Новости за 27.01.2021

On a typical day in early January, the stock for GameStop, or GME—a beleaguered brick-and-mortar video game retailer undergoing downsizing—traded at around $18, with about 6.5 million shares changing hands. With the pandemic devastating retail and much video game purchasing having shifted to digital channels, GameStop’s prospects were poor. It became one of the most shorted stocks on Wall Street—that is, hedge funds and other large investors bet billions that GameStop’s stock price would go down. Читать дальше...

One of my first bosses, the publisher of a digital media startup, sat just a few rows of desks away from me. She blended in fairly easily. The only thing that made her stick out was that her leather jacket, unlike the ones some of my co-workers wore to work, was custom made, with the words “suffering from realness” written on the back.

“Unity” is an elusive word in American politics. More often than not, it suggests something utopian and silly—the promise of an end to partisanship, an epiphanic recognition of a common interest after years of squabbling. It asserts the notion that our divisions are artificial constructs, pushed onto us by conflict-oriented media and snake-oil-spewing partisans—whatever it may seem on the surface, deep down we are actually in complete agreement with one another about what to do. And what is that thing we should do? Читать дальше...

The standoff for control over the U.S. Senate ended Monday with GOP leader Mitch McConnell declaring victory, even though he failed to secure his main demand: an official commitment, by Senate Democrats, to preserving the filibuster.

With the release of the drama Ammonite, paleontology has joined palace intrigue and oil painting on the list of surprising provocations to lesbian sex in recent historical films. Ammonite is a fictionalized account of a love story between the famous (real) fossil hunter Mary Anning and an ailing woman tourist, set at the seaside in 1840s England. Like fellow queer imagined histories The Favourite (2018) and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), Ammonite is sensuous and dark, almost luxuriantly interested... Читать дальше...

The historian Joan Wallach Scott started thinking of the judgment of history when the Charlottesville riots took place in 2017. The appearance of a large number of marchers chanting antisemitic slogans (such as “Jews will not replace us”) and displaying Nazi paraphernalia ran counter to her assumption that history had rendered its final judgment on the Nazis. She had thought that Nazism had been banished forever from the political stage. How could she have been so wrong?

While it remains unclear how Biden’s legislative agenda will take shape once coronavirus relief and impeachment have been dealt with, one item that will be competing for his attention will be statehood for the District of Columbia. Biden, like the last two Democratic presidents, reiterated his support for admitting D.C. as a state on the campaign trail. More Americans have come to back the idea in the last year, as well: A Data for Progress poll in September registered 43 percent support from American voters... Читать дальше...

For one ever-so-fleeting moment after the Capitol Hill riot earlier this month, it looked as if the GOP might take decisive action against Donald Trump. Ten House Republicans voted to impeach him for incitement of insurrection one week after the attack. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell floated the possibility that he would vote to convict him. Even those who were ostensibly defending Trump, like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, said he bore responsibility for what happened.