“Julia Ioffe joins Elizabeth Warren on the campaign trail, where the surging senator has spent the season overcoming her campaign’s wobbly start and getting down to business—trouncing debate foes, climbing in the polls, and somehow making a slew of policy plans feel exciting. Suddenly, she’s winning over Democrats by making the grandest ideas sound perfectly […]
Search results
How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance
In 2002, still reeling from the dot-com crash, Google realized they’d been harvesting a very valuable raw material — your behavior.
The Man Who’s Going to Save Your Neighborhood Grocery Store
American food supplies are increasingly channeled through a handful of big companies: Amazon, Walmart, FreshDirect, Blue Apron. What do we lose when local supermarkets go under? A lot — and Kevin Kelley wants to stop that.
A Reading List on Travel Influencers and the Politics of a Place
A reading list on travel influencers and the implications of Instagram on tourism and politics.
The Tow Truck Turf War and the Driver Left for Dead
In Pittsburgh’s cutthroat towing business, “crash chasers” sabotage competitors, employ “enforcers” to intimidate each other, and fight on the scene with disturbing regularity. For new driver and new father, Jason Stotlemyer, one job nearly turned deadly.
We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Very Beginning
Early electric cars performed better in cities than internal combustion vehicles, but didn’t give riders the same illusion of freedom and masculine derring-do.
Defrauding the Competition
As competitors prank each other into account suspensions, the business of reinstating Amazon Marketplace businesses is booming.
How Bagel Makers’ Union Local 338 Beat NYC’s “Kosher Nostra”
‘“A bagel,” the newspaper of record explained in 1960, “is an unsweetened doughnut with rigor mortis.”’
Japan: A Longform Reading List of Longform Writing
Armchair travel is more important than ever, now that pandemic has forced us to stay indoors. Reading can take you across the ocean.
The Day the Music Burned
“It was the biggest disaster in the history of the music business — and almost nobody knew.”
