I n ​ early February this year, what appeared to be a website glitch sent thousands of drugs-buyers into a panic. Liam (not his real name), a student at Manchester University, needed to buy some MDMA

I just spent the past week it the Bay Area, and it’s hard not to come away with an acute sense that there’s something wrong with the way that housing is working in the new economy: not just in San Fra

There’s a place in Iceland where you can see the northern lights any time of year, regardless of the weather. You don’t have to ride a snowmobile into the mountains or rent a glass-roofed igloo. You d

In 1940, four teenage boys stumbled, almost literally, from German-occupied France into the Paleolithic Age. As the story goes, and there are many versions of it, they had been taking a walk in the wo

(Photo: Gregg Segal) Last March, during the enormous South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, the late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! sent a camera crew out into the streets to catch hi

What do executives do, anyway? An executive with 8,000 indirect reports and 2000 hours of workin a year can afford to spend, at most, 15 minutes per year perperson in their reporting hierarchy... even

Hear an audio version of this story below: Fittingly enough, it was hot as blazes in Kentucky when Mitch McConnell slunk back home for Congress’ annual summer recess. One week earlier, Robert Mueller

Illustration by Laurène Boglio Timothy Noah is the employment & immigration editor at POLITICO . He has previously written for the New Republic and Slate, and is author of The Great Divergence: Americ

Translated from Hebrew by Josh Friedlander Like any great invention, I stumbled upon the idea of the hotel-room vacation by accident, nine years ago, after Toony and I arrived in Chania, Crete, for ou

Occasionally—once or twice in a lifetime if you are lucky—you encounter an idea so powerful in its implications that it unsettles the ground you walk on. The first time I heard anyone speak of the “wo

Given that modern life is so regularly baffling, it can sometimes feel like the only explanation for it all is that we’re collectively experiencing a Sims playthrough as directed by some sadistic cosm

Brevity 22 Brevity Home | Next Essay | Guidelines | Past Issues The Things I’ve Lost By Brian Arundel Fleece hat and gloves: in the backseat of a Boston cab in 2002, before driving back to Maine. Roun

POLITICO illustration/Getty Images photo The paper’s onetime data guru can’t stop kicking his ex-employer for its 2020 polling analysis and supposed capitulation to Trump. Nate Silver made his name as

When Moiz Ali launched his startup Native , the maker of a natural deodorant brand, he couldn’t help but be self-conscious when mingling with other Bay Area entrepreneurs. “In Silicon Valley, it’s oft

On a chilly spring morning in 2017, Boris Heifets took the podium to talk about MDMA in an Oakland, California, hotel ballroom packed with scientists, therapists, patients, and activists. If he notice

by Jonathan Solórzano-Hamilton “You will never be able to understand any of what I’ve created. I am Albert F***ing Einstein and you are all monkeys scrabbling in the dirt.” And so our resident genius,

Feature The Economics of Migration by Jonathan Portes | June 10, 2019 | Spring 2019 The essence of the economic case for migration is very simple: it is the same as the case for markets in general. If

H ow does the Slack message below make you feel? It’s from the CEO of Revolut, a fast-growing U.K. startup, about key performance indicators (KPIs), the team being behind on them, and the consequences

Rick and Morty and the Meaning of Life October 7th 2017 74,334 reads @daniel-jeffries Daniel Jeffries I am an author, futurist, systems architect, public speaker and pro blogger. “Am I dead? Am I stil

Perhaps you’re familiar with this experience: After a long week of work, the weekend finally arrives. It’s time to wind down, relax, and do nothing. However, before 9 a.m. Saturday morning you’ve orga

Nicky Loh / Reuters I n his 1930 essay “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted a 15-hour workweek in the 21st century, creating the equivalent of a five-day weekend. “For the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his…

The Last Questionby Isaac Asimov © 1956 The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as

How Cincinnati tried, and failed, to build one of America’s first subways I t’s early June in Cincinnati and the city is steamy after a recent rain. Elderly women fan themselves at bus stops. Tattooed

At one venture-backed startup where I used to work, you could score $20,000 in cash by referring in a software developer or product designer candidate who made it over their insanely high bar and got

[Content note: this is pretty much a rehash of things I’ve said before , and that other people have addressed much more eloquently . My only excuse for wasting your time with it again is that SOMEHOW

Charles Styles | Five Books | 2nd August 2018 Conversation with Graham Oppy, atheist and philosopher of religion, about books by Bertrand Russell, David Hume and others. “It’s hard to suppose that, when people are persuaded by arguments, that it’s the virtues of the arguments that are doing all the…

Restaurant Review Señor Frog’s 9 Photos View Slide Show › Daniel Krieger for The New York Times Señor Frog’s Fair Closed I was having my second Frogasm of the night when dinner got weird. Not that thi

“There is no love of life without despair of life.” “Those who prefer their principles over their happiness,” Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) wrote in his notebook toward the end of hi

Image via Nuno Cru z Tiago Forte Nov 16, 2015 · 15 min read By Tiago Forte of Forte Labs At the end of 2014 I received an email informing me that I had read over a million words in the ‘read it later’

In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century's end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour

In real life, Jonathan Sun is a Ph.D. candidate at MIT in the Department of Urban Studies + Planning. On Twitter, he's an alien who struggles with spelling and is baffled by human culture. Courtesy of

Jean-Louis Gassée Follow Feb 1, 2015 · 6 min read by Jean-Louis Gassée While Microsoft Office for mobile is a satisfying success, the company can’t seem to create — or even buy — a mobile operating sy

At counter-service restaurants, where a tip jar often sits by the register, DipJar offers a way to tip when customers don’t have cash. Credit... Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times The flat white coff

by Corina Zappia I moved to Seattle five years ago, after being laid off from my job in New York at one of those startups where employees rally around the VC-fueled dream until they’re dumped via emai

Playing cards are taken for granted. They have been ubiquitous objects in households for centuries, but they are hardly ever given the credit they deserve for what they can tell us about culture, hist

As the millions of men who saw combat during World War II reach their golden years, those who missed the horrors and heroics of battle are resigned to wonder what would have been. Story by Rebecca Whi

Is Batman gay? According to my seventh grade schoolmates, Batman is “Sooooo Gay,” and so was I. It’s certainly a popular opinion among those with a basic understanding of psychology, one shared by not

Voyages 1 / 5 Lynn Douglas, left, lives in a German Baptist community in Ohio. Steve King (in green shirt) is a train buff who has written books about train history. Matthew Carr (in front of King) is

The rumors started seeping out of Ukraine about three years ago: A young Russian film director has holed up on the outskirts of Kharkov, a town of 1.4 million in the country's east, making... somethin

Eric Jackson was sitting in his hotel room on Sea Island, Ga., watching his kids splash around in the pool, when he clicked “publish” on his latest blog post for Forbes.com. Jackson, an influential he