Events

From AVWeb: one of the world's two remaining B-29 Superfortresses flew for the first time this weekend after being grounded for more than 60 years. From CityLab: Nice's surveillance network is extensive—possibly too extensive to do any good. From New Republic: Jeet Heer says the GOP is the party of death. Brian Beutler says Trump lying about plagiarising Michelle Obama is making it worse. Alex Shepherd says news outlets actually need to call it plagiarism. Over in the Atlantic, James Fallows just adds...

Tony Schwartz, who ghost-wrote Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal, has broken his silence about the experience: Starting in late 1985, Schwartz spent eighteen months with Trump—camping out in his office, joining him on his helicopter, tagging along at meetings, and spending weekends with him at his Manhattan apartment and his Florida estate. During that period, Schwartz felt, he had got to know him better than almost anyone else outside the Trump family. ... It had never been his ambition to be a...

Pitchfork was a good way to spend most of Saturday (and the weather was perfect). Hanging out with friends and running errands was a good way to spend yesterday. And now I'm back at work. With the Republican National Convention going on this week, I expect I'll have regular posts*. But it's starting to look like July might be my slowest month for posting since I finished my MBA. * For instance, what does it say about the Republican Party that Cleveland felt it necessary to quadruple its police force for...

Because I need to read all of these and have to do my actual job first: I'm going to Pitchfork tomorrow; here's what Greg Kot says I should see. Jeet Heer thinks that Hillary Clinton's campaign is actually helping Donald Trump right now. Charles Pierce is yet another Republican very alarmed by Trump. Deeply Trivial looks at some data about how cosmetics help (or don't help) women. Three from Citylab: New York is building an underground park; London's Oxford Street will be pedestrians-only by 2020...

This is one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time: A new site called OldNYC delivers a Street View-like view of what the city looked like in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The site includes a map of New York City and a slew of dots that can be clicked on to see different images of that particular location. According to Business Insider, which earlier reported on the site, it was developed by Dan Vanderkam in collaboration with the New York Public Library, which has acollection of more than...

For a couple of odd timing reasons, this is my first full 5-day week at my new job...and it's already a 5½-day week. So I've barely enough time to jot these articles down for future reading: The former Longaberger building in Newark, Ohio, is for sale. It's a 7-story picnic basket. Seriously. Paris tourism has declined 10% over the last few months even as France tourism has increased 1%. Paris officials are worried. A resident of the Faroe Islands has created SheepView 360, which is pretty much what it...

David Cameron is about to meet HM The Queen to tender his resignation. Earlier today he gave his last appearance in the House of Commons to answer questions: Theresa May becomes Prime Minister with immediate effect. She's looking forward to winning the 2020 election—but it seems probable there will be an election this fall.

Brian Beutler says Trump poses an "invisible danger to our democracy:" In a country divided such as ours is, an election can help break impasses by providing reasonably clear guidance on what changes the majority of people want to make. But the strangeness of Trump’s campaign is sidelining that guidance. Rather than serving as an exponent of white working-class interests, advancing a policy agenda that would materially benefit his supporters, Trump serves merely as their id. This has made collateral...

British Home Secretary Theresa May became the last person standing in the Conservative party this morning when her only remaining challenger dropped out. So instead of waiting for the party conference in September to formally step down, PM David Cameron is buggering off this week: May had been competing with Andrea Leadsom to replace David Cameron as party leader after he announced he would quit after losing last month's Brexit referendum. However, Leadsom announced Monday she was dropping out, leaving...

Between Bristol Renaissance Faire's opening on Saturday and a lot of lazy Sunday yesterday, I didn't do a lot of productive work this past weekend. I'll catch up on blogging this week, though; got a ton of stuff in the backlog.