Columns
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Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Brilliant Take on the Zimmerman Verdict
Not to overload anyone on political coverage, but Ta-Nehisi Coates’s reaction to the George Zimmerman trial is an absolute must-read. In it, he looks at the actual legal text involved in the case and points out that what’s so deeply frightening…
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Hey, so we totally found a new moon around Neptune (that we should have found a while ago). Vintage Cuban political posters. Let us now discuss Edison’s last breath. Sometimes you need to build a frog sexbot for evolutionary science.…
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The Rumpus Interview with Jessica Mason Pieklo and Robin Marty
Writers and activists Jessica Mason Pieklo and Robin Marty discuss their book, Crow After Roe, “the ever-roiling storm that is the American clash over abortion rights.”
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Caine Prize Controversy Continues
Prominent Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie sparked outrage in the African literary community last week with comments she made about the Caine Prize, a prestigious annual award for African writers. Adichie said many things in her fascinating, no-nonsense Boston Review interview…
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Beauty and the Beastly Po-Biz, Part 1
We can’t see the forest for the trees. Think high school cliques. Think think tanks that figure “us” out for us. In their equations, you’re either obedient, an adherent, or expendable / inconsequential. You’re in or you’re out. With us…
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Mystery Solved: Galbraith is Actually Rowling
If you read Robert Galbraith’s debut novel, a detective thriller called The Cuckoo’s Clock, and thought it was remarkably well constructed for a first-timer, you weren’t alone. Nor were you incorrect: the actual author has been revealed to be J. K.…
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Ted Wilson Reviews the World #190
CANADA ★★★★★ (3 out of 5) Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing Canada.
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The Secret Songs of Plants
Sometime in 2011, Bartholomäus Traubeck noticed a certain similarity between tree rings and grooves on a vinyl record. Being a multimedia artist, he rigged up a turntable that could play cross-sections of trees like albums, transmitting the data from the…
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Notable San Francisco 7/15-7/20
Monday 7/15: National Poetry Slam champion Dominique Ashaheed joins Bay Area poets for this summer’s Lit Slam, a competitive, audience-judged reading performance. $10, 8pm, Viracocha. Tuesday 7/16: Granta celebrates the release of its 124th issue, Travel, with editor Ted Hodgkinson…
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Nick Cave Monday #44: “These Boots are Made for Walkin’”
Punk rock had exploded in New York City and the U.K., but kids in the Southern Hemisphere probably had to pay a lot of money to buy imports or have records shipped from the north.
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Staving-off-Despair Roundup
When there’s an injustice as great a man walking free after killing an unarmed teenager, at least we have writing to turn to. Our essays editor Roxane Gay has done some of that writing for Salon in a piece about the George…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
It’s that time again. Time to round up all the Rumpus weekends. Or the weekend Rumpuses. Or something. This weekend, we featured two super-cool interviews. Saturday’s was a lively discussion with Michelle Meyering, director of programs and events at PEN Center…