May 28, 2018

A futile and stupid gesture from Starbucks.

The deadly police tactics, insulting oratory, anti-Americanism, and overwhelming popularity of Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte.

Charlie LeDuff anticipated all the problems that Trump’s election made plain to the rest of us—then he fell into the Hole himself.

One year ago—on May 17, 2017—deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein signed Order 3915-2017. To “ensure a full and thorough investigation of the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election,” he appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller to be special counsel for the…

Is Donald Trump a masterful negotiator or an unqualified bumbler? The truth likely lies somewhere in between, but we want to avoid closed-mindedness here and accept the possibility that a mercurial president can secure a beneficial agreement by means of wrong-footing the other side’s negotiators.…

On May 15, Facebook released its first-ever “Community Standards Enforcement Report.” Despite its numbingly bureaucratic title, the report contains startling details about the scope of the challenge facing the company as it tries to monitor violent, extremist, and false content on its platform;…

There were a handful of primary elections last week in Ohio, Indiana, and West Virginia, and while the results from Middle America were more or less predictable—“establishment” Republicans prevailed against some Trumpier-than-thou candidates—the headlines were revealing in their way: “Parties’…

On May 25, the people of Ireland are set to vote on repealing the eighth amendment of their constitution, which recognizes that children in the womb have a right to life. As you can imagine, this has sent a country long riven by passionate disputes over religion into a frenzied debate. Naturally,…

A debased national movement at 70.

Is there a constitutional confrontation in the offing?

His legal arguments are tenuous, but they may be enough to convince the president.

Sequel to ‘The Karate Kid’ is a hit, may be good for some kicks.

Unsettled questions of Ireland’s past and hope for its literary future.

Hugs, handshakes, kisses, and grabs—the tricks and traps of greetings.

What today’s navalists can learn from the Allied success at sea in WWII.

Pleasure, war, and the mad torment of Lord Byron.

This week we learned, via BuzzFeed, about a new trend in weddings: bouncy castles. A wedding company has opened an initially successful line of wedding-themed inflatable trampolines. Photos depict shoeless groomsmen and bridesmaids bouncing and giggling like first-graders at a birthday bash.

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What will Jeff Bezos do with his fortune? The Amazon chief has amassed around $130 billion, and there’s really no practical way to spend more than a fraction of it. “The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel,” Bezos said…

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the organization that licenses EU television broadcasts and hosts the annual Eurovision Song Contest, has terminated its contract with a Chinese broadcasting company. The company, Mango TV, cut one of the songs from the contest’s broadcast—the gay-themed…

Last month, after two men were asked to leave a Philadelphia Starbucks on the grounds that they were loitering, the Starbucks Corporation announced that it would close more than 8,000 stores for a day in order to impose “unconscious bias training” on its employees. (Readers contemplating the wisdom…

Longtime readers of the Washington Post, among whom The Scrapbook numbers itself, will be familiar with the Post’s quaint custom of observing anniversaries and holidays with what might be called counterintuitive stories. For example, on the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (2,403…

Joseph Epstein's neighborhood.