The Outline
Culture
Unfair trade
Coursing through the veins of the modern world and the modern subject alike, coffee is the spirit of exploitation in brewed form.
Transfixed by Scott Stapp’s big Christian energy
The Creed frontman offered a model of religious ostentatiousness for believers and nonbelievers alike.
Hanging on the telephone
The pandemic has turned our social lives into software.
Masks through the ages
More and more, it seems like a good idea to wear a mask when you go out in public. Here is some mask inspo for your perusal.
By Drew Millard
Area man not Joe Biden, despite tweets to the contrary
We talked to the comedian Brandon Wardell, whose recent tweets pretending to be Joe Biden became the subject of a Russiagate-style conspiracy theory.
The secret resistance behind the world’s most dangerous cheese
Sardinia’s casu marzu teems with maggots, and might eat through your stomach. Why can’t people stop eating it?
Watch now: These people’s lives are ruined
Two new documentaries, ‘Tiger King’ and ‘Dark Side of the Ring: Benoit,’ probe events both unbelievably stupid and unspeakably cruel.
What we loved this week: Digging into the many Mel Brooks, László Krasznahorkai’s infinitely winding prose, sitting under some trees
Here’s the entertainment that got us through the week of March 23, 2020.
So what are you playing right now?
Gaming is a uniquely versatile entertainment built for staying indoors — if you can spare a moment to think about anything but current events.
Well, at least there’s golf
Coronavirus disrupts our lives more and more each day, but I can still take comfort in golf, which has survived, almost but not quite unchanged.
We have already reached alarming levels of bad quarantine content
While the internet offers a support system for those practicing social distancing, some celebrities can’t help but view everyone stuck at home as a captive audience.
10 recipes for non-bakers with flour and time on their hands
Advice on taking up quarantine's hottest new hobby.
Imagine there’s no apocalypse
Movies like Clive Barker’s ‘Nightbreed’ show how the erosion of society need not mean the erosion of our shared humanity.
What we loved this week: Ben Affleck doing math, the British being spies, and our own podcasts
Here’s the entertainment that got us through the week of March 16, 2020.
The Saddening
I recently discovered two things: a term from fabric dyeing about how to drain things of their vibrancy, and an old family letter. They are somewhat related.
Fox Sports pundit Clay Travis is spreading the worst possible coronavirus advice
Reasonable Men are not helping the crisis.
Disco inferno
A fire at one of the world's only lacquer manufacturing plants calls the future of vinyl into question.
Release that shit
As we remain at home due to coronavirus, we’re all in desperate need of distraction — a new movie or video game would help.
Farewell, tour
Book events are an essential opportunity for authors to promote new work, but hundreds have been canceled due to coronavirus.
The coronavirus lockdown in Milan: “Nobody knows how long this is going to last”
It has become apparent that neither the Italian government nor the regional authority had the faintest idea of how to manage a contagion.
