From exploding Ford Pintos to racist algorithms, all harmful technologies are a product of unethical design. Yet, like car companies in the ’70s, today’s tech companies would rather blame the user.
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Posted inNonfiction
Demonology: A Woman’s Right to Fury
In an excerpt from her new book, Darcey Steinke investigates — and debunks — the demonization of anger within the female body.
Posted inStory
Kristen Arnett on Taxidermy, Memory, and “Mostly Dead Things”
“What’s considered high art? What’s lowbrow? What are those things? That’s something that, as a person who like, lives at 7-Eleven, I’m extremely interested in.”
Posted inBooks, Culture, Nonfiction, Story
Walking Across California
To understand what the Golden State is compared to what it was, one solitary hiker follows the trail of the first overland Spanish expedition into California 250 years later.
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
‘I Believe That Silence Is Ineffective’: Devi S. Laskar on Invisibility and American Terror
Laskar’s debut novel imagines an alternate ending to an incident from her real life: When law enforcement agents raided her home, and confiscated her unfinished novel, what if she had refused to comply?
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Profiles & Interviews, Science Fiction, Story, Writing
‘Every Woman Writer Feels Like She’s Starting Over Without Any Guides’
Ann Leckie talks about “The Raven Tower,” the erasure of women writers from the canon, the privilege inherent to ‘the anxiety of influence,’ and the power of tradition.
Posted inStory
High Expectations: LSD, T.C. Boyle’s Women, and Me
“Outside Looking In” dramatizes the discovery of LSD and the cult of personality surrounding Timothy Leary. Our reviewer drops acid and thinks about how, for women, it can be safer to be a downer.
Posted inNonfiction
‘TV Has This Really Fraught Relationship with the Audience.’
Emily Nussbaum talks about why TV’s relationship with its audience has become more intimate, whether we can blame Trump on True Detective, and how a TV critic’s biggest challenge is just figuring out what to watch.
Posted inNonfiction
‘The Survivor’s Edit’: Bassey Ikpi on Memory, Truth, and Living with Bipolar II
Bassey Ikpi discusses writing about mental illness. “I could count on the morning. It became the thing that existed without my input… without determining whether or not I was worthy of it.”
Posted inNonfiction
The Growing Power of Prosecutors
An unintended consequence of mandatory minimums has been to concentrate too much power in the hands of prosecutors. Journalist Emily Bazelon talks about how some cities are pushing back.
