Category: Miscellaneous

Posted on by

The Hobo Handbook

The name of the book is a ruse. Camping on Low or No Dollars, the dingy cover page reads. An older edition bears a similarly anodyne title: From Birmingham to Wendover. Both are a misdirection, intended to keep the wrong people—cops, journalists, nosy normies like me—from realizing what they’re holding. The Crew Change Guide is a set of best practices and guidelines for hopping freight trains anywhere in the U.S. and Canada. A “crew change” refers to a train’s personnel shift, a brief window of opportunity for those brave enough to take it. In the heist movie, this is that ten-second gap after the night watchman clocks out and before his replacement takes over. For a train hopper, it’s a rare chance to clamber up a wagon undetected. Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on by

The Polish Resistance Hero Who Infiltrated Auschwitz

In September 1940, the Polish underground resistance fighter Witold Pilecki undertook a monumental act of bravery: He volunteered to allow the Nazi forces occupying Poland to arrest him, in the expectation that they would incarcerate him in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on by

NaNoWriMo is No Mo

The nonprofit behind National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, has announced that it is shuttering. The closure follows a period of turbulence which included disputes over the organization’s stance on AI and its content moderation, as well as what NaNoWriMo described in an announcement as financial challenges. NaNoWriMo was launched by Chris Baty in 1999 as an online community centered around its flagship annual monthlong novel-writing challenge, in which participants attempted to write 50,000 in 30 days. It continued to grow year over year—at its height, hundreds of thousands of writers around the globe participated in the challenge, facilitated by scores of volunteers who oversaw online forums and local gatherings—and became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2005. Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on by

Meta Seeks to Block Further Sales of Ex-Employee’s Scathing Memoir

Meta won a legal victory on Wednesday against a former employee who published an explosive, tell-all memoir, as an arbitrator temporarily prohibited the author from promoting or further distributing copies … The filing did not appear to limit the publisher, Flatiron Books, or its parent company, Macmillan, from continuing publication of the memoir. Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)