Benjamin Scott

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The conversation stalled as we both caught sight of a dark shadow, a bird of prey wheeling high above the hills. I watched the last of the cigar burn down to the warden’s fingernails. As long as the thing still sent up that fragile tendril of smoke, we could continue to stand there in the warm light of the sun. Only the throbbing heat of the ember getting too close snapped him back. He ground the stub into the wall unceremoniously before turning away and sealing us back in.

Roc Morin on New Hampshire Prison Warden Rick Van Winkler (Vice, May 2014)

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From the Vault: Hastings on Berghdahl

The retrospective downward spiral, delusion and death of Hastings gives an aded layer of pathos to his compelling portrait of an introspective, intense and idealistic kid from the heartland just looking for escape. Pushing beyond the headlines and punditry we glimpse the human being beneath in all of his complexity, a boy, according to his father, who "was living in a novel." Chris McCandless with an M16. (Rolling Stone, June 2012)

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After the Goldrush

Willy Lomans abound in Gideon Lewis-Krause's story of one startup and its founders’s struggle to find funding and keep the dream alive. For all of the talk of changing the world, the Silicon Valley Ubermensch still hasn't disrupted the art of bullshit. (Wired)

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page 93 on "The Irony Epidemic"

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The Return of Geopolitics

From Walter Russell Mead: Obama’s grand vision comes crashing down in the Middle East, Crimea and Asia. In the age of the statistician-cum-pundit, the accumulation and use of power in geopolitics remains qualitative, subjective and unavoidably important. The jury is still out, but Mead offers the conservative argument in the major fault line of US foreign policy. (Foreign Affairs)

Alternative take defending Obama from John Ikenberry here.

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Canary in the Coal Mine

Lanier looks like a Matrix-era Wachowski brother, grew up in the Bay Area, is an accomplished musician and technologist. His two books not only try to analyze our current political moment but, unlike so many others, actually propose solutions, however ludicrous they may seem. (Salon.com)

For more: this New Yorker profile on the heels of You Are Not a Gadget 

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If He Hollers Let Him Go

Rachel Kadzi Ghanash // The Believer

In search of Dave Chapelle. Reminiscent of “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” in technique if not in style as Ghanash speaks with those orbiting Chapelle’s star without ever making contact with the man himself. A mix of biography, intellectual history and post-mortem on the comedian’s turn away from the spotlight. Guest appearance by Dick Gregory. 

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Ask them what they know and they will say that making suits is all they know how to do. What distinguishes them, what makes them the last of their kind, is the belief that this knowledge is sufficient, that a suit is a vessel capacious enough to accommodate a man's highest aspirations, that everything in a man's heart and head can find its way into his tailor's hands, which have the knowledge, which do the work.

From The Vault: Tom Junod's "The Last Tailors" Esquire, September 1, 2005

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Bill Rauhauser, Detroit

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Gary Clark Jr. talks Austin Roots and Stevie Ray Vaugn

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Nathan For You

Canadian absurdist revels in the awkward. Culture writer Mike Powell profiles the latest Tim and Eric production (Grantland)

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Read it here

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A Man in Full

Schlubby Trevor Day burnout gets Amazon development deal, parties with A-Listers in Cannes. Demi-fame based on  136k Twitter and  493k Instagram followers. He is: The Fat Jewish (NY Post)