Nora Caplan-Bricker investigates airlines’ readiness to deal with incidents of sexual assault on airplanes—which are more common, and more terrifying, than you might think—and finds protocols sorely lacking. (Warning: A reading of this article paired with David Wallace-Wells’ eyewitness account of the recent panic in JFK Airport may leave you wanting to abandon air travel forever.)
Sam Kriss has heard the argument that we have entered a uniquely upsetting era of post-facts politics, and he doesn’t buy it. “This is the oldest complaint in the history of political theory,” he points out. “We have always been in post-truth politics. The first written texts of political theory are a lament that questions of government are no longer ruled by transcendent, objective fact.”
An increasing number of Central American migrants showing up at the Mexico–U.S. border are unaccompanied minors, Annie Hylton and Sarah Salvadore find. In many cases, the children are forced to leave their countries when gangs recruit them, or threaten to assault them. An immigration attorney Hylton and Salvadore interviewed reports: “For the first time, I’ve been hearing multiple stories about children as young as 6 or 7 being forced to join, or killed for not wanting to join the gangs. We’ve had kids in here as young as 4 years old reporting sexual violence.”
Why did the critically acclaimed Ghostbusters reboot garner lackluster box office, while the much-less-loved Bad Moms is still earning well? Jesse David Fox thinks the conversation around Ghostbusters may have hurt its chances. “A person’s position on the movie and his or her decision whether to see it, had come to feel like taking a political position,” Fox theorizes. “For moviegoers who consider lighthearted movies a chill thing to do after a stressful week of work—which is to say, most moviegoers—that’s not the sort of mind-set you want your expensive summer action-comedy to engender.”
For fun: Gene Wilder’s perfect comedic pauses.
Most people call me … Jim,
Rebecca
