In this edition: Twin Cities resistance, psychedelic self-reinvention, guardians of the ranch, a file of fragments, and Pantone’s political white.
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The Cloud Under the Sea
“The Ocean Link was one of a small number of ships that maintain the subsea cables that carry 99 percent of the world’s data.”
What ‘Game of Thrones’ Did to the Media
“For a crucial decade in print media’s transition to the internet, HBO’s fantasy series was a boon in traffic… for everyone. But what happened when every publication started chasing the same thing?”
The Text File That Runs the Internet
“For decades, robots.txt governed the behavior of web crawlers. But as unscrupulous AI companies seek out more and more data, the basic social contract of the web is falling apart.”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Featuring notable stories from David Pierce, C.J. Chivers, Paige Kaptuch, Michael Adno, and Jessica Winter.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending stories from Mariana Serapicos, Camille Bromley, Devon Fredericksen, Georgia Brown, and Sarah Golibart Gorman.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending stories from Emily Bazelon, Eva Holland, Kevin Pang, Jessica Traynor, and David Pierce.
The Perfect Webpage
“How the internet reshaped itself around Google’s search algorithms — and into a world where websites look the same.”
The Lurker
“The obsessive tormentor who made professors’ lives miserable
It didn’t matter if she knew you — if you were a professor and Asian American, you were a potential target.”
A Year in Reading: The Dark Side of Progress
We’re moving farther, faster, than ever before. But we’re also destabilizing crucial areas of human experience.

