Prospero pans the 2013 Met Ball, designed to celebrate the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibition “Punk: Chaos to Couture”: It was a silly idea to begin with. Doing punk through the clothes is like trying to do hippiedom with peace symbols....
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Dressing The Air digs up a short film by Alex Roman: Entirely built and rendered on computer, this impossibly controlled journey around Louis Kahn’s Exeter Academy Library evokes the soul of the architecture with very particular attention to material...
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George Packer enumerates a long list of “technological advances that make life easier, tastier, more entertaining, healthier, longer; and socio-political changes that have made the [United States] a more tolerant, inclusive place”: The bottom line...
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Ta-Nehisi reflects on his recent experience abroad as a novice French-language student in his mid-thirties: I stayed with a host family and took my dinners with them. These were awesome affairs—wine, cheese, meat, chocolate. They took no pity on me....
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Connor Simpson is impressed by Tesla’s early repayment of their Department of Energy loan, which has earned the government a $20 million profit: It’s quite an accomplishment considering the fates that have befallen other green energy companies....
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A couple months ago, the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) recommended that doctors share incidental genetic findings with patients. Robert Green explains: The recommendations state that laboratories performing a sequencing...
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Lane Kenworthy believes that, eventually, “the United States is likely to have universal publicly-funded early education for children aged one to four.” How he would like the system designed: American parents with a child younger than age five...
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Yesterday California announced premium rates for its healthcare exchanges. Sarah Kliff points out that the premiums are lower than many estimates: Health insurers will charge 25-year-olds between $142 and $190 per month for a bare-bones health plan...
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From Jane Mayer’s write-up of Obama’s speech: What kind of solution for indefinite detention can be arrived at, however, Obama left for later. It won’t be easy. As Joseph Margulies, clinical professor at Northwestern University Law School and...
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Of a different variety: Seattle-based [William] von Schneidau has been feeding marijuana scraps — leaves, stems, and root bulbs — to a stable of pigs. He’s a butcher in newly street-legal Washington; the weed feed comes from a medical marijuana...
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Daniel Stuckey chats with Alex Gibney about his Wikileaks documentary: I think the seeds of whom Assange has become today were always there: In his childhood, in the way he approached the world through the computer, in his kind of solitism, in the way...
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Room For Debate tackles the question. Garrett Peck ponders marijuana taxes: The nation’s powerful alcohol lobbies have managed to rebuff any federal alcohol excise tax increase, last raised in 1991. States should be on the lookout for what will inevitably...
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Part of an excerpt from Temple Grandin’s new book: If people can consciously recognize the strengths and weaknesses in their ways of thinking, they can then seek out the right kinds of minds for the right reasons. And if they do that, then they’re...
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Alyssa heralds their rise. On the movie whose trailer is seen above: The tension in Don Jon comes not from the idea that Jon might be unable to overcome his addiction to porn and as a result, lose out on Barbara, but that these two horribly mismatched...
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Madrigal examines Microsoft’s claim that the servers for their recently announced Xbox One gaming system will exceed “the entire world’s computing power in 1999.” He get’s Martin Hilbert, who co-authored a paper on world processing capacity...
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Ned Resnikoff highlights the tense battle over public school closings in Chicago: Wednesday afternoon, the Chicago Board of Education voted to close 50 reportedly “underutilized” schools—49 elementary schools and one public high school—in what...
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Amanda Marcotte reacts to the recent finding that “women are far more likely to lose interest in sex with their partners” than men: What’s really fascinating is that with this shift in understanding comes a profound shift in how we as a society...
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Sponsored Content Pretty Fucking Awesome If you want to support online journalism that is not thinly-veiled corporate branding, We really are trying to find a business model for online writing and thinking that can stand on its own independent feet,...
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Ryan McGee worries about Netflix releasing an entire season of Arrested Development on Sunday: The intensity in and out of the industry means this show will essentially blind everything else around it for a few days. Of that, we can be certain. Everyone...
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Kyle Kondik observes that “rural/urban divide in American presidential politics is pronounced” Generally speaking, Republicans win the districts that are geographically large, and Democrats win the districts that are geographically small. This...
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Ars Technica writer Jason Marlin describes a recent hair-raising experience: I was getting ready to dive back into work when the storm really picked up. “Ahhhh,” I thought as I leaned back in my chair to stare out at the strange greenish light against...
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As long as you stick to the serving sizes: Jane Brody pushes back against attempts to pin the obesity epidemic on sugar: Sugar, it turns out, is a minor player in the rise. More than half of the added calories — 242 a day — have come from fats and...
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Who knew that refugees from Somalia would consider themselves “deprived” in Sweden. Just ask the BBC: bbc.co.uk/news/world-eur… — Michael Ross (@mrossletters) May 23, 2013 There has been rioting in Sweden for the past five nights (NYT): As the...
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As part of a “Room for Debate” series on how to sell marijuana safely, psychiatry professor A. Eden Evins spells out the risks for stoners: Regular cannabis use has been associated with an 8- to 10-point drop in I.Q. over the course of 20 years,...
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In his new book, Jaron Lanier blames the web: Much of the book looks at the way Internet technology threatens to destroy the middle class by first eroding employment and job security, along with various “levees” that give the economic middle stability. “Here’s...
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Good news from California.
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The Massachusetts race just got classier.
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Chait profiles Josh Barro: The brief arc of Barro’s young career—at National Review, then Forbes, and now Bloomberg View—displays a man losing all patience with the Republican Party. Over time, Barro’s writing has fitfully evolved from muted,...
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It’s on the rise: According to a new report put out by the Brookings Institute, more poor inhabitants of the U.S. now live in suburbs than in cities and rural areas. Between 2002 and 2011, the population of the suburban poor rose 67%. That’s over...
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Ian Crouch reflects on his tendency to read vociferously, only to completely forget books shortly after: This forgetting has serious consequences—but it has superficial ones as well, mostly having to do with vanity. It has led, at times, to a discomfiting...
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Ben Thomas compiles evidence that variances in young adulthood, early childhood, and even in utero nutrition set in motion the distinct personalities of genetically identical twins: In short, Kempermann says, “Experience matters. Genes are clearly...
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Bryan Schatz attends a “building party”, where gun enthusiasts privately collect and assemble pieces from various assault rifles: Although US customs laws ban importing the weapons, parts kits—which include most original components of a Kalashnikov...
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Alex Mayyasi summarizes a study (pdf) on the gap between perceived and actual learning: One group saw a lecturer who presented with the skills of a TED speaker. The other watched the lecturer read haltingly from notes. Afterwards the students answered...
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Derek Thompson explains how “cable is still making more and more money every year, despite a structural decline in cable TV subs”: Cable ≠ video, and nothing says it more clearly than the latest earnings reports from the Big Two: Comcast, the...
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A reader responds to our latest reality check: I would argue that the average amount people spend on their pets is significantly higher than those figures suggest. The $500/year average is a bit misleading; it was calculated across all households and...
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Researchers have finally discovered the precise pathogen that caused the Great Famine. Why it matters: The study is the first time that the genetics of a plant pathogen have been analyzed by extracting DNA from dried plant samples, opening up the possibility...
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John McWhorter joins the debate: [L]anguage can express a concept from various angles, positively or negatively, or with a noun or a verb. For example, a journalist once marveled that an obscure language of India has a verb referring to how a baby...
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As we discover more details about the DOJ’s investigation of Fox News journalist James Rosen, former FBI agent David Gomez compiles a list of best practices for journalists: Take a lesson from the Mafia and never use phones for anything other than...
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How Chait understands Obama’s remarks (above): President Obama’s speech today defending his conduct in the war on terror was notable for what he was defending it against — not against the soft-on-terror (and maybe sorta-kinda-Muslim) attack...
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Ezra wants the IRS to clean house: A number of IRS employees developed criteria that was politically biased both in appearance and in effect. They were reined in once by their superiors, and then they changed the criteria again, and had to be reined...
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Dogbeards – that’s more like it: Catbeards here. (Photo by Laura Blanc)
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After an earthquake struck southwest China earlier this year, social media and mobile phones proved instrumental in relief efforts. Patrick Meier considers the broader implications for the Chinese government: [U]sing social media to crowdsourced grassroots...
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Jane Mayer narrates the struggle of two documentary filmmakers to produce their documentary Citizen Koch and get it aired on public TV. A sample: The messages from [Independent Television Service] ITVS officials grew confusing. [Vice-president of programming]...
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Another possible use for the technology: [Anjan Contractor] sees a day when every kitchen has a 3D printer, and the earth’s 12 billion people feed themselves customized, nutritionally-appropriate meals synthesized one layer at a time, from cartridges...
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Maybe not: It’s tempting to assume that climate change is responsible for an increase in the number devastating tornadoes, like those that ravaged Joplin, Missouri, in 2011, and Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in February. But if these tragedies are indeed...
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The challenges that Barack Obama faced upon taking office were, even his critics would admit, daunting: an economy tail-spinning toward a second Great Depression, two continuing, draining and tragically self-defeating wars, and an apparatus of vastly...
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Reports from China indicate plans to pilot a carbon trading program next month in the southern city of Shenzen, as part of a regional rollout in 2014 and a potential countrywide cap in 2016. Katie Valentine calls the announcement a “bombshell”:...
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A reader writes: The video and story of Mohamed Assaf reminded of something I’ve been meaning to send you. It’s a music video by activist Israeli-Palestinian hip-hop group DAM, for a song called”If I Could Go Back in Time.” DAM is Tamer Nafar,...
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Brian Reis spoke with entomologist Louis Sorkin about how to eat cicadas: Hors d’oeuvres! I’ve seen much worse. But James Hamblin gets queasy: Some will mention that cicadas are arthropods, like shrimp and lobster. Eating them is just a step away....
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