Temple of Womb
India’s mid-1970s state of emergency and its ghoulish “family planning camps” inadvertently spawned a particular kind of horror film, and the underground infrastructure to match
Selling Roots
Can DNA tests really tell us anything about our ethnic identity?
LinkedOut
Social media investigations of potential hires automatically put employers on the wrong side of the law.
Prescription Strike
The CIA’s use of vaccine programs as cover for covert operations in Pakistan has endangered aid workers and undermined the fight against polio
Labor Pains
When Western women rent other women’s wombs to carry their children, it undermines the unifying potential of the reproductive commons
Fjordian Slip
The second volume of Karl Ove Knausgård’s epic exploration of the everyday, in all its glorious meaninglessness
Further Materials Toward a Theory of the Hot Babe
The Hot Babe is no one in particular, and neither are you
First-Person Deficient
A review of Franco Moretti's The Bourgeois
An Infantile Disorder
If jobs mean maturity, not everyone gets to grow up
Further Materials Toward a Theory of the Man-Child
Left theory’s response to the feminization of labor has been to cry for mommy
How to Destroy a Community
The identity one adopts in massively multiplayer games is a ripe target for psychological warfare
Footnote Records
Rap Genius is the newest example in a long tradition of black music explained for whites, now with a neoliberal twist
Beyond Belief
A class of kids goes to see Waiting for Superman ready to hate it. They cry anyway. Why isn't being convinced enough?
Minor Feelings
While coverage of the riot grrrl movement inadvertently domesticated blunt female rage, Juliana Hatfield honed the critical edge of ambivalence
Beautiful Weapons
An interview with Twine-game designer Porpentine about interactive fiction, “trash spinning,” and how to destroy the “completely unredeemable” games culture
Mind Games Forever
Eric Berne’s Games People Play offers a blueprint for making passive-aggressive manipulation into compulsive fun