In this video, Rob outlines all the ways Facebook *could* rig an election. Among them: manipulating the newsfeed algorithm, blacklisting stories in their trending news section, and selectively deploying the “I Voted” module:Though Facebook says it won’t use that power, the company last week drew criticism over the way it has curated its “Trending” module. Here’s Rob with details:
In at least one non-negligible way, Facebook joined journalism’s dirty ranks [last] week, as the company found itself accused of having a liberal bias. And perhaps it really does. A series of Gizmodo reports have raised new information about how the company’s “Trending” module works. “Trending” is the list of popular headlines that appears in the top right of Facebook.com; it also appears under the search bar in its ubiquitous mobile app. While many users believed that this module was compiled algorithmically, Gizmodo (and now The Guardian) have revealed that humans, working on contract for the company, guide its creation every step of the way. What’s more, these workers (often Ivy-educated twenty-somethings) “routinely suppressed conservative news,” according to the allegations of one former employee who talked to Gizmodo.
In an attempt to appease concerns over partisan bias, Mark Zuckerberg invited a bunch of conservative media figures to Facebook HQ this week. One of them was Glenn Beck, who took to Medium yesterday to describe “what disturbed me about the Facebook meeting.” His most highlighted quote:
It was like affirmative action for conservatives. When did conservatives start demanding quotas AND diversity training AND less people from Ivy League Colleges. I sat there, looking around the room at ‘our side’ wondering, ‘Who are we?’ Who am I?
An Atlantic reader thinks that Facebook pushing any political preference would be bad for business:
Facebook doesn’t need to be fair any more than Fox News or MSNBC or HuffPo or anyone else who has a clear political slant. But if they're not trying to be fair, then they’re subject to the same ridicule and declining status that those other outlets have faced, and over time, they whittle their audience down to a concentrated niche. It’s in Facebook's commercial interests not to exclusively buy into a political point of view.
This reader, on the other hand, doesn’t think a clear political slant would necessarily hurt the company’s bottom line:
Facebook sells advertising—that is their core business. So if their algorithm found that favoring left-wing politics is better for advertising dollars, that is what they are going to do. If it helps their advertising revenues to claim the moon is made of cheese, they will do so as well. Rest assured they have done the data analysis and asked this question. That is all there is to it.
But, as this next reader suggests, would a trending module by any other name smell as sweet?
Facebook should stop suggesting that its “trending” news is news that is actually, you know, trending. It should select a more accurate title. Something like “Much Glorious And Inspirational News Selected by Ministry of Information and Personally Approved By Facebook Commissars.”
Thoughts on whether Facebook should stay politically neutral? Let us know.
Many emails are coming in from my reader callout tied to Megan’s feature on the future of high heels, “Arch Enemies.” The first one comes from a self-described “career woman in Minnesota who NEVER wears high heels” and who challenges some common narratives surrounding ladies in stilettos:
The idea of wearing them to “feel taller” is beyond me. If that’s the case, short men should be suffering in stilettos instead of relatively comfortable platform shoes—if they care at all about their height, that is. I liken stilettos to Chinese foot-binding—just another way to make women helpless, while at the same time telling them it makes them powerful. They’re not good for your feet, and certainly not good for your back: Ask any podiatrist or chiropractor (but don’t ask Stacy London [the fashion consultant and reality TV host]). And never mind running away from a mugger—or chasing a mugger—wearing heels. It only works in the movies.
Google “high heel quotes,” and this is the type of hype you will see:
Superwomen do it in high heels.
Strong women wear their pain like stilettos. No matter how much it hurts, all you see is the beauty in it.
How can you live the high life if you don’t wear high heels?
They might be painful, but they are a girl’s best friend
[The Marilyn Monroe quote seen above] particularly bothers me. Grrrrrr.
Here’s an anonymous reader, who also chimes in “from the high-heel-hater side of the argument”:
I love clothes, and I love shoes all too much, but I’ve disliked very high heels at least since I was in high school and that’s a long time ago. Why? I dislike them because the human foot was never meant to be raised up like that. I’m looking for clothes that make me feel free, happy, and able to go wherever I want, in comfort and style.
Sorry for the high-heel lovers, but I think those stilettos that you just purchased for a small fortune are plain old ugly. And even worse, they make you look like a wounded animal when you try to move in them. I can’t help but wonder if that’s the appeal of them to a certain kind of guy. Fortunately, I’m married to a guy who thinks they are as dumb as I do.
When I think of beauty in clothes, I think of clothes that enhance someone’s natural gracefulness, not something that makes a woman look she is hurting with every step or is playing dress-up in her mom’s shoes. One of the saddest things about coming home to the U.S. from almost anywhere in the world is realizing how so many Americans dress with no self-respect or attempt to look like they even halfway care about themselves. At the same time, it’s sad to see how many of those who do care only care about following the latest dictates from a the fashion industry. Beauty is not about being a slave to ridiculous fashions; it’s about caring for yourself. And if you don’t even care to treat your feet with respect, I think it’s hard to care about yourself.
Here’s another reader, Ulash, on a particular topographical challenge:
In my early adult life, when I was living in London, I would strut around in my heels because all my friends were wearing fabulous shoes with high heels. It was the norm. I would notice by 1pm at work that my feet hurt with blisters. I was always questioning: Why do I wear high heels? Is it because society defines them as being sexy?
Anyway, fast forwarding to ten years later, when I moved to the United States—specifically San Francisco—I think I wore heels the first year then stopped. Why, you ask? Because SF has so many hills, making it challenging to strut in heels! Plus, I noticed the culture in SF is a little different than London, that it’s more acceptable to wear loafers and comfortable shoes. So I’ve traded heels for loafers, and I must admit: I love it!
Now, when I watch women strutting in high heels, I am so happy for them. But I wonder to myself, are they comfortable?
As someone who once lived in a particularly hilly part of San Francisco, I can confirm: those hills are not heel friendly. And I never would’ve shown up to work at a tech-startup in heels. Even boots felt formal. Another reader hits this point: “I don’t think it matters in tech world. Where I work, nobody wears high heels, unfortunately, and it is highly discouraged for practical and safety reasons.”
What drives you to slap on a pair of stilettos? Let me know.
“The party of Lincoln” wasn’t always so. In 1856, at the first-ever Republican National Convention, party leaders passed up Abraham Lincoln for vice president. But second time’s a charm, right? On May 18, 1860, the 51-year-old congressman from Illinois, having raised his national stature during the Lincoln-Douglas debates two years earlier, secured his party’s nomination for president. The Chicago Tribune’s Kenan Heise described the scene at the convention for the book Chicago Days: 150 Defining Moments in the Life of a Great City:
The eloquent, self-assured [William] Seward, a U.S. senator from New York, was widely thought to have the nomination wrapped up; many deals had been cut, one of which put Chicago Mayor “Long John” Wentworth in the Seward camp. … Fortunately for [Lincoln], Chicago, which was hosting its first national political convention, was the heart of Lincoln country.
To make sure a friendly crowd was on hand to out-shout the competition, batches of admission tickets were printed at the last moment and handed out to Lincoln supporters, who were told to show up early at the Wigwam, a rickety hall that held 10,000 people. And, for good measure, Illinois delegation chairman Norman Judd and Joseph Medill of the Chicago Daily Press and Tribune placed the New York delegates off to one side, far from key swing states such as Pennsylvania.
Drawing of the Wigwam, a building specially constructed for the convention (Wikimedia)
No candidate had a majority after two ballots. During the third ballot, with Lincoln tantalizingly close to winning the nomination, Medill sat close to the chairman of the Ohio delegation, which had backed its favorite son, Salmon P. Chase. Swing your votes to Lincoln, Medill whispered, and your boy can have anything he wants. The Ohio chairman shot out of his chair and changed the state’s votes.
After a moment of stunned silence, the flimsy Wigwam began to shake with the stomping of feet and the shouting of the Lincoln backers who packed the hall and blocked the streets outside. A cannon on the roof fired off a round, and boats on the Chicago River tooted in reply. … The Republicans had a candidate.
The Atlantic, founded as an abolitionist magazine just three years earlier, threw its weight behind Lincoln but expressed some initial disappointment over Seward’s loss (the New York senator was a more forceful opponent of slavery than the moderate Lincoln). Here’s our founding editor, James Russell Lowell, on “The Election in November”:
We are of those who at first regretted that another candidate was not nominated at Chicago; but we confess that we have ceased to regret it, for the magnanimity of Mr. Seward since the result of the Convention was known has been a greater ornament to him and a greater honor to his party than his election to the Presidency would have been. … [Seward], more than any other man, combined in himself the moralist’s oppugnancy to Slavery as a fact, the thinker’s resentment of it as a theory, and the statist’s distrust of it as a policy,—thus summing up the three efficient causes that have chiefly aroused and concentrated the antagonism of the Free States.
After sizing up the national schisms over slavery, Lowell turns to Lincoln:
The first portrait of Lincoln as nominee (May 20, 1860)
We are persuaded that the election of Mr. Lincoln will do more than anything else to appease the excitement of the country. He has proved both his ability and his integrity; he has had experience enough in public affairs to make him a statesman, and not enough to make him a politician. That he has not had more will be no objection to him in the eyes of those who have seen the administration of the experienced public functionary whose term of office is just drawing to a close. He represents a party who know that true policy is gradual in its advances, that it is conditional and not absolute, that it must deal with fact and not with sentiments, but who know also that it is wiser to stamp out evil in the spark than to wait till there is no help but in fighting fire with fire.
The 1860 general election brought one of the highest voter turnout rates in presidential history. And, of course, “Honest Abe” walked away the winner and went on to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and then orchestrate the passage of the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery for good. As Lowell wrote with great prescience, “We believe that this election is a turning-point in our history; for, although there are four candidates, there are really, as everybody knows, but two parties, and a single question that divides them.”
Yesterday marked the 62nd anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which undid Plessy v. Ferguson’s “separate but equal” doctrine established 120 years ago today. (Sage has compiled archival Atlantic readings on the Brown decision.) But the fight to desegregate schools continues. Just last week, a Mississippi judge ordered the state’s Cleveland School District to desegregate. City Lab’s Brentin Mock has details:
One city that just never succeeded at school integration is Cleveland, Mississippi, where the school district was sued by a group of parents way back in 1965 for its failure to comply with Brown. Black families were concentrated (both then and today) in neighborhoods to the east of a railroad track that split Cleveland in half, both physically and racially. Black children were forbidden from attending schools located to the west of the tracks, where white families lived almost exclusively, due to Jim Crow policies.
This sequestering of black students persisted for decades after that lawsuit was filed, despite numerous consent decrees and court orders for the Cleveland school district to desegregate. The district was never able to come up with a plan that could convince white parents to send their kids to schools on the black side of town. Now, the federal government wants Cleveland to squash its schools’ race-based reputations by folding the east-of-the-tracks black middle and high schools into the historically white schools to create single, blended schools for each age group.
“The wheels of justice have been said to turn slowly,” wrote Shannon Lerner in a piece for us last year covering the Cleveland School District on the ground. She continues:
And few things move quickly here in Cleveland, Mississippi, a town of 12,000 people with no movie theater and a quaint commercial district that’s shuttered on Sunday. But when a deadline on a school desegregation suit—originally filed in 1965—came and went last month with opposing sides still unable to agree on a resolution, some locals admitted frustration.
“If you fight for something for 50-some-odd years and it don’t work out? Good gravy, that’s a long time,” said Leroy Byars, 67, who is known around town simply as “Coach.”
Cleveland isn’t alone. Last month, Alana reported from Little Rock, Arkansas, on the persistence of school segregation there. She tells the story of LaVerne Bell-Tolliver, whose parents “volunteered her to integrate Forest Heights Junior High in Little Rock in 1961”:
Bell-Tolliver looks at Little Rock schools now, though, and wonders if her years of hell were all in vain. In the decades since the schools were first integrated, Little Rock has become a more residentially segregated city, with white residents in the northwest part of town and blacks in the southwest and south. Because the vast majority of children attend schools in their neighborhood, the schools have become re-segregated too.
And those separate schools are not at all equal. For example, 58 percent of the students at Roberts Elementary, located in northwest Little Rock, are white, though the district as a whole is just 18 percent white. Roberts was completed in 2010 and has a climbing wall, a state-of-the art computer lab, a chemistry lab, telescopes, high ceilings, natural light, and a cafeteria with a stage and TV screens. Wilson Elementary, 72 percent black, is located in a majority-black neighborhood and, according to a lawsuit filed this year, has failing air conditioning, squirrels that died in the air ducts, and a cafeteria that was closed by the public-health department.
One reader has a cynical reaction:
It’s wrong to deny resources to majority-minority schools. But no matter how liberal, every parent wants their children to attend a high-performing school. And no doubt about it, those schools are white.
On that note, Alia posed the following question to New York Times Magazine investigative reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones during our Education Summit yesterday: “What do you say to parents who really believe in [integration], but they don’t want to sacrifice their kid’s education?” She added, “They don’t want to send their kid to a school with bad test scores. What do you say to them?”
Hannah-Jones’s response:
Well, one, I would say test scores are often a reflection of the socioeconomic status of the kids in the school, and what the data shows is that middle-class parents who go into these schools, their kids do just fine. My daughter is doing just fine. She’s reading above her grade level; she’s thriving. Because anything that the school would lack, I can provide for her. But also she has come into the school with a certain level of knowledge and privilege. So I think that that’s a fear that is often unfounded, but it’s a fear all the same.
I think the other thing is the notion that we’re going to get equality without having to give up any of our privilege is just a false notion. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t say, “I want equality, but at the same time I want my child to have every advantage.” That’s not equality.
You can watch the full exchange below (Alia’s question starts around the 9:25 mark):
For more from Hannah-Jones, check out “The Problem We All Live With,” an episode of This American Life looking at desegregation and the achievement gap.
Megan recently spoke with Dolly Singh, a former employee of SpaceX and the current CEO of the shoe design firm Thesis Couture, about her company’s attempt to build a comfortable stiletto. Along the way, Megan muses:
It’s appropriate, though, that creating those shoes would transform from a “project” to a broader purpose: The appeal of heels—not just of sky-high stilettos, but also of their less audacious cousins—lies, most broadly, in their ability to function not just as footwear, but also as small, wearable symbols of mankind’s tendency toward restless ambition. Heels have emerged from roughly the same impulse that led to cathedrals and skyscrapers and, yes, rockets: our desire to be taller, and grander, and generally more than we once were.
That allure—of being something bigger than oneself—resonated with this reader:
What a wonderful article! Thank you! I happen to love wearing high heels, and it’s embarrassing to admit, since I find flats much more comfy. My reason for liking them is that I’m a bit short, and heels make me tall. Taller, anyway. When I put on high heels, I’m suddenly 2"- 3" higher, and I feel a greater sense of power. It’s much nicer to be able to look people in the eye and not have to look up at them.
As for the sexy factor, I suppose they make us look sleeker, and men like that, and of course. But the fact is that I LOVE feeling taller. If I could wave a magic wand and be taller, I’d wave it like crazy!
Another reader is a bit more skeptical, but she acknowledges the possible utility of high heels for a shorter coworker:
I abandoned high heels after a serious injury that left me with a limp for several years. I could wear them now, in theory, but I’ve lost the habit and don’t miss it. Wearing flat shoes or low, stacked heels (generally loafers and not ballet flats) hasn’t hurt my career at all.
The only woman over 35 who regularly wears high heels at my office is tiny and probably going for the height. Otherwise, heels seem to be for the young women in the lower-ranking jobs, while the older women who actually run the place wear more practical shoes.
So. Let’s talk about heels. Why do you choose to wear them? If not, why not? Shoot me your shoe stories: hello@theatlantic.com.
Asinine dress codes don’t disappear after graduation. During a stint at a Christian coffee shop in Virginia in 2006, I made recreational reading out of our comically restrictive staff code of conduct. The strangest? Employees were only permitted to wear “simple, white” underclothes. Lacey bras and panties were explicitly prohibited. I never mustered the courage to ask my boss how often he did inspections …
More readers shared their workplace rules, including this woman who apparently once worked with the Peep Toe Police (🚨):
Working for a large (50,000+) company in the late ‘90s, we had to wear closed-toe shoes and “foot coverings.” That meant, even in summer, women had to wear nylons or socks, even with pants and pumps. One day, my boss actually pulled up my pant leg to check that I was wearing them. We all hated the term “foot coverings!”
Another ‘90s horror tale:
I worked in a Fortune 50 internationally known company, and I was based at the world headquarters in NYC. Women were not allowed to wear pants. I witnessed an executive woman sent home in a blizzard because she wore pants that day—a day when about 50% of the people didn’t make it to work because of the blizzard. I guess she couldn’t make decisions that impacted a multi-national, billion-dollar company with her legs covered.
Maybe, this next reader suggests, all of these weird dress codes in high school are just training for a lifetime of weird workplace dress codes:
There are workplaces that tell you what kind of earrings you can wear. They tell you what the color of your suit can be. Where I work, half the people come in to work in their pajamas, but one particular group isn't allowed to wear jeans on Friday because screw you.
Arbitrary, nonsensical dress codes are part of the adult world, so the kids should get used to it.
Now that our aerial feature has grown to include videos, I figured I’d throw a new medium in the mix: I snagged this (cinemagraph? Boomerang?) short video back in 2015:
That bright part on the righthand side? That’s Downtown Los Angeles. Here’s another grab from the same flight, as the plane neared landing at LAX:
This flight path never gets old, and the sheer amount of L.A. sprawl astonishes me. I love how there are speckles of light in every direction, like endless constellations in the night sky. (Of course, the actual constellations are blocked by the city’s smog.) As the band Thirty Seconds To Mars put it in their 2013 song, Los Angeles is truly “the land of a billion lights.”
“It’s easy to assume that our constantly proliferating digital devices can easily generate any color we want,” the author of that New Yorker piece, Amos Zeeberg, writes. “But, in fact, our screens paint from a depressingly small palette: most can only recreate about a third of all the colors that our eyes can perceive.”
Here’s an interesting tidbit from USA TODAY’s Mark Saltzman: “[A] little-known Night Shift feature uses your iPhone or iPad clock and geolocation to automatically adjust the colors in the display to the warmer end of the spectrum after dark – which may help you get a better night’s sleep, says Apple.”
For now, at least one Atlantic reader is sticking with grayscale:
I just did this, and it’s amazingly effective. Candy Crush was my weakness, and it’s dull as dirt in black and white. Yay, now I can spend my spare time knitting and meditating instead!
It can be found in nightstand drawers or stashed away in purses. Each day, women across the world wrestle the tiny pill, smaller than most candies, out of its packaging. It’s grown so ubiquitous (or perhaps just taboo) that it has taken on a generic name: “the Pill.”
On May 9, 1960—56 years ago today—birth control pills became a reality when the FDA approved the first oral contraceptive: Enovid. (For a deeper dive on Gregory Goodwin Pincus and his invention, check out “The Team That Invented the Birth-Control Pill,” by Jonathan Eig.) Back in 2013, when we asked readers what day “most changed the course of history,” one of you pointed to Enovid’s introduction.
Today, millions of women are on different variations of the Pill. It’s the leading form of contraceptive among American women between the ages of 15 and 29, according to the CDC. It’s hard to image what life would be like without the Pill. But last year, our video team put together this animation, detailing the long history of contraception:Revolutionary though it was, the Pill certainly wasn’t, and still isn’t, perfect. Many women today maintain a “love-hate” relationship with the Pill, citing side effects or the inconvenience of having to take it daily. Meanwhile, intrauterine device (IUDs) remain a more effective, but less popular, form of birth control.
So where do we go from here? For last year’s March issue, Olga reported on “a number of contraceptive technologies in various stages of development—none of which involves women taking a daily pill.” A girl can dream.
It finally happened: With Ted Cruz and John Kasich both out after the Indiana primary on Tuesday, Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for the President of the United States. “Where were you the night Donald Trump killed the Republican Party as we knew it?” Molly asked.
So what does Trump’s triumph mean? First off, there’s rest of the party to consider: In a new cheat sheet, we’re tracking where the GOP’s elders, opinion makers, and others stand on Trump. And what about Congress? “His unpopularity with the general public could drag down Republican congressional candidates across the country, hand control of the Senate,” Russell wrote, “and maybe even the House to Democrats, and cost [Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell] their August job titles.” Uh-oh.
And just who will be Trump’s vice-presidential pick? David Graham is analyzing the options in another cheat sheet.
And even Silicon Valley is in on the minivan bandwagon; Google announced Tuesday it will partner with Chrysler to produce 100 self-driving minivans. Adrienne reflected on the “brilliant move” by the tech giant, noting “Google’s interest in self-driving minivans has to do with building public trust, a hurdle facing the developers of driverless cars that’s arguably even greater than the remaining technological challenges.” In other words, Google’s aiming to prove the new technology is safe enough for parents, and therefore safe enough for everyone.
“At 10, I didn’t speak English,” Juleyka recalled. “I wore hand-me-downs. I was skinny and had unruly curly hair. I loved books and cartoons. I was determinedly awkward and naively blunt. All of that would have been disastrous for the average kid. But it was a toxic outer skin for a new kid from an old country in a city full of strangers. That’s why I decided, instead, to be Optimus Prime.”
How do the toys, books, and television shows we encounter as kids influence our identity as adults? We’re exploring that in our special project on “Childish Things.” So far, writers such as Juleyka have looked at the deeper consequences of everything from choose-your-own-adventure books to Maurice Sendak to Rugrats. Go ahead, let the nostalgia sink in.
Thinking Outside the Major Cities
Though city-folk might like to imagine they’re at the center of the universe, not everyone lives in a mega-metropolis. In response to this month’s cover story on the cash-poor middle class, Anne Trubek details her decision to “[opt] out of coastal madness to live a low-overhead life.” She adds, “Many of my friends and colleagues live in East Coast cities and make twice or, with spouses included, quadruple what I do, but they, like [Neal] Gabler, worry much more about utility bills than I do.”
Trubek isn’t alone in settling outside of the city; many millennials are doing the same. Last week, Derek noted that the average 29-year-old “despite the story of urban renewal, is more likely to live outside of a dense urban area like Brooklyn or Washington, D.C.” (A reader testified to that.)
Last week, Megan looked at “mensesplaining”—“the dynamics of mansplaining (men explaining things to women, usually extremely unnecessarily), reversed. Women enlightening men about something (most) guys will never experience themselves.” Their periods, that is.
Yesterday, Megan responded to a reader who pushed back on the term “mensesplaining” on the grounds that mansplaining has a negative connotation. This next dissenting reader thinks periods are “objectively gross”:
Even in the absence of a gendered taboo, not wanting to discuss periods is categorically akin to not wanting to discuss diarrhea. Discussing the specific issues surrounding periods like access to tampons and being generally sympathetic is fine, but the graphic details are toilet humor.
What exactly is meant by “normalizing periods”? That you can talk about it any time with no push-back? I’m sorry, but there’s an enormous list of things that don’t make for polite dinner conversation, and periods will virtually always be one of them, at least if you can’t be a little tactful about it. You want to talk about the moods, the pain, the inconvenience, by all means, do so, and I will dutifully extend my condolences. But as soon as you start applying adjectives to your emissions, I’m done. Unless you want to hear about how my semen was runnier today than yesterday, we’ve got to have a detente. The red line is fluids and their descriptors. Let’s keep it civil now.
As a caveat, any person from whom I would tolerate detailed descriptions of their bowel movements is also on the small and privileged list of people whom I would tolerate being explicit about their periods. It will still be gross, and an oblique and humorous spin would be appreciated unless we’re talking medical issues, but there’s some leeway for close relations.
Another reader pushes back on that argument:
Think of all the comedies you’ve ever seen that use farting, urine, feces, and semen as punchlines. It’s a million, right? Why should periods be the only bodily function exempt from that list? I mean, in addition to the real issues involved, periods are funny. Bodily functions are, in general, probably because they make us uncomfortable.
In addition to discussing the real medical issues: The fact it’s only recently that pads and tampons stopped being subject to luxury taxes shows this conversation should have happened a long time ago.
Our Aug 1968 cover features a nonfiction excerpt from Joan Baez’s memoir, Daybreak.
We’ve made it our project over the next several weeks to uncover nonfiction Atlantic pieces written by women. It’s been a difficult process, since many of the early pieces are not online. But after (physically) digging through our print archives, we’re able to present the following crop of lady-journos from the ‘60s—and it’s quite an impressive group.
During that decade, women in TheAtlantic tackled everything from Castro’s Cuba to illegal abortion to Marlon Brando. Among the authors listed here are a Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian, an anonymous part-time secretary, a Harvard professor, a First Lady, and a famous film critic. (Like our first list, the authors here are fairly monochromatic—the majority are white and American.)
Eliza Paschall’s “A Southern Point of View” The writer and activist criticizes the Georgia legislature’s willingness to close down schools rather than integrate them. (May 1960)
Eleanor Roosevelt’s “What Has Happened to The American Dream?” The former First Lady demands a re-dedication to the Dream in the face of Soviet influence, “the greatest challenge our way of life has ever had to meet.” (April 1961)
Martha Gellhorn’s “Eichmann and the Private Conscience” The famed war correspondent reports on the trial of Nazi official Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem and sketches out “some of the lessons to be learned.” (Feb 1962)
Jessica Mitford’s “The Undertaker’s Racket” An investigation of the funeral industry in the United States. (June 1963)
Mrs. X’s “One Woman’s Abortion” An anonymous suburban mother of three talks about her search for an illegal abortion. (Aug 1965)
Barbara W. Tuchman’s “The Case of Woodrow Wilson” A historian and best-selling author “agrees with Sigmund Freud that President Wilson was a tragic figure whose neuroses got in his way.” (Feb 1967)
Elizabeth Drew’s “Report: Washington” One of her many dispatches during her run as Washington correspondent for the magazine. (April 1968)
Emma Rothschild’s “Reports and Comment: Cuba” A look at Fidel Castro “committing Cuba to an agricultural future.” (March 1969)
A huge shoutout to contributing editor and Atlantic archives legend, Sage Stossel, for helping us with this list.
But what about 1964? One work we were unable to digitize was “Four and a Half Days in Atlanta’s Jails” by Gloria Wade Bishop (now Gloria Wade Gayles), a prolific black essayist and literary critic. In that July 1964 piece, she gives a gripping account of her time behind bars after her arrest during a peaceful protest.
A visitor looks at a display by U.S. artist Roy Lichtenstein during the "Roy Lichtenstein: from beginning to end" exhibition. (Susana Vera / Reuters)A woman walks past Roy Lichtenstein's 'Frolic' at Christie's Auction House in New York. (Brendan McDermid / Reuters)
Of course, this is a satellite image, taken thousands of miles away from not only Lichtenstein’s works, but his planet. From Anthony Quigley’s caption (which appears to be from the Wikipedia page for Ha’il):
Ha’il (Arabic: حائل Ḥā'il), also spelled Hail, Ha'yel, or Hayil, is a city in north-western Saudi Arabia. It has a population of about 500k. Ha'il City is largely agricultural, with significant grain, date, and fruit production. A large percentage of the kingdom's wheat production comes from Ha'il Province, where the area to the northeast, 60 to 100 km away, consists of irrigated gardens. Historically Ha'il derived its wealth from being on the camel caravanroute of the Hajj. It is also the homeland of the Al Rashid family, historical rivals to the Al-Sauds.
Most of the dress code rules that readers submitted after our callout related to a student’s external appearance. But some schools didn’t stop there. Here’s one reader over Twitter:
@TheAtlNotes All girls private school strict uniform code even governed underwear - navy blue only. Hats, berets, abolished gloves in 1981.
Now, you may be wondering how a teacher would, um, know what color underwear a student is wearing. This high schooler used that to her advantage in her quest for underwear justice:
As a high school journalist, I was determined to bring about great change to the world. In the end, I really only made a small change. The dress code at my public school in San Diego (between 2001-2003) had a rule that I thought was ridiculous: “Underwear must be worn, but not visible.” I understood the concept, but ... really? You were going to do panty checks to be sure that I was wearing underwear? I don’t think so!
I went to several teachers and employees and asked, “If I told you I wasn’t wearing any underwear, what would you say?” Most of them told me my question wasn’t appropriate. I ran my story in the school paper about the rule being inane and, the next year, it changed: “Underwear must not be visible”—a much better rule, in my humble opinion. And while no one ever said my article was the reason, I’d like to think I had something to do with it.
In case you’ve felt inclined to pull a Captain Underpants, this school had it covered:
I attended a small, private boarding and day school in Concord, Mass. from 1995 to 1999. Our dress code had one rule: “Underwear is not outerwear.”
But enough about undies—what about brassieres? Fear the bra strap, if you attended this school:
The weirdest dress code rule was that you could wear tank tops, but not “spaghetti straps.” I think the logic behind this was that visible bra straps were inappropriate. This rule was kind of dumb because strapless bras do exist and even if your tank tops straps were thick enough, it was still quite possible that your bra straps could be visible.
This next reader shares a similar story, but is okay with the policy:
In my New York State public high school, I remember when the style quickly shifted from white baby t-shirts with the graphic prints to spaghetti-strap tank tops. All of a sudden, you could see 75 percent of the female student body’s bra straps on any given day. This predictably caused the school to ban tank tops, a comically ineffective “walk-out,” and a pile of controversy in the last few weeks of the school year. Although the “no tank tops” rule stayed on the books by the start of the next school year, the functional rule was “No visible bra straps or mid-drift,” which I still think is completely appropriate for a school setting.
Oh, and “undergarments” are in the eye of the beholder: One reader wrote in explaining that “plain white t-shirts weren’t ok” at her high school “because they ‘were underwear.’”
And where precisely are these shapes doing battle? An Instagram commenter points to a plot in Gaines County, Texas, with the coordinates 32°49'14"N 102°26'28"W. Zoom around in this Google map and see if you can find the exact spot without driving yourself mad in a sea of squares and circles (something I have yet to have done). It sure does look right, but it’s hard to find the right color and shape combination:
Elena Kupriyanova, 42, poses for a photograph in her flat which was evacuated after an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.Gleb Garanich / Reuters
The Long Half-Life of Chernobyl
This week marked the 30th anniversary of the nuclear disaster. Marina detailed how “workers continue the long process of securing the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history,” Ron Broglio looked at how radiation still affects animals in the area, and Michael LaPointe examined the “literary legacy” of the meltdown. For a clearer picture, Alan compiled spooky photos of abandoned places near the site earlier this month. And Rosa noted that the January 1987 issue of the Atlantic featured a writer who experienced the fallout of Chernobyl.
When Life Gives You Lemons …
Make Lemonade. Beyoncé, “sidestepping traditional distribution once again,” released her latest album, along with an HBO film, over the weekend. Spencer reviewed the work and dove into what it says about the artist’s relationship with sex: “Here, being hot is not necessarily liberating. Sex is serious, sex can harm, and sex does not reliably do the things that society has said it can do. Feeling yourself is not enough.” Beyoncé also kicked off her new tour this week, where she’s selling “BOYCOTT BEYONCÉ” shirts.
Pace(r) Yourself
It’s all eyes on Indiana. After Donald Trump swept Tuesday’s primaries and Hillary Clinton nearly did the same against Bernie Sanders, the candidates shift their focus to the Hooiser state, which votes on Tuesday. Ted Cruz and John Kasich formed an alliance: Kasich’s campaign paused efforts in Indiana, while Cruz “will cede New Mexico and Oregon.” Their goal? Stop Trump.
While it’s unclear which way the state will sway, Cruz has at least one Indiana voter locked down: The state’s governor, Mike Pence, who endorsed Cruz on Friday. In the hopes of getting a further boost, Cruz added presidential drop-out Carly Fiorina to his hypothetical ticket.
Periods and tampons and blood, oh my! Megan covered the rise of the period joke: “If the normalization of the period is a feminist issue, then the effort to normalize it for everyone, guys included, reflects a broader feminist realization: that its concerns are matters not just for women to contend with, but also society,” she wrote. “Whether it’s wage equity or cultural representation, things will improve more quickly if women’s issues have male supporters.”
As Julie pointed out, Megan’s piece joins the tradition of Atlantic period coverage, which includes the history of the tampon, readers discussing its taboo, a look at whether women need to have periods at all, and more. Last week, Julie contributed a new piece of her own, detailing how NASA engineers asked Sally Ride in 1983 if she’d need 100 tampons for her week-long trip to space.
Our video team recently posted an animation in which former FDA commissioner David Kessler “argues that all mental health issues, including addiction, depression, and overeating, can be explained by ‘capture’—a process where focusing on selective stimuli results in adverse behaviors”:
Several readers find Kessler’s argument to be a little too broad. Here’s Paul Alexander Bravo:
Asking whether mental illnesses are related is like asking whether pie and cake are related because they are two words used to describe food. All things in the universe are related because all that can be said to be part of the universe is, at a minimum, necessarily spatially and temporally related to all that is not itself. But no one can even begin to ask what motivates another human being to behave in any particular way without first knowing what motivates their own behavior, which itself requires truly “knowing” oneself.
A few others, like this reader, disagree with the video’s framing:
FYI, the way this video is done is very dangerous to a severely depressed person. The video concludes with a statement saying, “We’re just wired that way.” The implication (especially to an already suffering mind) is, “Oh well, nothing can be done, might as well give up.”
“Seems like an introduction to a longer series,” another reader offers. He’s not totally off; this video played as an introduction to a panel during The Atlantic’sSummit on Mental Health and Addiction. (Richard Branson’s appearance at the same event sparked a reader debate about whether drugs should be decriminalized.) That panel included Kessler. “Capture is universal,” he argues, offering additional examples:
Have any additional arguments for or against capture theory? Let us know. Update from a reader and Zen monk, M. Price:
Is psychology simply going to rename everything the Buddha discussed 2500 years ago and then claim it reinvented the wheel? Mediation, which has specific instructions depending on school, became watered-down “mindfulness,” and now attachment is “capture.” However salient the claim may be, Buddhism rightly points out that without right means, it is impossible to cut attachment asunder and achieve lasting freedom/enlightenment. Something tells me the field isn’t about to convert and then let its patients fly away like little birdies.
Moreover, to claim bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or even unipolar depression are the result of attachment is to ignore all of the genetic biomarkers which predispose to these conditions. The NIMH is specifically working on getting away from these fantastical notions of “single causes” and towards verifiable tests and criteria for diagnoses, which currently do not exist. This problem severely hampers all aspects of management of these conditions.
I think if the director wanted to point out that eating disorders, addiction and OCD in all its foci might in fact be the same condition in different guise, then now we’re talking. OCD, which can be called “greed,” too, if we like, is in my opinion fertile ground for “capture” research, not all of mental illness.
Speaking of eating disorders and addiction, here’s another reader:
As both a smoker and a person who has struggled with disordered eating for the last eight or so years, I can assure you that the mechanisms behind both are incredibly complicated. In the case of the eating disorder, for instance, both restricting and binging/purging are manifestations of my feeling of being out of control—they are maladaptive coping mechanisms for my depression and numerous types of anxiety.
Where do these disorders stem from? In part, likely, genetics; in part, I believe, the extreme academic/social pressure I experienced from my parents and wider community in the county I grew up in—but they are also side effects of a raging case of lifelong ADHD, which was only very recently diagnosed. ADHD is highly heritable and is a neurobiological executive dysfunction, so it seems highly inaccurate to me to call it a result of capture.
Indeed, capture theory, when applicable, seems that way only because it is so broad. It’s like saying that sense perception all stems from “neural processing of external stimuli.” I mean, duh. Your brain picks up certain things and some of them result in mental illnesses, yes, but capture theory sounds to me like a huge overstatement of how closely related this implies mental illnesses to be.
A friend of mine experienced a period of major depression after the death of his father—capture theory? Probably, insofar as he was focused on the loss. Meanwhile, my depression likely stems from constant feelings of inadequacy and inability—also attributable to capture theory, if you consider my preoccupation with my own dysfunction. Yet it seems that my friend and I were struggling in very different ways—he from an outside event and me because undiagnosed ADHD caused me to internalize a great deal of self-loathing. Yes, both are results of “capture” of negative thoughts, but when they are experienced, based in, and treated by such different things, is capture theory really a particularly unifying force?
You don’t have to be a classical musical snob to recognize this track—it might even be your ringtone:
The trickling tune was covered by The New Yorker’s Alex Ross in 2009: “Although Pachelbel’s Canon, ‘Eine kleine Nachtmusik,’ and the ‘Ode to Joy’ provide stiff competition, Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise’ is probably the most numbingly familiar of classical melodies. Myriad times a day it is murdered by novice piano students, only to rise up again.” Infamous though it may be, “Für Elise” has built quite a following: A fan website dedicated to the song allows readers to submit the story of their first encounter with the Beethoven classic, which turns 206 today! (Or at least, we thinkit does.)
In honor of the song’s purported big day, press play on the 60-minute cut above and read about Beethoven’s natural genius, courtesy of an 1858 Atlantic profile of the composer:
The boy had an inborn love of the beautiful, the tender, the majestic, the sublime, in nature, in art, and in literature,— together with a strong sense of the humorous and even comic. [...] Beethoven was no exception to the rule, that only a great man can be a great artist. True, in his later years his correspondence shows at times an ignorance of the rules of grammar and orthography; but it also proves, what may be determined from a thousand other indications, that he was a deep thinker, and that he had a mind of no small degree of cultivation, as it certainly was one of great intellectual power. Had he devoted his life to any other profession than music—to law, theology, science, or letters—he would have attained high eminence, and enrolled himself among the great.
(Track of the Day archive here. Submit via hello@)
Benjamin Grant credits the abundance of blue to aluminum:
The colorful roofs of Songjeong-dong—an industrial district in Busan, South Korea—are seen in this Overview. The striking colors that you see here result from the use of aluminum roofing, which is used for its low cost and longevity.
One commenter isn’t satisfied with that explanation: “Bullshit, there are many different cultural reasons for the blue roofs. The material has little to do with it.”
There are a few Reddit threads devoted to the numberof blue roofs in Korea. (South Korea’s presidential home is the Blue House, named for the hue of its roof tile.) Some Redditors speculate that blue roofs were something once reserved for those with high social status—a fact I’m having trouble confirming. Are you a historian or have a solid source on it? Let me know.
In our latest cover story, Neal Gabler takes a look at the cash-strapped middle class, offering the startling statistic that 47 percent of Americans would struggle to come up with $400 for an emergency. It’s something Gabler knows all too well—he’s one of them.
Leading scholars weighed in on Gabler’s piece, while readers offered their own stories of financial struggle. “I have friends whose fertility I know more about than their finances,” Rebecca wrote in her callout for reader submissions.
The rest of our May magazine can be found online here. Darhill also offered a behind-the-scenes look at how the cover art came to be in our Notes section.
Purple Tears
Musical legend Prince died at his Paisley Park home in Minnesota on Thursday. He was 57.
Tributes poured in from celebrities and fans alike. His albums surged to the iTunes Top Albums chart. The Broadway cast of “The Color Purple” sang “Purple Rain” in his honor. Even the president offered his condolences. Spencer reflected on Prince’s extraordinary life and “how deeply important iconoclasts”—like Prince and David Bowie—“are to the evolution of a culture.” And Sacha recalled attending a Prince concert in New York back in 1984.
“One thing I’ve appreciated about Prince, as I’ve aged,” wrote Ta-Nehisi back in 2009, “is that he knows how to sing about sex, like a man honestly singing about sex.”
Empire State of Mind
For this week, at least. The 2016 presidential candidates—Republicans and Democrats alike—descended on the state for Tuesday’s primary election contest. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump pulled in yet another win, with Ted Cruz coming in at less than 15 percent. And Hillary Clinton broke Bernie Sanders’s winning streak, opening up questions about his campaign going forward. (Get full play-by-play of everything that happened Tuesday here.) “It’s going to be Hillary Clinton’s nomination,” David Frum wrote after the dust settled. “But it’s not going to be her party.”
Meanwhile, some voters reported technical issues, while “tens of thousands of Brooklynites learned they’d simply been purged from the voter rolls altogether.”
Tubman on the Twenty
The Treasury Department announced Wednesday it plans to remove Andrew Jackson from the $20 dollar bill, replacing him with Harriet Tubman.
Some rejoiced, others had mixed feelings about the news: “Here is a woman who fought that with everything she had. How would she feel about being the new face of inclusive capitalist imagery?” Shuana wondered. Four of our writers—Adrienne, Juleyka, Shauna, and Gillian—discussed that and more in a roundtable on the topic.
