The Angle

The Angle: That Future’s Too Real Edition

Slate’s daily newsletter on racism in Baltimore, the weather and the climate, and Andrew Jackson’s Creek “son.”

Lyon, France, Feb. 10, 2016.

Jeff Pachoud/AFP/Getty Images

The winner of Tuesday’s Democratic mayoral primary in Baltimore, state senator (and public relations consultant) Catherine Pugh, has been “strangely hesitant” to talk about race during her campaign, writes Rachel M. Cohen—an approach that will make it difficult for Pugh to address Baltimore’s needs head on. “There’s a lot that’s wonderful about Baltimore, but the fact is that almost every major issue facing the city today is a racial one,” Cohen argues. “Not even a PR professional like Pugh can expect to avoid that.” 

A handful of satires generated in the wake of the recent bathroom panics hit a little too close to home for J. Bryan Lowder. “The phrase ‘gender-suspicious activity,’ ” deployed in one parody, “might have been made up by a rather brilliant satirist,” Lowder writes. “But it’s actually a useful distillation of the fetid drain clump of sexist assumptions, judgmental entitlement, and curdled hostility to diversity that lies at the core of this kind of legislation.”

Lots of people in the United States are experiencing subjectively better weather—milder winters, with still-temperate summers—because of climate change. This is a problem, Jacob Brogan writes: “Weather that seems to be good may lull us into a false sense of security, dissuading us from acting until it’s too late to make a difference.” We need to find a way to mentally divorce weather and climate

Andrew Jackson brought a Creek Indian into his household, and some people, including Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, have used that fact to argue that Jackson must have had some reserve of compassion toward Native people. Not so fast, I argue; Old Hickory could have had many reasons, aside from altruism, for taking Lyncoya as his ward

For fun: There are some great Prince performances on YouTube right now. Jessica Winter pulls together the best

Don’t miss the Arsenio Hall,

Rebecca