Slate

He Became a Mathematician in Prison. Now, He’s Stuck There.

Science Christopher Havens was approved for release by the Washington State Clemency Board. All he needed was the governor’s signature. May 02, 202610:00 AM Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Kwangmoozaa/Getty Images Plus and Pressmaster/Getty Images Plus. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Christopher Havens has a part-time position as research staff at the University of California at Los Angeles. And he’s had a prolific few years. In June 2020, Havens published an article in the journal Research in Number Theory with co-authors from the University of Torino in Italy. Soon after, he published another article on the proceedings of a math conference held in Bratislava, Slovakia, with a co-author from Rome. Another five publications followed, including a 2025 textbook on continued fractions published by Springer. Havens has never visited Italy or Slovakia. He hasn’t, despite his UCLA appointment, been in L.A. for a long time. He’s not allowed: He lives in Shelton, Washington, at the Washington Corrections Center. He’s been in prison for 16 years, since he was convicted of the murder of Randen Robinson. Haven shot Robinson in the woods while Robinson was

Graham Platner Got Everything He Wanted. Is That Good for Democrats’ Hopes of Retaking the Senate?

Politics Maine was supposed to be Democrats’ marquee Senate primary. It ended before a single vote was cast. May 02, 20265:45 AM Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Sophie Park/Getty Images and Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images. Sign up for the Surge, the newsletter that covers the most important political nonsense of the week, delivered to your inbox every Saturday. Welcome to this weekend’s edition of the Surge, which wonders why there was no speculation about whether the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner attack was a conspiracy to secure more material for political newsletters. And now we’re not even writing it up! What do we write up instead? Another American right was lost to the pen of Samuel Alito. Jim Comey spent a day at the beach, and you won’t believe what happened next. Trump is mad at Germany and so may remove American troops from there. (Don’t you usually keep troops around the people you don’t like?) Let’s begin with a double dose of the sudden political developments in Lobster Country. 1. Janet Mills A shocking upset. Last fall we described the Maine Democratic Senate primary between Gov. Janet Mills and oysterman Graham Platner as the “marquee” and “blockbuster”

Can Google Keep This Up?

Google Gets Its Bag Alphabet reports staggering Q1 earnings, Bill Ackman’s IPO is a bust, and Palintir is selling a branded but stylish chorecoat. We're sorry, but something went wrong while fetching your podcast feeds. Please contact us at plus@slate.com for help. Episode Notes This week: Google’s parent company Alphabet announced an incredible $110 billion in first-quarter revenue thanks, in part, to the computing needs of the AI boom. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck, discuss the shocking earnings report and the reasons to doubt it as a sign of future growth, including the internet’s ever-evolving information economy. Then, they get into Bill Ackman once again trying and failing to make a closed-end fund happen, and why he’ll never be Warren Buffet. Finally they’ll examine the utility of corporate merch, such as Palantir’s french chore coat, and company retreats, like the Plex’s disastrous Survivor-themed getaway. In the Slate Plus episode: Can you have a Tiktok and a job on Wall Street? Want to hear that discussion and hear more Slate Money? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slate Money show

The Personal Essay Is Back. The Internet Isn’t Ready.

Reactions to new memoirs from Lena Dunham and Lindy West show how much the internet has changed. We're sorry, but something went wrong while fetching your podcast feeds. Please contact us at plus@slate.com for help. Episode Notes On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by author Leigh Stein, who landed her first book deal in the 2010s personal essay boom. With new memoirs from Lindy West and Lena Dunham, it feels like confessional writing is getting a 2020s rebirth. However, reactions to viral personal essays, like those in The Cut, prove social media has become a much different beast. Now, writing a personal essay is not only much more fraught, but can be downright dangerous. Did the personal essay change, or did we? This podcast is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, and Kate Lindsay. Bonus Episode Bonus: What Happened After A Viral Lindy West Essay Leigh Stein’s essay about Lindy West’s memoir went viral, and provoked a telling response.

A Conservative Studio Has Returned With an Adaptation of Animal Farm. It’s Not What You Think.

Movies The New Animal Farm Movie Satirizes a Very Different Target Angel Studios wants you to think the adaptation is about “the dangers of communism.” Others decry it as anti-capitalist. It’s neither. By Laura Miller Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Laura Miller? May 01, 20263:49 PM Photo illustration by Slate. Images via Secker & Warburg and Angel Studios. When first published in 1945, George Orwell’s Animal Farm featured a subtitle: A Fairy Story. It’s likely Orwell was being ironic in labeling his satire of the corruption of Russian communism this way, given that children, the assumed audience for fairy tales, have little interest in such matters as industrialization and collectivization. Fable might be a more accurate term, anyway, for a story like Animal Farm, a tale with a moral message in which anthropomorphized animals illustrate some enduring truths. But whatever you call it (the pedant in me must point out that Animal Farm is not technically an allegory), the book was meant for adults. Distilling the complex early history

Here’s Proof of Just How Bad Voting Rights in America Are About to Get

Jurisprudence May 01, 20263:03 PM People wait in line to participate in early voting on Oct. 31, 2020, in Greenville, South Carolina. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Sean Rayford/Getty Images, JillianCain/Getty Images Plus, Smart/iStock/Getty Images Plus, and Larysa Stepanechko/Getty Images Plus. Sign up for Executive Dysfunction, a newsletter that highlights one under-the-radar story each week about how Trump is changing the law—or how the law is pushing back. You’ll also receive updates on the latest from Slate’s Jurisprudence team. One big question has emerged in the wake of Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court’s ruling this week that knocked down the Voting Right Act’s final remaining major pillar: How bad are things about to get? History is a good guide. Our work has shown that the court’s previous assaults on the act have wrought devastating consequences for voters of color. The impact of this decision likely won’t be different. Minority voters will now be left with a diminished voice in American politics, rolling back half a century of steady progress toward racial equality in voting practices. The Voting Rights Act is one of the most effective laws in American history. Congress passed it in 1965 to ensure that racial

One of the Biggest Boondoggles in Sports History Is All but Dead. The Damage Is Real.

Sports The wreckage of LIV Golf will haunt the sport for years to come. By Alex Kirshner Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Alex Kirshner? May 01, 20262:29 PM Tim Warner/Getty Images LIV Golf, as far as any normal person need be concerned, died on Thursday. The league still exists, even though it just canceled an upcoming event in New Orleans. But unless you are one of an apparently tiny number of fans, LIV Golf ceased to exist when the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia announced on Thursday that it was pulling its funding come the end of this season. Because if LIV Golf does not exist as a geopolitical influence project, LIV Golf has to exist as “a golf league,” and precious few people on the planet have ever watched a LIV Golf event. The league says it will look for new investors. Those investors would have to be on a powerful cocktail of drugs, because there is no capitalistic reason to want to be involved. The Saudis

Trump’s Vengeance Tour Is Opening the Door to Something More Terrible

Jurisprudence How to finally plug the holes in our criminal code and stop it. May 01, 20261:27 PM Jim Comey. Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images. Sign up for Executive Dysfunction, a newsletter that highlights one under-the-radar story each week about how Trump is changing the law—or how the law is pushing back. You’ll also receive updates on the latest from Slate’s Jurisprudence team. President Donald Trump’s revenge campaign of criminal prosecutions against his political enemies is showing no signs of stopping. Just this past week brought new indictments against former FBI Director James Comey, who earned the president’s ire for his role in the Russia investigation, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose work fighting hate groups has irked the political right. It is possible these cases will stumble, just like the administration’s past attempts to turn “Lock her up” into a governing philosophy. Judges and grand juries foiled previous efforts to target Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and the so-called Seditious Six—Democratic lawmakers who filmed a video urging troops to resist illegal orders. Prosecutors also dropped a probe of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell last week in the face of Republican political

How Normie Pundits Paved the Way for the Supreme Court Voting Rights Disaster

Jurisprudence May 01, 202612:30 PM Polarization is not the problem. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Chip Somodevilla/Pool/AFP via Getty Images, SupremeCourt.gov, and Amazon. Sign up for Executive Dysfunction, a newsletter that highlights one under-the-radar story each week about how Trump is changing the law—or how the law is pushing back. You’ll also receive updates on the latest from Slate’s Jurisprudence team. For two decades, a certain kind of American political thinker has insisted they know the real problem. Authoritarianism, oligarchy, and racism were symptoms rather than causes. The true pathology was partisan polarization. The sorting of Americans into hostile camps. The collapse of bipartisan comity. We built serious institutions around this diagnosis. Duke opened its Polarization Lab. Princeton launched its Bridging Divides Initiative. No Labels raised tens of millions of dollars. Braver Angels held town halls. The Carnegie Foundation offered prestigious fellowships, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences convened a blue-ribbon commission. Ezra Klein’s bestselling book didn’t seek to answer why democracy is dying, but Why We’re Polarized. Today there are more conferences and fellowships devoted to “bridging divides” than there are functioning bridges between the parties. The Supreme Court just revealed where that project was leading.

You Might Be Having a Strange Reaction to the Trump Assassination Attempt. You’re Not Alone.

Politics Donald Trump’s Attempted Assassin Had Shocking Motives—Especially What They Weren’t A decade of MAGA has really done a number on us. By Luke Winkie Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Luke Winkie? May 01, 202611:46 AM Dana Verkouteren/AP Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. If Donald Trump is going to face assassination threats for the rest of his term—if the next three years will be intermittently interrupted by incidents like the one on Saturday, in which a gunman with a manifesto was apprehended outside the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner—it will not be because the revolution is here. That is what I found myself thinking after surveying the social media footprint of one Cole Tomas Allen, a teacher from California who allegedly attempted to kill the president and the rest of his Cabinet, and is now in federal custody. Allen kept an active account on Bluesky, the social media hub preferred by #resistance-honed liberals,

Red Lobster’s Endless Shrimp Is Back. Employees Are Horrified. That Probably Explains the Internal Document They Sent Me.

Food Another Round! Red Lobster’s accursed Endless Shrimp promotion is back. Employees are horrified. So was I—until I learned a little secret. By Luke Winkie Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Luke Winkie? May 01, 202610:00 AM Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Getty Images Plus. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Streaking atop the Red Lobster website is a wraparound banner, divided into four frames, each containing videos of starry-eyed diners stuffing their faces with impossible amounts of shrimp. The shellfish is prepared in all applications: There is shrimp linguini, shrimp scampi, and deep-fried butterfly shrimp—bisected along the spine, opaque with breading, and submerged in marinara sauce. There is coconut shrimp with a sweet Polynesian glaze and “Marry Me Shrimp,” as in shrimp served in a tomato cream sauce, gesturing toward the viral chicken recipe of the same name. All are served on cerulean-trimmed platters piled high with wedged lemons and steamed broccoli. “YOU