Topic - The Dish

Alyssa heralds their rise. On the movie whose trailer is seen above: The tension in Don Jon comes not from the idea that Jon might be unable to overcome his addiction to porn and as a result, lose out on Barbara, but that these two horribly mismatched people might end up together because it’s what […]

Madrigal examines Microsoft’s claim that the servers for their recently announced Xbox One gaming system will exceed “the entire world’s computing power in 1999.” He get’s Martin Hilbert, who co-authored a paper on world processing capacity over time, to weigh in: “I think the reality is rather that the computing power of this cluster is […]

Ryan McGee worries about Netflix releasing an entire season of Arrested Development on Sunday: The intensity in and out of the industry means this show will essentially blind everything else around it for a few days. Of that, we can be certain. Everyone will be talking about it. But they may not necessarily be discussing it. He zooms out: If […]

A phobia finally gets its horror flick:

As long as you stick to the serving sizes: Jane Brody pushes back against attempts to pin the obesity epidemic on sugar: Sugar, it turns out, is a minor player in the rise. More than half of the added calories — 242 a day — have come from fats and oils, and another 167 calories […]

Who knew that refugees from Somalia would consider themselves “deprived” in Sweden. Just ask the BBC: bbc.co.uk/news/world-eur… — Michael Ross (@mrossletters) May 23, 2013 There has been rioting in Sweden for the past five nights (NYT): As the unrest spread from the outlying district of Husby, where it was apparently set off on Sunday by […]

Hugo Schwyzer considers another aspect of the debate over onanism: Masturbation feels really good. It also can feel really icky, when conditioned feelings of guilt wash over the masturbator as he or she comes down from a post-orgasmic high. That shame may or not be rooted in religion, but it is certainly grounded in the idea […]

It’s on the rise: According to a new report put out by the Brookings Institute, more poor inhabitants of the U.S. now live in suburbs than in cities and rural areas. Between 2002 and 2011, the population of the suburban poor rose 67%. That’s over twice the number seen in urban areas. Brad Plumer summarizes key […]

Daniel Stuckey chats with Alex Gibney about his Wikileaks documentary: I think the seeds of whom Assange has become today were always there: In his childhood, in the way he approached the world through the computer, in his kind of solitism, in the way he kind of took to himself and also imagined himself to always […]

Bryan Schatz attends a “building party”, where gun enthusiasts privately collect and assemble pieces from various assault rifles: Although US customs laws ban importing the weapons, parts kits—which include most original components of a Kalashnikov variant—are legal. So is reassembling them, as long as no more than 10 foreign-made components are used and they are […]

A reader writes: If only Americans appreciated how hard this was to do, given the institutional resistance, and how singularly the President himself, within the government, actually understands this in its broader context. I was there at the speech, and moved to tears. Even the interruption by the Code Pink woman turned out to be […]

As we discover more details about the DOJ’s investigation of Fox News journalist James Rosen, former FBI agent David Gomez compiles a list of best practices for journalists: Take a lesson from the Mafia and never use phones for anything other than the most innocuous conversations — i.e., “Meet me at our usual spot” or […]

How Chait understands Obama’s remarks (above): President Obama’s speech today defending his conduct in the war on terror was notable for what he was defending it against — not against the soft-on-terror (and maybe sorta-kinda-Muslim) attack that Republicans have lobbed against him since he first ran for president, but against critics on the left. … Politically, if not substantively, Obama’s speech […]

She really wants that song dammit:

A reader writes: The video and story of Mohamed Assaf reminded of something I’ve been meaning to send you. It’s a music video by activist Israeli-Palestinian hip-hop group DAM, for a song called”If I Could Go Back in Time.” DAM is Tamer Nafar, Suhell Nafar and Mahmoud Jreri, who are from the wrong side of the wall in Lod, […]

Brian Reis spoke with entomologist Louis Sorkin about how to eat cicadas: Hors d’oeuvres! I’ve seen much worse. But James Hamblin gets queasy: Some will mention that cicadas are arthropods, like shrimp and lobster. Eating them is just a step away. Just like how cats and cows are both mammals, so it’s okay that you eat […]

Despite the fact that “Canadian teens were the most likely to smoke pot of all teens in the developed world,” Soraya Roberts isn’t ready to start toking: Call it reefer madness, but I don’t trust my already-precarious anxiety-addled brain to survive pot intact. Particularly these days—this ain’t the pot my parent smoked. In the ’60s, […]

Pivoting off Dreher’s recent musings on the suburbs, Alan Jacobs considers our dissatisfaction with them: Suburbs are diverse not just in age but also in population density. There are no “empty” suburbs, of course, or else they wouldn’t be suburbs, but while some disperse their people into spacious lots, others pack them in in city-like ways. […]

Susan Karlin previews an upcoming PBS documentary about the “artistic sleight-of-hand” that helped the US defeat the Germans in WWII: This is the astonishing true story of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, nicknamed the Ghost Army, a group of 1,100 handpicked American G.I.s who tricked the German army with rubber artillery, sound effects, fake radio transmissions, […]

An increasingly awesome look at the animal kingdom: Relatedly, Ze Frank’s latest video tackles the awesomely weird aye aye.

It was in broad daylight – by two men who attacked a British soldier near his barracks. An eye-witness account: “We saw clearly two knives, meat cleavers, they were big kitchen knives like you would use in a butcher’s, they were hacking at this poor guy, we thought they were trying to remove organs from […]

I had no idea – and you probably didn’t either – that Simon Cowell’s Idol franchise extends to the Arab world – and, in fact, may be one of the last gasps of pan-Arabism, as the region descends into a sectarian and educational hell. But the story of a young Palestinian who somehow managed to […]

A reader writes: As an African-American, I respect your point about the value of Obama’s speech at Morehouse, but ultimately, I completely agree with TNC’s critique. Why? Because I am tired. It seems that every time Obama comes to the black community to address us, he lectures us; he does not simply speak to us. He gives us […]

“This ‘closing off’ that imagines that those outside, everyone, cannot do good is a wall that leads to war and also to what some people throughout history have conceived of: killing in the name of God. That we can kill in the name of God. And that, simply, is blasphemy. To say that you can […]

Adrian Paci documented a group of Chinese craftsmen as they sculpted a classical Western column from a solid piece of marble, all while aboard a cargo ship traveling from China to France. Paci describes his inspiration for the resulting short film: The Column came out of a story I heard from a friend of mine, […]

It will be constructed in a matter of months: Brian Merchant contrasts this project with other skyscrapers: So, should we cheer or jeer the prospect of mass-produced biggest-ever skyscrapers? And also: why mass-produce ginormous skyscrapers in the first place? Well, if the specs [that Broad Sustainable Construction] provides are to be believed, mass-manufacturing prefab skyscrapers is much more […]

[Re-posted from earlier today] A survivor of the Oklahoma tornado gets a surprise: I totally lost it with that video. First off: what a great human being. No bullshit, no mawkishness: “I know exactly what happened.” Then the little dog – her second prayer. Sometimes it takes just one tangible story to fully grasp from […]

Christian Brown showcases videogames that challenge the conception of winning at all costs, such as Spec Ops: The Line: [A]s the game progresses, generic Arab bad guys are replaced with American soldiers and sometimes civilians. The load screens — most commonly seen after the player dies — explicitly question the values of the player. “DO YOU FEEL […]

Robert McCrum pens a tribute to W.G. Sebald, whose practice of mixing various genres of writing with images outlived him: [H]ere’s the strange, and heartening, thing – and also the riposte to the cultural pessimists (vide supra). Sebald lives on. Uniquely, among so many recently deceased writers, he and his oeuvre have had a rich […]

Michelle Lhooq explores “what makes the global culture industry fall for some countries and not others,” charting the rise of Denmark and South Korea: [B]oth of these cultures are especially seductive because they show us an alternative way of life that is somehow better than our own — but at the same time, familiar enough that we […]

A reader fisks me: With every word you wrote here, I questioned more and more whether this was the same person I read religiously day after day. Your defense of Jon Karl is complete and utter nonsense. When he and I were at TNR together, I saw nothing in him but good sense, good humor, […]

In case you missed it, it’s our Tuesday Cry. Below is another video of a survivor emerging from the destruction, followed by another amateur video surveying a leveled neighborhood:

Last week, Kevin Williamson took matters into his own hands when a fellow audience member wouldn’t stop using her smartphone during a theater performance: The lady seated to my immediate right (very close quarters on bench seating) was fairly insistent about using her phone. I asked her to turn it off. She answered: “So don’t […]

An Oxford American mini-documentary, featured above, lost a National Magazine Award earlier this month to Romney’s 47% video on Mother Jones. Kevin Hartnett reflects: There’s a lot of joy and some sadness, too, in Tiny Town, a small-scale world housed in Hot Springs, Arkansas. The elaborate model was carved and assembled over the course of […]

Wayne Curtis believes that pedestrian-friendly roads are making a comeback: The saint of modern pedestrian revival is the late Hans Monderman. Faced with a small budget and a request that he make streets safer in part of a Dutch village called Oudehaske, Monderman did the unthinkable: He removed curbs and signs and let cars, bikes and […]

Felix Salmon ponders the personal privacy consequences of Google Glass: If Google Glass — and wearable computing more generally — takes off and fulfills its potential, it will change society’s norms about what is public and what is private. It is therefore entirely rational, whatever you think of the set of norms we have right now, […]

A long nostalgic look at 1986: (Hat tip: Devour)

Illah Nourbakhsh considers the most vulnerable jobs as robotics are deployed throughout the economy: Robots will be able to fix your car poorly before they can fix it well. They will cook food that is bland and mealy before they garner a Michelin star. But they will take on middle-class jobs and win, not because […]

One way 3D printing is changing the world for the better – personalized prosthetics: Bloomberg View’s editors suspect that this is only the beginning: 3-D printing is already having a demonstrable effect on the economy. Traditionally, it has been most useful in creating prototypes. But as GE and others are showing, printers will increasingly be […]

This story about getting KFC into Gaza, first reported by Xinhua, went viral last week: Paul Mutter wishes the Israeli blockade of Gaza was more prominently mentioned: According to the Canadian International Development Agency, 50% of the strip’s population is considered “food insecure.” While that number may be lower now, especially with the easing of bans on food imports, […]

At a recent typography conference, participants raised concerns about the future of their field. Some pre-conference thoughts: “The future of type is the same as football: everyone does it, and even more people have an opinion about it. Only a few make a living out of it, and some of these are very good,” says […]

This weekend on the Dish, Andrew praised the sanity of the American people, saw the deep Christianity in an Obama commencement speech, and continued to dissect the awfulness of a recent Peggy Noonan column. We also provided our usual eclectic mix of religious, literary, and cultural coverage. In matters of faith, doubt, and philosophy, David […]

A reader reflects: That first Sesame Street episode made a big impression when I was five. The show’s premier was a major event for the white progressive moms in my neighborhood in Evanston, IL. I was actually wrangled before the TV set and told to watch it, a strange act for my mother, who was very anti-TV […]

Mockingbird highlights this arresting passage about The Brothers Karamazov from Jaroslav Pelikan’s Fools for Christ: Dostoevsky’s study of human nature made him see a demonic element in man for which moralism could not account. Like few men before him, Dostoevsky learned to know the subtle means which the demonic employs in asserting itself with the […]

With graduation season upon us, David Zahl revisits Stephen Colbert’s 2011 commencement address at Northwestern University. An excerpt from the speech: After I graduated from here, I moved down to Chicago and did improv. Now there are very few rules about improvisation, but one of the things I was taught early on is that you […]

Kenneth R. Morefield compares Robert Rossellini’s Rome, Open City, which came out shortly after the end of WWII, to contemporary films. He praises Rossellini for framing “his characters’ struggles within a long historical perspective”: [T]he sweeping historical perspective of Rossellini’s films highlights rather than diminishes their moral questions. They force us to look beyond the scope […]

From a review of Marc Maron’s Attempting Normal: The comedian knows well… that “real life” can be a real challenge: “If you are alive and awake, sadness is a fluctuating constant.” As Maron explained during a keynote address at a comedy festival in Montreal… humor is one of our greatest analgesics. Growing up, he felt […]

Melissa Mohr, author of Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing, discusses profanity with the Boston Globe’s Ideas section: IDEAS: Are there… old curses that 21st-century people would be surprised to hear about? MOHR: Because [bad words] were mostly religious in the Middle Ages, any part of God’s body you could curse with. God’s bones, […]