Men and nations do act wisely when they have exhausted all the other possibilities. | | | | It's a beautiful building and system. But it's only as good as those that uphold its virtues and laws. Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington." (1939)
(Sony Pictures Classics) | | | | |  | “Men and nations do act wisely when they have exhausted all the other possibilities.”
| - | Abba Eban, Israeli politician and diplomat |
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| | rantnrave:// I just got back from WASHINGTON, D.C., A beautiful city. One that was designed to inspire and instill awe. The system of government it represents is one of mankind's greatest achievements. Even if there are hypocrisies about the country it serves and the people that designed it. The idea, which is what AMERICA is, is still wonderful. An ideal we need to strive for no matter how often we fall short. The laws, the branches are designed to serve the people. Equally. We fail often. But still, it's about the idea. BONO once said, "That's how we see you around the world. As one of the greatest ideas in human history. Right up there with the renaissance. Right up there with crop rotation and The Beatles' 'White Album.' The idea. The American idea." But all of it is only as strong if the system is upheld. And that is only as dependable as those that are tasked with upholding it. When you pick a party and personal loyalty over the system and your country, you've failed us. Interesting times. Our soul, our goodness is in the crosshairs. I'm rooting for us to do the right thing. For all of us. That is all for today, "rantsnraves" tomorrow... Happy Birthday to STUART SCHWADRON, AVNER RONEN, and ERIC ALEXAZNDER. | | | - Jason Hirschhorn, curator |
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 | The New York Times |
| Cynicism about big business can be healthy, but we don’t always have a better tool for bringing about social change. | | |
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 | CNN |
| CNN's John Avlon says President Trump's projections against political opponents are used to "muddy the waters between fact and fiction." | | |
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 | Boundary Stones: WETA's Washington DC History Blog |
| On October 26, 1962, John Scali and Aleksandr Fomin met for lunch at the Occidental Restaurant--a meal that would help end the Cuban Missle Crisis. | | |
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 | The Irish Times |
| How can a 16-year-old girl in plaits, dedicated to trying to save the planet, inspire such incandescent rage? | | |
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 | REDEF |
| Cloud game delivery and 'Netflix of Gaming' are the big new 'things' in media today. But they're unlikely to deliver the player or playtime growth that many expect. | | |
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 | Wired UK |
| Before 1996, the web was a static, dull place. But the accidental creation of Flash turned it into a cacophony of noise, colour, and controversy, presaging the modern web | | |
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 | Vanity Fair |
| Fellatio has a long and storied history, but not until 1972-with the release of Deep Throat-did it come out, so to speak, in polite company. From the Wild West to the Wild White House, the author explores the blowjob's emergence as the nation's signature sex act. | | |
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 | The Intercept |
| Thomas Hofeller and GOP strategists experimented with using race as the primary factor in drawing districts in Alabama, Florida, and West Virginia. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Twelve years. Thousands of hours of sleuthing. No answers. On the hunt for the three most enigmatic minutes of music | | |
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 | The Business of Fashion |
| The puffer vest has frequently been spotted as the fashion item of choice for the one percent, from HBO's 'Succession' to Jeff Bezos's wardrobe, and brands like Moncler and Cucinelli are reaping the benefits. | | |
|
 | Lawfare |
| A timeline of how allegations of wrongdoing by the Bidens in Ukraine percolated up through right-wing news circles to the president’s desk; what the president and his lawyer have said and done about it; what the Ukrainian government has said about the situation; and how Congress has reacted. | | |
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 | NY Daily News |
| The insultapalooza that was the 2016 presidential election - wherein Donald Trump doled out emasculating nicknames to his opponents, attacked women for their looks, and mocked everyone from an American war hero and disabled journalist to a Gold Star family - is burned on the brains of Democrats. That feature of the 2016 election, in fact, has set the parameters for what Democrats are demanding this go around: a candidate who’s “tough enough” to take on Trump. | | |
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 | Sports Stories |
| In 1959, a 21-year-old named Rong Guotuan entered the field at the World Table Tennis Championship in Dortmund, Germany with low expectations. Rong was a tall, skinny kid, with a parted haircut. His day job before becoming a full-time ping-pong player was as the librarian at a union hall in Hong Kong. | | |
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 | Undark |
| Sewer robots and other new technology aim to end caste-based scavenging, which regularly costs lives. But are they enough? | | |
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 | The Washington Post |
| News organizations ‘privilege the lie’ when they let Trump blame-shift to Biden’s Ukraine role. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| Errors and controversies involving several high-profile books are forcing writers and publishers to reconsider how they handle fact-checking. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| As kids in the ’90s grew up, so did the movies they watched--from ‘Home Alone’ to ‘Clueless.’ That maturation continued into 1999, the year that saw the release of one of the dirtiest, most successful comedies of the decade. | | |
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 | Vox |
| The HBO series about awful rich people seems like it’s about wealth. It’s really about abuse. | | |
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 | Road & Track |
| Twenty years ago, the world's largest energy-drink company tried to transform the path to Formula 1. The result pissed off drivers and ended careers. | | |
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 | TOR.com |
| Welcome to the third installment of a series exploring the look and feel of fantasy maps. In this series, I argue for the existence of a default fantasy map style, tease out its key elements, and say something about where it came from and where it’s going. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| The "Ken Burns effect" is that trick of slowly panning and zooming over a still photo - a ubiquitous practice in documentary filmmaking now, but such a Burns trademark that it took his name. The other Ken Burns effect, one could argue, is the measured, authoritative narration of Peter Coyote. | | |
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 | The Marshall Project |
| Over the past 40 years, a multi-billion dollar industry built on the incarceration of immigrants has proliferated. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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