Top Reads
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Scrubbed
(Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine; Patrick McMullan (Upham)) On November 29, 2010, federal agents in San Francisco arrested a 33-year-old New Yorker named Samuel Phineas Upham, setting in motion the chain of news reports that are responsible for Google’s autocompleting his name in the following ways: PHINEAS UPHAM TAX PHINEAS UPHAM ARREST PHINEAS UPHAM INDICTMENT The case against Upham, who…
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Contest of Words
Although high school debate is often considered the thinking person’s—the nerd’s—alternative to sports, my memories of it are primarily somatic: the starched collar of the…
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Four Ways to Figure Out What You Really Want to…
We've all hit that point where we can't figure out exactly what we really want to do with our lives. It can come when you're 18 or when you're 50, and it's always a difficult process to work through.…
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The Prism
An extraordinary fuss about eavesdropping started in the spring of 1844, when Giuseppe Mazzini, an Italian exile in London, became convinced that the British government was opening his mail. Mazzini,…
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The Gift of Doubt
In the mid-nineteenth century, work began on a crucial section of the railway line connecting Boston to the Hudson River. The addition would run from Greenfield, Massachusetts, to Troy, New York, and…
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Persuading David Simon (Pinboard Blog)
Persuading David Simon I read with interest David Simon's recent blog post in which he responds to revelations that the NSA has been collecting the call records of all American mobile phone users. David Simon, of course, created the…
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Quickly Master Any Skill the Tim Ferriss Way by…
Tim Ferriss, Mr. 4-Hour-Everything, recently gave this TED talk clarifying how anyone can master a new skill in just four steps. The "secret sauce" to his method is sequencing, or timing the order in…
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Bigfoot by Robert Sullivan
Department of Open-Ended Investigations Open Spaces Home -> Back Issues -> Volume One Number Three -> Bigfoot by Robert Sullivan Bigfoot by Robert Sullivan Among those who believe that such a thing as the Sasquatch exists,…
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Cheating Ourselves of Sleep
Think you do just fine on five or six hours of shut-eye? Chances are, you are among the many millions who unwittingly shortchange themselves on sleep.Research shows that most people require seven or…
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One
Every month, The Atavist publishes a new piece of longform journalism and delivers it directly to the web, your phone, your tablet, and anywhere else you like to read. Get 30% off when you use the…
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Inside Pocket: how a startup beat its rivals to…
The day before he turned 27, Nate Weiner drove from San Francisco to Mountain View for the most important meeting of his life. Weiner — he pronounces it "WINE-er," and yes, junior high was a rough…
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Effective Technical Leadership
Most successful projects have a single engineer responsible for driving the project forward and while along the way ensure that strong technical decisions are made with confidence. Typically, that…
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SPEW
1. Thievery “Develop a little self-righteousness. A lot of that is an ugly thing, God knows, but a little spread over all your scruples is an absolute necessity!”-- Glen Bateman, in Stephen King’s The…
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How Caffeine Short-Circuits Creativity
Honoré de Balzac is said to have consumed the equivalent of fifty cups of coffee a day at his peak. He did not drink coffee, though—he pulverized coffee beans into a fine dust and…
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Legacy Check
As the NBA Finals head back to Miami for Game 6, just about everyone on the floor has something to proveThe NBA Finals shifted to a 2-3-2 format after the 1984 Finals, when the Lakers and Celtics…
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How to Get (Nearly) Stock Android on Any Phone,…
Recently, Google fans finally got what they've wanted since the HTC Hero first came out: stock Android versions of the most popular, non-Nexus handsets. However, if you aren't able to pick up one of…
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Network Error
Network Error (tcp_error) A communication error occurred: "" The Web Server may be down, too busy, or experiencing other problems preventing it from responding to requests. You may wish to try again at a later time. For assistance,…
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How to Read a Book
1. Open book. 2. Read words. 3. Close book. 4. Move on to next book. Reading a book seems like a pretty straightforward task, doesn’t it? And in some cases, it is. If you’re reading…
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The Graduate
After a few months, I was promoted to the next stage of girldom at Newsweek: I became a clipper. Being a clipper entailed clipping newspapers from around the country. We all sat at something called the clip desk, armed…
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America's 50 worst charities rake in nearly $1…
The worst charity in America operates from a metal warehouse behind a gas station in Holiday. Every year, Kids Wish Network raises millions of dollars in donations in the name of dying children and…