Invisible Images (Your Pictures Are Looking at You)
Automated images don't just simply represent things—they actively intervene in everyday life.
It Ought to Be Called Vice Cream
The scoop on how a familiar frozen treat once got respectable folk all hot under the collar
When Game of Thrones Stopped Being Necessary
In the context of romantic high fantasy, the show’s sado-masochistic narrative engine had a moderately subversive purpose.
Permanent Records
Kids are uploading their adolescence in real-time, and the Internet refuses to forget. Will it change the way we live as adults?
Manifesto of the Committee to Abolish Outer Space
There’s nothing there already
Out of Sight
The Internet delivered on its promise of community for blind people, but accessibility is easy to overlook.
Foucault's Addendum
Finally published, Foucault's lecture notes from 1970–71, his first year teaching at the Collège de France, demolish the caricatures of his thought
Steal This Article
If stealing is wrong, then American society doesn't want to be right
Drama for Cannibals
Prisons and Shakespeare go hand in hand, but who's learning what when Hamlet is an inmate?
Life: Why Bother?
Philosopher David Benatar makes the logical case for nonexistence. He may have a point.
K in Love
Every love story is a cop story.
Live Through This
Rape is often regarded as the worst thing that can happen to a woman, a sort of spiritual murder
Break It Down
In a dry landscape, men work. With axes, hammers, and other tools, they break stones.
The IRL Fetish
The idea that we can no longer access unmediated “real life” is a pretense that allows us to congratulate ourselves for our disconnection.
The Lonely Ones
By all accounts, Susan Sontag found being alone intolerable. Solitude is a problem for writers generally, and men are often worse at being alone than women.
Why We Love Sociopaths
We live in the age of the sociopath. They are dominant figures on television and appear within essentially every television genre. An excerpt