Though it is currently the 7th most visited site in the world (and 4th in the US), it’s easy to underestimate the sheer scale of Reddit, the self-styled “front page of the internet”. That scale, and its anarchic traits, have made it the front line in figuring out what is acceptable online behaviour. This insightful and often darkly funny piece meets the people trying to draw the lines.
A profile of three of the last polio sufferers in the US using an iron lung. The piece examines what life is like spent in one of these contraptions, used in a medical context for nearly 100 years.
Our election special provides a range of pieces from different publications on the coming week’s UK election – offering information, analysis and opinion from different viewpoints. We’ll keep adding noteworthy pieces that are published in the coming days.
A sociologist spent 18 months living with gangs in Chicago fighting bitterly violent local turf wars, and simultaneously trying to make it big with rap tracks and on social media.
A story looking at the professionals hired by wives in China to deal with their husbands’ mistresses.
The remarkable story of the shipworm, a wood eating mollusk that has plagued mariners for hundreds of years, and has had a resurgence due to a variety of factors including the large quantities of debris washed out to sea by the 2011 Japanese tsunami.
A story looking at the sheer complexity and scale involved in designing the floating cities that make up modern cruise ships. http://bit.ly/wired-cruise
A piece revisiting the alternative virtual world Second Life, which is still surviving and even generating significant revenues, despite receding from popular consciousness in the last decade.
The story of Nasa’s evocatively named Operation IceBridge.