March 3, 2017

Gambian Ali Sonko, an immigrant in Denmark, just became a partner at Noma, one of the world’s best restaurants, after washing dishes there for 13 years. / b.dk, Eater

“There was absolutely nothing misleading about his answer.” Jeff Sessions’s spokesperson is apparently lying even now about the fact that Sessions perjured himself by not disclosing unorthodox meetings with the Russian ambassador during the campaign. / NBC News

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s damning connections to Russia are fairly conventional-seeming, in that they’re all tied up in Russian-controlled Cypriot banks with difficult-to-establish (but almost certainly existing) connections to Russian intelligence services. / dcreport.org

Though he’s been silent about nearly everything recently, it’s important to remember that Rex Tillerson’s extremely close personal ties to Russia are supplemented by financial ties he forged in his (very recent) past career. / The Washington Post, The Guardian

In case you haven’t seen it, here’s something slightly more fun: This tick-tock Times story of the Obama adminsitration breadcrumbing their evidence of communications between the Trump campaign and the Russians. / The New York Times

“Will Putin expose the failings of American democracy or will he inadvertently expose the strength of American democracy?” An exhaustive examination of Putin’s reaction to the fallout from the Cold War, and how it led to his government apparently collecting kompromat on Trump. / The New Yorker

We recently published “The Long Tail of the Attica Prison Riot,” by J. Oliver Conroy, where Oliver dove into a groundbreaking recent book on the government’s ugly cover-up, Blood in the Water, and spoke to several survivors of the tragedy. Oliver explains how the story came together. / Amazon

“Inspired by the blood-and-guts, monosyllabic war movie that had taken us off the tarmac and into the air, I realized the answer by the time of arrival. The opposite of a ‘chick flick’ is a ‘prick flick.’” Gloria Steinem explains what a “prick flick” is. Unfortunately for the Gray Lady’s op-ed page, she already did so 10 years ago, as the editors’ note explains. / The New York Times

President George W. Bush wants credit for his Bushisms. / Wikipedia

“I want more time with Jason. I want more time with my children. I want more time sipping martinis at the Green Mill Jazz Club on Thursday nights. But that is not going to happen. I probably have only a few days left being a person on this planet. So why I am doing this?” Author Amy Krouse Rosenthal, dying of ovarian cancer, writes an online dating profile for her husband. / The New York Times

Texas did away with the practice after an inmate ordered an elaborate meal, then refused to eat it. But many ask for something simple; a Whopper is a common request, and most ask for something from childhood—a mark, somehow, of innocence. Researchers have noted that the meal serves a ceremonial function that helps guards absolve themselves of the process, and has some religious resonance for its similarity, albeit faint, to the Last Supper. / The Ringer

“Human beings have fundamentally shaped life on earth for thousands of years, a fact that the term Anthropocene alludes to.... Ecologically, you might say, the Anthropocene is here to stay, but just how it unfolds over coming generations will be decided by whether, politically, it remains the Capitalocene.” Longread from Benjamin Kunkel: While useful, “Anthropocene” blames all of humanity for the environmental destruction wrought by a specific economic force. / London Review of Books

A love story from famous Turkish writer Sabahattin Ali has nothing to do with politics, but it’s being denounced on talk shows and read by activists—a cultural touchstone in a Turkey divided over sentiments towards a president showing Islamist and autocratic tendencies. Allegedly the most-Instagrammed image in Turkey last year, Madonna in a Fur Coat doesn’t so much challenge orthodoxy as confirm to the younger generation that their pains are valid. / tinhouse.com