“Unlike the sobering effect it has on Neo as he discovers the sockets in his flesh, this pill tends to have the same effect as going too deep into any research hole on the internet without proper barriers. It is much more likely to create further distress, alienation, or just outright absurdity than it does […]
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The Toll of War and the Week’s Top 5
“Tesfaye wan’t sure where the gunfire was coming from, and with service outages across Mekelle, he couldn’t look online for answers. He was certain something was very wrong. But what could he do? He got dressed and did what he did most mornings. He went to work.” Every month, we share an excerpt from our […]
Remember the Titans: An ‘Attack on Titan’ Reading List
The influential anime didn’t just upend kaiju tropes—it delivered an unsettling look at imperialism and hubris.
‘No Single Machine Should Be Able to Control So Many People’
Can we survive the social web?
Stories on Shady Science (and Our Top 5)
“On one hand, it’s critical to root out research fraud and serious errors. On the other hand, highlighting the most dramatic outliers risks creating the impression that science as a whole can’t be trusted.” When I told my 7-year-old daughter that the recent viral clip of bunnies jumping on a trampoline was fake, she looked […]
People vs. 👻, Townspeople vs. Nazis, and Our Top 5
“The new bridge is square where the old bridge is round, bustling instead of deserted, awash in the sounds of schools and neighborhoods nearby. At some point, Lydia’s haunting shifted along with the traffic patterns. She’s been seen at both bridges, but the new one is the only place she might still hail passing motorists.” […]
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Featuring stories from Sophie Vershbow, Sharon Lerner, Geoffrey Gray, Christopher Solomon, and Abe Beame.
A Nameless Hiker and the Case the Internet Can’t Crack
A friendly and charming hiker was known on the trail as “Mostly Harmless.” After his body was discovered in a tent in Florida, no one could figure out who he was.
I Remember the Bookstore
Jason Guriel | On Browsing | November 2022 | 4,361 words (15 minutes) Let’s browse a bookstore—a Platonic one, a composite. Let’s wander an aisle, running our fingertips across a wall of spines. One spine, thick and black, juts out: the recent NYRB Classics reissue of William Gaddis’s novel The Recognitions. It’s a block of a book, […]
Taken and Told
A filmmaker was producing a documentary series on the Iran hostage crisis. Then her father went missing overseas.


