The April launch of the Digital Public Library of America brings the knowledge-sharing we love about local libraries to the internet.
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Some of our best online-only content from the month of April 2013.
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From the Vietnam War to credit default swaps to climate change, how American journalism brought crisis on itself.
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The editorial staff of Utne Reader nominates 36 outstanding independent publications and websites for the 2013 Utne Media Awards.
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Amidst rising
ethnic tensions over the coming Kenyan elections, one filmmaker sends his
message of healing through a well-established network of DVD pirates.
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The decline of newspapers has created countless underserved “news deserts” in need of coverage. Through a cooperative model, the Banyan Project aims to help.
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Taking a cue form Martin Luther King, activists like Terry Messman have harnessed the potential of narrative to guide struggle and illuminate solutions.
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While the real you is petty and vaguely racist, the Facebook version of you endorses multicultural organizations and believes in life as a shared path.
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Representations of Africa in western journalism tend to obscure moral ambiguities and nuance in favor of simplified stories and objectifying compassion narratives.
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For a full decade, Creative Commons has been at the center of a movement to make digital culture open and accessible.
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What the history of digital piracy tells us about intellectual property, copyright law, and the digital pirates of today.
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In this ode to New Orleans’ Times-Picayune newspaper, Chris Rose unearths the implications of moving from print to online publication.
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Utne Reader Visionary Alexis Pauline Gumbs considers what it is possible to know about the most famous Black women alive today.
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After 30 years, the founder and publisher of Orion magazine steps down.
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When Martha Payne began chronicling
the paucity of her school lunches on her blog NeverSeconds, she was not prepared to become a
social media star.
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Even as states clamp down on immigrant rights and Washington steps up deportations, immigrant rights activism offers some hope for meaningful change.
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Renewable hotspots, Vietnam 2.0, and American political history in 74 seconds.
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Satirical architecture, middle class illusions, and how Ecuador is saving a rainforest.
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Life after the games, the hidden cost of beef, and some hopeful signs in environmental activism.
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Before Hurricane Katrina hit, Lakeview, New Orleans was described as an idyllic neighborhood filled with nice houses and an educated, hard-working community.
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Southern secession, political sandwiches, and George Washington's dirty election.
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A new project aims to redefine the American road trip, plus how to minor in cycling, and some good news on carbon emissions.
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Latino activism, Batman's fascism, Rudyard Kipling, and other stuff you may have missed this week.
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The demand for biofuels is bad news for poor farmers in Guatemala.
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Why Colorado's cows just won't explode properly, plus Mark Twin's delicious sarcasm.
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This link collection includes sexist breakfast cereal, canine brain scans, and why bilingualism is so awesome.
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This link collection includes panning for gold in the cosmos, postmodern playgrounds, and the lost spirituality of enjoyment.
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This week's collection includes award-winning Tweets, your iPad's big fat carbon footprint, and the story behind all those bodies in Ben Franklin's basement.
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A cybersecurity bill limits freedom and causes public outcry.
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This link collection includes Google's proposed paywall, toothpick San Francisco, and the charms of our most beloved sociopaths...
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Laws on digital privacy largely predate the Internet. We need to rethink them...
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This link collection includes stories on American education, guerrilla gardening, and what the Titanic has to do with modern radio...
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Eric Utne shares his advice to the new editorial staff of “Utne Reader,” from straying neither left nor right in coverage to capturing emerging culture.
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Tree rings reveal a tree’s lifespan and growth cycles, but a new record player can translate the tree slices into piano music.
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The David Reinhardt Trio explores new territory in contemporary jazz guitar on an album as soulful as it is rapturous.
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Ana Tijoux explores her personal politics through vibrant funk grooves and sizzling R&B beats on a new album, “La Bala.”
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Trampled by Turtles’ new album, “Stars and Satellites,” expands the band’s emotional range and potentially their fan base, beyond their signature punk-tempo bluegrass.
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Lady bloggers just can’t catch a break. Whether they’re writing about politics, pop culture, or what they’re wearing, women must endure disparagement from a broad range of critics. It seems they have become a screen on which to project ideas
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This week's Crockpot is on social media, linguistic urban legends, and what happened when NOAA tried to document all those heat wave records from the Midwest...
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This link collection includes evolution and politics, the Easter Bunny, and awesome Bonsai trees...
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A new documentary looks at the violence and repression surrounding the 2008 RNC, through the eyes of two activists accused of “domestic terrorism.”
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A new documentary on Pruitt-Igoe, one of the most infamous housing projects in U.S. history, explores the institutional racism behind American public housing.
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The Loneliest Planet, Julia Loktev’s new art film rich in breathtaking landscapes, explores a young couple’s journey through the Caucasus Mountains.
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This link collection includes lab coats, a French cemetery, and the first trans-global automobile race...
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This week’s link collection includes spooky brainwaves, Las Vegas sprawl, and radioactive chandeliers...
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Just a few years after the London Times and New York Newsday lost big on experiments with digital subscriptions, paywalls are going up again, bringing issues of practicality and ethics in journalism once again to the forefront.
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This week’s link collection includes bottom-dwelling sea robots, 300-million-year-old forest, and insightful insomnia...
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Instead of clinging to static political boundaries, maps can illustrate changing forms of interaction across traditional barriers.
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This week’s link collection includes a Canadian whiskey fungus, tortured writers, and refrigerator rejecters...
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The underappreciated innovators of storefront display
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How documentary filmmaking set the stage for reality TV
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This week’s link collection includes the death of fairytales, old-timey pawn shops, and parasite farms...
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This week’s link collection includes illegal baby names, Jewish dentists, and cyber-gardening...
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Buffalo Moon delivers surf rock at its best in this album
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Check out this soulful, occasionally comedic album from Stew and the Negro Problem
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Kate Bush does some of her best storytelling in this winter-themed album
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This week’s link collection includes Charles Bukowski in California, presidential grandchildren, and writing advice from George Orwell...
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This week’s link collection includes a Wi-Fi superhero, solar flares, and the art of penguin-eating...
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This week’s link collection includes the allure of the robot dance, floating animal preserves, and the Doomsday Clock...
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Twenty years ago, the average fashion model weighed 8% less than the average woman. Today, she weighs 23% less and meets the Body Mass Index physical criteria for anorexia....
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This week’s link collection includes an intro lesson on primary elections, musical flooring, and the big business of communion wafers...
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This week’s link collection includes hyperpolyglots, Comet Lovejoy, the problem with movie theaters, and more...
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This week’s link collection includes bike lanes made of trash, literary mixtapes, and spelunking for wimps...
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Revisit five of the best blogs that we gleaned from the alternative press this year...
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Norway’s national hero shows what it takes to bare all...
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An open letter from a Guatemalan reporter on living life under the gun...
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This week’s Utne Reader Crockpot includes orphaned amusement parks, the 1 percent’s headquarters, the psychology of dictatorship, and more.
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This week’s link collection includes Occupy D.C., buying elections, and reasons to not self-publish...
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This week’s link collection includes the least influential people alive, bisexuality, the CIA’s secret weapon, and more...
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Five nonprofits to be thankful for this Thanksgiving…
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This week’s link collection includes the “Twilight Belt” of America, the history of stigmata, the MIT Mood Meter, and more...
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Some of the best stuff from the Twitter feeds we follow...
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This week’s link collection includes taking a gun to happy hour, honey that’s not honey, The Lorax, and more...
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Women bloggers open the door to a chorus of commenters howling about their opinions, their appearance, and their sexuality….
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Some of the best stuff from the Twitter feeds we follow...
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This week’s link collection includes lit from OWS, the global black market, our meaningless national motto, and more...
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Facebook refuses to take down rape joke pages, even though it monitors and removes other content it finds offensive, from anti-Semitic pages to photos of breastfeeding mothers. Why does violence against women get a free pass?...
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This week’s link collection includes the secret life of Charles Dickens, the new food commandments, a wooden necktie, and more...
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The tales we tell ourselves could change everything...
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This week’s link collection includes old band T-shirts, Iceland’s midnight sun, Willa Cather, and more...
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This week’s link collection includes fiscal gladiator Ron Paul, Cowpocalypse, 100 Abandoned Houses, and more...
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Two magazines that we’re dying to tell you about: Slake and Sampsonia Way...
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This week’s link collection includes the Occupied Wall Street Journal, Gibson Guitars’ sour Tea Party note, and David Bowie in your wallet...
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This week’s collection includes Rick Perry’s “slicked up trashmouth,” dreamy male librarians, and Miami’s Compost Mobile...
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Instead giving you a shotgun and a mission to kill everything in sight, a new videogame asks you to capture video footage of battlefield skirmishes in war-ravaged countries...
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A new collection of essays about the causes and effects of terror is a must read, particularly after the media blitz that accompanied the tenth anniversary of 9/11...
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Links from around the web, including the most hilarious typo of all time, the triumph of new-age medicine, and more.
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This week's link collection includes 50 Documentaries to see before you die, super fathers (with 150 children), a Domino's on the moon, and more...
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This week: The Kama Sutra, the Russian hospital system, a high-tech spitball gun, and more...
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This week’s link collection includes the dark energy of the brain, a 105-year-old investment banker, movie clichés, and more...
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Whether in polite conversation or a passionate argument, political dialogue should challenge your preconceptions and prejudices...
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A guide to concise obfuscation for public relations professionals...
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If you thought you were getting your news from a journalist, think again...
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The events of September 11, 2001, were understood, by and large, by the real-time coverage on TV. Now, two Internet archivists have collected 3,000 hours of international TV news from that day and the days following...
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This week’s collection of links includes an augmented reality tattoo, a slow-motion owl, blogging from prison, and more...
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Is sex columnist Dan Savage a shock jock, a sagacious ethicist, or both?...
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This week’s link collection includes fast fashion, the art of busking, and Ken Kesey’s psychedelic school bus ride...
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This week’s collection includes Virginia Woolf’s nephew, Arizona’s new war on terror, and sour milk...
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This week's link collection includes the skinniest house in the world, natural playscapes, musings on eating human placenta, and more...
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This week’s collection includes sex objects, urinals for women, and Christopher Walken...
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This week’s collection includes evil horoscopes, robot wars, and the backlash against multiculturalism...
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Can 10-hour-long YouTube videos and 1,000-year-long songs cure our media overconsumption?...
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According to the former NY governor the facts in the News Corp. scandal have already violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and therefore the Department of Justice needs to investigate...
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Negah-e-Zan is Kabul’s first magazine fighting for women’s empowerment...
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This week: green scams, dirty water, toxic strawberrys, and more...
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This week’s link collection includes writing in exile, wastefully informative infographics, and Fink Ployd...
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Utne Reader launches a social-curated real-time magazine to accompany a cleaner, more user-friendly site layout...
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This week’s link collection includes Billy Collins Action Poetry, 10 ways to reduce food waste, and Sarah Palin’s remarkably lucid prose...
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Oliver Miller wrote 10 articles every night for 10 months for AOL. They paid him 8 cents per word...
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This week’s link collection includes anti-union employee training videos, Fox News’ race-baiting, and an ad on a strand of hair...
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A streetwise sociologist guides reporters through the drug underworld...
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This week’s link collection includes hilarious exit-interviews, a naked travel writer in Berlin, and a slow-motion landslide...
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The word seminal is thrown around a lot these days: a seminal band, a seminal book, a seminal figure, a seminal work. But to me, seminal conjures mostly one thing: semen…
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“The muscles of journalism are weakening and the muscles of PR are bulking up—as if they were on steroids,” says New York Times reporter David Barstow. . . .
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This week’s link collection includes amphibious ice cream, Glenn Beck’s publishing imprint, and ending the war on drugs...
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This week’s link collection includes diaper eating mushrooms, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s birthday, cool posters from Amsterdam, and more…
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This week: farms in the desert, the shower curtain effect, the apocalypse, and more…
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