I hear you. But I'm thinking it's just the barbification of her. 

THERE IS ONLY ONE CRUEL SUMMER AND IT IS BY BANANARAMA! I will fight for this !

lololol.  If you know one thing about Taylor Swift,  she’s an amazing song writer.  A great singer?  Maybe not, but she writes better lyrics than just about anyone.

This feels like a contrarian take to me. Not just yours, the entire premise of the article, too. American Beauty is on the nose and its visuals have aged poorly in that it looks a bit too 90s, compared to all those period pieces that won before and after... but it definitely knows all these things people are…

“The best athletes” in a story about DOTA tournament players made me laugh. In fact, I’m laughing on a train as I type this.

even though i have always though dog racing was sketchy at best, this well written story (questionable hug aside) made me kind of sad. Thanks for the story.

A subtle, revealing and thoroughly excellent piece. A world most people don’t see, and now, probably won’t.

He was born in Georgia but he’s been coming to Florida for the races since he was seven. “Me and my daddy used to drive down here with a big white styrofoam cooler full of beer,” Clark said. “My job was to hand him the beers while he was driving on the way to the dog races.”

Fantastic read. Our former neighbors had 3 rescue greyhounds. They were truly wonderful dogs...until they would turn on each other. That’s a truly horrifying spectacle. They were so high strung that it was hard to relax around them.

I’ve worked with enough dog rescue places to know that most of the dogs that come out of these tracks are really fucked up.  So while I hope people like Deb can find a new way through life, I have no sympathy that her old one is going away.

Dog racing isn’t dead, it’s just moved to a farm upstate.

Great article. I walked away with two things:

Somewhere Sarah McLachlan just came on the arm of an angel.

Rejoice, for America continues as it was founded, binding deliberately weakened people into contracts that exchange their health, education, and access to justice, in return for staying alive in a system where the benefits only really flow upwards, no matter what the contract said?

Trying to play devil’s advocate, would you like it if veiled conservative mantras (that nobody opposes in their literal meaning but that clearly mean something else) were banned like “Blue/All lives matter” (AKA black lives dont matter), “GOD bless America” (AKA we’re a Christian country), “Support our troops” (AKA…

Two things:

- 1987 wasn’t some “random year.” It was famously the “rabbit ball” year where all sorts of previously light-weight hitters started jacking home runs at notably higher rates than before.

If you pick 1988 (0.76), 1986 (0.91), 1989 (0.73) or 1985 (0.86) etc, you’ll see what an outlier, pre-steroids, 1987 was.

-…

It’s possible that it won’t! But I like to argue, so.

“it still feels galling that one of the best movie years of the past few decades somehow wound up with the darkly comic, semi-satirical suburban-angst drama American Beauty as its representative”

The important thing is that you took the time to comment. 

I kind of like the movie, too! There’s nothing in here about what you’re supposed to like.