Category Culture

Inside the United Kingdom Disaster

State of the Union: If the once mighty British state is unable to restore public order, perhaps targeted counter-force from the public will restore equilibrium. If you have not seen the bloodcurdling video from Trinity College, Cambridge, you should. Everyone…

My Anxiety

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story In her short story “Five Signs of Disturbance,” Lydia Davis writes of a woman who is “frightened”: She cannot always decide whether what seems to her a sign of disturbance should…

Iris Apfel Wore Fame Well

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story It is more or less unheard of, in American life, for anyone, let alone a woman, to become globally famous as an octogenarian. That it happened to Iris Apfel, the inimitable…

The Kate Middleton Conspiracy-Theory Swirl

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story We don’t traffic in rumors, but, if we did, there’d be plenty to choose from. If you were cruising the Internet last week, you may have come across an urgent appeal…

Michael Schulman’s Oscar Predictions

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Michael SchulmanStaff writer You’re reading the Goings On newsletter, a guide to what we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week. Sign up to receive it in your in-box. Is it…

Patrick Stewart Boldly Goes There

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story When “Star Trek: The Next Generation” premièred, in 1987, a newspaper referred to its leading man as an “unknown British Shakespearean actor.” Patrick Stewart was already forty-seven and had spent fourteen…

What Do Google Gemini’s Woke History Pictures Mean?

The era of reenchantment through “conscious” machines is upon us. The Economist’s report on Google Gemini reads like the set-up for a joke: “It all started with black Vikings and Asian Nazis.” Then the magazine turned serious on the waywardly…

Lana Del Rey’s New Album Searches for Transcendence

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Lana Del Rey doesn’t toy with signs—of American glamour and its decay, of female melancholia and racial desire—so much as consecrate them.Photograph by Rich Fury / Getty One thing about Lana…