“Spurred by my father’s death, I returned to the Czech Republic hoping to reconnect to him. In doing so, I also reconnected with my native tongue, and with parts of my identity that I had long ignored.”
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Posted inEditor's Pick
The Italian Fruit Detective Who Investigates Centuries-Old Paintings for Disappeared Produce
“Renaissance paintings, medieval archives, cloistered orchards—one Italian scientist is uncovering secrets that could combat a growing agricultural crisis.”
Posted inNewsletter
A near-death experience and our Top 5 stories of the week
“My boating experience was minimal and that section of river was not for beginners, but I had scraped by enough times that my risk assessment was dangerously off-kilter. It was a really, really bad combination.” Congratulations—we made it to the weekend! We’ve got some unforgettable stories for you this week. First, Maggie Slepian recounts her […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
When Food Is the Only Narrative We Consume
“Chinese culture can’t be made bite-sized for mass consumption.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
How Citizen Surveillance Ate San Francisco
“When a homeless man attacked a former city official, footage of the onslaught became a rallying cry. Then came another video, and another—and the story turned inside out.”
Posted inNonfiction
Death of Writing, Writing of Death: A Reading List on Artificial Intelligence and Language
Five longreads on artificial intelligence and a future filled with machine-written prose.
Posted inEditor's Pick
ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web
“OpenAI’s chatbot offers paraphrases, whereas Google offers quotes. Which do we prefer?”
Posted inEditor's Pick
On Writing: An Abecedarian
“To be inside the cathedral of a language is to be inside a particular view of the world.”
Posted inNewsletter
This Week: Rituals, Emoji, and a Cold Case
“Ritual is an urge and an act; it’s an aesthetic gesture. As an adult I established the habit of turning my attention to those subtle seasonal details and recording them. I was loving and honoring the land, but this practice still left something undone. A certain clarity, maybe formality. Something like a frame around a […]
