Latest
September 9, 2026
Unlike Things | Fiction
Henri Lipton
I worried about my organs, the ones involved in the processing of toxic substances. Cheap vodka and good wine, mushrooms incubated in cowshit, coke snorted through the U.S. currency I used to buy more coke, cigarettes and weed, pills and tabs and capsules — I had reoriented myself to reality through the self-administration of many expedient poisons. I worried about cortisol levels. I worried about hemochromatosis. I worried about my...
September 8, 2026
Everything in Moderation | Tech Fiction’s Discontents
Lora Kelley
In the late aughts and early 2010s, before Cambridge Analytica and Theranos and the so-called techlash; before the interest rate hikes and layoffs and Sam Bankman-Fried; before Silicon Valley’s leaders pledged fealty to Trump and military contracting came back into vogue, big tech companies seemed like pretty nice places to work. There was shrimp in the office; free laundry service was a corporate perk; many enjoyed feeling that they were...
September 1, 2026
Brothers in Arms | On the UAE’s Israel Model
Séamus Malekafzali
On May 4, the United Arab Emirates’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a condemnation of recent Iranian strikes on Emirati territory. The UAE “will not tolerate any threat to its security and sovereignty under any circumstances,” the Ministry promised, and “it reserves its full and legitimate right to respond to these unprovoked attacks.” The communiqué came less than a month after the UAE’s air force had partially disabled, via airstrike,...
August 25, 2026
Socialists in Office | NYC-DSA Is Put to the Test
Piper French
“We just elected Zohran Mamdani as NYC Mayor!!!!!” For more than six months after Mamdani’s election, a banner atop the New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America’s homepage heralded this victory with no fewer than five exclamation points. Coming exactly a year after Trump was reelected, Mamdani’s win was the purest validation of DSA’s ability to offer a compelling alternative message — and an explicitly socialist one at...
April 21, 2026
History Has Its Eyes on You | Slam Frank and Musical Theater’s Hamilton Bind
Emma Adler
For those who struggled through The Diary of Anne Frank as adolescents, wishing it were more entertaining, 2025 brought a special treat: Andrew Fox and Joel Sinensky’s musical Slam Frank. A send-up of both identity politics and the musical theater that has attempted to cash in on identity politics, Slam Frank imagines what would happen if a woke community theater decided to give the story of Anne Frank the Hamilton...
April 21, 2026
My Graduation | Fiction
Kion You
At the airport, I hustled out of my Subaru and waved down my family. They looked awful, but who doesn’t at Arrivals. “Why is it so hot?” my mother asked. “Austin, Texas,” my dad said, switching from Korean to English. “Great!” My mother handed me her suitcase and scrutinized the FREE PALESTINE sticker on the car’s bumper. My friend Joana had put it on — she sold me the car...
April 21, 2026
Encounter | Poetry
Adam Judah Krasnoff
Two stones at rest at the summit of a hill. Two stones at rest at the summit of a hill Atop which we too are seated, resting. We two at the summit of a hill, seated atop A pair of immovable stones, whose rest Is permanent. This is the summit of feeling, I do not say, you do not say, we do not say, But rather point out facts about...
April 21, 2026
A Severe Face Angle Makes the Shadows Clear | Poetry
Andy Butter
A new study made no claims on discovering anything of value, it was only an extension of every other study’s conclusions: if we’ve found abandoned cities under the rainforest’s canopy using LIDAR let’s assume from here on out there will be a great deal more buried in the Earth’s crust. A pocket of parasites squeezed out of a sheep’s skin. Here’s everything I know about everything we don’t know: extreme...
April 21, 2026
Editors’ Note | The House Never Chickens Out
The Editors
You may have noticed that Donald Trump often seems to change his mind. His record of abruptly backing off dangerous courses of action to which he had previously committed himself — from tariffs to civilizational annihilation — inspired the slogan “TACO” (Trump Always Chickens Out). For a while, TACO was a reassuring thought. It conjured up an image of a weak, flailing president who was playing with empty threats but...
April 21, 2026
ESOP Fables | The False Promise of Employee Ownership
Francis Northwood
In December 2021, employees of the prominent New York-based architecture firm SHoP — most famous for designing landmarks like the Barclays Center, the Brooklyn Tower, and 111 West 57th, the thinnest supertall skyscraper in the world — announced they were seeking to form Architectural Workers United, the first professional architecture union in over seventy years. Organizers told the press that they had been driven to unionize by mismanagement, an inconsistent...
