Recent quotes:

Who Are All These Trump Supporters?

If you are, as I am, a sentimental middle-aged person who cherishes certain Coplandian notions about the essential goodness of the nation, seeing this kind of thing in person—adults shouting wrathfully at one another with no intention of persuasion, invested only in escalating spite—will inject a palpable sadness into your thinning, under-exercised legs, and you may find yourself collapsing, post-rally, against a tree in a public park, feeling hopeless. Craving something positive (no more fighting, no more invective, please, please), forcing yourself to your feet, you may cross a busy avenue and find, in a mini-mall themed like Old Mexico, a wedding about to begin. Up will walk the bridesmaids, each leading, surprisingly, a dog on a leash, and each dog is wearing a tutu, and one, a puppy too small to be trusted in a procession, is being carried, in its tutu, in the arms of its bridesmaid.

Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.”

Germany is really the single best example of a country that, throughout its history, has never repaid its external debt. Neither after the First nor the Second World War. However, it has frequently made other nations pay up, such as after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when it demanded massive reparations from France and indeed received them. The French state suffered for decades under this debt. The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.

Growing Up on Easy Street Has Its Own Dangers

Using a variety of data that included families with median household incomes of about $150,000, she found that the adolescents in higher-income families had higher rates of substance abuse of all kinds than those in lower-income ones. This makes a certain amount of sense, since they can afford the drugs, the vehicles to go buy them and the fake IDs that help with the procurement of Stoli and Jägermeister.But there was more. The more affluent suburban youth stole from their parents more often than city youth with less money and were more likely to experience clinically significant levels of depression, anxiety and physical ailments that seemed to stem from those mental conditions. These things began emerging as early as seventh grade.

Sam Biddle on Justine Sacoo and the death of irony

Twitter is a fast machine that almost begs for misunderstanding and misconstrual—deliberate misreading is its lubricant. The same flatness of affect that can make it such a weird and funny place also makes it a tricky and dangerous one. Jokes are complicated, context is hard. Rage is easy.

UrbanGlass Introduces Barware Inspired by Loos

“I made an ironic comment on this by using trashy, not very ecological things, which are around us every day,” he said. The carafe-and-five-glass set is $700.
On Sunday afternoon, Sulzberger appeared determined to try to change the narrative. He cast doubts on Abramson’s management and seemed forgiving of his own mistakes. “Am I happy we’re in this place?” he asked himself. “No. Did we lead us there? No.”
It is the mark of the flattening effect of time, and of the years that Ali has battled Parkinson’s in relative silence, that the fiercely outspoken boxer—a draft protester, civil-rights advocate, and Muslim—could be recast as a bland signifier of Kentucky pride in a campaign spot for a Republican senator, who recently was seen waiving a vintage rifle above his head. Yet, to the makers of the ad, with its vague celebration of ethnic diversity and patriotism, the Ali clip may have seemed like a perfect fit: an African-American son of Louisville proudly representing his country abroad.
Outraged Liberation journalists vented their opposition to the plan on the cover of the weekend edition, which had the frontpage headline: "We are a newspaper, not a restaurant, not a social network, not a cultural space, not a TV studio, not a bar, not a start-up incubator." The staff voted Sunday not to repeat a 24-hour strike they staged Thursday upon learning of what the owners had in mind. Instead they vowed to fight against the "illegal" project in their newspaper's pages. Started by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in 1973 as a leftwing title, Liberation has been a mainstay on newsstands -- especially in left-leaning Paris -- with its emphasis on photos and sometimes militant stances.
It seemed ironic to a number of commentators that the authorities allowed the suitcase but threatened performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky with a five-year sentence for nailing his scrotum to the pavement on Red Square. "If it is just a square where you can put up anything you like -- Louis Vuitton suitcase, a Villeroy & Bosch urinal -- why is it wrong to nail one's balls to the cobblestones?" wrote columnist Maxim Sokolov.
That kind of writing — clear, direct, humane — and the reading on which it is based are the very root of the humanities, a set of disciplines that is ultimately an attempt to examine and comprehend the cultural, social and historical activity of our species through the medium of language.
"But a book is nothing compared to the power of a feature film," says Jablonski, who was instantly gripped by the power and efficiency of Pasikowski's storytelling. His first step was to bring the project to the Polish Film Institute, an office founded in 2005 and dedicated to nurturing films that celebrate Polish culture. The fund found the taboo project "anti-Polish," Jablonski says, not because the claims made in it were deemed untrue, but because it chose to overlook acts of Polish heroism and compassion shown toward Jews during the war. In other words, Aftermath was not a Polish Schindler's List. Jablonski adds that PFI also objected to the image of the present-day village, inhabited by anti-Jewish thugs and locals who conspired to keep the truth literally buried. "They said this wasn't the truth about Poland, but unfortunately, I didn't agree," Jablonski says. "I know these kind of villages; I know these kind of people."
Flint, 79, the lobbyist, said he began representing the industry in 1985 and now has about 10 clients, including the Bunny Ranch. Flint said rural brothels that depend on truck drivers have been among the hardest hit. “A lot of these long-haul truckers have to buy their own fuel,” he said. “They could afford diesel when it was $2.49 a gallon, but now when it’s up over $5, particularly in rural Nevada, they don’t have any leftover income.” Flint has hedged his bet on fornication: He also owns Chapel of the Bells, a Reno wedding service, where his office is decorated with portraits of Napoleon.
“The fact that…the claimant was carrying on his person a handwritten piece of paper containing the password for one of the encrypted files recovered from him is a sign of very poor information security practice,” says Govt statement