What are tariffs, and how do they work? — Explore how tariffs work and dig into how their enactment can set off an economic chain reaction that impacts global trade. -- In 1930, in hopes of supporting farms and manufacturing, President Hoover made a bold decision: he approved…
J.R.R. Tolkien on Fairy Tales, Language, the Psychology of Fantasy, and Why There’s No Such Thing as Writing “For Children” — “Creative fantasy, because it is mainly trying to do something else (make something new), may open your hoard and let all the locked things fly away like
I’ll Take the Fire — One night in November 2021, I lost my sense of taste and smell. There was a woman sleeping in my bed. I licked her shoulder, buried my nose in her neck. I moved my face down between her legs. I cou…
Every literary(ish) person who attended Taylor Swift’s wedding. — Usually when I hear about a party thrown by the most famous person in the world, I don’t immediately assume that someone like me should be there. What does make me think that delusional thought is …
This interactive atlas captures more than a thousand literary journeys. — Have you ever wondered how long those nice people were actually stranded on the Orient Express? Or speculated about the carriage distance from London to Longbourn? Well, dear reader, have I got a t…
Surrendering to Subjectivity: In Praise of Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts — As a writer and thinker, my life is divided into a B.N. and A.N.: a before-Nelson and after-Nelson. Before cracking open Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, I’d been all phobic about the first-per…
What to expect from WWDC 2026: Siri's highly anticipated revamp and Apple Intelligence updates | TechCrunch — Apple's WWDC nears: here's what you can look forward to.
The Grasshopper and the “Lusory Attitude” Essential for Playing the Game of Life — On a recent flight, I watched a mother across the aisle play peek-a-boo with her small son while next to me a grown man in a VR headset spent six hours ascending the levels of a video game. It…
How to See a Bird: Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s Exquisite Illustrated Field Guide to the Wonder of the Winged — “Split the Lark — and You’ll find the Music, ” Emily Dickinson taunted the materialists, “Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?” In the wake of On the Ori
What Writing About Bobby Kennedy Taught Me About Male Power — A few summers ago, while the Supreme Court was deciding whether or not abortion would remain legal, I was writing a novel about Bobby Kennedy. During the day, I was a woman in the twenty-first cent…
A octopus in an aquarium learned to open jars by watching other octopuses do it once. Now it teaches the new ones and they're all escaping 🐙
Static Allocation, Constant Work — In reply to this email:
How to Live Fully: The Samurai Guide to Dying Every Day — The great paradox of human life is that our mortality is the fulcrum of our search for meaning — the yearning to make this brief lungful of life matter amid the breathless void of space and t…
AI is making development faster. But where did the work go? — <p>When AI makes one part of product development faster, what happens to the rest of the system?</p> <br/><br/>
6 ways to play CDs in a modern car — Spin up your driving tuned old school.
The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Nonfiction — Here are this week’s Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers for nonfiction, based on sales in hundreds of independent bookstores nationwide, generously provided by the American Booksellers Associatio…
Rachel Syme Loves a Good Yarn — Welcome to Season Four of The Critic and Her Publics: The Art of the Interview. This season, host Merve Emre talks with professional interviewers of all kinds about how they get the answer theyR…
“A Person Should Be in Love Most of the Time.” An[other] Ode to Grace Paley — I first started reading Grace Paley in the weeks after my second novel was published, as I sought refuge from refreshing Goodreads, from waiting for the Booker Prize Committee to phone. Reading the…
Guggenheim Rushes to Clarify 77% Earnings Drop After Loan Slides — A financing entity of Guggenheim Investments moved to explain a steep decline in second-quarter earnings after the disclosure sent its loan price tumbling.
How Not to Waste Your Life — “Let me not seem to have lived in vain,” the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe whispered on his deathbed, not realizing that the astronomical tables he was leaving behind would become the p…
The Crops That Created America (Mostly Came From Africa) — When we talk about the formation of America, farming, and the history of people of African descent in this country, Virginia is at the core of it all. My family history goes back to the oldest plan…
The Cell Phone Novel Craze of Early 2000s Japan Did Not, in Fact, Destroy Literature — Once upon a Y2K, technology still felt like it could fulfill some human need: our drive for connection, perhaps, or just external recognition of our internal monologue. In the early aughts,…
The Wild Iris: Nobel Laureate Louise Glück on the Door at the End of Your Suffering — “Whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice.”
Lupe Mendez on Texas Politics and the Killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo — Houston-based poet Lupe Mendez joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and Jennifer Maritza McCauley to discuss ICE raids, the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and the political climate in Texas heading i…
Wi-Fi 6 vs Wi-Fi 7: What's the difference wnd which is better for home internet? — Wi-Fi 6 Vs Wi-Fi 7: What's The Difference And Which Is Better For Home Internet?
Necessary Losses: The Life-Shaping Art of Letting Go — “We cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate people, responsible people, connected people, reflective people without some losing and leav…
Nature and Creativity: The Science of “Soft Fascination” and How the Natural World Resets the Brain — “Our everyday experience does not prepare us to assimilate the gaping hugeness of the Grand Canyon or the crashing grandeur of Niagara Falls. We have no response at the ready;…
Marcus Aurelius on the Good Luck of Your Bad Luck: The Stoic Strategy for Weathering Life’s Waves and Turning Suffering into Strength — “What happened could have happened to anyone, but not everyone could have carried on.”
Now Yourself: The Elusive Science of What the Present Moment Is Made of and How It Makes You Who You Are — “Whatever has happened, whatever is going to happen in the world, it is the living moment that contains the sum of the excitement, this moment in which we touch life and…
Japan’s NYK CEO on Alternative Routes Amid Iran War — Japanese shipping giant NYK's head Takaya Soga in an exclusive conversation with Bloomberg's Shery Ahn discusses how the company is exploring alternative routes due to the conflict in the Middle East. (Source: Bloomberg)
Our Favorite Hotels—From the Hamptons to the South of France—That Still Have August Availability — Don't count summer travel out just yet—these editor-approved properties make for excellent last-minute getaways.
Inside the Wild World of Roman Romance Novels — People have been debating the invention of the novel forever. For some, the first novel was the 11th Century Japanese Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikabu, for others the novel truly began when Cervan…
Arundhati Roy on the Deepest Measure of Success — “To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance… To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what…
Newly described Australian ballista spider builds a spring-loaded snare to catch a single ant species — An international team of researchers has discovered a remarkable new spider species in the rainforest of North Queensland that spins an ingenious and powerful spring-actuated…
A Culture of Collaboration: The Legacy of Lunigiana’s Traveling Booksellers — In certain borghi (small medieval villages) in Lunigiana several centuries ago, some impoverished mountain people, pushed by necessity, began climbing the arduous paths of the Apennines and then de…
Joby Warrick, LaToya Watkins, Katy Simpson Smith, and more: 20 new books out today! — August zooms on, or trickles on, depending on how you look at it. We’re reaching a quieter moment of the publishing cycle: a few weeks of slowness and peace before the onslaught of September.…
Nine Fabulous Books by Drag Performers Who Were Never Featured on RuPaul’s Drag Race — There are some dazzling books by drag queens who have risen to stardom, either through social media like TikTok or reality shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race. Of course I attended Bob the Drag Queen
Am I the Asshole For Abandoning My First Love, Fantasy? — Hey there, howdy! Welcome back to another enormously entertaining episode of Am I the Literary Asshole?, an advice column that runs on Steel Reserve and Writer’s Tears. I’m your host, Kristen Arnet…
Lush Foliage Permeates Xanthe Burdett's Delicate Portraiture — For London-based artist Xanthe Burdett, the boundary between humans and nature is thin, malleable, and always in flux.
U.S. says pipelines will make Strait of Hormuz be irrelevant. Energy experts disagree — Treasure Secretary Scott Bessent said oil pipelines will make Strait of Hormuz irrelevant in two years. Energy experts say that is unlikely to happen.
4 great Paramount+ movies under 90 minutes to watch this weekend — Pressed for time? Check out these movies on Paramount+ that you can finish under 90 minutes.
Now Amazon is destroying rare books to train its AI. — Per a 404 Media report published this morning, Amazon, that evil empire, “is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training data, and destroying them in the process.”…
The Unexpected Joys of a Geriatric Debut — If I were 26 years old, full of piss and vinegar and had a debut poetry collection, I’d fancy myself a modern-day troubadour. I’d live out of my car, which would likely be a beat-up Volvo station w…
A octopus opened a jar to get a crab inside, then screwed the lid back on so other octopuses couldn't steal it. The planning part is what gets me 🐙
After Six Decades and Thirty Novels Jodi Picoult Was Missing One Thing: A Tattoo — I didn’t care about turning forty. When fifty rolled around, I celebrated. At 55, my neighbor took a picture of me under a matching speed limit sign and we both laughed. Then came sixty. Several…
The Nearly Departed: Inside the Art of Writing a Great Obituary — What’s next? What happens after you die? It’s one question I’ve never asked when interviewing the scores of nearly-departed people I’ve profiled for advance obituaries in The New York Times. The an…
Three killed in strikes on Gaza as Israel renews threats over kite-flying — Israeli defence minister renews threat to expel Palestinians from areas where kites or balloons are being flown in Gaza.
New Zealand Labour Opposition Vows to Restore RBNZ Dual Mandate — New Zealand’s main opposition Labour Party pledged to restore the central bank’s dual mandate if it wins office in the Nov. 7 election, saying price stability and sustainable employment are both essential for a…
10 Literary Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels That Offer Hope for the Future — During graduate school, I finished the novel that found me an agent—but when my agent submitted it to publishers, all twenty of them turned the manuscript down. Truthfully, it was closer to a colle…
Lit Hub Daily: July 6, 2026 — Michael Dirda makes the case for Moby-Dick as the ultimate American novel. | Lit Hub Criticism Why the “legendary” dinner party from Plato’s Symposium is actually about love. | Lit Hub …
Uruguay squad lands in US after flight delay ahead of World Cup opener — Uruguay arrived in the US less than 24 hours before the kickoff time for their game against Saudi Arabia.
The Vocabulary of Vulnerability: 10 Words from Around the World for Complex and Difficult Emotions — Language is the chalice we lift to our lips to taste our own experience — a vessel that constrains what it contains by giving it its own shape. The more complex our experience,…
The Responsible Party — By the time Irv and Kath met, the Oberbach Corporation was ankle-deep in concrete, middle-manning the cheap Chinese labor the city needed to build its demonic underground highway along the river. I…
Optimizing Life and Finances in Your Twenties | Masters in Business with Jack Raines — Barry sits down with Jack Raines author of "Younge Money". Jack dives into his unlikely journey into finance and venture capital. He discusses how his travels impacted the way he sees money…
Mum of Nottingham attacks victim backs calls to stop killers' early release — Emma Webber has joined more than 30 families in signing an open letter to the government.
5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week — Our smorgasbord of sumptuous reviews this week includes Megan Nolan on Jon Ronson’s The Castle, Kasia Boddy on William Kennedy’s Albany Trilogy, Jonathan Dee on Kurt Andersen’s The Breakup, Johanna…
The Letter Doula: How to Help a Life Arrive on the Page — For years, I believed people avoided letter writing because they lacked time. But after teaching leadership, communication, and storytelling to thousands of students, I’ve come to believe something…
What is credential catfishing? Inside social media’s fake identity problem. — From fake PA students to pretend NFL players, impressive credentials can earn trust before anyone verifies them.
A literary map where every book is pinned to where its story actually takes place... and you can see how many novels are crammed into like three city blocks in Manhattan.
Apple Wallet driver's license support just launched in a new state - 9to5Mac — This is the 15th state to support driver's licenses in Apple Wallet, usable at TSA checkpoints and select businesses