A Commons Problem
In his 2015 book The Republic of Conscience, former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart identifies what may be the central dynamic of American political and economic history: the struggle...
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Television Learned the Wrong Lessons From The Sopranos
The elderly Uncle Junior is in his armchair, facing down a disloyal male relation. In the next episode, Junior will get his hand stuck in the garbage disposal for six hours, but for now he has the...
View ArticleIt’s Not a National Emergency. It’s Also Not the Dawn of Dictatorship.
What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? The unstoppable force declares a national emergency to go around it.That option appears to be President Donald Trump’s endgame to...
View ArticleWe Need to Acknowledge
the weight of certain news on the phone that makes the receiver heavier makes it fall from my hands the pointless weight of certain things: metal pieces in abandoned lots the curved posture of my...
View ArticleDoes Your Box of “Ugly” Produce Really Help the Planet? Or Hurt it?
“I’m an environmental journalist, not an environmentalist.” I’ve said this countless times over the course of my career, usually to make a distinction between myself and the people I write about. But...
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The Exhausting Minimalism of Tidying Up
The coupled protagonists of Georges Perec’s materialist parable Things, Jerome and Sylvie, are 24 and 22 years old, both conductors of marketing interviews. Their dearest dream is to live in a Parisian...
View ArticleParable of Beauty & Privilege
As for the ingrate blue jay inherently dapper dappled in Brooks Brothers plumage whose wing wicked resplendent lit in a freak fir fire involving one rosy-cheeked waddling...
View ArticleRepublicans Have Learned Nothing From the Midterms
Ahead of last year’s midterms, President Trump telegraphed his electoral strategy. “Hard to believe that with thousands of people from South of the Border, walking unimpeded toward our country in the...
View ArticleFive Dealbreakers for Confirming Trump’s Next Attorney General
Bill Barr is no stranger to the Senate confirmation process. President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the next attorney general already went through it twice before, first to serve as deputy attorney...
View ArticleWhat Israeli Airstrikes Say About Trump’s Middle East Policy
The series of strikes shaking Damascus and its southern countryside last Friday night now appear to have been the most extensive wave of airstrikes by Israel against Iranian-linked targets in Syria...
View ArticleMommy and Data
In 2009, Piraye Yurttas Beim, a molecular biologist from Texas, started pitching investors on her vision for a new kind of women’s health company. The startup she had founded, Celmatix, would bring the...
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What’s So Controversial About a Medieval Nun’s Teeth?
When an academic makes a research breakthrough, two things can happen in the public consciousness: nothing, or something. It’s hard to know which is worse. Let’s say you’re a physicist who discovers a...
View ArticleDid the FBI “Overstep” by Investigating Trump?
In the chaotic days after President Donald Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey in May of 2017, FBI officials opened an investigation into whether he was a Russian intelligence asset,...
View ArticleSome of the Biggest Green Groups Have Cold Feet Over the “Green New Deal”
By now, every member of Congress should have received a very long letter about the Green New Deal. Sent by 626 environmental groups on Thursday, the letter calls on lawmakers to support the idea,...
View ArticleThe Philosophical Roots of Today’s Immigration Debate
When Hegel wrote that the owl of Minerva flies at dusk, he meant that philosophy makes sense of the world only retrospectively: After the world has given birth to a reality, the philosophers arrive on...
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Resistance Training
Since Donald Trump became president, the United States has seen over 20,000 street protests. While this number includes some pro-Trump rallies, most of the events voiced opposition to the...
View ArticleStop Indulging the Fantasy of a Trump Primary Challenge
Elizabeth Warren, Julián Castro, and Tulsi Gabbard have all already announced plans to seek the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. By summer, they will be joined by as many as two dozen other...
View ArticleHow Much Do You Trust Bill Barr?
Bill Barr, the once and likely future attorney general, had one mission on Capitol Hill on Tuesday: convince the Senate that he would be an honorable man. In a day-long confirmation hearing before the...
View ArticleThe Real Villain of Fyre Festival
“Honestly I can’t believe this documentary—there’s two of ‘em.” Against the strains of “Build Me Up Buttercup,” this is how the Hulu documentary Fyre Fraud draws to a close. The disbelieving individual...
View ArticleWho’s Afraid of Bernie Sanders? A Lot of Democrats, Apparently.
In the wake of Bernie Sanders’s loss to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primary, some people argued that, as Vanity Fair put it, he “won in the end” because his race had “a profound, and...
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