Donald Trump, Women's Language, Sashimi, Sikkim, Cowardice, Emerging Markets
What Kind Of Person Would Vote For Donald Trump?
Drew Magary | GQ | 4th August 2015
"The bus tells you everything you need to know because the bus is a piece of shit. You would expect a Donald Trump campaign bus to be MOST LUXURIOUS, MOST DESIRED, NUMBER ONE BUS in the world, with a solid-gold chassis and marble toilets and a rooftop fuck cabana. This is not that bus. It’s built to look nice for a single day, then it falls into disrepair the moment you’ve stopped paying attention. And the bus is working" (4,200 words)
How To Write About Women’s Language
Debbie Cameron | Language: A Feminist Guide | 3rd August 2015
"Most bullshit articles about women’s language are fairly similar. Here’s my how-to guide. Choose something that’s already been defined as a problem (uptalk or vocal fry), or go for something no one’s been paying close attention to (over-using the word ‘just’ at work). Pitch a piece on 'Why this thing women do with language is damaging to women’ to the editor of just about any publication. It’s a perennially popular formula" (1,570 words)
The Great Sushi Craze Of 1905
H.D. Miller | Eccentric Culinary History | 31st July 2015
The arrival of American warships in Tokyo Bay in 1853 launched a love affair between America and Japan. Japan hired hundreds of American experts to advise on national development. Prominent Americans — among them ex-president Ulysses C. Grant — toured Japan and came back "besotted". Americans learned to eat raw fish, if not live fish. And the culmination: New York's first Japanese restaurant opened in 1889 (3,500 words)
Last Tango In Gangtok
John Keay | Literary Review | 3rd August 2015
The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim was a "paradise" until India seized it in 1975, deposing King Thondup and his American queen, Hope Cooke from Brooklyn. The couple met in Darjeeling and married in 1963 shortly before Thondup succeeded to the throne. Sikkim was home to 518 villages, 44 monasteries, 4,000 species of flowering plants and 6,700 kinds of butterflies and moths. Ms Cooke lives once again in Brooklyn (1,100 words)
The Bully’s Pulpit
David Graeber | Baffler | 4th August 2015
Our professed contempt for cowardice is both universal and strange, since the effect is to encourage cruelty — from bullying in the schoolyard to massacres in time of war. We find it easier to admire an aggressor than a victim, so long as the victim is not us. "Our first instinct when we observe unprovoked aggression is either to pretend it isn’t happening or, if that becomes impossible, to equate attacker and victim" (4,700 words)
What Comes After ‘Emerging Markets’?
James Kynge & Jonathan Wheatley | Financial Times | 4th August 2015 | | Read with 1Pass
'Emerging markets' has ceased to be a useful investment category. It was coined as a way of referring loosely to dozens of countries which were hugely diverse among themselves, and which by now overlap in many ways with the developed world. But over time the 'emerging markets' label has been appropriated by various institutions in various ways to define funds and indices worth $10.3tn. What should replace it? (1,650 words)
Video of the day: Sartre On Love
What to expect: BBC animation scripted by Nigel Warburton, explaining Jean-Paul Sartre's view of love (1'43")
Thought for the day
Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species
Edward O. Wilson