Remember last week I told you to join the new Slate Plus Facebook group? Well, 1,700 of you did, and now we are all happily chatting away about the Culture Gabfest and the History of American Slavery Academy and what we’ve been reading. We have much more planned. Do join in.
When you’ve done that, here are some things for you to read.
From Slate
“Once an icon of progress, then another stale waiting room of modern life, the airport has now entered a third phase,” writes Henry Grabar: the hub of our national anxieties. Grabar’s acute analysis introduces Terminal, a fertile investigation into the quietly central position of airports in 2017 America.
The end of DACA will be a slow-motion catastrophe for almost 1 million young immigrants—but also for the Trump administration, Mark Joseph Stern writes. (Unless Congress passes legislation to fix the problem, which, don’t hold your breath.)
Katy Waldman’s obituary for the poet John Ashbery is a smart and lovely introduction to Ashbery’s work that doesn’t run from its difficulty. “I confess I am not sure what Ashbery … is getting at here,” is how Waldman begins her second paragraph—although she’s characteristically precise about what he’s up to. (If you come away wanting to read more Ashbery, try Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror; if you come away wanting more help, try Meghan O’Rourke’s 2005 “instruction manual” to reading these strange and alchemical poems.)
After the ACLU defended the organizers of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Waldo Jaquith stepped down from the board of the ACLU of Virginia. Dahlia Lithwick’s conversation with Jaquith is a thoughtful look at how free speech advocates should respond to the rise of the far right.
Why has the world been so slow to respond to the persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar? Joshua Keating wonders if the answer is the cult of Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s Nobel-winning head of state.
I am going to keep this tab open in my browser so I can look at the headline several times a day for the next 3½ years.
Not From Slate
The best Facebook assessment I’ve read in a while.
Chris Orr addresses a question that has long perplexed me: Why are Woody Allen’s movies so terrible?
It took me a while to get to Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah’s profile of Charleston, South Carolina, shooter Dylann Roof, but it’s a magisterial piece of writing and reporting.
Drew Magary’s season-opening NFL column begins with a harrowing description of almost drowning that segues into an evocative description of what it’s like to actually play football. (I do not follow the NFL and despite my admiration for Magary’s work would not have seen this if BML had not brought it to my attention. In exchange, here’s a link to a funny post he did today.)
Equifax had one job. It totally failed at that job. But hey, Equifax will be fine—it’s the rest of us who are screwed.
How do wild dog packs make collective decisions? They vote by sneezing. (That one comes from Dita Kamath in the new Slate Plus Facebook group, which you’ve already joined, right?)
Thanks for your Slate Plus membership, which makes our journalism possible. See you next week!
Gabriel Roth
Editorial director, Slate Plus
P.S. The good folks at the Membership Puzzle Project are researching programs like Slate Plus, which connect journalistic organizations and their audience. They’re interested in talking to a few Slate Plus members. Click here if you’d like to participate.
