“How a card-playing Siberian AI outsmarted the world’s brightest researchers and raked in millions.”
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My Mother, the Poker Shark
“My mother realized that the best way she could pay the bills on time was to start playing poker again.”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Showcasing stories from Ryu Spaeth, Kit Chellel, Dave Eggers, Holly Haworth, and John Semley.
On Resilience and Our Top 5
“It is hard, I think, to learn as an adult. This is not some profound statement. It just is. But it is not hard because of the fact of it; it is hard because learning anything means learning again how to learn. It’s not that riding a bike is hard; it’s that learning is hard. […]
The Outlaw Tradition of Noodling for Catfish
“The secretive, centuries-old outlaw tradition of noodling reaches its peak every summer at a Lake Tawakoni tournament with the kings of catfish.”
‘An Ass-Backward Sherlock Holmes’
“Over seven seasons on NBC, Columbo put a charming, shambolic gloss on the crime show. Now it has a new generation of imitators.”
20 Years Later: Little Brother, “The Minstrel Show”
Like minstrelsy, Little Brother’s album shows you one hand, convinces you of one thing, while something else works behind the scenes.
A Year in Reading: Inward Journeys
Navigating a world in flux demands some understanding of who you really are, and some of my favorite pieces from this year speak to that need.


