“What in fiction is enjoyable and beautiful is often terrifying in real life.”
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For the Love of Wordle: A Reading List on Puzzles and Games
Seven longreads on the communal pastime of puzzles, games, and crosswords.
Wild Talk: A Reading List On Artificial Intelligence and Interspecies Communication
AI is opening up the possibility of communicating with other animals. But will we listen? And can we ever truly understand?
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 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
This week we’re highlighting stories from Yuval Abraham, Paul Tough, Leslie Jamison, Melina Moe, and Meg Bernhard.
That Dropped Call With Customer Service? It Was on Purpose.
“Endless wait times and excessive procedural fuss—it’s all part of a tactic called ‘sludge.'”
Inside California’s Brutal Underground Market for Puppies: Neglected Dogs, Deceived Owners, Big Profits
“Buyers are often fooled into thinking they’re supporting reputable, local breeders, but are instead fueling a trade in which some puppies are born and raised in horrific conditions.”
40 Years Later: Sade, “Promise”
“Promise” isn’t necessarily about love, or even about surrender, but about giving your heart over, repeatedly, and enduring the failures that come with the exchange.
How the Poet Christian Wiman Keeps His Faith
“Pushpin-specific lists fill his essays; single, stirring images lift from lines of his poems like the pages of a pop-up book.”

