— Christopher Cox, features editor, New York
| If you’re wondering who is responsible for more and more of the items in your local pharmacy winding up in little plastic security boxes (known as “keepers”) or behind locked Plexiglas screens (a.k.a. “showcases”), New York’s James D. Walsh has identified the culprit: you. In a masterful bit of reporting, James traces how an item stolen by a shoplifter to pay for a drug habit makes its way to a fence who will “clean” it and then sell it online. Join him as he unpicks the multiple strands of an e-fencing kingpin’s empire in New York, including an army of boosters who raided stores throughout the city. If you’ve purchased a deeply discounted skin cream or designer shirt on Amazon or eBay, you’re an indispensable part of this process, though it’s the fences who are getting rich — one recent bust involved more than $10 million in stolen goods. They’re also the only ones doing real jail time, at least for now. |
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| Photo-Illustration: Joe Darrow; Photos: Marcus McDonald, Getty Images |
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| “You’re going to bring every homeless person to the hospital, and we’re going to fix it? There’s no room in the system.” New York’s Lisa Miller reports from a New York emergency room, where Mayor Adams’s plan to commit the homeless has little meaning. |
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| For Vulture, Lila Shapiro mingles with writers, academics, and analysts sipping $3 beers at the launch party for Parapraxis, a new magazine that revels in the recent renaissance of psychoanalysis. |
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| Why can artificial intelligence often feel like magic? Why can it also leave us feeling equally disoriented? Intelligencer’s John Herrman ruminates on what this year will hold for the future of AI. |
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