How the New Yorker story — short, plainly written, plotless, with slightly enigmatic endings — became a genre

Open Thread

No Retroactive Pseudonymization in Federal Court Under California "Safe at Home" Program

Keith Haring on Creativity, Self-Doubt, and the Love of Life in the Face of Death

For Warmth: Thich Nhat Hanh’s Poetic Antidote to Anger

New AI model could cut the costs of developing protein drugs

This Forest Rodent Serves as a Reservoir for the Deadly Mpox Virus

Richard Dawkins on the Luckiness of Death

Today in Supreme Court History: February 15, 1790

How We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love

Open Thread

Penny, a Doberman pinscher, wins the Westminster dog show

Dying Mothers, the Birth of Handwashing, and the Bittersweet True Love Story Behind ‘Frankenstein’

A Viral Story Claims an ICE Worker Was Caught in a Child Sex Trafficking Sting. The Truth Is Much Stranger.

The Monarchs, Music, and the Meaning of Life: The Most Touching Deathbed Love Letter Ever Written

Short Circuit: An inexhaustive weekly compendium of rulings from the federal courts of appeal

California Promised to Reduce Wildfire Risks. It’s Fallen Short.

Telling “the Full Story” of George Washington

Short Circuit: An inexhaustive weekly compendium of rulings from the federal courts of appeal

What explains the success of Colson Whitehead, Jennifer Egan, and Kazuo Ishiguro? Publishers want literary fiction that looks like genre fiction

Review of “The Bed Trick” by Izabella Scott – a bizarre story of sexual duplicity

Tolkien’s reading of Beowulf, and his ability to blend the epic with the novel, fiction and scholarship, shaped his sense of story