An NYU graduate student has created the BurritoBot, a robot capable of “printing” edible bean burritos, and you can control the machine with your iPhone. Humanity, we have peaked.
What Happens When It Becomes Self-Aware?
Against Reason with Margo Jefferson
Agent Scully, Author
“There is so much low self-esteem in girls, and so much self-hate that I keep reading about. My first idea for a book was something that would help to lift girls out of that place of negativity.” Actor Gillian Anderson and journalist Jennifer Nadel are writing a 300-plus page guide entitled We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere, slated for release in March 2017.
Auditors Welcome
Historians N. D. B. Connolly and Keisha N. Blain have done us all a serious solid by assembling a syllabus of readings around “what many simply call ‘Trumpism’: personal and political gain marred by intolerance, derived from wealth, and rooted in the history of segregation, sexism, and exploitation.” The self-directed course contains readings from more than 100 scholars – including Audre Lorde, Aziz Ansari, and Ta-Nehisi Coates – and aims to “introduce observers to the past and present conditions that allowed Trump to seize electoral control of a major American political party.”
Neil Gaiman Gives Advice
Recommended viewing: a mashup of Neil Gaiman‘s advice on writing and clips from movies about, what else?, writing. And for more about Gaiman and writing, be sure to check out our own review of his book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
Tuesday New Release Day: Franzen, Binet, Baldwin, Müller
A new collection of non-fiction by Jonathan Franzen, Farther Away: Essays, is out today. Also out is Laurent Binet’s HHhH, from which we recently published some redacted scenes. Other new releases this week include Rosecrans Baldwin’s memoir Paris, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down and Nobel laureate Herta Müller’s The Hunger Angel.
United Slang of America
(Interactive) Infographic of the Week: Slate’s United Slang of America. Click each state to find out more about the state-specific slang. You could also read our own Michael Bourne’s piece on, like, why the word like is really cool!