It’s been a big week at ToM. Due to the shimmies and swerves of the capricious sprite Fortuna, some stories blow up, some don’t, and some come back to life after years. The undisputed champ for us this election season is Cherie Braden’s 2013 investigation “How Do Different States Allocate Their Electoral Votes?” Apparently, many computer owners out there are trying to figure out how America’s gonzo electoral system works, and Cherie has the answers — such as they are.
Thanks to the sharing of our piece about the old Burroughs-Wellcome building among former employees, that photo essay has circulated a great deal in the last few weeks. Rachel Grace Newman’s essay about activist Olga Gutierrez and school desegregation in El Monte, California has recently gotten a lot of readers, and it appears that Ryan Reft’s 2010 piece about Dumbo, Disneyland, and suburbia was assigned as a course reading somewhere in America. Finally, rounding out this week’s round-up is a long-time favorite in the contrarian community, Alex Cummings’s 2013 The Case Against Bodies.
We also began our “Is Trump Sui Generis?” series this week, which explores what Trump represents about the past of the conservative movement and what he tells us about the future of the GOP. We’ll be rolling out more expert trolling next week, but in the meantime you can find the first few pieces here:
There Is a There There: Trump Is Hardly Sui Generis
Reckoning Trump Through a Joan Didion Lens
Last but far from least, check out the Twitter hashtag #MormonMafia. You’ll be glad you did.