Slate Articles

The Inn of the Second-Act Happiness

Emily Yoffe — Wed, 22 May 2013 11:00:00 GMT

Ellen Goldberg grew up helping out at her family’s two furniture stores, and to her it was a lesson in the drawbacks of being your own boss: the long hours, the sore feet, the lack of vacations, the ceaseless pressure, the threat from encroaching competitors. (“Ever hear of Levitz?” she asks.) Her grandparents had started the business, in suburban Philadelphia, and she was determined not to be part of a third generation. So she got both an MBA from Columbia and a law degree from George Washington University and began a long climb up the world of corporate finance.

The Man in the Pink Suit

Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell — Wed, 22 May 2013 09:30:00 GMT

Everywhere you look these days, dudes look like ladies. At the movies, Leonardo DiCaprio struts around West Egg like it was his personal runway in Jay Gatsby’s iconic pink suit and beautiful shirts. On television, Michael Douglas inherits Liberace’s feathered, bedazzled mantle in HBO’s Behind the Candelabra. Museum exhibitions—David Bowie Is … at the V&A, Punk: Chaos to Couture at the Met, and Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion at the RISD Museum—celebrate male fashion iconoclasts. Recent books on the wardrobes of Liberace and Michael Jackson lavish loving attention on each rhinestone and sequin.

Fear Itself

David Weigel — Wed, 22 May 2013 09:15:00 GMT

At noon today, at the urging of the local Washington, D.C. Tea Party, nearly 100 activists gathered on the Pennsylvania Avenue side of the IRS building. Down the road to their left was Capitol Hill; up the road to their right was the White House. The media-to-protester ratio clocked in at a robust one-to-five—the industry standard.

Is Everyone Smoking Pot but Me?

Soraya Roberts — Wed, 22 May 2013 09:15:00 GMT

In 1990, in Canada’s capital, if you drove along Bank Street toward the parliament buildings at a particular time in the day, there was a good chance you’d find a blond grimacing teenager walking back and forth yelling. At nothing. He had smoked pot and gone psychotic, my mother said. “His poor parents,” she would say.

Stop Hating on the IRS

Emily Bazelon — Tue, 21 May 2013 23:13:35 GMT

As Apple CEO Tim Cook deftly parried attacks on his company for avoiding paying billions in taxes before Congress Tuesday, we could be forgiven for heaving a collective sigh, part resignation and part resentment. Of course the big fish get away with tax shenanigans that the rest of us don’t. It’s one more reason to hate the IRS, after the agency’s targeting of Tea Party groups for intrusive questioning.

Steve Jobs’ Dream Device Has Arrived

Farhad Manjoo — Tue, 21 May 2013 22:59:25 GMT

Just before he died, Steve Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson about his dream for revolutionizing television. His fantasy device would control all the many doodads that crowd your living room—DVRs, game consoles, Blu-ray players—and would connect to the vast world of entertainment available online. Best of all, it would be drop-dead simple to control—no more futzing with the Input button to switch between different kinds of content, no more fiddling with different remotes to control your devices. “It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine,” Jobs said. “I finally cracked it.”

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Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories

Geeta Dayal — Tue, 21 May 2013 21:28:58 GMT

Few albums this year have been more eagerly awaited than Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, the French duo’s first studio album in eight years. A 15-second clip of the first single, “Get Lucky,” led to an avalanche of YouTube homages, loops, and remixes from fans desperate to make a meal from any bone Daft Punk tossed in their direction. “Get Lucky” was released in full last month, and the breezy, infectious disco hit seemed to be a good omen. But after the mountains of advance hype piled on Random Access Memories, the album itself—a wildly ambitious, slow-burning ’70s-style colossus that you can’t really dance to—came as a surprise. To some, it was a huge disappointment.

Is Anywhere Safe in a Tornado?

Forrest Wickman — Tue, 21 May 2013 21:17:40 GMT

At least 24 people are dead after a powerful tornado tore through Moore, Okla., Monday. “Numerous neighborhoods were completely leveled,” Sgt. Gary Knight of the Oklahoma City Police Department told the New York Times. According to Moore resident Ricky Stover, the twister even tore open his locked cellar door. Is anywhere safe in such a powerful tornado?

All Killer Tornadoes Since 1950

Chris Kirk — Tue, 21 May 2013 20:04:36 GMT

Currently, 24 people are confirmed dead after a tornado swept through Moore, Okla., on Monday, leaving devastation in its wake. If the death toll goes unchanged, the tornado will rank as the 37^th most deadly since 1950, according to historical data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, mapped above. The map includes a 1953 tornado that killed 94; a 1953 tornado that killed 116; the more recent 2011 Joplin, Mo., tornado, which killed 158; and the 1999 tornado that also struck Moore, Okla., killing 36.

With a Little Love, and Some Tenderness

Mike Spies — Tue, 21 May 2013 17:25:07 GMT

This may come as a surprise to you, but I don’t typically think much about Hootie & the Blowfish, at least not any more than I think about the Spin Doctors, Sister Hazel, or G-Love & Special Sauce. Which is to say, I don’t think about them at all. Sure, I bought Hootie’s first album, Cracked Rear View, when I was 10 years old, and this, without question, was a positive experience. I listened to that improbably catchy single, “Hold My Hand,” on repeat, and I grinned and sang along and, overcome with the religious ecstasy of a gospel-inspired chorus, may have even danced a reckless, unironic jig. Then somebody told me it was 1994; apparently Hootie was about as cool as a pair of neon rollerblades; and I was left with little choice but to publicly sacrifice the album in front of my friends. We played hockey with the CD in the schoolyard, but not before I wrote, “this band sucks rockets” on the cover.