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“It is famous for fire, but you get there by water…” And so begins the best piece I’ve read this year—a masterpiece by Kathryn Schulz about wildfires, a tragedy, and our relationship with nature. Achingly beautiful writing. “Things buzz. A hawk rises up on its invisible elevator and gets off at the 200th floor.”

“We despise them – yet we imbue them with our hopes and dreams, our dearest memories, our deepest meanings. They unlock much more than our accounts.” An wonderful bit of writing by Ian Urbina about a most mundane group of things: passwords.

For the last