The 2026 World Cup is now in full swing in 16 cities across the United States, Mexico, and Canada. In my home city, Boston, the streets are flooded with national supporters from all over the world. The Tartan Army, Scotland’s fans, have made dozens of local headlines over the past few weeks, drinking bars dry, ‘coning’ statues, among a lot of other fun stuff. The actual playing has been just as exciting, especially if you’ve been following the astronomic run that Cape Verde’s had. It is a shame

Just off the New Jersey Turnpike in Newark is a fairly nondescript building, in an industrial district on the banks of the Passaic River. It is a squat, block-like grey thing, windows facing out across a sea of concrete parking lots and gas tanks. The air is smoky, and on hot days, you can smell the mixture of natural gas, animal fat, and sewage from the other plants in the area. Surrounding it are iron walls, faced inwards, resembling an umbrella topped with barbed wire. Aside from this unusual

In the 1930s, as part of housing reforms connected to the New Deal, the newly created Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) made color-coded maps to represent perceived mortgage risks neighborhood by neighborhood. From best to worst, neighborhoods were colored green, blue, yellow, or red. Neighborhoods inhabited mainly by racial minorities (especially black people), immigrants, or the working class in general were marked red and deemed “hazardous.” Greater Boston was considered one of the cities