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Issue no. 27
March 2015

Venus in Furs

Look, it’s our first-ever fashion issue!

But the work arrayed under the slightly furtive label, “Venus in Furs,” amounts to nothing like the cosmetics kits of upmarket, style-addled journalism. We’re mindful, instead, that the fashion industry’s main proposition—confusing clothing with personal worth—has been a longstanding affront to women, not to mention a handy insignia for encoding and regulating the rules of social class.

The general drabness
 of American attire is also something to consider. We strap into the uniforms that come with our corporate cubicles, and on weekends don our baseball caps, flannels, sneakers, and mom jeans—the studied, casual look that hipsters have ironically lifted from the working class and that fashion pundits are wont to call “Normcore.”

Ho well, like the boy said (more or less): the empire has nothing to wear.

Herein we also give you a manifesto for female supremacy; some bridge-burning recollections of what it meant to be a “Yahoo”; a peek at the mindfulness industry; the torrid love affair between venture capital and the media; the death of tech criticism as we knew it; and remembrances of Joe Bageant, Philip Roth, Karl Kraus, Joseph Brodsky, The New Republic, the city of Buffalo, and the very concept of satire.

Oh, and so much more—some crisp and colorful new art, stories, and poems, too. Try it all on for size, why don’t you.

Table of Contents


Intros and Manifestos


Salvos


Odds and Ends


Poems


Stories


Ancestors