How The Dig and Ammonite Fetishize Britishness
With the release of the drama Ammonite, paleontology has joined palace intrigue and oil painting on the list of surprising provocations to lesbian sex in recent historical films. Ammonite is a...
View ArticleThe Persistence of Hate In American Politics
The historian Joan Wallach Scott started thinking of the judgment of history when the Charlottesville riots took place in 2017. The appearance of a large number of marchers chanting antisemitic slogans...
View ArticleThe D.C. Statehood Debate Is Coming, Like It or Not
While it remains unclear how Biden’s legislative agenda will take shape once coronavirus relief and impeachment have been dealt with, one item that will be competing for his attention will be statehood...
View ArticleThe GameStop Saga Shows How Casino Capitalism Is Eating the World
On a typical day in early January, the stock for GameStop, or GME—a beleaguered brick-and-mortar video game retailer undergoing downsizing—traded at around $18, with about 6.5 million shares changing...
View ArticleHere’s What Happens When Every Government Vehicle Is Electric
The best way to think of President Biden’s midweek flotilla of executive actions on climate is as a statement of intent: a signal of how this administration intends to approach the climate crisis....
View ArticleTribal Nations Deserve a Greater Say on Drilling Projects
President Joe Biden is looking to make good on a promise that every president since Bill Clinton has formally offered, in some shape or form: to uphold the sovereignty of tribal nations. If he actually...
View ArticleThe Republican Retreat From Governance
On January 26, 45 Republican senators voted for an amendment declaring the upcoming impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump unconstitutional—a stance not shared by legal scholars. Trump is...
View ArticleUnemployment Nation
Nearly a year into the pandemic, more than 10 million people are out of work in the United States. That number is partial, excluding the seven million people who are unemployed but have simply stopped...
View ArticleGameStop Is Teaching Republicans to (Pretend to) Hate Wall Street
The ongoing fallout over a group of Redditors boosting GameStop and other heavily shorted stocks has landed—inevitably—at the door of the Trump family. While the former president hasn’t spoken out, Don...
View ArticleWhat the GameStop Rally Has Revealed About Financial Media
For a brief moment on Wednesday afternoon, CNBC anchor Scott Wapner appeared to be on the verge of an epiphany. Wapner was, in that moment, in a heated debate with venture capitalist Chamath...
View ArticleThe GOP Has Nothing Left but a Persecution Complex
On January 11, just a few days after the Capitol riot, Fox host Mark Levin opened his show by outlining a grand conspiracy involving the Democrats, the media, Black Lives Matter, football and...
View ArticleCan We All Stop Trusting the Market Now?
A GameStop in a New Jersey mall was the first place I participated in a market. I’d beg my dad to drive me there so I could swap out old GameBoy cartridges for new ones, fetching whatever the going...
View ArticleIn Defense of Doing Nothing
In March of last year, Reddit user Oneawkwardpanda mentioned that the pandemic stay-home order had resulted in a “massive dip in productivity” for them and asked for advice. “How do you keep yourself...
View ArticleWhy Republicans Deceive Themselves
Not long after the attack on the Capitol, Republicans turned from spreading outrageous lies about the election to calling for “healing” and an end to division. “We must come together and put this anger...
View ArticleThe March for Life Marches in Place
The March for Life began in 1974—a year after the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. It bills itself as the largest social mobilization of any cause in the world. But for the first time in 47...
View ArticleBiden’s Bipartisan Dream Is Already Over
In December 2017, President Trump signed an executive order dramatically reducing the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, opening the door to oil and gas...
View ArticleOur Vaccine Rollout Has an Inequality Problem
When Washington, D.C., announced that it would soon prioritize people who are overweight for the Covid-19 vaccine, experts and commentators were perplexed. Nate Silver tweeted that “there’s basically...
View ArticleThis Might Be a Good Time for Democrats in Congress to Stop Trading Stocks
As GameStop’s share price seized the internet’s attention this week, another set of news stories about the stock market went all but unnoticed. Senator Dianne Feinstein, according to a report published...
View ArticleThe Trump Era Could Have Been Much, Much Worse
It’s been almost three weeks since Donald Trump began his exile from public life on a Florida golf course. I thought this would be a moment of relief after years of exhaustion and misery. But as we...
View ArticleThe GameStop Saga Is the First Post-Trump Story
For much of the past week, one story has dominated the news: The share price of GameStop, a brick-and-mortar retail chain that sells physical copies of video games in the cloud computing age. A few...
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