Новости за 16.02.2017

In 2013, Lauren Collins published a piece in the New Yorker called “Danish Postmodern” about the sudden blooming of British people’s love for Danish television, which then showed how the tendrils of this cultural phenomenon were also reaching into America. After the tremendous success of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Collins reported, Denmark’s public-service broadcaster DR produced the now-legendary crime dramas The Killing and The Bridge, and the political thriller Borgen. These first two were remade into inferior American adaptions... Читать дальше...

All these years later, it still is weird to think of Matt Damon as an action hero. When his career began, starring in and writing the screenplay for 1997’s Good Will Hunting, he seemed too ordinary, too sweet, to ever be part of that ultra-macho genre. (The joke of his character in 2001’s Ocean’s Eleven was that he wasn’t nearly as cool as the rest of the smooth crew, especially George Clooney and Brad Pitt.) But 2002’s The Bourne Identity changed that impression, altering his persona from that of the milquetoast everyman to a lean... Читать дальше...

As foreshadowed by his campaign, Donald Trump has spent his presidency fear-mongering over imaginary or exaggerated problems, toward sinister ends. Trump claims of widespread voter fraud are a pretext for cracking down on voters who favor Democrats. He invents crime statistics to lay the groundwork for authoritarian law-and-order policies. And he routinely calls the mainstream media “FAKE NEWS” to delegitimize accurate reporting that makes him look bad.

None of President Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees garnered more activist opposition than Betsy DeVos, the billionaire Republican donor who was nevertheless confirmed by the Senate as education secretary. Andy Puzder, whom Trump nominated for labor secretary, is also widely loathed on the left, but didn’t generate the same level of intense opposition, and was nevertheless forced to withdraw from consideration.

In October of 1994, Wired magazine ran a feature about a new Californian subculture, cheerfully titled “MEET THE EXTROPIANS.” Extropianism, the article enthused, was a philosophy of transcendence. With technology and the right attitude—aggressive individualism, cool rationalism, and other vaguely libertarian leanings—followers of the movement would “become more than human.” They would become transhuman, possessing “drastically augmented intellects, memories, and physical powers,” or maybe even post human. Читать дальше...

Later this week, the Senate is expected to hand over control of the Environmental Protection Agency to environmentalists’ worst nightmare. Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general, has spent his career waging legal battles against clean air, climate, and water regulations. He has sued the EPA more than a dozen times, participating in what The New York Times described as “an unprecedented, secretive alliance” with fossil fuel companies to fight Obama-era environmental regulations. He has helped... Читать дальше...

The campaign to chair the DNC has revived tensions between wings of the party, and forced Democrats to use outreach and organizing muscles that atrophied during the Obama years. It also occurs against the backdrop of a major crisis of competence and national security within the Trump administration.