There are lots of well-told stories about con men, Craigslist hoaxes and financial scams—here are a few of my favorites.
The New Yorker
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
The Art of the Con: Four Stories About Scams
There are lots of well-told stories about con men, Craigslist hoaxes and financial scams—here are a few of my favorites.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Happens When Your Writing Professor Is William Zinsser
The weekly writing assignments—thousand-word limit, a safeguard for Bill’s sanity—required us to try our hands at a wide range of forms: humor, interviewing, travel, science, sports, criticism, editorials. This regimen inevitably yielded the occasional face-first failure, soon to be transmuted by pedagogical alchemy into an edifying failure. At the end of class, Bill would return […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Privacy vs. Equality in the Supreme Court
There is a lesson in the past fifty years of litigation. When the fight for equal rights for women narrowed to a fight for reproductive rights, defended on the ground of privacy, it weakened. But when the fight for gay rights became a fight for same-sex marriage, asserted on the ground of equality, it got […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Will Technology Eventually Replace Marc Andreessen?
One challenge for Andreessen is whether venture itself has a skills problem. If software is truly eating the world, wouldn’t venture capital be on the menu? The AngelList platform now allows investors to fund startups online. Its co-founder Naval Ravikant said that “future companies will require more two-hundred-thousand-dollar checks and way fewer guys on Sand […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Almost-Real Science in ‘Orphan Black’
If you’re not watching “Orphan Black,” a BBC sci-fi drama about six? eight? twelve? clones, each played by the unbelievably talented Tatiana Maslany: start. Today, preferably.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes, Video
The Moment When President Obama Realized He Needed Luther
-From Zadie Smith’s New Yorker profile of Comedy Central stars Key and Peele. Keegan-Michael Key reprised his role as Luther for President Obama’s weekend speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Read the story
Posted inReading List, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Our favorite stories of the week, featuring, The New Yorker, Toronto Life, The AV CLub, The Atlantic, and Radio Silence.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Astronauts and the ‘Nutella Incident’
Their persistently cheery e-mail updates [from the crew in the Hawaii-based simulation] raise a question: Does a happy crew tell NASA anything useful? Binsted argues that upbeat blog posts don’t always tell the whole story. Small gripes often emerge in the post-study interviews, when subjects know that their replies will be kept anonymous. It was […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
All Dressed Up: Five Stories About Style
In my not-so-past life as a fashion magazine addict (let’s be real—I bought seven of last month’s fashion mags for a quarter each at a recent library sale), this time of year was crucial to me. What kinds of skirts would appear on the pages of Seventeen? Would I be able to afford them? Would one-piece swimsuits finally be cool? Was this the year I started blow-drying my hair?! Each issue was a mini-New Year’s. Anything was possible.