Monday Medley

What we read while giving our Moms a day off (with no pay)…

• It was a dark day for TV fans last week when NBC cancelled Community. The low-rated show was a critical darling and one of the smartest, funniest, and best written shows on TV. It will be missed.

• In other TV news, it’s been ten years since the Friends finale. In honor of the show, here’s a look at which of the friends were the closest, and how the series depicted New York City.

• Cecily McMillan, the Occupy Wall Street protester who was arrested and allegedly abused by the NYPD, was convicted of assaulting a police officer and now faces up to seven years in prison. Even the jury that convicted her thinks that’s crazy. McMillan responded to the verdict and plans to appeal, and now has the support of Pussy Riot.

• On the behemoth that is the Department of Homeland Security.

• Defending that Princeton kid who won’t check his privilege.

• Here’s what net neutrality is.

• An historic NFL Draft. And not just because of Johnny Manziel sipping water.

• This week in oral histories: The 2002 Western Conference Finals.

Monday Medley

What we read while Nelson Mandela lived 2 fast and 2 furious…

• The world reacted to the death of Nelson Mandela, one of the most significant figures of the 20th century. Those who knew him revered him and were even in awe of him. But he was also a controversial figure, which should not be forgotten. Many in the U.S. government, like Dick Cheney and Ronald Reagan, demonized him and the CIA may have played a role in his imprisonment. This is what makes Mandela’s legacy an inherently political one.

• An excellent look at “smarm,” the holier-than-thou rhetoric that condemns “Internet snark.”

• Meet the new boss, same as the old boss: The new NYPD commissioner endorses stop-and-frisk and would have stopped Occupy Wall Street.

• This week in oral histories: The Kids in the Hall.

• The lessons QuizUp can teach you about making the next Great American App.

• Conor Friedersdorf on how the NSA and friends try to discredit their critics.

• Ron Burgundy does the news, for real.

• Inside the search for the next sleeping pill.

• What it’s like to work in the warehouses that make online shopping possible.  

• A parent responds to his kid’s Christmas list.

Monday Medley

What we read while Duke became a football school…

• This game story about a 1915 Auburn-Georgia football game is the greatest sports story–or, really, the greatest story about anything–that you will ever read.

• Jeremy Hammond, the “hacktivist” responsible for exposing the private intelligence firm Stratfor, was sentenced to 10 years in prison last week. Here’s his statement. He joins fellow Anonymous-affiliated hacker Barrett Brown, already in prison for nonviolent crimes. Meanwhile, Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova exchanges letters with Slavoj Zizek about what it’s like to be a political prisoner in Russia.

• In other prison news, there are over 3,000 US prisoners facing life sentences for nonviolent crimes. Also, the problem of false confessions still hovers over police interrogations.

• David Mamet talks about the theater.

• Terry Eagleton reviews Morrissey’s autobiography.

• Is Elizabeth Warren the greatest threat to Hilary Clinton’s run for president? These ten clips show why she could be. Of course, speculating about 2016 now is pretty stupid.

• On the growth of the finance industry at the expense of the rest of the economy. And on what happened to American jobs.

• Occupy Wall Street has now cancelled over $15 million of consumer debt.

• A profile of David Miranda and his role in breaking the NSA stories, and how that makes him a “terrorist” apparently.

• UCLA has more NCAA championships than black male freshmen.

• Tom Haverford’s business ideas, ranked in terms of viability.

Monday Medley

What we read while the Emmys honored Jeff Daniels sarcastically…

• Last Tuesday was the two-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. Here are six things the movement accomplished, as well as six reasons why another crisis is inevitable. And a look at how the NYPD systematically breaks up protests.

• What was the flight from Dallas like on November 22, 1963?

• Jonathan Franzen hates the modern world. Meanwhile, The Millions looks at Franzen’s first novel on the occasion of its 25th anniversary and a reissuing.

• Conan O’Brien celebrated his 20th anniversary on the air by talking to frequent guest and early writer Louis C.K.

• The odds of Koji Uehara’s accomplishment.

• The Washington Post on Skip Bayless, when he’s off the air.

• Bryan Goldberg, the man who helped bring you Bleacher Report, is bringing his fresh take on “journalism” to women’s magazines.

• Republicans vs. Obamacare.

• On the history of last meals.

• A visit to Gitmo, where evidently nobody reads Kafka.

• The bullshit job title generator.

• The weirdest and most haunting thing you’ll read this week (you know, maybe).

Monday Medley

What we read while Tiger Woods also lost at the Teen Choice Awards…

• President Obama offered some NSA reforms, which the New York Times said “tinker around the edges” of the problem and the ACLU deemed “not nearly sufficient.” Of course, Obama has lost most of his credibility regarding surveillance, and he couldn’t help take a swipe at Edward Snowden. Meanwhile, we keep learning more about dangerous loopholes in NSA policy and the creepy cooperation of most US companies.

• An amazing story on the abuse of civil forfeiture laws throughout the country.

• The 10 year anniversary of The O.C. was last week. It was one of the seminal shows of the Aughts. Alan Sepinwall interviewed the show’s creator Josh Schwartz, and writer J.J. Philbin.

• The story behind the disastrous marriage of Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

• More on the Alex Rodriguez situation, including a legal analysis of his appeal and a compendium of the most hateful diatribes directed his way.

• A report on the NYPD’ s conduct during Occupy Wall Street (spoiler alert: It’s not good).

• Damon Lindelof on the art of writing blockbusters.

Monday Medley

What we read while conceiving the next Dauphin…

• Rolling Stone got some flak for its cover story on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, but the story itself is pretty great. It’s also worth remembering that ignoring inconvenient facts doesn’t make them go away. Also, newly released photos of Tsarnaev’s capture.

• Speaking of terrorism, what isn’t “terrorism” these days?

• Another piece on Mariano Rivera’s final season.

• How the new sports network, Fox Sports 1, plans to compete with ESPN.

• Now banks are going after credit unions. Speaking of banks, watch The Newsroom try to get Occupy Wall Street right.

• The life and times of Jack Handey.

The Democracy Project: An Occupy Manifesto

An OWS Manifesto

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” —Karl Marx

What ever happened to Occupy Wall Street? Only 18 months after the camps in Zuccotti Park and across the country were being compared to the Arab Spring, people now remember the movement with the same dismissive nostalgia usually reserved for lesser Backstreet Boys. Cynics wonder what the movement ever accomplished, as if OWS fizzled out on its own accord as opposed to being brutally, aggressively, and covertly evicted in a coordinated, nationwide campaign of repression.

Of course, the reality is that OWS never really went away—it only became less visible and therefore easier to ignore after the evictions. Even when OWS couldn’t be ignored, it was always easier to make fun of it than to try to understand it. The lack of concrete demands, the weird hand gestures, and the eclectic mix of people all made the movement impossible to fit neatly into the ubiquitous “Democrat vs. Republican” narrative, and so it was generally viewed as a sideshow or a “liberal Tea Party” by the mainstream media.

But OWS was always better understood in the context of history than in the context of American politics—the entire premise of the movement was that American politics were fundamentally broken in the first place. David Graeber’s new book, The Democracy Project: A History, A Crisis, A Movement aims to place OWS in that historical context. It’s something of a tricky task, since the movement is only two years old, and its long-term effects are still unclear.