How Columbus Day Fell Victim to Its Own Success
Today is Columbus Day, a solemn occasion marked by parades, pageantry, and buckets of fake blood splashed on statues of its namesake. Activists have turned the commemoration of Columbus' landfall in the New World into an annual protest against 'the…
very nuanced take by Yoni Appelbaum on the history of Columbus Day and its meaning today—TK
On May 5, 1857, eight men sat down to dinner at Boston's Parker House hotel. They had gathered to plan a magazine, but by the time they stood up five hours later, they had laid the intellectual groundwork for a second American revolution. These men…
'Americans aren’t fighting too hard; they’re engaged in the wrong fights. The universalism of the left and cultural nationalism of the right are battering America’s sense of common national purpose.'
another from Yoni Appelbaum—TK
What Facebook Did to American Democracy
In the media world, as in so many other realms, there is a sharp discontinuity in the timeline: before the 2016 election, and after. Things we thought we understood—narratives, data, software, news events—have had to be reinterpreted…
'Facebook is “like a four-dimensional object, we catch slices of it when it passes through the three-dimensional world we recognize.' No one can quite wrap their heads around what this thing has become'
great read from Alexis Madrigal—TK
The Government Is Failing Puerto Rico
Federal assistance for Puerto Rico is proving to be woefully inadequate: Federal officials privately admit there is a massive shortage of meals in Puerto Rico three weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated the island. Officials at the Federal…
From Aggressive Overtures to Sexual Assault: Harvey Weinstein's Accusers Tell Their Stories
Since the establishment of the first studios a century ago, there have been few movie executives as dominant, or as domineering, as Harvey Weinstein. As the co-founder of the production-and-distribution companies Miramax and the Weinstein Company…
I'm sure you've heard about this. If there's one thing to read, it's this one.—TK
At the end of June, the Supreme Court, in a case called District of Columbia v. Heller, invalidated the District's ban on the private ownership of pistols. It did so in the name of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. The decision was the most…