Events

When your stupid, racist, age-befuddled uncle says something dumb at Thanksgiving dinner, the best course of action might be to ignore him. Unfortunately, when your stupid, racist, age-befuddled president says something dumb, you have to respond in some way. Which is how the U.S. has now ended up in a diplomatic tiff with, of all places, Denmark: President Trump faced a fierce European backlash to his reported interest in acquiring Greenland from Denmark, as some lawmakers compared the idea to...

Today's Washington Post takes up the world-bending news that people put their Myers-Briggs types into their dating profiles: The Myers-Briggs assessment categorizes people into one of 16 personality types, using an extensive questionnaire of nearly 100 questions such as, “Do you prefer to focus on the outer world or on your own inner world?” and “Do you prefer to focus on the basic information you take in or do you prefer to interpret and add meaning?” Many critics argue that people’s personalities...

...I might have time to read all of these: President Trump's new rule, announced by acting USCIS chief Ken Cuccinelli, could radically change who gets to become an American. This week is the 10th anniversary of Kanye West's unpardonable dick move against Taylor Swift. The UK banned a Philadelphia cream cheese advert because it portrayed a gender stereotype. David Dudley argues that the bad mayor in Stephen Spielberg's 1975 movie Jaws explains "all I really needed to know about cities." Blogger Charles...

It's hard to believe that I started my MBA program in London 10 years ago. Wow.

Just a few for my commute home: New York Times reporter James Stewart interviewed Jeffrey Epstein on background a year ago, and it was weird. The Post analyzes temperature records to find which parts of the US have warmed faster than others. Chemist Caitlin Cornell may have discovered an important clue about the origin of life on Earth. The site of the city's first Treasure Island store, just two blocks from where I lived in Lakeview from 1994-1996, might become an ugly apartment tower unless residents...

A former FBI agent is using "cold-case" techniques to figure it out: Gertjan Broek, a lead researcher with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, believes that the search for an informant might prevent researchers from discovering what really happened. “By asking ‘Who betrayed Anne Frank?’ you actually assume tunnel vision already. You leave out other options,” he says. It’s possible, Broek says, the Franks weren’t betrayed at all—instead they might have been discovered by accident. There’s a chance that...

Including sitting with a lost dog for 45 minutes this morning, I've had a pretty lazy Sunday. Here are some of the articles I might read if I decide to do anything productive today: Astronomers in Hawaii have mapped the structure of the entire universe. Closer to home, what's up with Jupiter's great red spot? A book published in 1968 attempted to predict the world in 2018, and got some things right. Graeme Wood calls President Trump's El Paso photo "obscene." Andrew Sullivan says, of the Democratic...

This morning, as Parker and I went for our pre-breakfast walk, we encountered this fluffy girl trotting down the street with no humans in sight: We manage to corral her in a neighbor's yard, while I posted on Facebook and called animal control. She seemed healthy, well-fed, and accustomed to people and other dogs (though really scared and disoriented). Unfortunately she didn't have a name tag or a phone number. Happy ending, though. After about 45 minutes her owners came by. They'd been canvassing the...

Yesterday, I attended my first professional NFL game* at Chicago's Soldier Field. I can't complain about the view: The Bears did not play their best, but I had a great time at the game. And after, I got to walk in sticky August weather with a stadium's worth of people to the Red Line, which everyone loves after 11pm. I'm being unfair. The tickets came from last April's Apollo After Hours, via a generous donation from one of our members and a lucky bid on my part. And now, I've been to a professional NFL...

That Sgt Pepper taught the band to block a street in London: It was on August 8, 1969, that the band snapped the photo that would change Abbey Road’s future forever. The following month they would release an album named after the northwest London street where it had been recorded, and that album’s iconic cover would seal the street’s fate. A photo of the Fab Four crossing the street in tidily-arranged profile made Abbey Road the site of the most famous crosswalk in the world. In terms of traffic...