1. When a DNA Test Shatters Your Identity
The generation whose 50-year-old secrets are now being unearthed could not have imagined a world of $99 mail-in DNA kits. But times are changing, and the culture with it.
2. Shadow Politics: Meet the Digital Sleuth Exposing Fake News
Buried in media scholar Jonathan Albright's research was proof of a massive political misinformation campaign. Now he's taking on the the world's biggest platforms before it's too late.
3. How the Pee Tape Explains the World Cup
Or vice versa. Before the Steele dossier on Trump’s interactions with Russia, there was another Steele file on Russia’s interactions with Trump: This time, an illegal gambling ring with ties to Russian organized crime outfits operated out of Trump Tower, which led the FBI to evidence of massive corruption at FIFA.
“The Outer Banks are where the English first came ashore and where the Wright Brothers took flight. I had gone to the region compelled by this idea of first-ness. Once there, however, I found myself preoccupied with ideas of end times. ”
How many weapons does the U.S. export? To whom? And what happens next? This 2-minute data visualization shows the breathtaking escalation of our foreign policy via force, from 1950 to today.
6. Letter of Recommendation: Used Clothing
“Clothes, for all their seeming functionality, fragility and disposability, can be more like medieval tapestries: mysterious, legible and enduring. Nowadays I think of them as ‘other people’s clothing.’ … Thinking like this is an exercise in empathy.”
7. For the Love of Goddesses, Stop Deifying Women
“If this hazy empowerment narrative sounds suspiciously like a regurgitation of timeworn stereotypes about women being docile, beautiful caretakers who are innately nurturing and maternal, and emotional rather than rational (felt sense!), then that’s because it is.”
Artificial intelligence promises ever more control over the highs and lows of our emotions. Uneasy? Perhaps you should be.
9. How We Create Personal Myths (and Why They Matter)
“As an adult, I know that my parents left because the plan was always to eventually bring me; that it was for the promise of a better life for me that they left in the first place. If you trace back all the decisions my parents made for me, the decision to immigrate is likely the best one of all.
But a two-year-old doesn’t know that.”
10. Millennials Reinvent Localism in Their Search for Community
“There’s an inherent personalism involved in choosing the local – it demands real conversations in real-time, real meals around real tables, and real problem-solving and sacrifice, less hash-tagging and virtue signaling.”
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