‘Shopping is impossible’
Rachel Sugar at The Atlantic
With online shopping, the “problem is the overabundance of options” and “too much information, or too little information,” says Rachel Sugar. At “this point, the boundary between ‘shopping’ and ‘not shopping’ has all but collapsed.” There is “now a third state: ‘a little bit shopping,’” the “constant thrum of consumer opportunities that lead mostly to more consumer opportunities.” It is “both a genuine attempt at making a purchase, and a hobby that is infinitely expandable to fill any length of time.”
‘Why must a socialist also be woke?’
Janan Ganesh at the Financial Times
It is “natural to forget what a normie Karl Marx could be,” says Janan Ganesh. From the “beginning, it was possible to be a socialist, the socialist, and culturally middle-of-the-road.” It was “possible to believe in seizing the means of production without being avant-garde on matters of sex, race, crime or war,” but “that point has got lost over time.” The “hard left will always pair a conceivably popular economic program with a provably hated cultural one.”
‘The death toll of a mass shooting doesn’t end at the scene’
Vishal R. Patel, Christopher M. Worsham and Anupam Jena at Time
When a “mass shooting tears through an American community, we count the dead,” say Vishal R. Patel, Christopher M. Worsham and Anupam Jena. But the “damage doesn’t stop at the victims.” The impact that a “shooting spreads across the whole country cannot be seen the way we can see a wound,” but “we can see its footprints in the form of antidepressant prescriptions filled, in accidental gun deaths” and in “lives lost on the road,” as “decades of research show that stress and distraction make drivers more dangerous.”
‘Why fashion falls for fascists’
Ari Hoffman at UnHerd
A “Dorian Gray-like question comes to mind in the wake of the decision” by Anna Wintour to “devote the 2027 Met Gala to John Galliano, a designer hailed as a visionary who has also spewed baroque bigotry,” says Ari Hoffman. Beyond the “judgment of Galliano’s character — by all accounts, it’s troubled — lies a more difficult reckoning with fashion’s fascination with cruelty and fanaticism, which all too often has lain behind the glittering surfaces.”