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The Joys of Consumption
July 03, 2015
In the 1970s, when the New Deal consensus began to erode, something unexpected started to play a role in popular culture. It was the decade after the industry-approved release of The Pawnbroker (1964), the first Hollywood film to show women’s bare breasts, and all the old ...

Historical Hangovers, New Millennial Crusaders
July 02, 2015
Review of The Rise of the Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution by Patrick Cockburn. It once looked as if America’s long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan might provide, if not victory, at least a fig leaf—a “decent interval” during which anti-U.S. terrorists would ...

Bending Toward Real Justice
July 02, 2015
In the moving celebrations that came in the wake of the SCOTUS decision legalizing gay marriage in America last week, the White House and Empire State Building were both bathed in a commemorative rainbow light and the Washington D.C. Gay Men’s Chorus sang a stirring ...

The Permanent War on Terror: Only As Old As It Feels
July 01, 2015
This week marks the one-year anniversary of the declaration of the Islamic State. The most infamous cult of ultra-violent millenarian revolutionists since the Khmer Rouge celebrated the event in characteristic style: by murdering some people. On Friday, terrorist attacks in ...

Daily Bafflements
July 01, 2015
• Today in Bespoke: Is your supercar failing to stand out in a sea of supercars? So make your supercar more super still! Here—let us direct you to the manufacturer now catering to that armor-plated circular thinking popularized by the superrich; it offers to ...

The Unbearable Emptiness of Politics as Code
June 30, 2015
Nothing inspires nihilism quite like physical proximity to a U.S. presidential campaign. Having attended my first pseudo-event of the 2016 election cycle in San Francisco, I must now banish the encroaching numbness by speaking its name. Evil, thy name is campaign ...

Show Those Pearly Whites
June 30, 2015
Officially, things have rebounded since Wall Street collapsed and the world’s wealthiest and most rugged individualists turned to Washington for a bailout. Corporate America is now raking in more money than ever before, and unemployment rates continue to fall, inching back ...

Daily Bafflements
June 30, 2015
• Got a startup and on the lookout for some seriously dubious career advice to internalize? Try this chunk of wisdom, from the FT: “To defy the startup odds, try pitching like a poet.” The similarity between startup entrepreneurs and poets are, of course, ...

The Branded, the Sponsored, and the Native
June 26, 2015
The name of Samsung’s new advertising campaign for its Galaxy 6 and 6 Edge devices coos with the consumer-soothing cadences of a practiced therapist, or masseuse: “The 30-Minute Recharge: Connectivity Without Concern.” In reality, though, the campaign has all ...

Daily Bafflements
June 26, 2015
• After two crashes, Elon Musk is “uncertain” whether his third Falcon 9 rocket will be able to make a successful landing on the drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You.” The Tesla CEO’s SpaceX venture aims to provide cheaper, privatized ...

It Sounds Like a Melody
June 25, 2015
Pope Francis’s recently released Laudato Si, or “Praise Be to You,” has been called “the climate encyclical” and “the environmental encyclical”—but while it’s true that the papal missive does address climate change, ...

Daily Bafflements
June 25, 2015
• With its new venture, Sidewalk Labs, Google is making its terrifying entrance into the world of urban planning. According to Susie Cagle, the company seems to be taking as its model its own sprawling corporate campus, whose expansion was blocked because of a frightening ...