The Rise and Fall of Toronto’s Classiest Con Man

James Regan swindled his way through the city's monied classes. The problem was, he seemed to believe his own lies
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10+ Master-class balloon animals by Japanese artist Masayoshi Matsumoto.

Incredibly intricate animal and insect sculptures. Matsumoto doesn’t use markers, stickers or any other supplementary material. Ever. His multi-colored animal kingdom is made purely out of blowing and twisting balloons.
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Nomadic bookseller travels all over France with his tiny library on wheels

We’ve seen a number of tiny home constructions put to all sorts of good use, but this French nomadic library on wheels is très chic. Built by tiny home specialists La Maison Qui Chemine, the Librairie Itinérante (traveling bookstore) is a custom-made tiny home built for an altruistic bookseller who travels the all over France delivering books to small villages that don’t have their own libraries or bookshops.
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What Makes The Spelling Bee So Hard

This week, 291 children, ranging from a single kindergartner to 124 eighth-graders, will assemble in National Harbor, Maryland, for the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Since 1996, young spellers have attempted to spell over 14,000 words — from abactor to zymurgy. Twenty-five percent of those words, over 3,500, have been misspelled. Oliver Roeder sifts through all 21 years’ worth of errors, looking for reasons that some of the best spellers in the world stumbled when the stakes were highest.
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The Icelandic publisher that only prints books during a full moon – then burns them

Tunglið is a tiny imprint that defies conventional business models, incinerating work that doesn’t sell immediately. Its creators explain their ‘poetic act’.
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Why Are Americans So Hostile to State-Funded Art?

On May 23, the Trump administration requested that Congress close the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, the premier government organizations for funding arts, scholarship, and culture in the United States. The NEH and the NEA, despite commanding a tiny fraction of the federal government’s budget, have long been on the GOP’s kill list, since conservatives consider them to be a complete waste of taxpayer money.
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Cerro Torre Mountain

A shot from the hike up to the base camp through the autumnal coloured forest below Cerro Torre Mountain one of the most recognisable with it's distinctive pointed peak standing 3128m high.
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Chasing the Harvest: ‘If You Want to Die, Stay at the Ranch’

In this oral history, a former sheepherder describes the loneliness and medical hardship he experienced while tending sheep in California’s Central Valley. By Heraclio Astete, with journalist Gabriel Thompson.
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Who’s the real cunt?: Dacre’s Paper

Andrew O’Hagan reviews “Mail Men: The Unauthorised Story of the ‘Daily Mail’, the Paper that Divided and Conquered Britain” by Adrian Addison.
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Trump’s Ignorance Is Radicalizing U.S. Historians

They’re in great demand by the media. But will many Americans even believe what they’re saying, or accuse them of partisan bias? By Graham Vyse. (May 3, 2017)
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Mousetrap sniffs out graffiti and alerts train staff.

Sydney Trains is using a new technology named Mousetrap to sniff out graffiti vandals and alert the police. (2015)
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91-year-old man spends 56 years building his own cathedral alone.

Former monk Justo Gallego Martinez has been constructing his own cathedral in Mejorada del Campo, Spain, since 1961. He had no prior knowledge of architecture and hadn't laid a brick in his life, yet his project currently stands 131ft tall, and acts as a wonderful reminder that faith overcomes everything.
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The remains of Brooklyn’s disappearing industrial waterfront

Graffiti artists had begun covering the empty warehouse in elaborate murals, and in 2016, a partial vacate order was placed on the buildings next door for illegal dumping of asbestos and other hazardous waste. Several other major violations were also cited in 2016 at the property’s southernmost warehouses, which had become a canvas for large-scale graffiti works. None of these violations appear to have been resolved, and the entire campus is currently being left wide open to the elements.
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Between Everywhere and Nowhere

A little review of travel literature. By Bernd Brunner.
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Ancient Chinese Medicine Blocks Sperm From Egg

It's safe, natural, has no side effects, and works — even after conception.
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10 stencil artists changing the way we look at the city.

We look at the development of stencil art and 10 street artists who helped innovate the technique, from Nick Walker to Blek le Rat.
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Kafka in Vegas

Fred Steese served more than 20 years in prison for the murder of a Vegas showman even though evidence in the prosecution’s files proved he didn’t do it. But when the truth came to light, he was offered a confounding deal known as an Alford plea. If he took it he could go free, but he’d remain a convicted killer.
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Lines of Spines

What is a library?
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Things You May Not Know About Memorial Day

From its Civil War origins to its modern-day traditions, find out more about America’s most solemn holiday.
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‘Beautiful Military Equipment’ Can’t Buy Middle East Peace

As President Trump was being feted in the palaces of the Saudi royal family after concluding a historic arms deal, Iranians were celebrating the outcome of a hard-fought election... By Mohammad Jamad Zarif in Tehran, Iran. (May 26, 1017)
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My Adventures With the Accountants of Germany

On freelancing and paying taxes in Berlin. By Vanessa Ellingham.
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What It Took to Get Impeached in the 14th Century

You basically had to sell a castle to the enemy. By Sarah Laskow.
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The Promised Land

Canada’s thirst for oil pitted against its commitment to First Nations. By Patrick Michels.
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The challenges in setting up a California single-payer system are daunting — but not insurmountable

California’s plan for its own single-payer healthcare system are unprecedentedly ambitious–but the challenges may be more political than economic. By Michael Hiltzik.
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Too many prisons make bad people worse. There is a better way.

The world can learn from how Norway treats its offenders
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‘Fiction takes its time’: Arundhati Roy on why it took 20 years to write her second novel

The author of "The God Of Small Things" talks about political activism – and why she fled India to finish her new book
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U.S. death rate from Alzheimer’s rose dramatically over 15 years. Why?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has just put out a grim report about Alzheimer’s disease in the United States. Death rates from Alzheimer’s climbed 55 percent from 1999 to 2014, CDC found, and the number of Americans afflicted is likely to rise rapidly in the coming years. About 5.5 million people 65 years and older have the disease — a wretched and fatal form of dementia that erases memories and ultimately can destroy mental and physical capacity. By 2050, that’s expected to more than double to 13.8 million people.
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The Other North Korean Threat

Assessing the capability of North Korean Cold War-era artillery and its danger to Seoul.
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The struggles of war babies fathered by black GIs

Many GIs had children with British women but under US laws black servicemen were usually refused permission to marry. So what happened to the children?
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10+ Nostalgic Portraits Of 1970s Rebel Youth Captured By High School Teacher

Before Joseph Szabo was a world renown photographer, he was a teacher at Malverne High School in Long Island. And on his first days at the job he figured that he's gonna need something special to catch the attention of his pupils. So he brought a camera into class...
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The Secret History of American Surveillance

Few remember that the origins of our modern American surveillance state were forged over 115 years ago, half a world away in the Philippine Islands. By Arian Wu. (Oct. 15, 2015)
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Air rage: why does flying make us so angry? Science says it's about class

Rise in acts of plane-related violence shed light on something bigger: modern air travel is a perfect example of a situation in which human status is highly visible
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Deadly Chetek Tornado Was Wisconsin's Longest on Record

Assisted by a drone, the NWS found tornado damage for almost 100 miles.
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The Spirit of ’40 and ’45 and ’74 and ’79 and ’97

The entire pitch of May’s snap election campaign has been predicated on a strange elision of the Britain of 1940 and the Britain of 2017. By Owen Hatherly.
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Busting the tree ring

How a landmark investigation unraveled a Washington timber-poaching gang.
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Amazon’s first bookstore in New York City sucks the joy out of buying books

Coming soon to a mall near you.
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Charging bear attacks hunter in terrifying encounter caught on video

A Canadian hunter is lucky to be alive after being attacked by a black bear. Richard Wesley was bow hunting near Fire River, Ontario, when he noticed a large black bear roaming nearby. At first, the bear seemed unfazed by Wesley's presence, but when the hunter makes a sound in an attempt to scare off the approaching bear, it charges.
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The Curious Case of the Disappearing Nuts

In California, millions of dollars' worth of almonds, walnuts, and pistachios are disappearing. Farmers are perplexed, the cops are confused, and the crooks are getting richer. We sent Peter Vigneron to the Central Valley to take a crack at the crimes.
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Mount Sinabung

Mount Sinabung spews thick ash, as seen from Brastagi, in Karo, North Sumatra province, Indonesia.May 24,17
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Why Richard Spencer Matters

Quite simply: Trump has made him matter. By Jamelle Bouie.
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This American Life

Twenty years ago, a brown-skinned boy was shot to death near the Rio Grande. What fate awaits my own son? By Sterry Butcher.
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The Dangers of Reading in Bed

In 18th-century Europe, the practice was considered a menace to life and property, but mostly to morals.
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The Russian space shuttle that never was

In a giant hangar in remote Kazakhstan, two Russian space shuttles that never made it into orbit are collecting dust.
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Getting Over

A short documentary looking at graffiti in Seattle. Featuring Perck, Aerub, Kato, Baso Fibonacci and Jesse Edwards
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A Botanist in Swedish Lapland

On the trail of Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish scientist who gave names to much of the natural world nearly 300 years ago.
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Why Poland doesn’t want refugees

An ethnically homogenous nation battles EU efforts to distribute asylum seekers.
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'The internet is broken,' says Twitter co-founder Evan Williams

Say you're driving down the road and see a car crash. Of course you look. Everyone looks. The internet interprets behaviour like this to mean everyone is asking for car crashes, so it tries to supply them.
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The Poisoned Generation

The story of a decades-long lead-poisoning lawsuit in New Orleans illustrates how the toxin destroys black families and communities alike. By Vann R. Newkirk II.
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The great digital-age swindle… and the man fighting back

He was tour manager for the Band, producer of Mean Streets… so why, at nearly 70, is Jonathan Taplin taking on Facebook and co?
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Listen to a Rare Recording of an Eyewitness Account of Lincoln’s Assassination

The Huntington Library has made a video highlighting an audio recording of an eyewitness account of that night — likely the only surviving one of its kind.
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