#seth stevenson

[jimstares]

Perhaps I’d been naïve, but it only now dawned on me, in the final week of the campaign, to my great horror, that the real reason they put us in the pen was so they could turn us into props. We were a vital element in Trump’s performance. He never once failed to invite his crowds to heckle us. He was placing us on display like captured animals. ... Behold, Trump said to his fans, I’ve rounded up a passel of those elites you detest. And I’ve caged them for you! Allow me to belittle them for your delight. Here, now you take a turn—go ahead, have at it! Do it again, don’t be shy! Under President Trump, the other elites will be in cages, too. We’ll lock them up, just like the chant goes. Just like you wanted. You’ll be their captors.

Seth Stevenson “How Trump Conned America”

Hey look, the media is finally starting to figure out that they got played. Great work figuring out what a lot of us have known for months. I swear it’s like the run-up to the Iraq war all over again.

[anakintheannika]

[sdickert]

Slate reviews the Beam and Telepresence robotics Into the inbox came the most nuanced article about telepresence robots we have seen in a while.

[thebeautifulsentence]

We’ve got Jim Cutler on one side (always sepulchral in his bearing, and now noting that 'we could all learn a lot from the funeral business'), lobbying to fire Don and buy a computer instead, favoring Harry Crane’s unctuous number crunching over what he terms 'creative hijinks.'

Seth Stevenson, Slate

[mediamattress]

The Whitey Bulger Trial

By Seth Stevenson, Slate (June 12, 2013)

When I was growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, just outside Boston, that old Irish tribalism still defined the city in a way it doesn’t quite anymore. Our top politicians, cops, columnists, and gangsters were all ethnic compatriots. Even my inner-ring suburb—rapidly becoming a haven for yuppie newcomers—still had a cordoned-off neighborhood nicknamed the Point that everyone knew as “the Irish part of town.” In the halls of my high school, Point kids stuck together. At parties, they’d draw a shamrock on the back of your hand when you paid for your keg cup.

Non-Irish wannabe kids like me—the Jews, the Lutherans, the Hindus—still bought into this weirdly collective Boston–Irish identity. We were Celtics fans, wearing green satin jackets embroidered with leprechauns. Some of us (to our later shame) fancied ourselves IRA supporters.

If there was a human embodiment of our blarney, it was the outlaw Whitey Bulger. Whitey was a near-mythical figure for a certain subset of Bostonians. He somehow defined our sense of provincial otherness. He looked out for his own. He had his own code. He was proud, tough, and cloistered, just like us.

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[robinachalmers-blog]

[thebeautifulsentence]

To be clear, the zombie tweeps just sit there, inert.

Seth Stevenson, Slate

[thebeautifulsentence]

I expected to see a clutch of voters in the parking lot, stressing about health insurance—pie charts and all-caps newspaper headlines floating above their heads.

Seth Stevenson, The New Republic