Top Reads
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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 dress shirt against my recently shaved neck, small cuts and razor bumps deepening the sensation; the constant gentle pressure of the tie; how my gait and posture adjusted under the direction of the suit; the way the slacks always felt high and tight because I normally let my baggy jeans sag to…
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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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Adapting To A Responsive Design (Case Study)
This is the story of what we learned during a redesign for our most demanding client — ourselves! In this article, I will explain, from our own experience of refreshing our agency website, why…
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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…
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"Weaponize the Media": An Anonymous Rapper's War…
One night this past December, sitting at his laptop in his bedroom in Winchester, Kentucky, Deric Lostutter donned a plastic Guy Fawkes mask, recently purchased on eBay. He turned on the camera of…
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The Long Con
The day Phil Ferguson killed Vern Cox, late spring was turning to summer in “The Big Empty,” an expanse of high desert in Eastern Oregon where the earth stretched lonesome and wide. By…
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How FPGAs work, and why you'll buy one
Today, pretty much everyone has a CPU, a DSP and a GPU, buried somewhere in their PC, phone, car, etc. Most don't know or care that they bought any of these, but they did. Will everyone, at some…
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The Whaleboat
This many pages into the book, I can feel it in the small of my back. A congressional report, 4 pounds, 12 ounces, dead across my thighs as a paving stone. I am reading it closely in an overstuffed…
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Shutter Madness
Garry Winogrand used to say that he took photographs of things to see what they would look like as photographs. He took a lot of them. He photographed relentlessly: crowds, zoos, dogs, cars, parties,…
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What's Wrong with the iOS 7 Icons?
“It looks childish.” That was the first reaction I heard to iOS 7. I’m not going to lie, when I saw it for the first time myself, I freaked out a little too. Like any good…
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Modern Warfare
HOMEThe video-game industry is currently waiting with bated breath for the release of Titanfall, the new sci-fi shoot-’em-up project from developers Vincent Zampella and Jason West. The game,…
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Chemically Burned: Dow Chemical Tries to Avoid…
His skin was on fire. Brian Johns couldn't feel exactly what was happening to him through the jolt of endorphins and adrenaline pumping through his body, but the acid was still there, sizzling…