1. What’s the Panic Over ‘Joker’ Really About?
“Every new Joker embodies the element of chaos his audience fears.”
“People here think life here has taken a turn for the worse. What’s also true, though, is that many here seem determined to get rid of the last institutions trying to help them, to keep people with educations out, and to retreat from community life and concentrate on taking care of themselves and their own families. It’s an attitude that is against taxes, immigrants and government, but also against helping your neighbor.”
3. Now the Rich Want Your Pity, Too
“The idea of meritocracy has long been used by the rich for self-justification. Now it is becoming fuel for their self-pity.”
4. Cars Are Death Machines. Self-Driving Tech Won’t Change That.
“Pedestrian fatalities in the United States have increased 41 percent since 2008; more than 6,000 pedestrians were killed in 2018 alone. More than 4,000 American kids are killed in car crashes every year.”
5. How the Silence Makes the Music
“This is a rough guide to recognizing and reading music’s negative spaces.”
6. What Does Having a Boyfriend Have to Do With Sleep?
“Someone pretending to care registers as someone actually caring for us.”
“Nostalgia for 70s era bohemia runs high, particularly in these fractious times.”
8. That Music You’re Dancing To? It’s Code
“Some artists have eschewed traditional acoustic and electronic instruments to compose with computer code. Colloquially, this is called ‘live coding’ — a D.J. takes the stage with a laptop, opens up a coding interface and constructs melodies in real time.”
9. By the Book: Lupita Nyong’o
“I have never been skiing, but I have a fantasy about going on a skiing trip with a bunch of friends and spending my time alone, in a cabin, by a fireplace, dressed in a cozy fleece onesie, wrapped in a warm blanket with a big mug of hot chocolate, reading a big, fat, juicy book that I have been intending to read all my life, while everybody else does the skiing. I myself would never actually go outside to ski. Instead I would passionately share my reading adventures with my exhausted, sunburned friends at the end of the day, over hearty dinners that I did not cook.”
10. Letter of Recommendation: Stock Trading
“Watching the value of individual stocks rise and fall in real time has become a personal reminder that loss is not only inevitable but also impermanent.”
11. Can the N.B.A. Find a Basketball Superstar in India?
“The international push has been decades in the making.”
12. How ICE Picks Its Targets in the Surveillance Age
“The business of deportation, like so much else in the modern world, has been transformed by the power of big data.”
Submitted For Your Perusal 