Read the best stories we published this year

The consensus is that it’s been a rough year. We were white-knuckled as we rode through the roller coaster election cycle, losing Prince and David Bowie, witnessing escalating events in Standing Rock and a summer of bloody violence. Even the Olympic Games were odd, with sexism and lies. But at Fusion—where the mission is to amplify underrepresented voices—we had our work cut out for us, and we’re really proud of the great pieces our writers and editors produced.

Here are sixteen of the best stories we published in 2016:

How an internet mapping glitch turned a random Kansas farm into a digital hell, by Kashmir Hill

The quiet racism behind the white female Trump voter, by Katie McDonough

What it’s really like to be black on ‘The Bachelor’, by Molly Fitzpatrick

How I learned to orgasm after sex reassignment surgery, by Samantha Allen

Young, black, and internet famous: How this power couple conquered Vine and Instagram, by Kevin Roose

Welcome to Yellowbrick, a ‘rehab’ for stuck millennials that attempts to turn them into adults, by Molly Osberg

Your favorite Harambe memes are racist. It’s time to stop using them, by Charles Pulliam-Moore

How a death row inmate who’s been in prison since he was 15 finds meaning in daily life, by Casey Tolan

How Airbnb piggybacked on a communist program to make Cuba its fastest growing market ever, by Tim Rogers

Nearly all mass shooters have this one thing in common, by Taryn Hillin

Get rich or die vlogging: The sad economics of internet fame, by Gaby Dunn

On Prince, blackness, and sexuality, by Dodai Stewart

Queer Selena wants notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio bidi bidi gone gone, by Jorge Rivas

Bollywood’s shameful history of blackface, by Isha Aran

Nameplate necklaces: This shit is for us, by Collier Meyerson

The pyramid at the end of the world, by Elmo Keep

Ten more links we also highly recommend:

• Transgender women are facing a devastating medical crisis—and no one’s talking about it
• A timeline of the year of resistance at Standing Rock
• ‘Uncovered,’ our series on middle-class twenty-somethings
• HIV Patients Are Dying in Venezuela Due to Worsening Medicine Shortages
• This is what it will be like to protest in 2020, when the state is watching your every move
• When you want to be into BDSM but it’s too soon because you’re black
• These undocumented women are graduating from Harvard—but immigration policy could ruin their futures
• I’m a progressive feminist. So why can’t I leave the Catholic Church?
• Why young people see taking a vacation from work as nothing but a trap
• Bodyhackers are all around you, they’re called women