The Outline

“What really wounded me wasn’t having to dodge one mediocre writer’s half-assed assaults — it was that I’d reached out for support afterwards and found nothing. It was the unruffled reaction of my peers when I told them what had happened, the implication that I should have known what to expect from him, when I genuinely had no idea at all. It was the words used to minimize his behavior — creepy, sketchy, bad vibes, never liked that guy — spoken by a community whose existence turned on the idea that words were of value.”

A cheese snack shaped like a bald eagle perched on a branch? That will cost you $849.99.

Startups are disrupting New York’s dry-cleaning industry and threatening the welfare of the Korean-Americans who have thrived in the industry since the 1970s. One thing startups can’t provide, though, is quality.

With Payless set to close all of its U.S. and Canada stores by the end of May, a former customer finds herself curiously missing a subpar, self-serve “ShoeSource” she hasn’t shopped at in years.

Salem, Massachusetts sells its witch history very well, but Vardø, Norway has its eerie isolation and cold dark climate to sell its haunted past.

We know — or sort of vaguely grasp, or willfully ignore, or try to forget — the general story of the housing bubble. But what happened to “all the single mortgages that were bought, bundled, divided, sold, rebought, rebundled, redivided, resold, etc.” in the years leading up to the 2008 housing crisis? With the help of a Lawyer Friend (“LF”), Cole Hawes Louison digs into the twisted, bizarre story of how one particular brownstone with an “extraordinarily clouded” title turned into a million-dollar ATM.

Enjoy the bunk beds and the single bespoke clothes hanger.

“Despite resistance from activist groups, state and federal prisons continue to be built in dangerous environments that imperil the health of inmates.”

Instant ramen is one of the most popular items in prison commissaries, where food runs from awful to inedible, but the ramen is dangerously high in sodium. To save inmates from dietary issues and help the government save money on health care, one man has designed a low-sodium alternative. Time in prison showed him the way.

In a bid to get to know the members of her community, Laura Yan spends 24 hours in the Nostrand Avenue branch of Dunkin’ Donuts in New York City.