“So maybe the thing to teach isn’t a skill but a spirit.”
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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Deaths in donation bins, the Hardy boys, MAGA slop, billionaire playgrounds, and nostalgia for the complicated.
The Painful Pleasures of a Tattoo Convention
“The art endures partly because it’s rooted in the moment—the surrender of one person to another.”
The Car-Crash Conspiracy
“High-speed accidents, crooked lawyers, and poor people desperate for cash—it was the kind of scheme that could have been cooked up only in the Big Easy.”
Can Crosswords Be More Inclusive?
“The puzzles spread from the United States across the globe, but the American crossword today doesn’t always reflect the linguistic changes that immigration brings.”
What Happens After A.I. Destroys College Writing?
“The demise of the English paper will end a long intellectual tradition, but it’s also an opportunity to reëxamine the purpose of higher education.”
Lessons for the End of the World
“On Octavia Butler, the L.A. fires, and the uses and misuses of the things that cannot be recovered.”
A Portrait of the Artist as an Amazon Reviewer
“Between 2003 and 2019, Kevin Killian published almost twenty-four hundred reviews on the site. Can they be considered literature?”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
In this edition: January begins, finding beauty, powerful blues, toxic water, and begonia batons.
How to Build a Better Motivational Speaker
“The upstart motivator Jesse Itzler wants to reform his profession—while also rising to the top.”

