Some thoughts on buying a house, white privilege and homewares for the apocalypse

It was a warm September evening, perfect for a socially distanced outdoor gathering. When she arrived at her friends’ house in rural Pennsylvania, Karen — who asked that we only use her first name to protect her friends’ privacy — dutifully donned her mask and walked straight to the back patio. The hosts, close friends of hers, had planned their get-together carefully. They set up chairs more than six feet apart on their patio, they asked everyone to bring their own drinks, and they planned to order individual meals from a restaurant to avoid sharing food.

Deciphering the most beloved, most reviled children’s-book author in history.

When COVID-19 tore through Donald Wallace’s nursing home, he was one of the lucky few to avoid infection. He died a horrible death anyway. Hale and happy before the pandemic, the 75-year-old retired Alabama truck driver became so malnourished and dehydrated that he dropped to 98 pounds and looked to his son like he’d been in a concentration camp.

Benjamin Franklin liked his with a zesty oyster sauce. The American revolutionary and polymath was so enthusiastic about eating turkey that he pioneered a new slaughtering technique to make the flesh “uncommonly tender”. He also nurtured a patriotic sentimentality about the bird itself. In a letter to his daughter in 1784, Franklin joked that the new country’s emblem should not be a bald eagle but a turkey, “a true original native of America…that would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British guards”.

No story excites children quite like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. First published in 1964 by English author, Roald Dahl, the story continues to capture imaginations. 1 The premise is simple, a usually unlucky boy is one of five winners of a worldwide competition. The prize is a once in a lifetime opportunity to tour a world famous chocolate factory. As an added bonus, the winning children are given a lifetime supply of sweet treats. There is scarcely a child who would not want that.

You're probably reading this on your phone. If not, take it out your pocket and look at it. It's a smartphone, isn't it? Think how often you use it and all the useful things it helps you do. Now, think back. How long since you bought your first smartphone? It will be about 10 years, most likely a bit less. Not long. Yet they are now ubiquitous: virtually everyone, everywhere has one and uses it for hours every day.

Just before sunrise in Istanbul on 11 November 2019, a determined thumping on her iron front door stirred Emma Winberg from a brief sleep. Blurry-eyed, she grasped at the empty space in bed next to her, pulled on a pair of trousers, fumbled with a bedside lamp, then ran across the bedsit to the kitchen next door. “James wasn’t there,” she said. “And that’s when I just knew.”

Journalists view Twitter as a valuable platform for finding and sharing information, but many say they wish they used it less.

If artificial intelligence will destroy humanity, it probably won’t be through killer robots and the incarnation—it will be through a thousand paper cuts. In the shadow of the immense benefits of advances in technology, the dark effects of AI algorithms are slowly creeping into different aspects of our lives, causing divide, unintentionally marginalizing groups of people, stealing our attention, and widening the gap between the wealthy and the poor.

The long read: How one magic word became a way of justifying Silicon Valley’s unconstrained power

Peter Minton was riding his motorized scooter on Rockaway Beach Boulevard when the patrolman served him with a summons to appear in traffic court. The reason: the 16-year-old was operating the vehicle without a driver’s license.

Facebook ignored or was slow to act on evidence that fake accounts on its platform have been undermining elections and political affairs around the world, according to an explosive memo sent by a recently fired Facebook employee and obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The remarkable inside story of one journalist’s quest to uncover the true costs of industrial farming to the environment, people & animals

A dying rainforest will release huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but the Piaraçu Manifesto taps ancestral wisdom to preserve traditional lands.

While social media and mass communication technology have made connecting easier than ever, loneliness -- the sadness that comes from a perceived lack of social connection -- has been recognized as a serious problem. Tech is trying to help.

What is the first thing you do when you get a new pair of headphones? Some of us might unbox it and put up an Instagram story. Others might immediately put on their favourite playlist and crank up the bass. However, if you ask any audiophile what they do with a new pair of headphones, their answer will most likely be: burning them in. Audiophiles are discerning music listeners who are motivated to get the very best sound quality out of their headphones, speakers, and audio equipment in general.

Show me a museum of important historical inventors and I will show you a gallery of deluded mass murderers. I’m not talking about machine gun manufacturers or nuclear scientists—those people, at least, have some sense of what they’re up to. I’m talking about the folks behind the printing press, the automobile, various kinds of boat technology. These people tried to improve the world, and succeeded, but also indirectly killed millions of people.

To lure Sears into a Chicago suburb, officials crafted the largest tax break package ever awarded to a company in Illinois. It resulted in revenue shortfalls, disappearing jobs and unexpected tax burdens, a Daily Herald and ProPublica review showed.

Regina Brave remembers the moment the first viral picture of her was taken. It was 1973, and 32-year-old Brave had taken up arms in a standoff between federal marshals and militant Indigenous activists in Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Brave had been assigned to guard a bunker on the front lines and was holding a rifle when a reporter leaped from a car to snap her photo.