I n Alaska, President Obama was in a very good mood. He visited the state in late summer to draw attention to the looming climate catastrophe the world faces, but with the exception of one big policy speech when he sounded as apocalyptic as any hemp-growing activist, he spent most of his three days…

On July 15th in Pittsburgh, David J. Hickton, a gray-haired U.S. attorney in a crisp dark suit, stepped out before an American flag to announce the feds’ latest victory against online crime. “We have dismantled a cyber-hornet’s nest of criminal hackers, which was believed by many to be…

A post-publication note: On December 23, 2015, Stars and Stripes , a newspaper and website focused on US military news, published an article in which several Air Force missileers dispute the unconfirm

Last week, we looked at one zombie Social Security lie that keeps coming back from the dead every time the Very Serious People begin to talk in Very Serious Tones about the problems of the system: the lie that individual life spans are so increasing that it will bankrupt the system. That's hogwash,…

Photo: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images A few weeks ago, the liberal comedian Bill Maher and conservative strategist and pundit Bill Kristol had a brief spat on Maher’s HBO show, putatively over what inst

The main sticking point in negotiations between Republicans and Democrats on deficit reduction measures to accompany a rise in the debt limit is whether higher revenues should make any contribution. A

Editor’s note: On February 1, 2023, the College Board announced its finalized curriculum for an AP African American Studies course. It has removed work—present in the pilot program—by writers such as

There have been rumors for years that the NSA can decrypt a significant fraction of encrypted Internet traffic. In 2012, James Bamford published an article quoting anonymous former NSA officials stating that the agency had achieved a “computing breakthrough” that gave them “the ability to crack…

Here is the story of The Day Jacques Pépin Saved My Life. That’s how I tell it, anyway —at parties, over dinner, on those occasions when a friend finds himself drowning in his own life and I’m cast as an unlikely dispenser of wisdom. That’s when I try to assure him that salvation can come in the…

When Raúl Labrador looks at his fellow House Republicans, he sees a lot of people who are in Washington for the wrong reasons. “They think that being a member of Congress is just so dang cool, and that there’s nothing greater than this,” the Idaho Republican said in June. In Labrador’s view, he and…

The Republican civil war has claimed its biggest casualty yet. The revolution that toppled John Boehner was carried out by a group of intransigent conservatives who had made the speaker of the House’s job hell ever since the Tea Party wave of 2010 elevated him to power. It is only in recent months…

“It’s just not like that. It is really, really difficult. ... I’m just saying, you know, like it’s a f---ing bitch, man. It really is.” The staff left the office for the last time Tuesday — the campaign was officially over, and only lawyers and HR people were left as Wiley and the rest headed for…

Hey, ya made it, great to see ya!” says Donald Trump, having just stepped aboard his throne room of a plane and stopping by my seat to extend his hand. “You get the big tour yet? No? What the hell? C’mon, I’ll show you myself.” I follow him into the stateroom of the 757, past three rows of sleeper…

At first he didn't look suspicious, not to me anyway. A tall guy in his late 20s, sandy brown hair, glasses, wearing khakis and a blue striped button-down shirt. Just another downtown office worker, laid off and seeking a little help with the rent. I was stationed with two other caseworkers in the…

At the northern tip of Michigan’s lower peninsula lies the quaint town of Petoskey, population 6 , 080 . In late March, a thick white shelf of ice still covers Lake Michigan, and a few miles north, ov

Over the past decade, the foreign-policy debate in Washington has turned upside down. As George W. Bush’s administration drew to an end, the brand of ambitious, expensive, Manichaean, militaristic foreign policy commonly dubbed “neoconservative” seemed on the verge of collapse. In December 2006, the…

By Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Nathan Furr The first thing you notice when you step onto Tesla Motors' production floor are the robots. Eight-foot-tall bright-red bots that look like Transformers, huddling over each Model S sedan as it makes its way through the factory in Fremont, Calif., on the…

For decades after its discovery in 1930, Pluto looked like nothing more than a gray smudge in the abyss of space. We knew it was there—even knew its size and gravity—but, without better images, we could not answer seemingly basic questions about it. Was it pocked by craters? What was its atmosphere…

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When Baltimore exploded in protests a few weeks ago following the unexplained paddy-wagon death of a young African-American man named Freddie Gray, America responded the way it usually does in a race

Let us discuss the very nature of the cosmos. What you may find in this discussion is not what you expect. Going into a conversation about the universe as a whole, you would imagine a story full of wondrous events such as stellar collapse, galactic collisions, strange occurrences with particles, and…

Software has been around since the 1940s. Which means that people have been faking their way through meetings about software, and the code that builds it, for generations. Now that software lives in o

Visit us on Threads! Opens External Webpage Visit us on Bluesky! Opens External Webpage Mail to Print page Submit a letter: Email us letters@nybooks.com 1. It was with great anticipation that I arrived for my appointment at the editorial offices of BuzzFeed on West 23rd Street in Manhattan. Among…

Best year of superhero TV ever? Best year of superhero TV ever. While not every show was perfect, there was a plethora of excellent comic TV series this past season, and they’ve provided four clear lessons for the future. So, next season’s show? Listen up. Warning: May include spoilers for the most…

In 2000, as Martin O’Malley took over as mayor of Baltimore and promised to bring crime under control, there was worry on the part of some in the city that the zero-policing, broken-windows strategies he hoped to import from New York might result in a culture of mass arrest and a dimunition of civil…

The final episode of Mad Men is perhaps the greatest finale in the history of television, a last episode that works on a character level - we see all these characters we love coming to a places of hap

Worth the trouble? Photo by Carin Baer/AMC As both a professor at Harvard Business School and a Mad Men obsessive, I’ve been considering the final episodes of the series from what is surely an unusual

Intolerance. And a broken-windows policy of policing is exactly what it means: The property matters. The people can stay broken until hell freezes over. And the ejection of these ill-bought philosophies of class and racial control from our political mainstream — this is now the real prize, not only…

Narratively Discover extraordinary true stories celebrating the diversity of humanity. Over 64,000 subscribers By subscribing, you agree Substack's Terms of Use, and acknowledge its Information Collection Notice and Privacy Policy. “High quality stories from terrific writers on fascinating…

Bob Iger wanted approval. It was February 2011, and the Walt Disney Co. CEO gathered his board of directors inside an intimate theater at the company’s Team Disney headquarters in Burbank, California. There, just the night before, Iger held an early screening for the board of Captain America: The…

Joss Whedon’s Avengers: Age of Ultron not only reunites and introduces a formidable and popular cast of Marvel characters – it also saw the re-assembling of several formidable visual effects studios t

If a friend told you that we were all living in a giant hologram, you'd probably tell him to lay off the kush. But incredibly, physicists across the world are thinking the same thing: That what we per

Second in a series. Part 1 here . Part 3 here . Siri can understand what you say. Google can take dictation. Even your new smart TV is taking verbal orders. So is there any doubt the National Security

First in a series. Part 2 here . Part 3 here . Most people realize that emails and other digital communications they once considered private can now become part of their permanent record. But even as