James Poulos

Tuesday

James Poulos

Azealia Banks is telling the truth

From our US edition

For a certain slice of the online commentariat, nothing better captured the zeitgeist this year than the surprise romance between tech industrialist Elon Musk and Claire Boucher, the cyberpunk-ish music impresario known professionally as Grimes. This week, we discovered their coupling was just the beginning.The worlds of Musk and Grimes worlds merged bizarrely when the pop star Azealia Banks wound up blasting out status updates on Instagram from inside Musk’s LA manse. Banks painted an unflattering portrait of Musk as a billionaire whose impulsive business decisions made it impossible to get Banks and Grimes in the same room of the same house where, ostensibly, their musical collaboration was supposed to begin: https://twitter.

Thursday

James Poulos

The future looks bright for Libertarians

Not long ago, America’s Libertarians—that’s capital-L, the pros—were ecstatic. Never before had their party nominated such a heavy-hitting presidential ticket. They boasted two former Governors, both credible (but not too credible) ex-Republicans, matching up against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the two least popular major-party nominees in history.   Governor Johnson seemed to be living proof that the GOP was sinking fast and the Libertarians offered the viable alternative. For Libertarian lifers who had suffered indignities like the abortive presidential run of Bob Barr (another ex-Republican), Johnson/Weld represented an unprecedented opportunity for unprecedented relevance. Instead, Libertarians have met with a familiar frustration.