New York Magazine February 27-March 12, 2023

1 For New York’s latest cover story, Simon van Zuylen-Wood wrote about Kyrie Irving and his tumultuous tenure with the Nets (“Head Games,” February 13–26). Rolling Stone’s Jeff Ihaza said the profile was “really good, non-hysterical writing that respects the complexity at hand,” and Hunter Walker called it “a nuanced look at Kyrie, the rise of internet conspiracy ideology, and Black-Jewish relations.” But radio host T.J. Legacy-Cole criticized the story as “an anti-Black hit piece … with racial undertones disguised as substantive journalism … Dehumanizing Black athletes has become such a perverse fetish in media.” Arianny Mercedes added, “I can’t stand Kyrie Irving for basketball reasons, but this is just an attack on him as a person.” Myles Brown countered, “This was thorough and fair, which is all I can…

INSIDE: Voices from Ukraine / Bernie Sanders celebrates Valentine’s Day / The lost art of projection JEFFERY WILLIAMS was born in 1991, the year after Atlanta won its bid to host the 1996 Olympic Games. He grew up in the Jonesboro South projects in a desolate corner of the city, “a forgotten place among a series of forgotten places on the south side,” King Williams, a documentary filmmaker, told me. Jeffery’s childhood experiences were as grim as they were indelible: He was the second-youngest of 11 children and watched his elder brother Bennie get murdered in front of him over a gambling dispute. He has rapped about how his dad shot his mom and her lover when he caught her cheating, and he sold drugs to make ends meet. Jonesboro…

ONE YEAR AGO, after Russia invaded Ukraine, New York Magazine asked 30 young people in Ukraine to share their experiences of life under siege. Since then, Ukrainians, who continue to beat back Vladimir Putin’s army, have endured a Russian campaign of atrocities against civilians—bombings of electrical grids, razings of residential neighborhoods, murder, rape, torture, and deportation. More than 5 million Ukrainians have been forced to leave their homes and start over in new cities or regions, and more than 8 million have crossed the border entirely. We spoke with a group of our original subjects to hear how their lives have changed since February 24, 2022. As told to Megan Paetzhold, Bridget Read, Amelia Schonbek, Laura Thompson, and Reeves Wiedeman. INNA ZADOROZHNA, 26, virtual assistant BEFORE THE INVASION: Cherkasy.…

THE SENATOR HAD no idea it was Valentine’s Day. “When is that? This weekend?” Bernie Sanders asked when I greeted him for dinner on February 14 at Young Chow, a Chinese restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue that he likes. No, I told him, it is Valentine’s Day currently, right now, as this very meal is taking place. He was grumpy: “Why is Valentine’s Day in the middle of the week?” Not that I was expecting a softer, sweeter Sanders just because of the holiday. Or even because he is 81 years old and has been a politician for much longer than I’ve been alive. This date would have no frills. We drank ice water. We ordered right away (him: pork noodle soup; me: dumplings). He wasn’t in the mood for chitchat.…

MICHELLE PFEIFFER AND JONATHAN MAJORS look like crap. Usually, they’re two of the most radiant, dermatologically exceptional people in the world. But right now, they’re decrepit husks of themselves, their faces so drained of color that they could pass for cadavers. I’m watching Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania— in which she plays Janet van Dyne and he plays Kang the Conqueror—at the AMC Empire 25 near Times Square. Although a ticket to this matinee costs more than a month’s worth of Netflix’s priciest subscription plan, the image onscreen is so dim that it’s hard to make out much of the movie’s action. Next to me is Jack Theakston, a projection specialist at Dolby Laboratories, who immediately diagnoses the problem: This is a 2-D showing of Ant-Man, but some neglectful employee…

ALLISON IS AN actress. When we meet up for coffee—she has an almond-milk cortado—in midtown, something’s different about her, but I’m not sure what. She looks like an Instagram version of herself but in real life. It turns out she’s down about ten pounds and happy about it. “Somebody once told me I had a size-zero personality, and they assumed that I was thinner than I was,” she tells me. “We don’t talk about it, but everybody knows it. Thin is power.” Allison isn’t alone in seeming to be suddenly, unaccountably slimmer of late. She admitted to me—with the provision that I not use her real name—the reason, one that is increasingly common if still not quite openly discussed. For the past month, she’s been jabbing herself every week with…