I'd met Tyler of Mushrooms For My Friends a few times socially. I knew that he made a living as a mushroom forager, working for some guy who allegedly had… Read the rest of the article: Do you know the Mushroom Man who lives in Jamaica Plain?

I'm a huge fan of the Song Exploder podcast, which brings musicians to talk about the process that went into writing and recording their hit songs. Even if you're not… Read the rest of the article: Semisonic's "Closing Time" is not the bar room party song you think it is

  I'm not the kind of person who possesses the programming or IT knowledge to run my own servers and host my own email. But I can manipulate some things… Read the rest of the article: Firewalla is a simple but effective way to take control of your home network

The United States has never had a single "official" language. While English is broadly accepted accepted as the common tongue and typically used in schooling as well as government documents,… Read the rest of the article: A fascinating map of the most spoken languages in every US state besides English and Spanish

@_leilanaatry this! #foryoupage #airpods #seeya #WhatsYourStuf #officelife #makethisviral ♬ The Box – Roddy Ricch Trade an Airpod with your friend. Pop it in your ear. Use a text-to-speech program like… Read the rest of the article: A TikTok video shows a clever Airpod trick that lets students "talk" in school without getting in trouble

Once again, the FBI is putting pressure on Apple to help them break into the phone of a mass shooter. And once again, Apple has been largely resistant to the… Read the rest of the article: The FBI doesn't need Apple to give it a backdoor to encryption, because it already has all the access it needs

Color of Change, a nonprofit founded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and dedicated to social justice advocacy, and the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center just completed a new study… Read the rest of the article: A new study further confirms that most crime TV shows are good PR for cops

In the latest example of Trump's Used-Car-Salesman tactics of free-association to find any word that sticks with a listener just to close a deal, the Commander In Chief of the… Read the rest of the article: Donald Trump thinks the wheel was invented by Americans

Today, the Planters' Peanut brand announced the "death" of Mr. Peanut, the jingoistic mascot-in-a-monocle who sold his own people down the gullets of Americans for more than a century. It… Read the rest of the article: Planters Peanuts is killing off their cannibal capitalist mascot in the most capitalist way possible

I'm a musician. I'm Irish-American, and play Irish music (among other things). And I live in Boston. Naturally, St. Patrick's Day presents me with some potentially lucrative opportunities. Unfortunately, Gmail… Read the rest of the article: Gmail's "Smart Compose" feature is terrible at helping freelancers negotiate

David Lynch celebrated his 20th birthday by dropping a delightfully bizarre new short film on Netflix called WHAT DID JACK DO? The 17-minute-long murder mystery, which originally premiered at the Fondation… Read the rest of the article: David Lynch's bizarre new Netflix short is a perfect companion to this quinoa recipe

The friendly surface-level rationale behind any mass data collection via surveillance is improved efficiency through metrics. With the right amount of the data, and the right analysts working through it,… Read the rest of the article: Surveillance is the new blooming onion at Outback Steakhouse

I've been a huge fan of Elizabeth Warren since I saw her yelling at a cop during the 2012 Boston Pride Parade. I generally think that her past history as… Read the rest of the article: Why aren't more conservatives concerned about felon voting rights?

Shahab Dehghani is an Iranian citizen and college student who has been studying in Boston for the past several years. According to MassLive, he had been in the United States… Read the rest of the article: CBP went against court orders and deported an Iranian student with a fully legal presence in the country

Lest you thought the "bulletproof" backpack trend wasn't heinous and exploitative enough, Wonder Hoodie is now selling a "bulletproof" hoodie. I use "scare-quotes" here because, like most "bulletproof" products on the… Read the rest of the article: This "bulletproof" hoodie comes with a lifetime warranty

Remember when ambient music was Enya and the X-Files theme song, and you could get your favorite mood music from a 1-800 number, instead of streaming it straight to your phone?… Read the rest of the article: Get in the mood with this commercial from the 90s "Pure Moods" music collection

Cities across the US have been holding gun buyback programs since at least 1974. Most of these events have been organized by local police departments, who typically offer between $50… Read the rest of the article: A Pittsburgh church held a gun buyback in honor of MLK Day and ran out of money in 40 minutes

I'm a huge fan of the Locke & Key graphic novel series by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez. Set in the coastal town of Lovecraft, Massachusetts (changed to Matheson, MA for… Read the rest of the article: Watch the new trailer for Netflix's upcoming "Locke & Key" adaptation

CNN has the full 4-page organizing resolution for the Trump impeachment trial that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sent to the Senate on Monday. As CNN notes, the impeachment trial for… Read the rest of the article: Read Mitch McConnell's proposed rules for the Trump impeachment trial

Vanity Fair just published a new excerpt from A Very Stable Genius, the new White House insider book from Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post staffers Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker. It explores… Read the rest of the article: Trump tried to read the Constitution but it was "like a foreign language"