“In boyhood, guilt was a constant companion. I stopped mentioning the quarters that Mr. Wood put into my pocket.”
The New Yorker
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
After the flood, twisted roles, the joy of emptiness, data disasters, and family road trips.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Prehistory of A.I. Slop
“Before ChatGPT, there was the Plot Robot, Auto-Beatnik, and a century’s worth of schemes for automating authorship.”
Posted inReading List
‘This Was Our Life’: A Reading List on Multigenerational Caregiving
Five stories on the overwhelming, profound art of caring for other people.
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
We’re recommending stories by Danny Chau, Annalisa Quinn, Bijan Stephen, Jordan Michelman, and Anna Wiener.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Life and Times of an American Tween
“In some ways, the world is cooked. But being a twelve-year-old still kind of eats.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
What Will It Take to Get AI Out of Schools?
“The tech world assumes that AI-aided education is necessary and inevitable. A growing number of parents, educators, and cognitive scientists say the opposite.”
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This edition highlights reading about messages in bottles, public benches, infinity, a series of books about everything, and pay-to-play orchestras.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Signed, Sealed, Delivered
“What happens when someone throws a message into the sea?”
Posted inEditor's Pick
When Your Digital Life Vanishes
“A broken phone or corrupted drive can mean the loss of work, evidence, art, or the last traces of the dead. But sometimes data-recovery experts can summon lost files from the void.”