| Move Over, Jeb. Here Comes Marco. |
[29 Sep 2015|12:03am] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/09/marco_rubio_is_catching_up_with_jeb_bush_fast.html If Jeb Bush were Jeb Jones or Jeb Johnson, he might be a George Pataki or Jim Gilmore—an insignificant, if not irrelevant, former governor seeking the Republican nomination. But he’s a Bush—the third to run for president—and that comes with “free stuff”—the unearned advantage of dynastic ties that will always keep you from becoming Jeb Nobody. And he’s had that leg up since well before he made his presidential run official. Jeb entered the race with checks from Bush family donors and help from Bush family advisers. Indeed, his super PAC raised massive sums in the first few months of the year, almost all on the strength and reliability of his name.
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| The Unlocked City |
[29 Sep 2015|05:32pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/business/metropolis/2015/09/european_heritage_days_in_paris_it_s_an_amazing_way_to_experience_a_city.html PARIS—A little past midnight on a Friday night earlier this month, I waited on the silent, rain-soaked rue du Cherche-Midi for the door at No. 8 to swing open, hoping my name was really on the list. As I entered, the corridor smelled of baking butter crust, and the room where we left our coats was hung with two-dozen paintings of bread and lit by a chandelier made of baked dough. When Pierre Poilâne opened his bakery here in 1932, this was a neighborhood of artists, and they bartered their talent for his 4-pound loaves. The lighting fixture is a replica of one that Pierre’s son, Lionel Poilâne, built with Salvador Dali in the ’60s, when the artist ordered a room made of bread.
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| Slavery Myths Debunked |
[29 Sep 2015|06:37pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2015/09/slavery_myths_seven_lies_half_truths_and_irrelevancies_people_trot_out_about.html A certain resistance to discussion about the toll of American slavery isn’t confined to the least savory corners of the Internet. Last year, in an unsigned (and now withdrawn) review of historian Ed Baptist’s book The Half Has Never Been Told, the Economist took issue with Baptist’s “overstated” treatment of the topic, arguing that the increase in the country’s economic output in the 19th century shouldn’t be chalked up to black workers’ innovations in the cotton field but rather to masters treating their slaves well out of economic self-interest—a bit of seemingly rational counterargument that ignores the moral force of Baptist’s narrative, while making space for the fantasy of kindly slavery. In a June column on the legacy of Robert E. Lee that was otherwise largely critical of the Confederate general, New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks wrote that, though Lee owned slaves, he didn’t like owning slaves—a biographical detail whose inclusion seemed to imply that Lee’s ambivalence somehow made his slaveholding less objectionable. And in an August obituary of civil rights leader Julian Bond, the Times called his great-grandmother Jane Bond “the slave mistress of a Kentucky farmer”—a term that accords far too much agency to Bond’s ancestor and too little blame to the “farmer” who enslaved her.
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| The Biggest Mistake Buster Keaton Ever Made |
[29 Sep 2015|06:48pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/you_must_remember_this/2015/09/hollywood_history_podcast_buster_keaton_s_move_to_mgm_in_1928.html Buster Keaton, one of the first great indie filmmakers, moved to a major studio in 1928. He hated the movies he made, but they earned money and made him doubt his own abilities and taste. That’s when the drinking started. Later, he would call signing with MGM the biggest mistake of his career—within a chapter in his autobiography titled “The Worst Mistake of My Life.” This week’s episode of You Must Remember This, the Panoply podcast about the secret and forgotten history of 20th-century Hollywood, tells the story of Buster Keaton’s biggest mistake. Here’s an excerpt. Listen to the complete Episode 3 below, and subscribe to You Must Remember This on iTunes.
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| Paint. Learn Piano. Build Mario Levels! |
[29 Sep 2015|07:37pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/gaming/2015/09/super_mario_maker_it_s_not_just_about_building_your_own_mario_levels_it.html I want to design a level in which Mario can only jump once. Not like one of those “automatic” levels you may have seen on YouTube in the past few weeks, ones in which Mario is bounced, conveyor-belted, and skull-platformed to the end as the player does nothing at all. I want my level to be a light hike: demanding engagement, but also fostering contemplation. The idea came to me as I sat in traffic on the 405 freeway, ruminating on level design and how to make a statement with verticals. But now that I’ve begun bringing my one-jump concept into being, I cannot—cannot—get the first and only power-up mushroom in the right place. I’m this close to giving up on the whole thing.
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