Indholdsfortegnelse for April 15, 2022 i The Week Magazine

In Bucha, outside Kyiv, the corpses lay in the street for weeks. Long enough for satellites to pass over them and record their locations from space. Long enough for dogs to gnaw at them. Long enough to rot. We already knew some of the horror of the war in Ukraine—children buried in the ruins of their shelter, a city without water, “green corridors” turned into shooting galleries. But, as almost always seems to be the case, what was hidden is worse than what was known. It is always worse than it looks. But maybe at least things will get better? After all, around Kyiv the Russians seem to be in retreat. At the United Nations, Volodymyr Zelensky captivates the world. Europe is rallying around NATO. Russia faces calamitous economic consequences.…

A Danish company has begun distributing a children’s book to newly arrived Ukrainian refugees. The book includes fun facts about Denmark’s cultural connections to Ukraine, such as the nations’ frequent interaction during the age of the Vikings. Mediabrands, the company that designed the book, has so far distributed 20,000 copies and plans to print at least 75,000 more. Welcome to Denmark also tells kids not to worry too much about pronouncing the Danish language’s three extra letters, which, the book admits, “sound funny.” A British 10-year-old was metal detecting with his father when, after just 10 minutes of searching, he uncovered a rare, 13th-century seal. Priests would have pressed the medieval copper ornament, embellished with an image of the Madonna, into wax to seal official documents and other correspondence. George…

Colorado has passed a law making it explicitly legal for a child to play or walk outside without parental supervision, after a rash of unwarranted reports of child abuse or neglect. Under a previous law, parents could be accused of neglect if they left kids in an environment “injurious to the child’s health or welfare.” That invited 221,000 calls to the state’s child abuse hotline last year, many of them reporting that a kid was simply playing outside or walking to school alone. NewYork City’s chief medical officer, Dr. Michelle Morse, faced backlash for referring to Black and Hispanic women as “mothers” but white women as “birthing people.” A health department spokesperson said Morse apologized for “inadvertently gendering Black and Puerto Rican birthing people.” In other news Biden extends student-loan…

Vitali Klitschko has inspired the world over the past month, said Justin Miller in New York magazine. The former world heavyweight boxing champ, who stands a towering 6-foot-7, has served since 2014 as mayor of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. When Russian troops invaded, Klitschko and his brother, Wladimir, also a former boxing champ, pledged to take up arms. Their father, a former Ukrainian general in the Soviet Union’s military, taught them as kids that the “biggest privilege” is to “die for your country,” says Klitschko, 50. “A few days ago, I was visiting an apartment building that was destroyed from a rocket,” he says. “An old man comes to me and tells me, ‘Mr. Mayor, I’m homeless now. What do I have to do?’ I gave him a proposal to…

Bruce Willis is retiring from acting because he’s suffering from aphasia—a debilitating condition that is robbing him of his ability to speak and “impacting his cognitive abilities,” his family announced last week. After several years of struggling with the brain malady, his family said in an Instagram post, “Bruce is stepping away from the career that has meant so much to him.” The post was signed by his wife, Emma Heming, ex-wife, Demi Moore, and five children, ages 7 to 33. Willis, 67, has reportedly been struggling to remember his lines on movie sets and had them fed to him through an earpiece. Aphasia often occurs after a stroke or head injury, leading to speculation about injuries Willis suffered filming Die Hard and 2003’s Tears of the Sun, including a…

Jonathan Rauch AmericanPurpose.com If “radical gender ideologues” are allowed to dominate discussions of transgender rights, said Jonathan Rauch, “LGBT equality will be in jeopardy.” As a 61-year-old gay male, I took part in the struggle for gay rights and gay marriage, joining other moderates in successfully arguing that there “is nothing intrinsically radical or left-wing about gay equality.” Trans equality is also not inherently a radical idea, and we can all “live with preferred pronouns” and other reasonable accommodations to gender identities. But the radical ideology now dominating the trans movement strikes most Americans “as nutty, unfair, and dangerous”—and it’s causing a backlash against hard-won LGBT rights. Gender extremists insist that “human gender and sex are social constructions,” that they are purely a matter of choice, and that “trans…

BANGLADESH Rafsan Ghalib Prothom Alo A century ago, the famed poet Rabindranath Tagore sang rapturous praise of our country’s rich soil and clear water, said Rafsan Ghalib, but now the land is making us sick. A new global report just put Bangladesh once again at the top of the list of the world’s most polluted countries. Dhaka is the world’s second-worst capital city for air pollution, and in 2019 alone some 164,000 Bangladeshis died from pollutant-related lung ailments. The smog comes from a noxious mix of car exhaust, factory smoke, and the emissions from the hundreds of kilns that operate day and night to make bricks—necessary for construction in a country of muddy river plains and few sources of stone. Dhaka also earned the indignity of being worst for noise…

“At your highest moment, be careful—that’s when the devil comes for you.”Denzel Washington, quoted in the Los Angeles Times “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”G.K. Chesterton, quoted in Sports Illustrated “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”John Milton, quoted in Los Angeles Review of Books “You can be in a good marriage and you can be in a bad marriage, and they can both be the same one but just at different times.”Anne Tyler, quoted in The Washington Post “A consultant is someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time, and then keeps the watch.”Advertising exec Carl Ally, quoted in The…

Recovering lost crypto passwords “There’s a market for companies that promise to recover lost Bitcoin,” said Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai in Vice. When Ebet Kuefler decided to cash in the seven bitcoins he owned, he realized he’d forgotten “the 24-character complex password that protected his crypto wallet.” Kuefler turned to Wallet Recovery Service, a startup run by somebody called DaveBitcoin, who eventually uncovered “the right password to unlock” the wallet. “What these companies do” is try to “brute force” their way into a wallet by trying “as many password or passphrase combinations as fast as they can.” The only way it’s achievable is if the client remembered at least some clues to the password; a computer-generated password is “essentially uncrackable.” But the father-son duo that runs Crypto Asset Recovery said their…

If you’re forever sneezing around cats, help may soon be at hand: Scientists think it may be possible to genetically engineer the household pets to make them allergen-free. One of the main causes of cat allergies is Fel d 1, a protein that induces hay fever–like symptoms in some people. Cats secrete the protein in their saliva and spread it all over their fur through tongue baths. Scientists have had the ability to change that protein for years, using the CRISPR gene-editing tool, but they haven’t tried because they didn’t know whether it would be harmful to the cat. A new study has concluded that it would not. Researchers looked at the genomes of 50 domestic cats and 24 wild species of cat, including Bengal tigers and Iberian lynxes,…

Mary Laura Philpott is the best-selling author of I Miss You When I Blink. Her new memoir in essays, Bomb Shelter, prompted when her teenage son unexpectedly collapsed one morning, is about living joyously in the face of uncertainty. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005). Best novel ever? Maybe. Saddest? Definitely. I will forever be awestruck by how Ishiguro cuts right to the heart of the most haunting question: Why, oh why, can’t love be enough to save someone? I also appreciate the hopeful truth he salvages from the tragic emotional wreckage. Even when all seems to be lost, it is never a futile act to care for one another. Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh (2013). Experiencing this hilarious illustrated essay collection is like getting…

3 The eight members of Ibibio Sound Machine share an instinct for music as “humanity’s means of talking to itself across vast times and spaces,” said Brian Howe in Pitchfork. This “indomitable” London-based ensemble “blends West African funk and electronic bass music with aplomb.” Their songs can be “light and teasing or clashing and commanding, but they always seek the ur-rhythm moving across the ages.” The septet’s stimulating fourth LP goes all in on electronica, and though “the holographic filter sweeps and webs of synth suppress the warm, jazzy qualities” of their earlier records, those shimmering textures also underscore the “finesse and ferocity” of Eno Williams. The bilingual front-woman shines on the propulsive opener, “Protection From Evil,” where she flips between English and the Ibibio language of her native Nigeria,…

Mobsters and toughs… Top Boy Canceled after two seasons in 2013, this British drama with a cast of rappers was revived in 2019 by Drake, who loved it so much he’s now executive-producing. With its pumping soundtrack, the gritty tale of two friends who seek to rule the drug trade in London’s East End has drawn comparisons to The Wire. Netflix Gangs of London Come to this brutal series for the saga of a young crime boss (Peaky Blinders’ Joe Cole) out to avenge his father’s death, stay for the abundant scenes of gasp-inducing, brilliantly choreographed violence. AMC+ Godfather of Harlem The typically excellent Forest Whitaker heads a stellar ensemble cast as the real-life Harlem gangster Bumpy Johnson, who emerges from a long stint in prison bent on taking…

Chrono24.com, a leader in the secondhand timepiece business, has half a million watches for sale at any moment. An estimated-worth calculator charts the watches’ market value over time, and users can create wish lists that are visible to vetted dealers. BobsWatches.com specializes in preowned Rolexes and is transparent about pricing: Each model listed includes the price a buyer must pay and allows prospective sellers to request a price bid from Bob’s. Shopworn.com sells heavily discounted watches—acquired directly from the manufacturers—that may have been tried on in a store but have never been purchased. TrueFacet.com is a resale marketplace with a unique service: Its concierge program can help track down rare timepieces. AnalogShift.com offers a curated selection of vintage curiosities, catering to enthusiasts with a passion for the history of horology.…

Estelle Harris was a virtuoso of maternal aggrievement. As Estelle Costanza, the mother of nebbishy layabout George Costanza on the seminal sitcom Seinfeld, Harris nagged, needled, and vented in a high-pitched, nasal voice that erupted into a screech at the first hint of offense or confrontation. Typically, the spark was supplied by her husband, Frank, an explosive crank played by Jerry Stiller, whose indignant rage could be detonated by anything from a missing TV Guide to bananas in the Jell-O. The weapons-grade bickering between the pair (“George LIKES the bananas!” “So let him have the bananas on the side!”) was a highlight of the show, and brought Harris fame after decades of regional theater and bit TV roles. “I’m the universal mother,” she said of her popularity with fans.…

Charles Conwell never had qualms about the violence he meted out in a match, said journalist Jacob Stern in The Atlantic. Then he killed an opponent, and wondered if he would go to hell. It’s the tenth and final round, and Patrick Day is fading. He’s still circling the ring in search of an opening, but his punches have lost the switchblade quickness they had in the early rounds. If he doesn’t do something dramatic, he is going to lose this fight. He had once looked like a star: No. 1 amateur welterweight, Olympic alternate, undefeated in his first 10 professional fights. But boxing is unforgiving. One bad loss to a weak fighter and the glow was gone. If this 2019 fight, at the Wintrust Arena, in Chicago, does not go well, Day’s…

Wasilla, Alaska. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announced her candidacy last week for the state’s lone House seat, joining 50 candidates competing in a special election after Rep. Don Young, the longest-serving Republican in the history of the House, died last month at 88. “As I’ve watched the far left destroy the country,” said Palin, 58, “I knew I had to step up and join the fight.” She earned the endorsement of former President Trump, who used the occasion to trash the late Sen. John McCain, who brought Palin onto his presidential ticket in 2008. Trump said Palin “had to endure some very evil, stupid, and jealous people” on the McCain campaign. Palin resigned as governor in 2009, and has since worked as a Fox News contributor. The special…

Amanda Feilding is eager to show people the penny-sized hole under her bangs, said Zoe Cormier in The Nation. A British countess who lives in a 500-year-old Tudor mansion with three moats, Feilding, 79, has been a major benefactor for psychedelics research, having done plenty of experimentation herself. “Nobody wants to give me any credit because I’m a woman, I’m old, I’m an aristocrat, and I’ve got a hole in my head,” she says. In 1966, Feilding was introduced to the ancient practice of trepanation, or drilling holes in the skull. Devotees from China to Africa to Central America believe the procedure has various benefits; Fielding saw it as a way to increase blood flow to the brain, allowing a permanent enhanced state of consciousness. Unable to find a…

LZ Granderson Los Angeles Times Madison Cawthorn is a chronic, flagrant liar, said LZ Granderson. The 26-year-old Republican congressman from North Carolina—an ardent Trumpist—has made false claims about nearly everything on his résumé, from his supposed admission to the Naval Academy to the circumstances of the car crash that left him paralyzed. Cawthorn said a friend left him for dead in the burning wreckage, when the friend actually dragged him to safety. GOP leadership ignored Cawthorn’s lies—until he began speaking of congressional orgies. In a recent interview, he said that gray-haired congressmen he once admired have invited him to sex parties and have snorted coke in front of him. Washington, Cawthorn said, is rife with “sexual perversion” and drug use. An incensed House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called Cawthorn…

ITALY Roberta Brunetti Il Gazzettino Venetians have never gotten along with their city’s “feathered residents,” said Roberta Brunetti. For more than a century, it was pigeons that harassed us and fouled our squares, thanks to feed-sellers who encouraged tourists to surround themselves with pigeons for photos. Finally in 2008, then-Mayor Massimo Cacciari banned the sale of feed in the piazzas, ending the scourge overnight. Now we face a new menace: seagulls. These dirty fowl once used to confine themselves to hunting fish in the canals. But as visitor numbers have soared, so has the number of gulls swooping down on unsuspecting tourists to snatch a quick snack. In 2005, there were 25 breeding pairs recorded in the city; now there are 500. The problem is so bad that restaurants have…

“Few things are closer to Elon Musk than Twitter,” said Matt Levine in Bloomberg, “and now it is 9.2 percent closer than it was before.” Tesla’s CEO revealed through regulatory filings that he bought a $2.89 billion stake in the social media company he loves/hates this week, becoming Twitter’s largest shareholder. Twitter said it would also appoint Tesla CEO Musk—one of the platform’s most compulsive users, as well as a persistent critic—to its board. Musk’s investment reverberated from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Twitter’s shares surged 25 percent, handing Musk a $700 million profit. Still, it is “absurd to think Musk is only interested in a quick and easy nine-figure profit.” Musk being Musk, he filed his notice late and suggested in his regulatory documents that he will not…

Contrary to popular belief, drinking coffee may protect your heart rather than causing it problems, three new studies suggest. Researchers examined data from UK Biobank, a database that tracks the health outcomes of more than half a million people for at least 10 years. They found that drinking two to three cups of java a day was associated with a 10 to 15 percent lower risk of heart disease or failure and heart rhythm problems, and even appeared to be protective against dying prematurely for any other reason, reports CNN.com. Different types of coffee—instant, ground, decaffeinated—made little difference to the outcome. And the effect was broadly the same for people whether they already had heart disease or not. “Because coffee can quicken heart rate, some people worry that drinking…

(Riverhead, $28) Nigerian writer Eloghosa Osunde’s “absorbing” debut is a novel in stories, said Chelsea Leu in The New York Times. Through interlinked tales set in Lagos, Africa’s most populous city, Osunde’s narrative jumps freely between the rich, who commit crimes with impunity, and the poor, who are scapegoated and punished. Osunde also populates her Lagos with supernatural beings blending the real and surreal to reach a climax “at once apocalyptic and bewildering, and even joyous.” Vagabonds! is “a blistering response” to Nigeria’s 2014 Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act, said Vikas Turakhia in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The law, which threatens people in LGBTQ organizations or samesex relationships with a 14-year prison sentence, appears here as a “poisonous” and unevenly enforced standard easily subverted by wealthy Nigerians. Despite Osunde’s fury,…

A Ballad of Love and Glory by Reyna Grande (Atria, $28) Reyna Grande’s historical novel is “part romance, part war story,” said Mark Athitakis in USA Today. During the Mexican-American War, John Riley, an Irish soldier, defects to the Mexican army for more honorable duties and better pay. He connects both politically and intimately with Ximena, the widow of a Mexican soldier. Grande’s dialogue can be “stiff,” but she chronicles the battles with admirable detail, and deserves credit for a romance “whose happily-ever-after leaves room for a few storm clouds.” Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman (Penguin, $17) In the hands of Isaac Fellman, the love story between a beautiful widow and a trans vampire is “very sweet, very intimate, and very, very queer,” said A.D. Cirulis in the San…

2 Red Hot Chili Peppers’ reunion with guitarist John Frusciante turns out to be “completely unmemorable,” said Ryan Leas in Stereogum. Frusciante, who left the band in 2009, was the one whose alt-rock sensibilities and “gorgeously understated” playing underpinned some of the Peppers’ biggest hits in the 1990s and 2000s. “Longtime fans will find things to enjoy” across Unlimited Love’s 17 tracks. But anyone who hoped for more of the sharp melodic hooks that defined Frusciante’s past contributions may be disappointed by this “very dry, meatand-potatoes iteration of RHCP’s sound.” It’s not a bad album; “there just aren’t many moments of uplifting transcendence,” said Ben Lindbergh in The Ringer. Singer Anthony Kiedis’ characteristically nonsensical lyrics “never stop sounding like free-associated first drafts,” but he still remains “a top-tier frontman.” Hopefully,…

Baltimore’s restaurants have bounced back with a “renewed sense of purpose, optimism, and more spirit and spunk than ever,” said Jane Marion in Baltimore magazine. After two years of pandemic flux, the scene abounds in new or revamped spaces where we can “eat something wonderful and leave feeling fortified, fueled, and connected.” Magdalena The “swanky” restaurant at Mount Vernon’s Ivy Hotel has been transformed from a stuffy fine-dining showcase to a “still upscale but far more approachable” home for globally inspired takes on “Maryland classics” by its first Black executive chef, Scott Bacon. Don’t miss his tagliatelle with braised duck ragù, which pairs house-made noodles with duck that’s cured overnight, braised, and fortified with garlic confit. 205 E. Biddle St., (410) 514-0303 Liora Matthew Kenney has a hit with…

JetBlue made a $3.6 billion bid to acquire Spirit Airlines this week, said Lauren Hirsch in The New York Times, about two months after Spirit had agreed to merge with another low-budget carrier, Frontier. JetBlue’s cash offer “is a roughly 40 percent premium to Frontier’s, which had an implied value of about $23 a share.” A combined Spirit-Frontier carrier would become the nation’s fifth-largest airline. JetBlue is the sixth-largest airline in the country. Spirit’s board has not made a decision yet on how to respond to JetBlue’s bid. California: Court strikes down board diversity law A Los Angeles court struck down California’s boardroom diversity mandate, said Ahmed Aboulenein in Reuters. Passed in 2020, Assembly Bill 979 “required publicly traded companies with a main office in California to appoint at least…

TurboTax sued over ‘free’ label The Federal Trade Commission sued Intuit for falsely marketing its TurboTax software as “free,” said Joseph Pisani in The Wall Street Journal. The agency asked for a preliminary injunction against Intuit’s “bogus” advertising around TurboTax, which is only free for users that have a “simple” tax return. TurboTax defines what simple returns are and “doesn’t allow people with certain types of forms, regardless of income, to file their taxes for free,” including most people with income aside from a regular salary. About two-thirds of users were disqualified in 2020, “but the company doesn’t tell them they have to pay until they have spent time inputting their personal and financial information.” TurboTax used to participate in the IRS Free File service for taxpayers with $73,000…

Holman Jenkins Jr. The Wall Street Journal “March wasn’t a good month for federal prosecutors,” said Holman Jenkins Jr. First, Boeing’s former chief technical pilot, Mark Forkner, was acquitted in the Boeing 737 Max disaster. Prosecutors tried to pin Forkner with four counts of wire fraud “related to his distribution of training materials that didn’t prepare pilots to cope with a design defect” in the plane’s flight software. As the jury saw it, if Forkner or anybody else “had known about the defect’s catastrophic potential, the solution would not have been more training anyway—it would have been to fix the problem.” Prosecutors also produced a hung jury for the second time in their attempt to convict 10 chicken-industry executives for price fixing. One company did plead guilty to corporate…

Patrick Demarchelier could find the authenticity beneath the veneer of celebrity. The self-taught French fashion photographer captured models and Hollywood and British royalty in quick, unstudied snaps taken before self-conscious posing could begin. “Fantastique, bootiful,” he would coo at his subjects—they often understood little else of his heavily accented English—before wrapping up quickly with that one perfect shot for the cover of Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar. He became such a legend that “Did Demarchelier confirm?” was one of the first questions Meryl Streep’s fashion editor character lobbed at her clueless assistant in 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada. But Demarchelier preferred to keep the photo shoots themselves pressure-free. “To me everyone has an inner beauty,” he once said. “My job is to relax people to the point where the beauty…

Good week for: Songwriters, after a British judge ruled that pop star Ed Sheeran did not plagiarize a one-bar phrase from an earlier song in his hit “Shape of You.” After the ruling, Sheeran noted that “there’s only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music.” Baseball 2.0, after Major League Baseball approved for this season an electronic device that enables catchers to send signs for fastball, curve, slider, etc. to pitchers. Since catchers will not need to use their fingers to send signs, the device will end sign-stealing. Job openings, with the U.K.’s Antarctic Trust listing three openings for its post office and museum on Goudier Island off the Antarctic Peninsula. The jobs, paying from $1,600 to $2,300 a month, do not include running water or flush…

Chris Wallace finally reached a breaking point with Fox News, said Michael Grynbaum in The New York Times. The down-the middle anchor, known for his pointed questioning of Republicans and Democrats alike, made the surprise announcement in December that he was leaving Fox after nearly two decades to work for archrival CNN. “I just no longer felt comfortable with the programming at Fox,” says Wallace, 74. He’d long insisted that his traditional approach to journalism could co-exist alongside right-wing commentary from provocateurs such as Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson. “I’m fine with opinion—conservative opinion, liberal opinion,” Wallace says. “But when people start to question the truth—Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection?—I found that unsustainable.” He hit a breaking point when Fox aired a documentary from…

Joshua Zeitz Politico “The Supreme Court has never been apolitical,” said Joshua Zeitz. Approval ratings for the court have plunged to 40 percent, largely because of the widespread perception that “the justices are motivated principally by politics.” But the idea that the justices should serve as “neutral umpires who just call ‘balls and strikes’” is relatively new in our history. The first chief justice, John Jay, simultaneously served as ambassador to Britain and a close adviser to President George Washington. Throughout the 19th and mid-20th centuries, the justices “were once and future elected officials, advisers to presidents, and even presidential aspirants themselves.” The court that decided Brown v. Board in 1954 included three former U.S. senators and a former governor; in the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson relied on Justice…

“The Republican Party is today a much less able and reliable vessel of conservative policy than it was 10 or 20 years ago, because it has been deformed by vulgar populism and infantile nationalism. Certain important factions within the GOP have discovered a strange new respect for everything from heavy-handed and politically tinged antitrust regulation to economic redistribution to Vladimir Putin—and a positive loathing of free trade, free speech, the military, and the libertarian sensibility that Ronald Reagan famously described as ‘the very heart and soul of conservatism.’ Down with Reaganism, up with Orbánism; down with Margaret Thatcher, up with Marine Le Pen.” Kevin Williamson in National Review…

LATVIA Artis Svece Satori Latvia’s upcoming World War II commemoration is posing a problem this year, said Artis Svece. Every year on May 9, more than 100,000 Russian-speaking Latvians gather in Riga to celebrate the Soviet liberation of Latvia from the Nazis. Russia’s current brutality in Ukraine, though, has made our leaders rethink the event. Prime Minister Arturs Karins says the gathering amounts to the “glorification of the occupation of our country” by the Soviets, who took over the Baltics for the next four decades. And Riga Mayor Martins Stakis is considering banning all May 9 gatherings, lest they serve as a rallying point for supporters of Vladimir Putin and the Russian war. These concerns are understandable but overblown. Sure, a few Russian-speakers use May 9 to wave Russian flags,…

CHINA Song Xiangqian Caixin A tainted pickled cabbage scandal has left four instant-noodle giants scrambling to prove their Chinese “bloodlines,” said Song Xiangqian. It started when 315 Gala, a popular annual investigative TV show, fingered noodle makers Master Kong and Uni-President for sourcing from a squalid Hunan production plant. Workers were caught on video stomping on pickles with bare feet and tossing cigarette butts into vegetables piled in a “dirt pit.” The companies quickly apologized and dumped the supplier, but the drama wasn’t over. After fellow noodle titans Jinmailang and Baixiang Food—not implicated in the scandal—assured consumers their own products were safe, bogus internet rumors sprang up claiming that most of China’s noodle companies were actually “owned by the Japanese.” The resulting furor was intense. During one of Jinmailang’s frequent…

The FDA and CDC’s approval last week of a fourth dose of the Covid vaccine for people over 50 raises a question for tens of millions of Americans, said Maria Godoy in NPR.org. “Do I really need another booster?” When the initial round of boosters was approved last year, experts and federal health officials agreed that every eligible person should get one. But this time the advice is muddier. If you’re over 60 and/or immunocompromised, most experts agree you should get it to boost waning immunity against serious illness. But for those under 60, “it’s less clear a second booster is necessary.” An additional shot will boost your neutralizing antibodies for a few months, said Melissa Healy in the Los Angeles Times. That will temporarily reduce your chances of…

American teens are facing “a mental health crisis,” said Aaron Blake in The Washington Post. Last year, 44 percent of high school students admitted to “persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness,” according to a newly released Centers for Disease Control survey of 7,700 teens. Nearly 20 percent reported seriously considering suicide over the past year, including nearly half of gay teens. Girls were twice as likely as boys to report poor mental health or suicidal thoughts, as well as “higher rates of drinking and tobacco use.” Although the pandemic clearly worsened teens’ feelings of hopelessness, “this crisis very much predated the pandemic.” Suicidal ideation and actual suicide attempts by teens have been steadily rising for more than a decade. This crisis “was utterly predictable,” said Matt Lewis in The…

(Random House, $29) Maud Newton’s life began as an experiment in genetics, said Lorraine Berry in The Boston Globe. Her father, a white supremacist, married her mother not for love but because he thought they would have smart children. Now long estranged from her father, Newton delves into her troubled ancestral lineage in this “beautiful and complexly nuanced” memoir. As Newton “shakes her family tree,” she uncovers uncomfortable truths about her ancestry—which includes forebears who were enslavers and stole land from Native Americans—and tackles questions about her personal responsibility to atone for the legacy she inherited. “This is rich material for a soul-searching memoir,” said Mary Ann Gwinn in the Los Angeles Times. Newton’s journey leads her down “multiple roads (and many blind alleys)” as she explores subjects like…

Erika Krouse never planned on becoming a private investigator, said Molly Odintz in LitHub.com. Twenty years ago, she was browsing in a bookstore and struck up a conversation with a fellow shopper—a lawyer—who reached for the same book. “After a moment, he stopped, shocked at himself for telling a complete stranger so much,” she says. “When I told him that this happened to me all the time, he hired me on the spot as a PI.” Krouse learned to rely on her knack for interviewing. “Because I wasn’t a cop or a lawyer, people had no real reason to talk to me, and I had no way to demand information from them,” she says. “It was all voluntary, information bought with free beer and nachos.” Krouse’s “blistering” new memoir…

3 “Aldous Harding doesn’t like to explain herself,” said Sheldon Pearce in The New Yorker. The New Zealand–born folk singer deploys her cryptic lyrics like “abstract smears on a spacious canvas.” And yet the eccentric subjects of Harding’s opaque character studies come to life through her theatrical and often playful delivery. “Her songs can feel like impressions, with singing that extends from a wraithlike whisper to a low-toned croon.” And because Harding’s once austere music continues to make room for new instruments—organ, banjo, flügelhorn—the 10 songs on her “animated” fourth album “take on a true dramaturgical splendor.” Granted, this is “often deeply weird” music that “can take time to get your head around,” said Patrick Clarke in NME. “Harding’s endless twists and turns are nothing if not engaging, however, and…

“Rustic” is the word that usually comes to mind when I’m drinking the red wines of France’s Languedoc region, said Eric Asimov in The New York Times. I expect them “to conjure up the wild herbs of France known as the garrigue.” That verdant note is key, but there’s more to explore in these bottles: 2018 Domaine d’Aupilhac Languedoc Lou Maset ($24). My favorite of the three, this “refreshing and energetic” red blend is a “bit rough” in the best way, with flavors of “dark and red fruits.” 2019 Domaine Faillenc Sainte Marie Corbières Rouge ($17). This “lively” red is “sweetly fruity” with a “mildly herbal” overlay. 2019 Domaine de l’Hortus Pic Saint Loup Bergerie Classique Rouge ($23). The “least rustic” of this group displays “aromas and flavors of…

Ghetto Film School (ghettofilm.org) offers a high-quality education in film, with access to top working professionals, for high school students in New York, Los Angeles, and London, as well as early-career support for young filmmakers, all free of charge. Every year, the organization serves over 8,000 people ages 14 to 34. More than half are Hispanic and over a third are Black. Ninety-eight percent of participants graduate from high school on time, and 92 percent go to college on time, with more than three-quarters pursuing creative professions. Some of the students are given funding to write and produce a short film—including travel to shoot on location. The organization also offers a fellowship program that provides 1,000 hours of training over three years to emerging filmmakers. Each charity we feature…

Peter Goodman The New York Times The world’s supply chain problems have added dramatically to the stresses of running a small business, said Peter Goodman. Hagan Walker runs a startup in Starkville, Miss., called Glo, which sells plastic cubes that light up in water. Walker depends on a factory in Ningbo, China, to make his products. But the surge in consumer spending during the pandemic created overwhelming demand for container space on trans-Pacific vessels. Prices rose to $20,000 per container, up from $2,000 a year earlier, and space was limited. In the spring, Walker’s arrangement for a partial container space for $5,485 fell through. With shipping rates “climbing every week,” Walker finally secured a spot out of Shenzhen, about 1,000 miles south of Ningbo, to Long Beach, Calif., for…

Bill Fries turned an ad campaign for a Midwestern breadmaker into a multiplatinum country music career, highlighted by the 1975 trucker anthem “Convoy.” A few years earlier, Fries, an Omaha-based advertising executive, was asked to writeTV commercials for Old Home bread. He came up with alter ego C.W. McCall, the fictional driver of an 18-wheeler. The resulting commercials, sung in his deep twang, became wildly popular, landing Fries a record deal. Under the McCall moniker, he released “Convoy,” a spoken-word novelty song filled with CB radio lingo. The No. 1 hit inspired a 1978 film by Sam Peckinpah. “Mercy sakes alive,” Fries sang, “looks like we got us a convoy.” Fries was born in Audubon, Iowa, son of a homemaker mother and a father who worked at a farm-equipment…

This week’s question: British psychologists have determined that the “most boring person in the world” would be a data scientist who lives in a small town and watches a lot of TV. What would you call a dating app for the world’s most unexciting people? Last week’s contest: At Karen’s Diner in Sydney, the wait-staff intentionally insults and ridicules customers and provides lousy service. Please come up with the name of a daily special that obnoxious servers could throw on patrons’ tables. THE WINNER: “Croak, Monsieur” Ken Liebman, Williston, Vt. SECOND PLACE: “Lemon Harangue Pie” Emily Nelson, Sandy, Utah THIRD PLACE: “Scorn on the Cob” Rick Torrence, The Village, Okla. For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go to theweek.com/contest. How to enter: Submissions should be emailed to contest@theweek.com. Please…