“I would say that Donald Trump’s views on women’s ideal roles are not shared by most people,” —Alice Eagly, a psychology professor in Illinois.
“Being a jazz musician you have to be a Jedi,” —J.D. Allen, a saxophonist, on the intellectualism of jazz.
“There will always be enough white kids. Most of them will never experience what it’s like being the only one,” —Rashaun Martin, who is black, on going to an elite, mostly white Boston high school.
Guy Clark, one of the finest songwriters in Texas country history and a Nashville legend, has died. A Grammy Award–winning artist, Clark wrote songs that were recorded by Johnny Cash, Vince Gill, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, and many other country-western stars. Among his 13 studio albums were scores of outlaw hits, including “L.A. Freeway” and “Desperados Waiting for a Train.”
My very favorite Guy Clark song is a ballad that he recorded in 1976 with Emmylou Harris and Waylon Jennings. (By pedigree alone, it’s got to be good.) “Anyhow, I Love You” is that rare love song that’s salty, not sweet. It captures such urgent emotion without a hint of cliche, pretense, or even much romance—“anyhow, I love you,” as in “anyhow, that’s all I’ve got to say.”
I wish I had a dime for every bad time
But the bad times always seem to keep the change
You been all alone so you know what I'm sayin'
So when all you can recall is the pain
Just you wait until tomorrow when you wake up with me
At your side and find I haven't lied about nothin'
I wouldn't trade a tree for the way I feel about you
In the mornin', anyhow I love you
Everyday it gets just a little bit better
And half the gettin' there is knowin' where I been before
I'm sure you understand 'cause I ain't your first man
So when you feel like runnin' for the back door, don't
Just you wait until tomorrow when you wake up with me
At your side and find I haven't lied about nothin'
I wouldn't trade a tree for the way I feel about you
In the mornin', anyhow I love you
Clark was 74.
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This podcast [SPENT] will address the age-old question: Why are we so f*****d up about money? Each episode will feature stories from people like you, people who have made money mistakes and lived to laugh about it. Well also have great advice from empathetic experts. We’ll laugh, we’ll cry, we’ll get our financial lives together, one episode at a time.
Our reader highlights a few of the best episodes so far:
The latest one is with Dean Haspiel, a comic-book artist, Emmy winner (he did the art for and inspired the Zach Galafianakis character in Bored To Death), Marvel and DC veteran … a genuine success in his field, and yet he only recently got out of debt and got health insurance, at nearly age 50. His latest endeavor is a free webcomic about an alternative Brooklyn where art is a currency of exchange. As he says wryly, “This is a romantic fantasy.”
The Tiana Miller episode is another standout. Broke and badly ill with multiple sclerosis, Tiana still musters the spirit and energy to perform standup comedy all around NYC. She talks about learning to navigate the health care system alone, having to rely on friends to take care of her, and how illness helped turn her into a professional funny person. (“I was like, why would I get hired at a chandelier store? One of my main symptoms is intense tremors!”) It’s a really emotional episode.
That’s the milestone the International Space Station reached yesterday. To celebrate, the U.S. National Laboratory aboard the ISS posted this serene view of the structure perched above Earth (though the angle does make it look like an ominous TIE fighter):
The first component of the ISS, the Zarya cargo module, launched on November 20, 1998. Since then, it’s orbited Earth every 90 minutes at around 17,500 miles per hour. NASA puts that in perspective:
That’s more than 2,643,342,240 miles traveled. Which is also like 10 round trips to Mars, OR nearly the distance to Neptune.
In commemoration of the 100,000th lap, another Instagram account from NASA posted a stunning, star-filled view of the space station:
This photo is part of a time lapse sequence showing stars in the Milky Way Galaxy visible over an Earth limb as seen by Astronaut Kjell Lindgren who captured this shot for all of us to see. Thank you Kjell!
Kjell completed his ISS tour in December, but his fellow astronaut Tim Peake, in orbit since December, just sent this commemorative shot:
More Cubesats will deployed through Wednesday contributing to a wide variety of research designed by students and scientists. The crew is measuring the grip strength of mice today for the Rodent Research experiment. That study is exploring an antibody used on Earth that may prevent the weakening of muscles and bones in space. A laptop computer is being readied ahead of next week’s expansion of the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM). The computer will monitor sensors and prepare for upcoming BEAM operations.
Last week, I wrote about a new Brookings report on sextortion, an increasingly common form of blackmail that the authors described as “remote sexual assault.” Perpetrators of sextortion acquire sexually explicit photos or video of someone—usually by manipulating them over social media or by hacking into their social accounts—and use the sensitive files to blackmail that person into providing more recordings of humiliating sex acts.
The report’s authors examined 78 state, federal, and international cases of sextortion, and found that perpetrators often torment dozens or even hundreds of victims. The harm is severe and lasting: In interviews with law enforcement, victims say they’re afraid to use the Internet or be seen in public, and at least one person was driven to attempt suicide by her attacker.
Despite the severity of the problem, the Justice Department doesn’t keep consistent data on sextortion cases, the authors found. They recommended a targeted data-gathering effort, and this morning, Barbara Boxer, a Democratic senator from California, sent a letter (PDF) to Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking for information on how her department collects data on sextortion cases.
Benjamin Wittes, the lead author of the Brookings report, says there’s been interest from both houses and parties since the report was published last Wednesday. That very day, for example, Katherine Clark, a Democratic representative from Massachusetts, called for a new federal law criminalizing sextortion. (A spokesperson for Boxer said that the senator considers better data collection the right first step.)
A push for federal legislation on sextortion may be able to leapfrog some of the snags that have slowed past attempts to pass laws criminalizing nonconsensual pornography, or “revenge porn”—the practice of posting explicit photos of another person with the intent of harassing them.
Revenge-porn legislation has gotten bogged down with free-speech concerns from advocates who say the law shouldn’t ban posting a legally obtained image. But the authors of the sextortion report put forward a legislative proposal that instead criminalizes the less ambiguous acts of threatening and extortion.
Meanwhile, a reader of my original post questions the wisdom of pushing to close the sentencing gap between people who victimize adults and children:
Do we honestly think that ANY sextortionist would engage in this behavior if he knew he’d only be imprisoned for three years, but not if he knew he was going to get a 10-year sentence instead? Of course not. People do this stuff because they think they won’t get caught, not because of some rational calculation of how many years is worth it to them.
If you want to actually protect people you need to raise the rate of prosecutions. People are deterred by the conviction that they WILL be caught and punished, not by whether the punishment is three years or 10 years. If you really want to help victims, surely it would be a lot more useful to pass laws designed to encourage them to come forward rather than by passing laws raising the punishment for the minuscule percentage of people who will ever be caught as long as long as prosecution rates remain laughably low.
I would point out that criminalizing sextortion at the federal level would likely lead to exactly what this reader is calling for: more prosecution. Without the right legal tools, it’s hard for law enforcement to go after perpetrators of sextortion.
I agree with the reader’s point about encouraging victims to come forward, but that’s a complex problem with no easy solution. Law probably isn’t the best arena to address it—but the message that new legislation would send could have an effect. “Criminal laws are supposed to reflect the values of our communities,” says Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Maryland and the author of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace. By that thinking, designating sextortion as a specific criminal act could legitimize victims and help convince them to speak out.
The movie clip was flagged by another John, from the inbox, telling his story of “rags to riches, living the American dream”:
I have been broke and don’t ever plan on going back there again. I grew up “middle class” because my father was a carpenter and made good money and spent it on “toys”—motorcycles, boats, cars, etc. I had four brothers. I worked for my dad carrying shingles but couldn’t swing a hammer. I got a job at a steakhouse washing dishes and that sucked. I worked in a grocery store bagging food and eventually night-stocking shelves.
My high school had a training program with a community college a few miles away and I certified in welding. After graduating high school I worked welding for a year with great pay. My only experience with a union is that after being hired I was “bullied” into joining the union; the union steward told me to be prepared to strike. Not encouraging for just starting. The strike never came but the business shut down.
I got married, had a kid, started going back to the original community college, got divorced, went to the local state college, got an Electrical Engineering degree, moved out of state, worked three years then got laid off, moved back home, got a job with an electric utility, bought a house, got a live-in girlfriend who loved to gamble and gamble and gamble—but she left with her debt, thank God.
I was deep in credit card debt and had a house payment and a rental house a state away. I took a deep look and decided that debt was the anchor holding me back.
I worked a side wiring job for extra income. I started living within my income instead of overspending for once in my life. I fixed up the rental house and sold it. Paid off the truck loan. Attacked the credit cards and paid them off smallest to largest using the snowball effect. I added 50% to my remaining mortgage for a while then doubled the payment until I had enough in savings to pay it off in full.
I have been maxing out my 401(k) and Roth and saving cash ever since. My work has a pension plan that has been building for the past 25 years. I have sat down and added up all my assets (no debts at all so nothing to delete — woo wooooo!) and they are approaching $1 million at 57 years of age.
What was the one event that made me change my ways? Becoming single the 2nd time and realizing that I was responsible for my own retirement and happiness. I’m not here to “make” anyone else happy as I’ve strived to before in life.
What financial event moved me out of paycheck-to-paycheck living? The realization that things happen and when you need savings to fall back on. The furnace goes out? Buy a new one. The vehicle breaks down? Tell the mechanic to “fix it.” The market tanks? Who cares, buy more dollar cost averaging. Want to go on a trip? Just buy a ticket or hop in the car and go. Want to eat out? Don't look at the prices, eat what you want and leave a big tip without fanfare. Attached is a link to John Goodman explaining why you should have a pile of money.
I’m debt free. I’ve been broke and I’ve been rich. Rich is better.
Jim Hamblin has a new piece up for Celiac-Disease Awareness Month. Money quote:
[Avoiding gluten] has not been shown (in placebo-controlled studies) to benefit people who do not have the disease. Celiac disease is known to affect about one percent of people. Yet in a global survey of 30,000 people last year, fully 21 percent said that “gluten free” was a “very important” characteristic in their food choices. Among Millennials, the number is closer to one in three. The tendency to “avoid gluten” persists across socioeconomic strata, in households earning more than $75,000 just the same as those earning less than $30,000, and almost evenly among educational attainment. The most common justification for doing so: “no reason.”
He goes on to detail the downsides of gluten-free replica products. A reader responds with a solid bit of advice:
As someone who has had a lifelong gluten allergy (and gave it to two of my three kids), the increased “trendiness” is a mixed bag. Yes, it mean more choices, but it also means that people think my disease is just a trendy lifestyle choice and not a real thing. My general recommendation is not to use too many wheat substitutes. Instead of a gluten-free sandwich, have a salad or meat and veg. Instead of beer, have wine or hard liquor.
One of my part-time jobs right out of college, while interning and waiting tables, was doing research for a book that my roommate and his celiac-suffering business partner were putting together to help people travel and dine out gluten free. This was late 2004, and I had never heard of gluten, nor had any peers I talked to about the research gig. So over the past decade it’s been remarkable to see how rapidly and widespread “gluten free” has become. Now my best friend is GF, for dermatological reasons, as is my mother, who swears that her GF diet has snuffed out some mild health problems—and she’s been a nurse for 40 years, so she’s very science- and health-oriented. Here’s another gluten-free reader who works in the sciences:
I work in human research. Getting people to keep accurate records of what they eat, or to maintain a specific diet for a long enough time without keeping them in a lab environment 24/7 is incredibly difficult if not impossible. I am gluten-free due to promising science on Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (I am not celiac). If you have a problem linked to inflammation, it makes sense to see if going gluten-free can reduce that inflammation.
In the future, as more and more studies are done, they may find the culprit is other than gluten, or that gluten without other natural enzymes in food that’s more alive or containing more of the plants original components might be healthier.
As an N of 1, if I eat gluten now, I get depressed the next day. I don’t seem to have any other negative symptoms as others with celiac do. There is no other “cure” for Hashimotos, but I tend to have fewer symptoms of Hashimotos (lethargy, weight gain, skin issues) when I remain gluten free. I went off it for a while, started eating gluten again, and gained 20 lbs. But this might be also attributable to the fact that more foods were available (i.e. a whole pan of brownies).
I am realistic and yet still making the best choice for myself. I can understand if others are concerned it’s a harmful fad, but there also might actually be something to it, and so I don’t think it should be readily dismissed either.
Neither does this reader:
I recall Nobel prize winner Dr. Barry Marshall commenting that half of what is taught in academic gastroenterology is flat wrong. [CB note: I couldn’t quickly find that quote, but here’s a Kathryn Schulz interview with Marshall about how he was right about ulcers when everyone else was wrong.] So it was not surprising to find see solid research in the last few weeks showing that common reflux medications, proton pump inhibitors, pushed so hard by gastroenterologists, are strongly linked to dementia and cardiac dysfunction. [CB: Here’s a recent report along those lines.]
I have been gluten free for a dozen years. I am not celiac, don’t even have the DNA for it. Prior to going gluten free, which was against gastroenterologists advice, I suffered from chronic severe reflux and GI problems daily and was becoming overweight. Within months after going strictly gluten free, every trace of reflux and GI distress disappeared and over 12 years have never returned. Within six months of going gluten free, I lost the 35 excess pounds I was carrying and have stayed at my ideal weight ever since.
My toughest problem in going gluten free was weaning myself off the proton pump inhibitors that GI docs had pushed on me. What they failed to tell me is that if you start these meds and go off them, you get rebound hyper-acidity at double your pre-med levels, and that lasts a couple of months. Great for pharma marketers. I used an Internet protocol from Jacob Teitelbaum MD to wean myself off PPIs in a couple of months. Never a hint of reflux since, in a dozen years.
I wonder what is motivating the recent quasi-academic push back against gluten-free living? So many such as myself have found gluten-free living to resolve a host of problems even though not celiac. I wonder if the financial interests involved are pushing back. But then I recall Hanlon's razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is explained by incompetence.”
I know through experience that GF people love to talk about going gluten free, so if you’d like to sound off on the subject, drop us an email.
Ninety-eight years ago today, Congress passed the Sedition Act of 1918, which made it an imprisonable offense to criticize the federal government or U.S. military involvement in World War I. The legislation, which expanded the Espionage Act of 1917, came at the height of wartime fear and anger:
W. A. Rogers / Library of Congress
Violence on the part of local groups of citizens, sometimes mobs or vigilantes, persuaded some lawmakers that the [original] law was inadequate. In their view the country was witnessing instances of public disorder that represented the public’s own attempt to punish unpopular speech in light of the government’s inability to do so. Amendments to enhance the government’s authority under the Espionage Act would prevent mobs from doing what the government could not.
It was in this political climate that James Harvey Robinson, in the December 1917 issue of The Atlantic, addressed “The Threatened Eclipse of Free Speech”—a foreshadowing of the Sedition Act. Robinson argued that in times of national hardship, dissent is not only natural but necessary:
When we see khaki uniforms all about us … when coal runs low in the cellar and sugar in the kitchen; when we … are consciously grateful for a boiled potato; when we note the lowering of the exemption limit of the income tax, and are suspected of being a scoundrel if we do not invest in government bonds, the mind is quickened as never before. We would seem to have a right to suspect that many things must have been fundamentally wrong in the old and revered notions of the State, of national honor, even of patriotism, since they seem at least partially responsible for bringing the world to the pass in which it now finds itself.
Robinson (who took care to assure his readers that he, too, supported the war effort) sought to calm people on both sides of the free-speech debate: those worried about the dangers posed by dissenters and the dangers posed by suppression of speech.
But some parts of his argument are more unsettling. In this passage, he considers why free expression can be so incendiary and concludes it’s because the beliefs we express—and those we react to—are not rational:
Strangely enough most of us most of the time are really quite indifferent to truth, and are using language in the old, primitive way as a signal of agreement or disagreement. We become partisans before we realize it. We get pledged to beliefs we know not how, and they become dear to us by reason of their familiarity and associations. When they are questioned, we are outraged, and rush to their defense in the name of truth. Our hypocrisy is too deep and impulsive for us to detect.
It’s a frightening idea—but fortunately, this problem of free speech contains its own solution. In 1919, two years after Robinson’s article, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the convictions of four men who had been prosecuted under the Sedition Act for publishing pamphlets critical of the war effort. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes veered from the 7-2 majority and issued “the most powerful dissent in American history,” in the words of The Atlantic’s Andrew Cohen. Here’s Holmes:
When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas—that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.
That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment. Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge. While that experiment is part of our system, I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death.
All life is an experiment. Tentative though Holmes’s argument sounds, it’s a powerful case for American democracy—and a powerful case for the value of dissent itself. In acknowledging the fragility and shortcomings of our beliefs, ourselves, and our nation, we can prove and preserve their strength.
David Cameron and Michael Bloomberg eat hot dogs on July 20, 2010. (Shannon Stapleton / Reuters)
“You saw your neighbor consume something, you saw that he didn’t die, so you decided that would be a pretty good thing to eat too. Then as society became more complex, you start to have prestige models of, well, not only did he like that food, he's the most important person in the village, so of course I should really check it out,” —Tom Vanderbilt, who studies taste.
“Sometimes women abort for reasons we wouldn’t like—‘we’ being whoever the woman isn’t,” —Carol Sanger, a law professor.
“In this day and age, we can’t cloister ’em like 1802 in West Point. And that didn’t work out that well anyway. I’m a military commander, but it’s college,” —Michelle Johnson, superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Academy, on why the school now allows students to date.
This morning, Mother Jones unveiled new designs for both the magazine and website to celebrate the publication’s 40th anniversary. In a note introducing the changes, editor Clara Jeffrey says her coworkers are “obsessed with our new favorite color, orange.”
My first response to the new look was an unbroken string of applause emoji.
My second take was self doubt. Is that ... is that what orange looks like?
Toward the top of the graphic, sure. As a University of Texas alum, I’d recognize burnt orange anywhere. I’m comfortable declaring part of the new logo to be burnt orange or Longhorn-adjacent. Hook ‘em, Mother Jones!
But the bottom of this logo treatment is far from the comforting colors of campus, instead awash in grapefruit hues. Adrienne shared the same reaction—at least, the part about seeing a gradient that changes from orange to pink. And we weren’t alone.
“If you hadn’t told me some people see a wash, it probably would have looked all one color—orange—to me,” texted a friend, a painting professor I consulted, fearing that others might see a white-and-gold logo.
But nope. No need to consult color theory. No need to dredge up traumatic memories. This Mother Jones sample is no illusion. Using highly sophisticated forensic analysis tools going well beyond the droplet function in Paintbrush, I deduced two distinct tones, with totally different hashtags and coordinates:
Now, orange you glad I asked?
*closes tab*
*deletes account*
Megan recently spoke with Dolly Singh, a former employee of SpaceX and the current CEO of the shoe design firm Thesis Couture, about her company’s attempt to build a comfortable stiletto. Along the way, Megan muses:
It’s appropriate, though, that creating those shoes would transform from a “project” to a broader purpose: The appeal of heels—not just of sky-high stilettos, but also of their less audacious cousins—lies, most broadly, in their ability to function not just as footwear, but also as small, wearable symbols of mankind’s tendency toward restless ambition. Heels have emerged from roughly the same impulse that led to cathedrals and skyscrapers and, yes, rockets: our desire to be taller, and grander, and generally more than we once were.
That allure—of being something bigger than oneself—resonated with this reader:
What a wonderful article! Thank you! I happen to love wearing high heels, and it’s embarrassing to admit, since I find flats much more comfy. My reason for liking them is that I’m a bit short, and heels make me tall. Taller, anyway. When I put on high heels, I’m suddenly 2"- 3" higher, and I feel a greater sense of power. It’s much nicer to be able to look people in the eye and not have to look up at them.
As for the sexy factor, I suppose they make us look sleeker, and men like that, and of course. But the fact is that I LOVE feeling taller. If I could wave a magic wand and be taller, I’d wave it like crazy!
Another reader is a bit more skeptical, but she acknowledges the possible utility of high heels for a shorter coworker:
I abandoned high heels after a serious injury that left me with a limp for several years. I could wear them now, in theory, but I’ve lost the habit and don’t miss it. Wearing flat shoes or low, stacked heels (generally loafers and not ballet flats) hasn’t hurt my career at all.
The only woman over 35 who regularly wears high heels at my office is tiny and probably going for the height. Otherwise, heels seem to be for the young women in the lower-ranking jobs, while the older women who actually run the place wear more practical shoes.
So. Let’s talk about heels. Why do you choose to wear them? If not, why not? Shoot me your shoe stories: [email protected].
Reader Ryan offers up a truly transformative pick for the cover series: Cat Empire’s version of “Hotel California.” As he describes it, “The Eagles sung in French by an Australian Latin jazz/ska band. Good times!”
Update from another reader named Ryan, in Denton, Texas:
Look, if you’re going to talk about covers of “Hotel California,” you may as well merge this discussion with your series of songs used in movies. The use of The Gypsy’s Kings cover of “Hotel California” is absolutely essential in introducing the character of Jesus Quinta:
That creep can roll, man.
The Atlantic abides.
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For centuries, philosophers and theologians have almost unanimously held that civilization as we know it depends on a widespread belief in free will—and that losing this belief could be calamitous. Our codes of ethics, for example, assume that we can freely choose between right and wrong. In the Christian tradition, this is known as “moral liberty”—the capacity to discern and pursue the good, instead of merely being compelled by appetites and desires. The great Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant reaffirmed this link between freedom and goodness. If we are not free to choose, he argued, then it would make no sense to say we ought to choose the path of righteousness.
Today, the assumption of free will runs through every aspect of American politics, from welfare provision to criminal law. It permeates the popular culture and underpins the American dream—the belief that anyone can make something of themselves no matter what their start in life. As Barack Obama wrote in The Audacity of Hope, American “values are rooted in a basic optimism about life and a faith in free will.”
Narcissism, disagreeableness, grandiosity—a psychologist investigates how Trump’s extraordinary personality might shape his possible presidency.
In 2006, Donald Trump made plans to purchase the Menie Estate, near Aberdeen, Scotland, aiming to convert the dunes and grassland into a luxury golf resort. He and the estate’s owner, Tom Griffin, sat down to discuss the transaction at the Cock & Bull restaurant. Griffin recalls that Trump was a hard-nosed negotiator, reluctant to give in on even the tiniest details. But, as Michael D’Antonio writes in his recent biography of Trump, Never Enough, Griffin’s most vivid recollection of the evening pertains to the theatrics. It was as if the golden-haired guest sitting across the table were an actor playing a part on the London stage.
“It was Donald Trump playing Donald Trump,” Griffin observed. There was something unreal about it.
One looming question during tonight’s primary races: Does it really matter? In terms of delegate numbers, as we’ve written, Clinton’s lead over Sanders is basically not surpassable. But there’s another question: What do these primaries say about how well a candidate might perform in the general?
With a race this close between the two Democratic contenders in Kentucky, it’s hard to think either could necessarily rally the kind of support needed to win against Trump in November. The state strongly trends Republican in national races. The last time the Bluegrass State went blue in a presidential election was 20 years ago, in 1996.
The city is facing a housing crisis, but despite its progressive reputation, it’s done little to ensure affordability for longtime residents.
PORTLAND—This city that prides itself on being different has been experiencing a problem all too common of late. It used to be unique, people say, a utopia where people could get tattoos and ride their bikes everywhere and just be weird. Portland was so affordable, as the slogan went, that young people went there to retire.
Then the city got “discovered,” people started flocking here, the tech companies came, and Portland became more expensive. Oregon has been the top destination for people to move to for three years in a row, according to United Van Lines.
Companies including Google, eBay, Airbnb, and Amazon have opened outposts here; Simple, an online-banking and consumer-finance company, moved operations here in 2011 after having offices in New York and San Francisco and has grown to more than 300 people. Portland has a great pool of creative employees, Krista Berlincourt, the head of communications, told me, and its relatively easy, low-cost lifestyle makes for happy employees.“We can give people a salary where you have a great life for your kids,” she said. When I visited Simple’s offices in Portland’s Pearl District, they were emptying out: Simple has outgrown its space and, like many people in Portland, is in the process of moving to a different neighborhood.
Bernie Sanders supporters are increasingly convinced the election isn’t a fair fight. That's bad news for the Democratic Party.
Who would have guessed things would turn out this way: After sidelining a crowded field of rivals, Donald Trump is the last man standing in the Republican presidential race, while Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders continue to fight it out in a Democratic primary that has grown increasingly ugly.
Tensions between Clinton and Sanders supporters are running especially high after the former secretary of state edged out the Vermont senator in a competition for delegates at the Nevada State Democratic Convention over the weekend. Chaos broke out amid protests from Sanders supporters that party officials rigged the process in Clinton’s favor. But in his analysis of the frenzied event, veteran Nevada political reporter Jon Ralston concluded, “Sanders folks disregarded the rules, then when shown the truth, attacked organizers and party officials as tools of a conspiracy to defraud the senator of what was never rightfully his in the first place.” The state Democratic chairwoman even faced a flood of insults and threats of violence in the aftermath of the event.
When a Venezuelan entrepreneur we know launched a manufacturing company in western Venezuela two decades ago, he never imagined he’d one day find himself facing jail time over the toilet paper in the factory’s restrooms. But Venezuela has a way of turning yesterday’s unimaginable into today’s normal.
The entrepreneur’s ordeal started about a year ago, when the factory union began to insist on enforcing an obscure clause in its collective-bargaining agreement requiring the factory’s restrooms to be stocked with toilet paper at all times. The problem was that, amid deepening shortages of virtually all basic products (from rice and milk to deodorant and condoms) finding even one roll of toilet paper was nearly impossible in Venezuela—let alone finding enough for hundreds of workers. When the entrepreneur did manage to find some TP, his workers, understandably, took it home: It was just as hard for them to find it as it was for him.
It can’t pass a budget, can’t confirm appointments, and now it can’t even scrounge up funding to address public-health crises.
In 2011, I wrote a piece for Foreign Policy magazine about the 112th Congress; the editors helpfully titled it “Worst. Congress. Ever.” It was a bit of hyperbole, but it may be no exaggeration to call the current, 114th Congress the worst ever—at least edging out the infamous 112th. The truly cringeworthy failures started when both the House and Senate refused to even acknowledge the president’s budget, an unprecedented step, and the House and Senate Budget Committees followed by refusing to hold the usual annual hearing when the president’s top economic advisor comes to the Hill to discuss the budget and the economy. It was a sign of disrespect that was simply shocking. (Although the shock value was exceeded days later after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death.)
The forensic technique is becoming ever more common—and ever less reliable.
One evening in November of 2002, Carol Batie was sitting on her living-room couch in Houston, flipping through channels on the television, when she happened to catch a teaser for an upcoming news segment on KHOU 11, the local CBS affiliate. She leapt to her feet. “I scared the kids, I was screaming so loud,” Batie told me recently. “I said, ‘Thank you, God!’ I knew that all these years later, my prayers had been answered.”
The subject of the segment was the Houston Police Department Crime Laboratory, among the largest public forensic centers in Texas. By one estimate, the lab handled DNA evidence from at least 500 cases a year—mostly rapes and murders, but occasionally burglaries and armed robberies. Acting on a tip from a whistle-blower, KHOU 11 had obtained dozens of DNA profiles processed by the lab and sent them to independent experts for analysis. The results, William Thompson, an attorney and a criminology professor at the University of California at Irvine, told a KHOU 11 reporter, were terrifying: It appeared that Houston police technicians were routinely misinterpreting even the most basic samples.
The uplifting Coloring Book makes profound use of Millennial nostalgia.
If adulthood truly is in crisis, one sign might be popular music’s anxious relationship with childhood. The recent 21 Pilots hit “Stressed Out” suggests a generation wishing to return to a time “when our momma sang us to sleep.” Most of today’s new pop icons come out of the child-star pipeline—the Demi Lovatos and Ariana Grandes sweating to prove that they didn’t peak before they could buy booze. Both in rap and outside of it, Biggie and Nas’s child-as-album-cover concept keeps being recycled, often to assert that the artist at issue was hard even when he was soft. Right now, bubbling up on the digital singles chart is a song from a 13-year-old Vine user who recently lost his braces.
Into the playpen comes Coloring Book, the third solo full-length record from the 23-year-old Chicago sensation and Kanye West protégé Chance the Rapper. Its title promises the same kind of kidult activity that’s upended the publishing industry, and its lyrics namecheck The Lion King, Harry Potter, Dragon Ball Z, Space Jam, Tootsie Roll Frooties, and cooties. Justin Bieber, the embodiment of developmental struggles, shows up to sing on a track about memories of innocent nights at the roller rink. Wendy of Peter Pan fame gets a shout-out.
In the time of the Facebook thumbs up, what does it mean to “like” something? What is it that makes humans decide they prefer one thing over another, so that you click replay on one song all day and cover your ears whenever you hear another in public? And how do Netflix and Spotify and other recommendation engines seem to know your taste as well or better than you do sometimes?
What determines people’s preferences is a fuzzy, hard-to-pin-down process, but Tom Vanderbilt takes a stab at it in his new book, You May Also Like. He examines the broad collection of likes and dislikes that make up “taste,” and how they come to be. Sometimes, people just prefer the familiar. Sometimes they like what their friends like. Sometimes they pretend to like movies they never really watch or music they don’t actually listen to. A lot of the time, they can’t say why they like something, they just know that they do.
