Rumors that former Gawker-ers (and RadarOnline-ers) Alex Balk and Choire Sicha had some sort of secret project in the works have been flying around for a while now. Turns out the rumors were true. The Awl went live today.

What if there were a website that zippily surveyed a wealth of resonant, weird, important, frightening, amusing bits of news and ideas? And what if it weren't totally clogged with reality show linkbait?

It would be a website which wasn't so invested in giving you the "counterintuitive take" that it actually stopped making sense. Dream further: What if were run by people who actually didn't care about the way we all allegedly live now? This is our little dream. And it begins here, in an extremely bare form. It might even grow.