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Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton’s Blog: In Search of the Last Great Google Street View
19th century cartographer, meet 21st century mapping.
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God Only Knows: A Conversation About BioShock Infinite
The most impressive videogame of the year is also the most flawed.
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You Know Nothing, Edward Snowden
“The question about Snowden is less, ‘Is he right?’ than ‘Who is this guy?’”
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Letters from Camp Pokomoonshine
“I will not, under any circumstances, be leaving for Camp Pokomoonshine tomorrow.”
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Car and Driver
What does it mean to own a car these days?
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WASD a Mile in Another Person’s Shoes
Mainichi looks like a throwback role-playing game but plays like an avant-garde experiment of how we express and internalize our feelings.
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A History of Swimming Strokes
“Freestyle overhand swimming, the most popular style of swimming, was so unwieldy and dumb for so long.”
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What’s in the Candy Box?
This might be the most unassuming, strangely delightful role-playing game ever.
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Recommendations, 6/7
This week we like tech blogs, summer jams, and literature in our inbox.
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Who’s Speaking: NBA Player or My Cousin Mike?
A quiz just in time for the NBA Finals.
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Having “The Talk” About Cronuts
I think it’s time we talk about what happens when a croissant and a doughnut love each other very much.
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Almost Fameless
After starring in a viral “fail” video, reflections on a brush with anonymous, embarrassing internet fame.
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Road to Nowhere
In the films Cosmopolis and Holy Motors, David Cronenberg and Leos Carax reinvent the metaphor of the road.
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Manic Pixel Dream Girl, Part 4
The conclusion to Elizabeth Simins’s comics series about coming out as a female gamer.
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Whiteness of Being
Traveling in Southeast Asia reveals a problematic desire for white skin.
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Notification
“Notification: you are unimportant.”
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Planting Starseeds
Starseed Pilgrim turns a repetitive, frustrating exercise into a game of discovery and wonder.
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We Watched the New Season of Arrested Development
The Bureau Staff and friends have many feelings about the return of the much-beloved sitcom.
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Goodnight Hotmail, You Sweet Prince
A eulogy for no one’s favorite email service.
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We Listened to Random Access Memories
Is the new Daft Punk record the ultimate internet album?
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Three Questions for Timmy the Galaxy
A quick chat with one of the universe’s brighter galaxies.
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Weapon of Mass Crustacean
“Perhaps some psychologist can tell me why it feels so good to inhabit a colossal cosmic crustacean and wreak havoc across the solar system. But I don’t particularly care why.”
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Notes from the Bigoted Ornithologist Association
Presenting new research from the most obstinately intolerant scholars of birds.
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Recommendations, 5/10
This week: eating chocolate, mediocre genre TV, radio plays, and absurdist 3D animation.
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The Garden State Soundtrack Will Change Your Life
“Indie music never belonged to anyone, but at least in the early ’00s, it was easier to pretend it did.”
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The Metamorphosis: On Amanda Bynes’s Twitter
“Watching the videos Bynes posts on her Twitter doesn’t feel like watching someone giving a poor performance. It feels like watching someone lose her mind.”
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Progress
So this is growing up.
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Some Luck
“The transgender community is all about hierarchies: how well you pass, how much surgery you’ve had, how much strife you’ve been through. The age you came out at is just another ladder to count rungs on.”
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Sam the Answer Man
An advice columnist goes to desperate lengths to reconnect with an ex-girlfriend.
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Border Cops to the North of Me, Border Cops to the South, Here I Am
“The mustache cop had the idea that I was a suicidal drug smuggling weirdo on a dark mission to Canada.”