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We’re Back to the Actually Internet

Fact-checking is out, “Community Notes” are in.

How to Define Old Age

Why would the World Health Organization want to call “old age” a disease?

How the Ivy League Broke America

The meritocracy isn’t working. We need something new.

What Parents of Boys Should Know

Daughters tend to receive higher levels of affection and patience at home than sons. But the sons might need it more.

A Trip Into Alaska’s Copper River Valley in 1902

At the end of the 19th century, an estimated 100,000 people joined the Klondike Gold Rush, seeking their fortunes in the interior of Alaska and Canada’s Yukon territory. Many gold seekers who chose the arduous path inland from Alaska’s port of Valdez also discovered rich copper deposits along the way. The U.S. Army soon started work on the Valdez Trail, which would become the main route between the mining fields and Valdez. Several competing businesses rushed to build a railroad along the route. In 1902, one of those groups sent a team of photographers, the Miles Brothers, to document the town, the growing trail, the landscape, its newly arrived residents, and Alaska Natives. Prints of these photographs were collected into an album I was able to digitize recently at the U.S. National Archives, giving us a remarkable glimpse into daily life along a rough trail into the Alaskan interior, nearly 125 years ago.

The Great Cousin Decline

Families are shrinking. But the weirdest family role is a vital one.

The Texas County Where ‘Everybody Has Somebody in Their Family’ With Dementia

And many people with the condition are cared for at home.

Lighthouse Parents Have More Confident Kids

Sometimes, the best thing a parent can do is nothing at all.

Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber

A series of purposely brutalizing psychological experiments may have confirmed Theodore Kaczynski’s still-forming belief in the evil of science while he was in college.

The Most Infamous Narcissist in Literary History Gets a Smartphone

A new stage production of The Picture of Dorian Gray conveys the cost of posturing online.

A Defense Against Gaslighting Sociopaths

If you can recognize their signature move, then forewarned is forearmed.

What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life?

“Our boyfriends, our significant others, and our husbands are supposed to be No. 1. Our worlds are backward.”

How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days

He used the constitution to shatter the constitution.