Selling Roots
Can DNA tests really tell us anything about our ethnic identity?
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
The Birth of Motherhood
It takes a lot of propaganda to make mothering seem natural
Further Materials Toward a Theory of the Man-Child
Left theory’s response to the feminization of labor has been to cry for mommy
Vol. 18 Editors' Note: Family Planning
The family is less a haven in a heartless world than an arrangement that has focused efforts at social improvement on relationships supposedly spun of love and affection.
How to Destroy a Community
The identity one adopts in massively multiplayer games is a ripe target for psychological warfare
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
Soundtracks for Virtual War
The Kuwaiti musician Fatima Al Qadiri composes possible themes for the Gulf War video game of her childhood
Playing Outside
If video games want cultural legitimacy, designers will have to concede it's not all about fun
Own to Rent
Social gaming and cloud computing are powerful alibis for always-on digital-rights management, which makes players into tenants
Reign in Drool
Games are about accepting arbitrary authority, but play is about the Satanic refusal of rules, seeking limits beyond limits
After Infinitude
BioShock Infinite promises radical possibility but strips players of meaningful agency