Obama’s senior spring: The president’s final speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday was among his very best, Fred Kaplan writes, offering a nuanced interpretation of trends in global politics over the past 25 years.
Meanwhile, in Trumpland: Those afraid that incidents of terrorism, like last weekend’s bombings, will help Trump’s reactionary candidacy can rest easy, Will Saletan writes. Polls show that the American electorate has, contrary to all conventional wisdom, responded with relative equanimity to the terror attacks of 2015 and 2016.
#SlatePitch of the day: Last week, the internet was enraged by the news that the sugar industry funded 50-year-old research that resulted in a recommendation to eat less fat to control weight. This is not a smoking gun, Andrew Smith argues. So long as scientists fully disclose industry support for their research, we should be able to judge their results based on methodology alone.
20 years: For Slate Plus members (tear down that wall!), Katy Waldman tells the story of one of early Slate’s most admirable and elaborate failed experiments, Blorple Falls. And we’ve launched a new crossword puzzle feature, also on Slate Plus; the first one is unpaywalled and is Slate-themed.
(For still more anniversary Slate chat, check out our editor Julia Turner on the Longform podcast.)
For fun: Jean-Ralphio meets his dad.
Uncanny,
Rebecca
