“What is new is how seamlessly a DM slide can become a business arrangement, how influencers of the Instagram-lifestyle variety and regular people alike have used this as a meaningful stream of revenue. Thanks to a pandemic that left many people at home substituting screens for IRL intimacy and the rise of platforms that merge […]
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A Trip to Twin Peaks and the Week’s Top 5
“I’d taken for granted how strange his work is—in the defiantly non-naturalistic performances he elicits from his actors and the surreal sheen of his stories and characters—until I started trying to explain the plot of Twin Peaks to Riley on our drive to Washington.” This week, we pay homage to director David Lynch, with Katherine […]
Fit to Be Tied (and the Week’s Top 5)
“When most of us build or buy a home, we carefully appraise the neighborhood. In Malibu the neighborhood is fire. Fire that revisits the coastal mountains several times a decade. In the past sixty years, ten of these frequent events have turned into all-consuming firestorms.” Welcome to 2025, friends. Peter here. As it does all too often, […]
Has Witch City Lost Its Way?
“Is a witch-based tourism economy the best way to honor the legacy of executed individuals who weren’t even witches in the first place? Or is continuing to transform the town into the epicenter of modern-day witchcraft actually the perfect way to right the wrongs of the past?”
Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we recommend stories from Sophia Panych, Brian Payton, Jeannette Cooperman, Joshua Hunt, and Sophie Elmhirst.
The Eloquent Vindicator in the Electric Room
No one remembers the assassination of Congressman James M. Hinds. What do we risk by making it just another part of American history?
Out on the Trail, Deep Online, and the Week’s Top 5
“Eating, even eating junk food—sometimes especially eating junk food—is not just a good idea but potentially the difference between life and death, or at the very least the difference between an enjoyable experience and a grueling one. No one has ever opened up a packet of Oreos on a mountaintop and said, ‘I’m being so bad.’” […]
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Highlighting stories from a collection of pro-Palestine student protesters, Chloé Cooper Jones, Nick Bowlin, Bathsheba Demuth, and Joshua Rigsby.
A Trip to the Library and Our Weekly Top 5
“I may never have wanted to be a librarian, but I love this job. This specific job. Not because of any kind of noble commitment to knowledge or love of books. I love it because every day requires me to meet humanity face to face.” What does it mean to be a librarian today? At […]
TikTok Covens and QAnon Shamans: A Reading List on Neo-Paganism
People in the West are responding to modern life by reviving ancient pagan spiritual practices.


