“The Supreme Court Once Again Reveals the Fraud of Originalism” – Adam Serwer (The Atlantic)

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“Every one of them decided, as transparently as possible in this case, that the text of the Constitution would have forced them to do something they did not want to do or did not think was a good idea, and so they would not do it. The justices did not want to throw Trump off the ballot, and so they didn’t. Not only that, but in order to head off the unlikely scenario of Congress trying to disqualify Trump after the election, they said that Congress must specifically disqualify individual insurrectionists, despite such a requirement having no basis in the text. Even if you agree with the majority that this was a wise decision politically, it cannot be justified as an “originalist” one; it was invented out of whole cloth”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/supreme-court-trump-v-anderson-fourteenth-amendment-originalism/677636/

“The fraught, frenzied, maybe impossible race to build a sustainable sneaker” – Oliver Franklin-Wells (GQ UK)

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“materials have expanded from the once radical vegan leather to include a whole bowl’s worth of fruit and vegetable-based alternatives, from apple to grape, pineapple, banana, even cactus. You only need to look at the continuing rise of brands like Veja – whose vegan leather sneakers have become ubiquitous among climate-conscious suburbanites – to see why bigger brands are worried.

But amid all these competing claims, it can be hard to know which of these new products are actually better for the planet, versus which just sound better. “Vegan leather” and “fruit leathers” are just plastics – for a fact that led the Portuguese government to ban the term in 2022”

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/sustainable-zero-carbon-sneakers

“Uncertain Future for Successful Austrian Employment Program” – Jan Petter (Das Speigel)

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“MAGMA aims to change that, at least in Gramatneusiedl. The long-term unemployed in the town are guaranteed a job: That’s the program’s promise. Nobody is forced to work, but those willing to do so are paid the minimum wage and work either at a workshop belonging to the project or in a company that receives support from the state. And the whole thing is to cost the AMS less than long-term unemployment already does – around 30,000 euros per year. The hope is that the program will improve people’s lives, that they will reintegrate into the labor market, and that the work they perform as part of the MAGMA program will boost the local economy”

https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/a-model-ignored-uncertain-future-for-successful-austrian-employment-program-a-0fde0a32-f7a3-4f04-9f65-368564b1a308

“Bad Vegan, Part Two?” – Allen Salkin (Grub Street)

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“So she gave the filmmakers access to her journals, videos, and records of her time with Strangis, plus she encouraged her family and former employees to speak with him. At the start of filming, she agreed to record a phone call with Strangis, whom she hadn’t had much contact with for a year. Smith ended up using that footage to start and end the series. She was kind to Strangis on the call, she says, in order to keep him talking — he wasn’t aware he was being taped. They laughed a little. She hated how it made her look — like she was sharing a joke with her abuser or like they were still in cahoots. When she saw the series for the first time — a week or two before its release — she was immediately furious”

https://www.grubstreet.com/2024/01/bad-vegan-sarma-melngailis-second-act.html

“Unearthing a Nuclear Scandal” – Sylvain Lumbroso & Tyler Wentzell (The Walrus)

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“The three men played a critical role in the industry that enabled the production of atomic weapons, but instead of optimizing production to benefit the Americans, British, or Canadians, they knowingly slowed down activities for personal gain. If the Nazis had been quicker in their nuclear research, this embezzling might have had far-reaching consequences”

https://thewalrus.ca/unearthing-a-nuclear-scandal/

“Jennifer Lopez – Get Right” – Popular, Freaky Trigger

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“There is a 2005 single, a huge hit, and many will tell you it’s producer Rich Harrison’s masterpiece. On that record, cut-ups of funk breaks are rearranged at oblique angles in a 21st century update of James Brown’s rhythmic modernism, building an abstract sculpture of bone-rattling beats and slivers of jagged keys and horns. And the singer, turning in her own career-best performance, turns that beatspace into a jungle-gym, her song finding the gaps in the arrangement and filling them with micro-hooks before the chorus locks in, like a twist in a metal puzzle that magically turns a mess of points and edges into a perfect cube.

This is not that single. “Get Right” is, at best, the shadow Amerie’s “1 Thing” casts on the cave wall of pop. At worst, I can’t believe it’s by the same producer”

https://popular-number1s.com/2024/03/01/jennifer-lopez-get-right/

“End of an Era – Sports Illustrated, VICE, Product Reviews, and Instagram” – A Scammer Darkly

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“Not only were Vice’s executives being paid handsomely to drive the company into the ground, they issued themselves massive ‘retention’ bonuses right before the bankruptcy filing – a filing which, conveniently, allowed them to avoid paying severance to regular employees spelled out in their union contracts”

https://newsletter.scammerdarkly.com/archive/end-of-an-era-sports-illustrated-vice-product/

“Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’ Director on Supersizing a Mythical Universe” – Jason Schreier (Game On, Bloomberg)

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“To hit the graphical fidelity of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth required an exponentially larger team, where engineers and artists have specialized roles and couldn’t just get their hands on everything the way Kitase could in the 1990s.

“Now, if I want something to be created, I need to document my thoughts and ideas, communicate what I’m envisioning to someone who has the skills,” Kitase said”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-03-01/-final-fantasy-vii-rebirth-director-on-supersizing-a-mythical-universe

“March 1, 2024” – Letters from an American

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“In 2017 the Trump tax cuts slashed the top corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and reined in taxation for foreign profits. The ITEP report looked at the first five years the law was in effect. It concluded that in that time, most profitable corporations paid “considerably less” than 21% because of loopholes and special breaks the law either left in place or introduced.

From 2018 through 2022, 342 companies in the study paid an average effective income tax rate of just 14.1%. Nearly a quarter of those companies—87 of them—paid effective tax rates of under 10%. Fifty-five of them (16% of the 342 companies), including T-Mobile, DISH Network, Netflix, General Motors, AT&T, Bank of America, Citigroup, FedEx, Molson Coors, and Nike, paid effective tax rates of less than 5%.

Twenty-three corporations, all of them profitable, paid no federal tax over the five year period”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-1-2024

“Financial systems take a holiday” – Bits About Money

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“Readers of a certain age might sensibly ask what “cyber” means. Consider it a way to gesture broadly at technology used almost exclusively by people who both do not understand technology and feel some amount of pride in that. Teams at large retailers, believing online commerce was doomed to be a tiny sideline like catalogs and only worth tens of billions of dollars, were involved in naming Cyber Monday. The other place you’re likely to hear it frequently is American national security circles, which exist in a superposition of understanding that technology can certainly be used to kill people and break things while also believing that it’s not a real way to kill people and break things if it is the sort of technology built by people who look like pre-juice Steve Rogers”

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/financial-systems-take-a-holiday/