Latest
December 2, 2025
Temporary Fixes | The Limitations of USAID
Olatunji Olaigbe
I first learned about USAID in 2017 while I was working at a computer cafe in Ilorin, North Central Nigeria. Educators used to come in to photocopy teaching aids supplied by the agency — mostly materials to help students with reading comprehension. There were never as many packets as children who needed them: as of 2024, the region still has only a 55 percent literacy rate. I made a copy...
December 2, 2025
Dignity and Access | On Food and Power
Abubaker Abed, Andy Cawley, Hamada Shaqura, Joelle M. Abi-Rached, Luis Feliz Leon, Olatunji Olaigbe, Pranay Somayajula, Sara G. Kielly, Shahad Elfaki, Vivian Hu, Zeead Yaghi
Back during the end of history, Thomas Friedman presented his “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention” in a 1996 New York Times op-ed. As he put it, “no two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other.” There was “no question,” he declared, that McDonald’s “is part of this worldwide phenomenon of countries integrating with the global economy and submitting to its rules.” Today,...
December 2, 2025
Annunciation | Poetry
Oksana Maksymchuk
I imagine it being true You remained in bed shards of glass levitating, like a sparkling tapestry Sound asleep despite rolling thunderclaps flashes of alien fast-moving light In the morning when the search party arrived they found you, index finger marking a place in a book a white lily at your bedside filling the room with a fragrance and your face still a child’s bearing a mark of a kiss
December 2, 2025
Love Language | Fiction
Will Hall
The most money I ever made from acting was for a crisps commercial. The brand wanted to show how its product brought people together by — my agent reading me the brief over the phone — “saying the unsayable.” To do this they made a series of ads in which people wordlessly apologized for things with open bags of crisps. I played an impulsive young woman who tries on her...
December 2, 2025
Battle Creek | Poetry
Kathleen Ma
A pig in the shape of me goes to the gas station. Two ninety five is not bad for the Midwest, pressed under great slabs of sun. Take it all in, what you know and what you don’t. Don’t get it twisted I would never in my life be the mayor of Battle Creek, Michigan. Open your eyes! You think it’s slick to imagine me so tall, so cool. Let...
December 2, 2025
still life in necromancy | Poetry
Leslie McIntosh
What makes the dead turn Beyond decomposition Is mystery is radical is Teleportation is a man coming Back to life is a toddler falling From a playground swing Zenith-spat smartly into mud Seeing all around lose her In descent puddle and dirt find her A worm forced from home by rain Wriggles closer to her ear saying Baby is a deer knowing no Language but understanding What it can safely...
December 2, 2025
Voraciousness and Shame | Ozempic’s Weight Loss Counterrevolution
Vivian Hu
In a March 2024 special titled “Shame, Blame, and the Weight Loss Revolution,” Oprah Winfrey aired what was essentially an infomercial for a new class of drugs that promised to revolutionize the way we thought about obesity. The hour-long segment promoted Ozempic, Mounjaro, and Wegovy, which target GLP-1 (and, in Mounjaro’s case, GIP) receptors to make people feel fuller and slow the rate at which their stomachs empty. On the...
December 2, 2025
Model Employees | The Dawn of Digital Twins
Max Hancock
The H.R. software provider syd™ may ask you to submit your spit. But even if you decline to supply a saliva sample, it will still request your dietary and financial information. All this, plus your environmental data (like your home address and the temperature outside), is used to create a digital copy of you, which syd™ delivers to your boss, who can then use it to track your “Life Quality,”...
December 2, 2025
It’s All Coming Back to Me Now | Poetry
Ethan Seeley
The hills are facts. Assembling. Toyotas are crawling, antlike, all over their hairy backsides. The ants vote with their pocket- books. Lacking pocketbooks, they are disenfranchised. So, they vote with their feet. Our feet head for the hills. The hills are looking very factual tonight. The mist descends, monsterlike, to knock at the doors of the houses pouring smoke out their several chimneys. The smoke, toyotalike, crashes into the mist....
December 2, 2025
Repackaged Nostalgia | The Dubaification of Beirut
Zeead Yaghi
Em Sherif, a high-end restaurant in Beirut, recently opened a more casual outpost that, according to its Emirates-based controlling shareholder ADMO Lifestyle Holding, “offers a modern and vibrant take on Lebanese cuisine” that’s rooted in “authentic flavors.” The most popular menu item seems to be an expensive sandwich that reimagines a classic Lebanese appetizer: slices of heirloom tomato are dressed with garlic sauce, sumac, green chili, spring onion, and olive...
