Dispatches

Bedazzling the Male

Much of this jewelry tilts toward gender fluidity, toward androgyny. Younger men seem happy to wear it, eager to insist that it does not threaten their masculinity or that they have moved beyond traditional masculinity anyway. Yet every report on men’s jewelry is accompanied by a sidebar or guide to staying manly.

The Fall Line of Technology

Jean-Marc Côté, circa 1900, from series ‘En L’An 2000,’ courtesy Françoise Foliot, CC-BY-SA 4.0     Technological innovation is tricky. Flying cars, sure, we know what to do: get a car, add wings and a propeller. But put a magnetron in a metal box and use it to hyper-excite…

Cold War Finally Made Hot, and Not By Proxy

Soldiers from the Minnesota Army National Guard on an exercise with British, Polish, and Lithuanian forces, in the Suwalki Gap in southern Lithuania, 2017. The Gap has been called the new Fulda Gap. (Photo courtesy of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, Minnesota Army National Guard Public…

The Drumbeat of War

At the times we most need to communicate calmly and comprehensively, we blur and obfuscate, posture and lie, or package the news in clichés. That is a telltale sign that the speech serves a private agenda, not the common and urgent need for clarity.

Skip to content