Become a Pilot
If you ever need a heartwarming reminder of the human capacity to come together and build amazing things, visit an airplane factory. The technology, the teamwork, the sheer beauty of the nearly finished vessels, their broad, shining wings waiting to lift themselves into the skies—it’s enough to make even this seasoned airline pilot (and the skeptical friends I drag along on tours) stand up a little straighter.
Reagan, The Americans, and the Cold War
Joining the CIA wasn’t “exactly the done thing in our liberal family,” says Jacob Weisberg, chairman and editor-in-chief of The Slate Group.
What Makes Facebook Live Videos So Mind-Blowingly Bad
Rubber bands, in sufficient numbers, act on a watermelon like a murderous corset, gripping the firm, green flesh and squeezing until an unnatural waistline appears. This past April, millions of people had occasion to become acquainted with rubber band–induced watermelon waist when BuzzFeed posted a live video on Facebook in which two employees placed rubber bands around a watermelon until it exploded. The rubber band appliers, overdressed in white hazmat suits—it was a watermelon, not a pustulated alien spore—counted out the rubber bands, ever more skittishly, until after 45 minutes and nearly 700 rubber bands, as the number of viewers edged up to 800,000, the watermelon burst. The video (or some part of it) has since been watched 10 million times.
The iPhone SE Is a Design Classic
With a new phone, like with a new friend, even the technologically ambivalent must make introductions. New phone: It’s why I need your Wi-Fi password. It’s why I don’t have that photo we took last month. It’s why I don’t have any music to play at your barbecue.
Don’t Run a Marathon
Have we devised any greater waste of time and energy than the running of the marathon? I’m asking for a friend.
Join the Slate Anti-Marathon
“I run because it’s cheaper than therapy.” I read this on the back of a T-shirt during a recent half-marathon, and although I was out of breath, I laughed out loud. (It was mile 10, and I was a little punch-drunk.)
Libertarians Are Loons
ORLANDO, Florida—It was just a couple of hours before the Libertarian Party’s final presidential debate. C-SPAN cameras were firing up; delegates were filing in. But one debate participant was still on the dance floor adjacent to the convention hall, swaying to techno music with a goblet of beer sloshing in his hand. John McAfee, founder of the eponymous anti-virus software company and a major candidate in the Libertarian race, had apparently eschewed traditional debate prep. Instead he was rocking out, pausing only to deep-tongue-kiss his wife—for what seemed an awkward and unnecessarily prolonged span of time—as his mesmerized constituents grew increasingly disquieted.
The Black Film Canon
#OscarsSoWhite wasn’t—isn’t—only about a stuffy institution failing to recognize work by people of color. Pushing the industry to allow black filmmakers and actors to tell more substantial stories through high-profile work is a crucial step toward remedying the systematic issues at the heart of this controversy. But it’s not the only step. To change Hollywood, it’s important not only to look forward but to look back.
Game of Thrones Podcast
In this edition of Slate’s Game of Thrones podcast, a members-only TV Club, Seth Stevenson and June Thomas recap Episode 6 of Season 6.
The Way We Live Now
Anthony Trollope’s “great, inestimable merit,” Henry James once wrote, “was a complete appreciation of the usual.” He was right: You won’t find a single uncanny moment in that Victorian author’s 47 novels. Yet reading Trollope in the 21st century can nevertheless be a bit spooky. That’s because seemingly everything that happens today has already been covered in one of his books, albeit in a less technologized form.
57 Famous Classical Compositions in One Video
You would think that three different pieces of classical music playing at once would sound cacophonous, but in this clever mashup by Grant Woolard, it all sounds perfectly harmonious.
Shrinking the World
We are deceived by our limited impressions of the world’s size. It is unimaginably and frighteningly vast. Yet its people seem to come together in time and space with a baffling frequency that shrinks the world to a more comforting size. If we ignore all the sensible reasons that make the frequency of coincidences mathematically predictable, their stories transmit a strong sense of inclusive human connectivity, justify our existential significance, and validate our longing for individuality.
How the Warriors Saved Their Season
On May 26, I presented 10 theories about the Golden State Warriors’ collapse. Two days later, the Warriors overcame a late-game deficit to beat the Thunder 108-101 and tie up the Western Conference Finals at three games apiece. Golden State and Oklahoma City will now play a decisive Game 7 on Monday night, with the winner facing LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals. Sports!
How Pop Culture Reacted to Roots
In a recent interview with W. Kamau Bell, LeVar Burton explained what convinced him that an update of the 1977 miniseries Roots was necessary:
Sea of Noise
There are the noises we make in the air, and then there are the noises we make below the waves. This video shows how scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s plan to find out more about what kind of impact we’re having.
Amicus: A Bird With a Broken Wing
Listen to Episode 45 of Slate’s Amicus:
The Villains Edition
Listen to Episode No. 107 of Slate Money:
You Can’t Handle the Spoof
Listen to Episode 507 of Slate’s The Gist:
The Angle: Mean Doesn’t Win Edition
If Donald Trump thinks he can just throw bile into the world and get approbation back, recent polls showing most Americans continue to hold negative views of the candidate prove him wrong, Jamelle Bouie writes. “Over the past year, Trump’s attention-at-all-costs strategy has done nothing but tank his ratings among the public at large, Republicans excepted,” Bouie argues.
Andrew Solomon on His New Collection of Essays, Far and Away
Listen to Episode No. 101 of Live at Politics & Prose:
Truly, Madly, Crazily
Yo Plus! Crazy week. Let’s get right to it.
Trump’s Strategy Is Backfiring
Donald Trump doesn’t believe in bad publicity. It’s why, over the past week, he’s worked to dominate the general election’s news cycle the same way he dominated the Republican primary’s: through attacks and controversy. He has succeeded in yet again blanketing cable news, blocking Hillary Clinton from anything like equal time.
Zika’s Getting All of the Attention. It Shouldn’t.
We did not beat Ebola.
Roots
The miniseries Roots originally aired for eight consecutive nights in 1977 because executives at ABC were convinced the chronicle of an enslaved black American family would flop, and they wanted to burn through it as quickly as possible. Instead, Roots, based on Alex Haley’s book Roots: The Saga of an American Family, became an event and a phenomenon. An average of 80 million people watched the first seven episodes. A hundred million watched the finale. Kunta Kinte became a household name.
Silicon Valley Needs a Valleywag
Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist and Facebook board member who co-founded PayPal and Palantir, has plenty of reasons to hate Gawker Media, the company he’s now trying to sue into oblivion by proxy. So do a lot of his peers in the technology industry, who were the chief target of Gawker Media’s now-defunct Silicon Valley–focused gossip site,Valleywag.
Scenes of Italy
If you don’t have plans for a luxurious Italian vacation anytime soon, this hypnotizing GoPro video of Italy from above is the next best thing. Take in the incredible range of vistas, from snowy mountains to blue-green lakes to ancient castles by the sea. It’s like a visual heir to Charles Dickens’ book reflecting on his travels in Italy.
The Dark Future of Whitewashing
Over at ye olde New York Times, Slate alumna Amanda Hess has a new article on the insane difficulties Asian Americans face in trying to score leading roles in film and television. Constance Wu, star of the hit ABC sitcom Fresh Off the Boat, has been particularly vocal about the lack of Asian American representation. So has Aziz Ansari, who addressed the issue in a vivid and heartfelt way in his Netflix series Master of None and in a Times op-ed that appeared last fall. There is a case to be made that Wu and Ansari’s complaints are self-refuting. Both are very successful, and we’re talking about the dearth of Asian Americans on TV and movie screens at least in part because Asian Americans like Wu and Ansari now have really big platforms. Given that there are far more Asian Americans in media today than in the past, it’s not crazy to believe that we will see more of them in prominent roles in the years to come. The march of progress is inevitable, yada yada yada.
Grief for the Ages
This piece originally appeared on Zócalo Public Square.
"The Starry Night" Meets Ice Age
Scientists at the University of Freiburg have come up with a way to transfer the style of a still image to a video sequence. And using that method, they have, fittingly, focused on doing so with the works of some of the world’s most famous artists. This video about the project shows popular movies animated in the style of some of these artists’ iconic paintings.
Wind Energy’s Rustic Years Are Over
NEW ORLEANS—In the middle of the sprawling Ernest N. Morial Convention Center this week, an executive from German industrial giant Siemens gave a quick history of the offshore wind turbine. The first turbine that Siemens planted in the North Sea off of Denmark 25 years ago had a generating capacity of 450 kilowatts and barely stood above the waves. Today, he explained, as waves of people drifted past, Siemens builds massive turbines with blades that are roughly equivalent to the wingspan of a jetliner—and that can generate nearly 16 times as much power.
Don’t Pee in the Pool
So … pool smell.
Why Are Indian Kids So Good at Spelling?
On Thursday night, 13-year-old Jairam Hathwar and 11-year-old Nihar Janga were declared co-winners of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, making this the ninth bee in a row to name an Indian-American victor. In honor of their victory, Slate revisits Ben Paynter’s story, originally published in 2010, which explains Indian-Americans’ prowess in spelling competitions. It is reprinted below.
Getting It Right: The Schlub
This post is part of Getting It Right, a field guide to the five tribes of modern men’s fashion.
Slate News Quiz
Slate readers and loyal quiz-takers, we are very excited to introduce you to Ray Hamel, your new Slate News Quiz host. When Ken Jennings retired a few weeks ago, we said that the quiz would continue on and that we would attempt “to capture the attention to detail and quick wit” that made the quiz such a hit.
Lightning in Super Slow Motion
Lightning is much scarier when you slow it down.
Florida Institute of Technology researchers filmed strikes during a storm this month to test a new slow-motion camera. Captured at 7,000 frames per second (compared with 24 frames per second for your average movie), the stunning footage shows creeping tentacles of lightning descend toward Earth before a full-on, blinding flash. In the future, the camera will be used to study upper-atmosphere electricity during storms, but we’ll take more shots like these any time.
“I’m Glad What I Done!”
You Must Remember This, the podcast that tells the secret and forgotten history of 20th-century Hollywood, is back for a new season. When each episode airs, creator and host Karina Longworth will share some of the research that went into the episode in an excerpt here on Slate. Listen to the complete Episode 13 below, on Elia Kazan and the blacklist, and subscribe to You Must Remember This on iTunes.
Corrections
Due to an editing error, a May 26 XX Factor misspelled Slate writer Christina Cauterucci’s last name.
Suing the Saudis
Listen to Episode 506 of Slate’s The Gist:
Peter Thiel’s Revenge Campaign Is a Wakeup Call
Peter Thiel is an eccentric libertarian and successful tech investor who has had a lot of crazy ideas: that Methuselan life spans are just around the corner, that America’s best and brightest should live together on man-made islands floating around the sea, that Donald Trump would be a good president. A multibillionaire, he has the ability to support these ideas. His vast fortune means that he is free to ignore any evidence that his ideas are stupid and that he does not have to tolerate those who disagree with him. That’s one of the great things about being superrich: Your wealth serves as a shield—and, if you want, a bludgeon.
The Weiner Edition
To listen to the discussion, use the player below:
The Angle: Doorstop Edition
Surveying the liberal-on-liberal conversational mayhem she sees in her daily life, Dahlia Lithwick is frustrated. “I think a lot about how we speak to one another, and I worry that my progressive friends and I are falling victim to some habits and ideas that have made it virtually impossible for the left and right to even engage—much less debate—serious issues anymore in this country,” Lithwick writes. “I wonder if now is the time to talk about it out loud.”
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