I sat in the cafeteria at 444 Westminster Street—the meeting space for the Providence Department of Planning and Development—and listened intently. Yet I couldn’t help but let my mind glaze over a little bit. Through the tedious presentations on overlay districts, parking requirements, R2, W2, 1A, and the like, I found myself thinking: this stuff does not apply to me as...

H.D. Davidman  is running for public office with the hope of defeating D.H. Benjamin of the incumbent party, FTRPRTY (not an acronym—pronounced with the elided vowels “Future Party”).  FTPRTY is a breakaway party founded by a group of wealthy Silicon Valley investors and CEOs who, having “changed the world” with their technological innovations, have now turned their sights to “changing Washington.”...

CLIPPED It’s the 10th Anniversary of Mean Girls this week, and people are making a big deal about it. There are screenings on college campuses and retrospectives from major magazines. It seems weird, this level of fanfare over a movie that’s very good but no better. But a quick mental run through the movie’s highlights explains it all. The phone scene,...

Around 38 monkeys live in research laboratories at Brown University. It is difficult to know for certain how many—the researchers won’t say. Thirty-eight is simply the latest available number, listed in a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) report from 2013. This number changes throughout the year when University researchers buy new monkeys or kill existing ones.      There is so...

At first, we see only his wagging tongue, set in a chalk white face with red-rimmed eyes. Playing striptease with wicked glee, he coyly reveals glimpses of his grotesque body to the audience. Finally, with a revolting smile, bouffon performer Red Bastard pulls back the curtain, releasing his full, bulging sack of red flesh onto stage.      Red Bastard is the...

Their last morning in the old man’s house, Alice woke and found George out of bed. She rose to her elbows and saw him through the window, leaning on the porch railing, a cigarette in one hand. No possibility of returning to sleep now but she spun in circles of breath, her own breadth and the breadth of babies suckling congealed...

In his newest film, A Mind Forever Voyaging Through Strange Seas of Thought Alone, Mike Mills interviews the eight to twelve-year-old kids of Silicon Valley employees. Some of the children give endearing visions of extreme connectivity and robot friendships. Others identify some of the more troubling implications of technology for the world they will inhabit as adults: Amy, age 10, believes...

In September 1992, eight football players filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the National Football League. They publicly called into question the power that franchises had at that time to prohibit players from leaving their employers to seek opportunities with other teams. Their landmark victory gave rise to the first true unrestricted free agents in League history.      After the Denver Broncos’...

Comedian Bassem Youssef has often been called “Egypt’s Jon Stewart.” Youssef’s El Bernameg (literally, “The Show”), broadcast online and on Egyptian station MBC Masr, “is a copy of the Jon Stewart Daily Show,” Dan Rather noted in an interview with Stewart. “You know that [Youssef] considers you his role model?” “Yeah, yeah. That’s all pish-posh,” Stewart replied, blushing.      In April...