Olive-oil fraud was already common in antiquity. Galen tells of unscrupulous oil merchants who mixed high-quality olive oil with cheaper substances like lard, and Apicius provides a recipe for turning cheap Spanish oil into prized oil from Istria using minced herbs and roots. The Greeks and the Romans used olive oil as food, soap, lotion, […]
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Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Jenny Diski: 1947-2016
Jenny Diski died this morning at the age of 68. Here are nine stories celebrating Diski and her work.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Mass Extinction: The Early Years
A quick rundown of the ecocidal empires that came before us.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story, Unapologetic Women
Feeling Unsafe at Every Size
Our new president’s predatory attitudes towards women transport Eva Tenuto straight back to a high school teacher’s abuse of power and the relentless criticism of her junior high peers that made her an ideal target.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Celebrating and Surviving in North Korea
Interviews with defectors also suggest that North Koreans are not serious consumers of marijuana. The drug of choice is, in fact, something much more pernicious: crystal meth. Meth, known colloquially as eoreum or bingdu (both mean “ice”, a name by which the drug is also known in the US) is a drug unfortunately suited to […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Brussels Playbook: Meet the Mike Allen of Europe
A 35-year-old Australian, [Ryan] Heath rises every morning at 4.30 to finish off the day’s Brussels Playbook, which in only a month and a half already goes out to almost 40,000 people. (The site itself received, in May, about 1.7m page views, from just over 700,000 unique visitors. The original Politico receives 7m monthly uniques, though […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
The Murky Importance of Giving: A Reading List
In reading for this list, I discovered people who give freely, their generosity intertwined with thoughtfulness at best; carelessness, illness or guilt at worst.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
The Love of a Thousand Muskoxen: Grieving a Love Lost to Time and Sickness
Years after spending a romantic month alone with a young photographer, Stephanie Land learns of his crippling chronic disease–and gets a glimpse of how much she meant to him.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Our favorite stories of the week.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Eight Stories About #HB2 and Its Ramifications on the Transgender Community
I hope the following eight stories will be of use to you, to educate my cisgender readers and provide support and solidarity to my transgender siblings.
