14hI didn’t know what e-mail was until I got to college. I had heard of e-mail, and knew that in some sense I would “have” it. “You’ll be so fancy,” said my mother’s sister, who had married a computer scientist, “sending your e-mails.”
↩︎ The New Yorker
Massive storms in the Deep South have killed at least 19 people as of this morning, marking President Trump's first natural disaster.
"Tornadoes are vicious and powerful and strong," Trump said, "so we'll be helping out the state of Georgia." He did not specify what that help would look like or when it would come.
President Obama oversaw some 563 drone strikes in the Middle East and North Africa during his presidency, some 10 times more then Bush. In the process, between 380 and 801 civilians were killed, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
Gorillaz drop their first track and video in six years, an unsettling and extremely 2017 "Hallelujah Money."
For years, to conduct evaluations of parents seeking custody, New York City's Family Court has relied on a for-profit "medical consulting" company—one that's been repeatedly accused of rushing through what they call hourlong "abbrevitaed IQ tests" that often misidentify "cognitive limitations" in parents that might just not speak English very well.
Steven Levy, extensive chronicler of President Obama's tech agency pet projects—like the U.S. Digital Service and GSA's 18F—now reports on those agencies' members "openly weeping" at their final retreat with Obama at Camp David while questioning their roles as President Cyber-Baron 400-Pound-Hacker takes office.
18hIf Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite.
↩︎ The California Sunday Magazine
From seedy, druggy, dangerous, and surfy to cheesy, homogenous, trendy and wealthy: Venice is the most expensive neighborhood in Los Angeles these days, where the average rent on a two-bedroom apartment is well ahead of Santa Monica, Brentwood, even Bel-Air.
So how did Venice become Beverly Hills by the sea? "That's easy!" laughs developer Frank Murphy, an easygoing guy with a gray mustache. "It's super attractive and [housing is] very, very scarce."
This ripping obituary of journalist Clare Hollingworth, who died recently at 105, is a cross between a kid's adventure story and something out of John le Carré.
She could swim, ride, ski, fly a plane and jump with a parachute. And shoot: during the war she slept with a revolver under her pillow; spares included a small pearl-handled one for her evening bag. Aged nearly 80, she was seen climbing a lamppost to gain a better look at the crackdown in Tiananmen Square. She once avoided arrest in Bucharest by staying wrapped only in a towel. Romanian secret police might strip a woman, she reckoned, but would not dress one by force.
It’s been a long, turbulent sleep, but now the Rooster wakes. Introducing the shortlist, judges, commentators, and Zombie poll for the 13th edition of The Morning News Tournament of Books.
The best music from 2016 meant more than usual this year.
The past year has been bad—but what made it bad, more or less? To find out, we asked a group of writers and thinkers: What were the most important events of 2016, and what were the least?
