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Culture Trust

Columns

Spare Change
May 15, 2015
Roll over, Andrew Jackson, and tell Frederick Douglass the news. That, in essence, was the upshot of a feverishly buzzed-over online poll conducted earlier this week—except that the African American eminence selected to replace our redoubtably racist and ...

Behind Every Fortune Lies Nail Polish
May 11, 2015
I woke up this morning to the news that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo had announced increased employment law regulation and enforcement in response to last week’s blockbuster New York Times investigation of nail salons, effective immediately. Workers will be required to wear ...

What Bono Does Next Won’t Shock You
May 08, 2015
If you’re looking to make a splash in the oversaturated social-mediasphere, nice is the new rule of thumb. The trendlet—officially dubbed the “Nice Internet” by no less an authority than the New York Times—encompasses videos devoted to cute animals, precocious kiddies, ...

Pep Talks for Spinsters
May 04, 2015
Here we go again! We are in another moment of pondering the benefits of marriage versus those of singlehood, with the all-important corollary question: Should we choose to become parents or go childfree? When I say we, I mean women, of course. As Elissa Strauss, writing for The ...

Nights of the Living Dread
May 01, 2015
This week, the luridly misleading media coverage of the Baltimore uprisings called to mind a fittingly grim narrative template from the entertainment world: shlocky action-horror fare. The strange alchemy by which reportage of Freddie Gray’s murder at the hands of six ...

Free Speech Culture Warriors of the World, Unite
April 29, 2015
It can be hard keeping track of all the awards that PEN America gives out. The organization, devoted to promoting freedom of expression, offers some two dozen, for translations, essays, novels, plays, and seemingly, every single other literary form. (There are two awards for ...

An American Marriage, Revisited
April 24, 2015
Limited Partnership, a new documentary about one of the nation’s first gay couples to be lawfully married, begins with a scene you might find in a legal thriller: an establishing shot of gray-slate courthouse columns gives way to a scrum of reporters positioned nearby. ...

The Mall of American Progress
April 23, 2015
Malls may not be an American monopoly, but America’s not really thinkable without them. They’re where we come together, octogenarian mall walkers and teen Goths alike, as we aim for that perfect, elusive balance between over- and under-stimulation. They’re our own ...

Surge Pricing for Your Entire Life
April 22, 2015
Sometimes, the darkest timeline comes quicker than you expect. Last year, Jathan Sadowski noted that insurance companies were fawning over the Internet of Things—smartphones, fitness monitors, wearable computers, and anything else with a sensor and WiFi—with an eye to ...

The University of Nowhere
April 20, 2015
A cursory look at recent jeremiads on higher education resembles a thesaurus entry for “doom”: Academically Adrift. Education Disrupted. College Unbound. Degrees of Inequality. The Last Professors. It’s no surprise that the latest entry in the field, by Kevin Carey, a ...

The One That Brings You Choices
April 17, 2015
Sizzler has provided white-bread fare above and beyond the cheesy toast you can always find beckoning to you at the self-serve chain’s salad bar. The brand managers at Sizzler HQ also want to remind you that the restaurant is a miniature consumer’s republic in its own ...

Game of Thrones, Meet Tony Robbins
April 14, 2015
I admit it: Game of Thrones’ massive popularity took me by surprise. When I first read George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, I frankly could not understand how it managed to capture its legions of fans. Like many “dark fantasy” writers of the 1980s and ...