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Listen, I don’t have thin skin. If I did, I would teach fourth grade and cry along with my students when the spider died at the end of Charlotte’s Web. Anyone can teach kids; I teach young adults. And I introduce them to their mentor, who will decide their fate: New York’s most haunted forever teen, Holden Caulfield.

By introducing decades of students to the philosopher in the backward red hunting cap, I’ve presented them with their next step into adulthood. Most English students make one of two choices: Either they love Holden and go on to have intense, fleeting, and passionate careers in fields like English or theater, or they realize they have good relationships with their mothers.

These past few years, however, I’ve noticed a startling trend: ambivalence.

The Sopranos
I have not watched The Sopranos. I have, however, seen the clip of the guy pointing angrily at someone across the table while someone else looks tired of his behavior.

That three-hour documentary you recommended
I saw a screenshot of the host looking very serious and assumed the rest.

Game of Thrones
I understand there were dragons and that everyone was upset about a chair.

That Oscar-winning movie from last year
I saw a reaction GIF from it on social media and decided I had the emotional gist.

The entire Marvel Cinematic Universe
I have seen approximately forty-seven memes of a raccoon with a gun.

Your favorite anime
I saw a dramatic still of someone screaming with wind blowing through their hair.

The new Netflix show everyone is talking about
I watched the trailer autoplay while deciding what I actually wanted to watch.

For a century, this theory of human origins has died and returned. To free it from limbo, we must disentangle its many meanings

- by Vivek V Venkataraman

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Treating journalism like a casino will harm reporting — and erode democracy.

The post We Need to Kick Prediction Market Betting Out of Journalism While We Still Can appeared first on The Intercept.

A DOJ prosecutor insists he charged Abrego based strictly on evidence of human smuggling. A federal judge seems skeptical.

The post Who Decided to Indict Kilmar Abrego Garcia Over a Years-Old Traffic Stop? appeared first on The Intercept.

The only extremism would-be assassins like suspect Cole Tomas Allen share is an extreme response to Trump’s deranging politics.

The post How Trump’s America Produces Normie Assassins appeared first on The Intercept.

With apologies to Walt Whitman.

I sneeze myself, I excuse myself.

For every sniffle belonging to me as good belongs to you. Sorry!

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass, clawing my eyes as I reach for Zyrtec-D and “fast-acting” eyedrops.

I, now thirty-seven years old and in perfect health, maintain a group text with my allergist, internist, and energy coach.

The atmosphere is not a perfume but an assassin, a revenge epic.

Each golden particle, a tiny airborne Judas.

I contain multitudes, but mostly mucus.

Mucus I wipe away with a CVS receipt longer than my sleeve.

My airways are inflamed, and my friends are tired of hearing about it.

We suffer, but not in silence. For when we sneeze, meetings stop, foundations shake.

Not I, not anyone else can travel the road for you. But before you do, obsessively check the pollen count and pack your inhaler.

Sometimes, when a 10Foot graffiti tag slips into view from an unexpected source — on a remote farm gate in the countryside, or in an over-gentrified corner of London Fields — the pleasurable jolt of human connection is not that far from the warm feeling of recognition that great literature can give you. So maybe […]

“This is why we have to have all the attributes of what we’re planning at the White House. It’s a larger room, it’s drone-proof and bullet-proof glass. That’s why the Secret Service, the military, are demanding it. They’ve wanted the ballroom for one hundred and fifty years.” — Donald Trump, April 25, 2026, after an assassination attempt against him at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

April 26, 1877

Dear President Rutherford B. Hayes,

As you know, I have seen some shit. Bull Run was no picnic, and Atlanta was no backyard bonfire. Which means I know of what I speak. Nothing like watching thousands of young men get blown to bits in a single afternoon to help you figure out your priorities.

And while I bear the middle name of the great Shawnee chieftain, even as we are “relocating” all our native friends from the Black Hills (I mean, all that gold must be ours), I’m sure Chief T would agree that our nation has always put a select few’s safety ahead of sanity.

More than twelve months of strike action has taken a devastating toll on the NHS. I’m not talking about walkouts by doctors or nurses, but about the sustained capital strike by some of the biggest pharmaceutical corporations in the world. Backed by the president of the United States, these companies have spent the past year […]

Deep inside a luscious grove in Nigeria, a community of artists preserves otherworldly monuments to Yorùbá spirituality

- by Aeon Video

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