to prison. The story of that little favor wonderfully (if depressingly) encapsulates the essential character of our times, in which average people who play by the rules are made to suffer by the blithe manipulation of those rules by the people at the top.

Harper Reed went from running a T-shirt community to running digital operations for Obama’s reelection campaign. Inside the team’s top-secret efforts to refine voter targeting to a granular (or: “creepy”) level:

“By the 2000 election, political data firms like Aristotle had begun purchasing consumer data in bulk from companies like Acxiom. Now campaigns didn’t just know you were a pro-choice teacher who once gave $40 to save the endangered Rocky Mountain swamp gnat; they also could have a data firm sort you by what type of magazines you subscribed to and where you bought your T-shirts. The fifth source, the increasingly powerful email lists, track which blasts you respond to, the links you click on, and whether you unsubscribe.

“In the past, this information has been compartmentalized within various segments of the campaign. It existed in separate databases, powered by different kinds of software that could not communicate with each other. The goal of Project Narwhal was to link all of this data together. Once Reed and his team had integrated the databases, analysts could identify trends and craft sharper messages calibrated to appeal to individual voters. For example, if the campaign knows that a particular voter in northeastern Ohio is a pro-life Catholic union member, it will leave him off email blasts relating to reproductive rights and personalize its pitch by highlighting Obama’s role in the auto bailout—or Romney’s outsourcing past.”

Exploring the social etiquette of Couchsurfing.org—and how its rapid growth is challenging the community’s expectations of safety and mutual respect:

“Orange Acres takes all kinds, provided you follow a few simple rules:

• No alcoholics, crackheads, or members of the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, or PETA
• ‘[O]n the subject of hippies and rainbow people,’ please don’t wear patchouli oil: ‘That stuff stinks forever’—and bring your own pillowcase if you have dreadlocks.
• Happy Hour starts at 6:30 p.m.; during that time—and only during that time—you may drink beer or smoke pot. Do not get shitfaced or you will be thrown out of the house. If you drink and try to drive, Jeff will handcuff you to a chair and call the cops.
• Dogs and children must be on leashes. This is non-negotiable.

“‘The place really is not a commune; it is a dictatorship,’ Halvorson tells me.”

At home, work, and play with Lorenzo Martone, the first husband of fashion.