Happy April Fools’ Day! Because we don’t think it’s cool to lie to people just because there’s a special designated “lying day,” there is no mendacious April Fools’ content in this newsletter or indeed anywhere on Slate today—only this thoughtful and truthful assessment of two online April Fools’ pranks. I recognize that that’s the kind of assertion that might lead you to expect the link will take you to some kind of dumb hoax, which is a sign of precisely the trust-corrosion that makes me hate all this April Fools’ crap.
From Slate
Jamelle Bouie follows up his magisterial reading of race and the Republican crackup: “Conservatives are talking about struggling white people the way they usually talk about black people.”
Looking for something new to watch? Willa Paskin has not one but three suggestions: Netflix’s The Ranch, Hulu’s The Path, and a great episode of HBO’s Girls.
The week’s most Slate-y #SlatePitch: the fact that Washington’s Metro might be shutting lines down for months at a time is a good thing.
Not from Slate
The best not-in-Slate thing I read this week was Veronica Geng’s 1980 review of Robert Altman’s Popeye, which James Wolcott unearthed on Twitter. But if you’re looking for something more current:
Slate president Keith Hernandez recommends “My Year in Startup Hell” by Fortune’s Dan Lyons: “A viciously brutal account of a really smart, fiftysomething person attempting to come to grips with a really bad career decision. Lyons can handle being older than his new economy co-workers; what’s harder to reconcile is a different philosophical understanding of what a business should be to its employees.”
And home page editor Seth Maxon enjoyed Benjamin Wallace-Wells’ “Rahm Emanuel’s Lessons for Hillary Clinton” from the New Yorker, which “has keen insights on Emanuel’s troubles as mayor of Chicago and the lessons they hold for Hillary Clinton. Both Rahm and Hillary established themselves as political leaders because they are fiercely competent and competitive, but many on the left now want something more than a tough manager; they want a moral authority, too.”
Also: Reihan Salam found “great fun” and “a grain of truth” in this essay: “In Defense of Pretentiousness.” Dana Stevens enjoyed this wonderful essay about coming of age as a female cinephile. And John Dickerson learned exactly how many decimals of Pi you need to build a spaceship.
Very Short Q-and-A
This week’s Very Short Q-and-A is with staff writer Leon Neyfakh.
Slate Plus: Like the rest of Slate’s New York bureau, you’ve been working from home this week as we prepare to move into our new Brooklyn office. What challenges have you faced?
Leon Neyfakh: At the office, I didn’t need to make my own coffee because I could drink work coffee. During my week working from home, that was no longer an option, so I bought a French press.
The coffee grounds are killing me. I’m shocked every time I put the coffee dust in the thing just how much there is of it. And then afterward it’s always just completely solidified and unmovable—but also filthy, which is a rare combo. I hate the wet coffee grounds. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with them. Someone told me once—“in a past life,” as they say—that I should freeze them, so I’ve started doing that even though I have no idea why I’m doing it. Putting them down the sink feels profane and aggressive. Dumping them in the garbage is both impossible (because they clump at the bottom of the beaker) and undesirable, since it means you have to take the garbage out pretty much immediately unless you want your home to stink of soggy, spent coffee beans. If anyone knows what to do about this, please tell me.
So that’s what’s up over here. I have enjoyed getting to spend the day with my dog.
Thanks Leon! And thank you for your Slate Plus membership, which helps make Slate possible. We’ll be back next week, when we’ll have an office again rather than writing this from a café where they’re playing “Let’s Twist Again” at high volume, as I am doing now.
Gabriel Roth
Editorial director, Slate Plus
