“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.’” […]
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A Work of Love
“Before gay marriage was legal, illustrator John Megahan was called to work on a revolutionary secret project: bringing to life, in painstaking scientific detail, the queer lives of the animal world.”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Showcasing stories from Jelani Cobb, Taylor Lorenz, Jack Shafer, and Max Tani; Nylah Iqbal Muhammad; Irina Dumitrescu; Leo Robson; and Caitlin Moran.
Seeing is Believing: A Reading List on Making Meaning from Data
Eight stories on the power and beauty of visual communication.
The Dubious Rise of Imposter Syndrome
“The impostor begins to do everything possible to prevent being discovered in her self-perceived deficiencies.”
What Happened to Heather Mayer?
“Police ruled Heather Mayer’s death a suicide. Her mother set out to prove them wrong and uncovered an escalating tale of violence.”
A New Series, An Unknown History, and the Week’s top 5
“Minstrelsy shows you one hand, convinces you of one thing—the thing you can see most vividly—while something else works behind the scenes. That something is something only those who are tapped into a specific kind of pain, a specific kind of quest for freedom that has failed before but is not worth abandoning, might understand.” […]
I Asked ChatGPT To Control My Life, and It Immediately Fell Apart
“After 35 years of living in relative control of my decisions, I had decided to see what would happen if I asked AI to control my life instead.”
Why Creative Work Still Matters and the Week’s Top 5
“The implication is that to exist within a community or to practice a craft out of passion and joy is not success. To many, maybe, that is true. But how limited is our potential, our community, our creativity when success is defined like that?” Does anyone remember that this week started out with an extra […]
Spiders as Unlikely Muses (and Our Top 5)
“When the spiders arrive in my dream, are they jolting me to risk vulnerability personally or creatively? I could stay inside collecting dust, or I could weave my web where others can see. If rejected, could I have the temerity to take the silk back, gobbling up my own words and trying again in some […]


