‘What Would Social Media Be Like As the World Is Ending?’ By Jacob Silverman Feature In Mark Doten’s “Trump Sky Alpha,” a journalist who has survived Trump’s nuclear apocalypse gets an assignment from what’s left of the New York Times Magazine: find out what people were tweeting as the bombs fell.
“Welcome to the House of Horrors”: When IP Address Mapping Goes Wrong By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight John and his mother Ann, who live in a house in Pretoria, South Africa, were two victims of faulty IP address mapping — and the U.S. government played a big role in the mess.
The Promise of Passive Income from Amazon: Too Good To Be True? By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Two self-proclaimed “Amazon coaches” say they can train you in their business models so you can make thousands of dollars reselling cheap Chinese products on the world’s largest ecommerce store.
They Wanted Her Body By Rafia Zakaria Feature Thinking of Qandeel Baloch’s murder as an honor killing doesn’t capture the whole truth. She was silenced for revealing men’s hypocrisy.
Re: Hate Mail By Amy Kurzweil Feature After receiving a string of menacing emails, Amy Kurzweil wonders: Can she safely extend a writer’s empathy to men who harass her on the internet?
The Gilded Age of (Unpaid) Internet Writing By Rebecca Schuman Feature How ’90s webzines heralded the best — and worst — of today’s online media landscape.
Not Quite Democracy: Lucie Greene on the Civic Aspirations of Tech Giants By Bradley Babendir Feature Lucie Greene’s new book “Silicon States” is about the danger of concentrating so much power in so few hands.
Army of Me By Longreads Feature A woman who doesn’t feel like going to work today stays in bed and looks at the internet instead. She finds a blog by a fed-up call center employee who complains about the customers.
Accountability for the Algorithms By Krista Stevens Highlight Tim Berners-Lee: “For people who want to make sure the Web serves humanity, we have to concern ourselves with what people are building on top of it.”
Meet the New Mormons By Sarah Scoles Feature Is it possible to be queer, lefty, and a Latter-Day Saint? After leaving the church, Sarah Scoles sets out to understand liberal Mormons.
The Last Place Where No One Is Looking: Embracing the End Times of Snapchat By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight As once-popular Snapchat becomes an increasingly irrelevant platform, Helena Fitzgerald finds beauty in its uselessness.
Wild At Heart By Longreads Feature They perform daring escapes from slaughterhouses, zoos, and laboratories. But animals on the run are only as free as we want them to be.
Digital Media and the Case of the Missing Archives By Danielle Tcholakian Commentary The more work that journalists create for the internet, the more work is rendered obsolete.
We’ve Always Hated Girls Online: A Wayback Machine Investigation By Julianne Aguilar Feature Searching for a teen girl who was once internet famous for her coding skills, a former fan uncovers a story of harassment.
The Internet Isn’t Forever By Maria Bustillos Feature When an online news outlet goes out of business, its archives can disappear as well. The new battle over journalism’s digital legacy.
The Fight to Escape “A World of Anonymous Abuse” By Emily Perper Highlight Online harassment is as serious as offline harassment, and it rarely stays “only” online.
What Happened to eBay? By Emily Perper Highlight I haven’t peeked at eBay in years, and apparently I’m not the only one who’s forgotten it exists.
The Creator of Bitcoin Comes Clean, Only to Disappear Again By Longreads Feature The mysterious creator of bitcoin asks a journalist to help reveal his identity.
Tech Companies Are (Maybe) Ready to Punch Nazis Now By Danielle Tcholakian Commentary Some tech companies are taking a stand against neo-Nazi users, but claim it’s a still dangerous decision to make.
How Do Words Get Added to the Dictionary? By Danielle Tcholakian Commentary Four times a year, lexicographers update and add words to the OED. Katherine Connor Martin helps decide what makes the cut.
(Re)Merchandising NASA as a Feminist Act By Pam Mandel Highlight “I took the NASA shirts from the ‘boys’ section from where they were prominently displayed, and put them little kid eye level next to tank tops in the ‘girls’ section 20 feet away.”
Popular Enough to Live: A Reading List About Crowdfunding Health Care By Emily Perper Reading List Sixty-three percent of Americans don’t have money to cover an emergency costing $500 or more. I’m one of them.
Why Should a Website Decide Where You’re From? By Michelle Weber Highlight In Real Life Mag, information accessibility and data-use expert Zara Rahman explores the coercive power of the location drop-down menu.
Filmmaker Kyrre Lien Traveled the World Interviewing Internet Trolls in Person By Krista Stevens Highlight Filmmaker Kyrre Lien was curious about what drives people who make hateful comments online, so he traveled the world to interview internet trolls in person.
The Name’s Grass. Mr. Grass. By Michelle Weber Highlight At watching-grass-grow.com, you can watch Alex Komarnitsky’s lawn. In Southwest magazine, Bradford Pearson profiles Komarnitsky and explores his own fascination with a stranger’s front lawn.
‘Why Pay for Therapy When the Advice of Strangers Has Proven to Be Helpful and Free?’ By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Ben Popper takes a look at Koko, a startup with an app that helps people connect and provide emotional support to peers and, in the process, allows them to recognize and “rethink” their own problems.
I’ll See Your Troll and Raise You One Notable Woman Scientist By Krista Stevens Highlight At Backchannel, Andrew McMillen writes on how one young Wikipedia admin fights back at trolls by raising the profile of notable women in science, one new Wikipedia page at a time.
