Day: September 19, 2019

Look! It’s the cast of Friends! | Warner Bros. Television The show’s long, lucrative run led to copycat after copycat after copycat — even long after it had left the air. If you’re one of Friends’ many fans, you almost certainly remember the show as one of the best comedies of its era, a megahit that nonetheless possessed warm, funny, relatable characters and a surprisingly soapy storytelling style. It spawned hairstyles, catchphrases, and Ross and…

Celebrate our daily explainer podcast’s 400th episode with 13 top picks. When you have 400 of something, it’s easy to forget which ones you like the most. Today, the Today, Explained team and I publish our 400th episode. To mark this milestone for Vox’s daily news explainer podcast, I took a break from hosting to ask the show’s producers the kind of retrospective question one tends to ask on days like these: “You guys, which…

She must work at a startup. | S3studio/Getty Images Nearly 60 percent of funded startups pay for Slack — much higher than the rate for Microsoft Teams. Slack is still king at startups. Nearly 60 percent of funded startups pay for Slack’s workplace communications software, according to new data from Kruze Consulting, an accounting firm that analyzed anonymized spending of its nearly 200 venture capital-funded startups. That percentage has declined slightly from last quarter but…

An activist marches against Trump’s immigration policies in El Paso, Texas, after Republicans postponed a key vote in Congress on immigration reform in June. | BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images The bill would have been a small fix to the green card system. A bill that would eliminate per-country caps on employment-based green cards, effectively opening the door to more high-skilled immigrants from India and China, failed on the Senate floor Thursday after Sen. David Purdue blocked…

Brad Pitt in Ad Astra. | 20th Century Fox Slow, gorgeous, and unnerving, the movie gives a distinctly modern answer to man’s search for the divine. Midway through Ad Astra, the crew of a spacecraft blesses one of their number with the words, “May you meet your Redeemer face to face and enjoy the vision of God forever.” And I sat up straighter. Prior to that scene, I wasn’t sure what kind of a movie…

Mayor Muriel Bowser, rides a bus to a rally on Pennsylvania Avenue ahead of a House hearing on a bill that would make DC the 51st state, on Monday, September 16, 2019. | Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images Republicans are unified in their opposition. The residents of Washington, DC would very much like the nation’s capital to be the 51st state. On Thursday, for the first time in 25 years, the Democratic-run House…