The Dildo of Damocles

If the new world of digitally connected sex toys has issues, it isn’t with sex. It’s with privacy, hacking and sextortion.

Author: Mark Hay
Source: The Awl
Published: Apr 24, 2017
Length: 8 minutes (2,236 words)

Can Cannabis And Christ Coexist? These Devout Southern Christians Think So

The Deep South is the nation’s most religious region and the least open to legalized cannabis for medical or recreational use. To those who say marijuana is a sin, though, devout Christians are using the Bible to argue that it’s God’s “perfect medicine.”

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: May 15, 2017
Length: 11 minutes (2,826 words)

Welcome to Airspace

How the same design language — “the neutered Scandinavianism of HGTV” — took over coffee shops and Airbnbs from Brooklyn to Osaka.

Source: The Verge
Published: Aug 3, 2016
Length: 14 minutes (3,601 words)

The New Berliners

After one Syrian family settles in Berlin, a whole new struggle begins: adjustment.

Published: Apr 10, 2017
Length: 20 minutes (5,154 words)

Her Eyes Were Watching The Stars: How Missy Elliot Became an Icon

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah profiles multi-platinum, Grammy-award winning recording artist and producer Missy Elliot for Elle, placing the innovative performer squarely at the center of a tradition of creators who have changed how we listen to music.

Source: Elle
Published: May 15, 2017
Length: 22 minutes (5,678 words)

Location, Location, Location

Moving is something Americans used to do a lot more of—not just moving out of a house, but moving an entire building with you. “Breaking off and hauling walls and roofs to a landfill is easier, and often cheaper, than recycling a house. Even simpler: demolition.” Jeannie Vanasco grew up in a while-sided saltbox house that had bee cut in half and moved across town. She began to search for the reason why.

Source: The Believer
Published: May 15, 2017
Length: 11 minutes (2,984 words)

Thomas Cook and the Stack Pirates

Boredom and an enterprising Brit gave birth to the modern tourism industry, and we’re still trying to make sense of it all.

Author: Mary Mann
Published: May 16, 2017
Length: 22 minutes (5,506 words)

My Family’s Slave

Alex Tizon tells the story of his family’s slave, Lola. A utusan (“person who takes commands”), Lola was given as a gift from his grandfather to his mother in 1943, when Lola was 18 years old. Lola worked — unpaid — for Alex and his family for 56 years. In a turbulent childhood where his parents were out of the house for days at a time, Lola was a constant source of love and devotion for Alex and his three siblings. In this moving piece, Alex attempts to understand his parents’ point of view, their motivations, and reconcile himself with Lola’s life of servitude.

Author: Alex Tizon
Source: The Atlantic
Published: Jun 1, 2017
Length: 34 minutes (8,703 words)

Why Russia’s Heroin Addicts Are Going Through Hell

Russia’s aversion to harm reduction as a strategy to combat drug addiction has led to an HIV epidemic. In Yekaterinburg — the fourth largest city in Russia with a population of 1.5 million people — one in 50 are HIV positive. In Russia, addiction is considered a “moral sickness” and methadone is illegal — “a despised ‘narcoliberal’ idea.” The country has gone so far as to assert that drug addiction and homosexuality are notions imported from the West in a bid to corrupt ‘Russia’s “conservative ideology and traditional values.”’ For those who are suffering, the prospects are grim.

Source: Gizmodo
Published: Nov 4, 2016
Length: 8 minutes (2,117 words)

Pet Project

The doggos of WeRateDogs have been there for us in dark times: Begun in the days after the Paris terrorist attacks in 2015, WeRateDogs is still going strong nearly two years later. It’s an eternity for a meme in Internet years, let alone dog years, but creator Matt Nelson is a college sophomore with big ambitions for his brand: “If it was just cute dogs I wouldn’t have millions of followers.”

Source: Esquire
Published: May 14, 2017
Length: 20 minutes (5,000 words)