Latest
April 17, 2026
Roman-Flood | Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Diabolic Realism
Max Norman
If you made it through the 3,600 pages of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (Min kamp, in the Norwegian), its conclusion could only inspire mixed feelings. Book Six — also known as “the Hitler one” due to its three hundred pages on the life of the dictator whose manifesto gave Knausgaard his title — records the precise moment (7:07 a.m., on September 2, 2011) that Karl Ove brought it to...
April 15, 2026
Devochka
Caroline Porter
My friend Ryan had stolen a virtual reality headset from the GameStop where he worked. He’d been using it for a week to alternately play a rhythm game called Beat Saber and jack off. I’m just out here living my best life, he texted me when I asked him what he was up to. This was followed by a clown emoji, then one of a guy in sunglasses. He was...
April 13, 2026
Into the Right-Wing Dreamworld | DHS’s Regime of Images
Mitch Therieau
In the video, the penguin waddles across a frozen expanse. He is heading away from his colony, into Antarctica’s vast interior, alone. Nothing can stop his solitary march: even if he were caught and returned to the colony, we learn from the sandpapery, Teutonic voice of Werner Herzog, he would set right back out toward the mountains. “But why?” Herzog asks. The video’s caption answers: “Americans have always known ‘why.’”...
April 8, 2026
The Blonde
Julia Kornberg
La Rubia lives here now. Even if we don’t talk about the events that led her to this place, she is here. Her back is straight and her chin points slightly forward. She is running her small finger over Tali’s old bookshelf. War: she reads one Céline title aloud. Next to it: War and War. La Rubia’s body is so unnervingly small that I can imagine it slipping between the...
April 2, 2026
Fraud with Benefits | How Breaking the Rules Makes Welfare Work
Maia Silber
In a viral video posted the day after Christmas 2025, Nick Shirley, a right-wing YouTuber in his early twenties, drives around a snowy Minneapolis aiming to expose what he alleged was the widespread misuse of federal funds by Somali-owned daycares. Shirley is accompanied by a local conservative lobbyist-cum-vigilante named David, who warns that the perpetrators of the scheme are “exceptionally violent”; Shirley declares that the money is being used for...
December 2, 2025
Be Grateful | Trump’s Latter-day Neoconservatism
Séamus Malekafzali
On October 13, international representatives gathered in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh in the southern Sinai Peninsula. Sharm el-Sheikh had been occupied by Israel from 1968 to 1982, and suffered a major al-Qaeda attack in 2005; now President Donald Trump was there to ink an agreement that would end what he described as three thousand years of conflict in the Middle East. In keeping with such a momentous occasion,...
December 2, 2025
The Wife
Elisa Gonzalez
Marie recognized his wife the way she used to recognize her mother in a crowd of other mothers. Absolute certainty based on the scantest evidence: how she toyed with her hair, or untwisted a skirt. Marie had never met his wife, but fame, it seemed, could stand in for intimacy. She’d seen her in Vogue, arms akimbo, collarbones vamped, and in The New Yorker, staring down the lens with an...
December 2, 2025
The Masada Option | Zionism’s Death Drive
Yoni Gelernter
On December 15, 2023, an Israeli sniper operating in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood of Gaza City opened fire on three shirtless, unarmed men in their twenties, one of whom was waving a white flag. Two were killed instantly; the third fled into a nearby building, where he called out for help in Hebrew. He was discovered there by another IDF patrol, which shot him dead. At the time, there was already...
December 2, 2025
Global Whack-a-Mole | Soy Farming and Deforestation
Andy Cawley
In May, China responded to Trump’s trade war provocations by halting imports of U.S.-grown soybeans, turning to Brazilian and Argentinian suppliers. Given that just over half of all American soybeans produced in 2024 were destined for China, the resultant cratering of demand was “a massive shock to our markets,” a University of Nebraska agricultural economics professor told ABC News. “I hope China will quickly quadruple its soybean orders,” Trump posted...
December 2, 2025
States of Decomposition | Eating in New York State Prison
Sara G. Kielly
My childhood was replete with family meals and cookouts. Even after I moved out and was, at times, homeless, I always knew that I could turn to my mother for a warm meal. I reveled in the foods I loved and had no problem turning up my nose at food I disliked. (Consider the horror that is egg salad or cooked greens!) Until I was 22, I got to decide...
