America has developed a thriving luxury market in moral melodrama, and its flagship product is the explanation that explains everything while Continue Reading
The Soft Bigotry of No Identification
There are few spectacles in American life more obscene than watching a well-moisturized professional moralist explain that requiring identification to Continue Reading
The Sanctimony Pageant in Black Tie
Every year the Oscars arrive like a scented candle in a power outage, expensive, performative, and somehow making everything worse. It is the one Continue Reading
The Great American Pill Parade Where Your TV Sells You Sickness and Immunity
Oh, darling readers, gather ’round the glowing idiot box that is your television, because Tammy Pondsmith is here to dissect the grotesque carnival of Continue Reading
The House of Hush Money
There is nothing, and I mean nothing, more spiritually moving than watching 357 members of Congress sprint together to bury sexual misconduct Continue Reading
The Alliance of Cowards
There is nothing quite as moving as the modern Western alliance in action, if by “in action” you mean standing in a tasteful semicircle, issuing Continue Reading
Signed for the slogan, invoiced for the consequences.
Last April, I looked at Iran’s eternal stadium chant of “Death to America” and reframed it as the geopolitical equivalent of a gym bro screaming “YOU Continue Reading
Europe’s Security Subscription Just Went Full Price Under Trump
Europe has two religions: Symbolism and Someone Else Paying For It. So when Donald Trump waddles onto the world stage and starts yanking the Continue Reading
California’s Homelessness Money Cannon Still Can’t Hit a Target
California has a special talent. Not Silicon Valley “invent a future” talent. Not Hollywood “manufacture a reality” talent. I mean the rarer gift: the Continue Reading
Shanghai Strings and the American Press Puppet Show
If you want to understand what’s happening in the United States, stop staring at the crowd shots and start staring at the wiring diagram. The chanting Continue Reading
Nuance Is Dead and the Algorithm Ate the Body
Vincent Vargas’ essay, “The Cost of Inaccuracy,” pulls off a modern miracle: holding two thoughts at once without snapping a moral tendon. He argues Continue Reading
January is a Performance Review for Your Fantasy Self
By Tammy Pondsmith, Senior Correspondent, Article 107 News (Reporting on the facts before they happen) It’s December 31st again: the night we Continue Reading