The Archive
Apocrypha
the ground breaks too so please tell me my name even if my fullmouth stings of feathers the loudest thing the …
Crisis of confidence
Individual accountability and collective reconciliation
This article is the fifth installment of a month-long series, “Through the Muck,” tackling climate change in Rhode Island. Climate change …
Simulated Bodies
How virtual physicalities are changing the landscape of medical education
Medicine is intimate. Beginning from our very first breath, most likely taken inside a hospital room under the watchful eye of …
Top Down
An examination of the tradition of half-staff
Mark Barnes, Chief Property Manager of the Rhode Island Capitol Campus, might get the email from the Governor’s Office at 3:00 …
Week in Compassionate Capitalism
STEM or: HOW GIRL SCOUTS LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB content warning: military violence At last month’s Macy’s …
Freedom for Whom?
The reflexive photographs of Danny Lyon and the stakes of critical curation
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Sit-In, Atlanta, 1963 Who’s the real Danny Lyon? The year was 1969 and Lyon was an …
Chinga las Armas
SOA, Plan Merida, and how the US funds gun violence in Mexico
December 10 marks the 12th year anniversary of the War on Drugs in Mexico. As of November 2018, 250,000 people are …
A (RI)sing tide
How coastal managers and local leaders are grappling with sea level rise in the Ocean State
This article is the fourth installment of a month-long series, “Through the Muck,” tackling climate change in Rhode Island. On a …
Invenergy
The last stand of RI's fossil fuel zombie
This article is the third installment of a month-long series, “Through the Muck,” tackling climate change in Rhode Island. Governor Gina …
Talking Heads
Sinclair and rising conservative influence in RI media
Last March, Frank Coletta and Alison Bologna, anchors at WJAR, the NBC affiliate station in Rhode Island, gave a speech on …
Week in Sad Food
1-800-BUTTERBALL “Alexa, how do I cook a perfect turkey?” This year, for the first time ever, you may have heard this …
The Absence
Margaret Boyle woke up and her left incisor was loose. In her dream, she was crushed under a giant unspecified citrus …
Glass House, Shattered
A walkthrough of Philip Johnson’s famed residence
We visited Philip Johnson’s Glass House on a chilly Friday morning in autumn. After multiple failed attempts to reserve a visit …
Safety First — But Wait, There’s More
Juggling multiple interests in the improvements to Kennedy Plaza
Although plans to improve the downtown area have been a topic of conversation in Providence over the past decade, the City …
Ask For Something Sweet
content warning: weight and eating issues Pie or cake? he asks. Cake, you say. He raises his eyebrows. The next afternoon, …
Brief Elemental Things
A conversation with essayist, editor, and translator Eliot Weinberger
Robert Atwan likened the essay form to a solitary, restless individual; Montaigne believed essays could only be written in paces; Hilton …
My Finest Jacket
Reimagining the placenta’s place in our birth narrative
Though addressing the experience of all placenta-bearing folks, I refer to mothers in this piece using she/her pronouns for the sake …
A Lack of Agency
Climate change tests the brittle Rhode Island bureaucracy
This article is the second installment of a month-long series, “Through the Muck,” tackling climate change in Rhode Island. Last December, …
Muckrakers
Forty years ago, student journalists uncovered records of police brutality in Providence
content warning: graphic descriptions of police brutality In 1980, Steve Kohn returned to the offices of the Providence Human Relations Commission, …
Gross National Cool
Objects I found in Tokyo
While researching my trip to Japan, I was surprised to find that “Gross National Cool” was an actual governmental concern. A …
The Life of Lorimer
Lorimer was a zesty youth. His baker made him with lemon rind and bitter vanilla. The lemon was shriveled and white-yellow …
A Black Mirror
Cognitive bias in machine learning
“These systems are simply mirrors for a biased society,” says Dr. Jerry Kaplan, a professor at Stanford University, speaking about deep …
Four More
OnceChildhood Dismissing worries quickly—like a professional palm reader, you never and always talk to me about bees, their outlines wasted on …
Four Poems
Harmony in Red I cut my foot at the museum, Walked around afraid Trailing blood I looked at the wall between …
Slowing Food
Using and watching Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
Being a foodie is most definitely entwined in my DNA. My mother famously recalls only eating noodles for about two months …
Week in Double Deals
Flushing the Swamp Never in the history of electoral politics has the accusation “My opponent is full of shit” been used …
Tough Love
I came around to Angela Merkel. Now she´s on her way out.
Germany’s historically early exit from the World Cup this year wasn’t the summer’s only national tragedy. Almost immediately following the Nationalelf’s …
Building my Ofrenda
Embodying ancestral knowledge in a scientific dystopia
Though Día de los Muertos is now over, I often think about the ofrendas, or altars, that my mom sets up …
Artificial Sweeteners
Providence navigates urban development
Last week the Ordinance Committee of the Providence City Council voted favorably on a bill that would increase the building height …
No Vacancy
Worrisome real estate trends and the fate of Providence's abandoned properties
The collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market in 2007 sent Rhode Island’s home prices plummeting and forced thousands of families from …
Through the Wire
Competing visions for a carbon-free electricity grid
This article is the first installment of a month-long series,“Through the Muck,” tackling climate change in Rhode Island. Everyone in Rhode …
LEARNING FACES
The uncanny horror of deepfake videos
“Will ‘Deepfakes’ Disrupt the Midterm Election?” reads a recent headline from Wired. Two weeks ago, the New York Times published an …
WHY AM I LONELY FOR LONESOME LOVE?
Emotion and spectacle in Mitski’s Be the Cowboy
I remember a particular moment from my first night on Brown's campus this September when my entire body was enveloped by …
Three Poems
here we collide Worry me at the tail edge of torn seams, Locked into conversation with the neighbors again About the …
The People’s Council
Rachel Miller reimagines Providence politics
On the night of the 2018 Rhode Island primaries, Rachel Miller, a candidate for Providence’s Ward 13 City Council seat, had …