1 – The Truth About Dentistry – Ferris Jabr for The Atlantic

"It’s much less scientific — and more prone to gratuitous procedures — than you may think."

2 – Always On – L. M. Sacasas for Real Life

““If you tell people how they can sublimate,” the psychologist Harry Stack Sullivan once quipped, “they can’t sublimate.” Likewise, if you perpetually involve people in the work of becoming themselves, they will never be themselves.”

3 – Michael Jordan Has Not Left The Building – Wright Thompson for ESPN

"As he turns 50, MJ is wondering whether there are any more asses to kick"

4 – Why the Depth Year Was My Best Year – Raptitude

"Towards the end of last year I proposed an idea that unexpectedly caught fire: what if, for a whole year, you stopped acquiring new things or taking on new pursuits. Instead, you return to abandoned projects, stalled hobbies, unread books and other neglected intentions, and go deeper with them than you ever have before."

5 – New Feelings: Screen Protectiveness – Suzannah Showler for Real Life

"Our devices contain evidence of our selves that we wish didn’t exist"

6 – What Happens When Techno-Utopians Actually Run a Country – Darren Loucaides for Wired

"Direct democracy! Universal basic income! ... Fascism? The inside story of Italy’s Five Star Movement and the cyberguru who dreamed it up."

7 – How SoundCloud Rap Took Over Everything – Carrie Battan for GQ

"The trendy DIY teen hip-hop genre went from a goofy punch line to the preposterously lucrative engine driving a whole new golden age in the music biz. But, wow, is it messy."

8 – The unnatural ethics of AI could be its undoing – Tom Whyman for The Outline

"Algorithms are so good at racism that it will hopefully become impossible to ignore."

9 – The most powerful person in Silicon Valley – Katrina Brooker for Fast Company

"Billionaire Masayoshi Son–not Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Mark Zuckerberg–has the most audacious vision for an AI-powered utopia where machines control how we live. And he’s spending hundreds of billions of dollars to realize it. Are you ready to live in Masa World?"

10 – Is Sunscreen the New Margarine? – Rowan Jacobsen for Outside

"Current guidelines for sun exposure are unhealthy and unscientific, controversial new research suggests—and quite possibly even racist. How did we get it so wrong?"

11 – Tunnel Vision – Henry Grabar for Slate

"Chicago tried to dig its way out of urban flooding decades before climate change made it a national crisis. Did the city, and its imitators, pick the wrong solution?"

12 – Dirty dealing in the $175 billion Amazon Marketplace – Josh Dzieza for The Verge

"Where people used to mostly game Amazon’s platform to rank higher, Stine says, now they game it to take each other out."

13 – Resolved: Debate is stupid – Aisling McCrea for The Outline

"But any form of debate is inherently flawed. The aim of debate is not to provide a detailed, cogent, well-sourced answer to the question at hand. The aim of debate is to be the most convincing, not the smartest, and anyone who’s good at debating knows this."

14 – The Rapid Rise and Sudden Fall of Tekashi 6ix9ine – Ali Watkins and Joe Coscarelli for The New York Times

"With brash stunts and offensive overtures, Mr. Hernandez amassed a curious legion of followers. His first viral “moment,” he recalled, was an Instagram photo of himself on a city street, wearing a robelike sweatshirt emblazoned with racial and sexual slurs. He eventually had the number 69, with its sexual connotation, tattooed on his body more than 200 times."

15 – What a brandless brand is selling you – Will Partin for The Outline

"What exactly is it about our present moment that makes brandless-ness attractive to consumers and financiers alike? Is the seeming success of a company like Brandless a genuine sign of dissatisfaction with our overly-branded world, or just a cynical elaboration of a familiar logic? Will consumers beholden to branded goods ever defect to so-called brandless ones? And, if they do, what does that portend for branding?"