Friday night’s all right for tweeting: Ever notice that the Sabbath is a kind of witching hour for Donald Trump’s administration? Andrew Kahn decided to analyze the propaganda mine that is Trump’s Twitter presence to see if his Friday-through-Saturday tweets bear this out, and well, folks, “Trump has used an average of 17 percent more exclamation points per tweet on Shabbat.” Statistically speaking, that’s something.
The myth of the master plan: Surveying all the conspiratorial Twitter threads and Medium posts that the Trump administration’s actions have inspired, Katy Waldman asks, “Why are so many liberals penning viral gibberish about how we’re all trapped in Lilly and Lana Wachowski’s adaptation of a Mickey Spillane novel?” Because the thought that there’s no plan at all might be the scariest one of all.
Cinematic torture: In the couple years since Fifty Shades of Grey came out, Laura Bennett had forgotten how tedious, how completely un-erotic it was, but it all came flooding back to her when she sat down to watch Fifty Shades Darker, the sequel that, despite a new director, is “another terrible movie with just the slightest whiff of self-awareness about how terrible it is.”
Just say no: Andrew Puzder for labor secretary is the one Cabinet nominee GOP senators should stomp out, Reihan Salam argues. This wouldn’t be knocking him off for the sake of knocking someone off but a vote against an anti-labor choice to lead the Department of Labor and a signal that Republicans are serious about the people vs. the powerful theme that Trump rode to the White House.
For fun: Women’s college gymnastics is the best show on TV.
Perfect 10,
Heather Schwedel
