The Week Magazine April 29, 2022

Anyone else have Sting’s lyrics “I hope the Russians love their children, too” stuck in their head these days? My parents grew up with duck-and-cover drills, knowing that global annihilation was just one bad Soviet decision away. For my generation, the Xers, the nuclear specter was our default, a constant background-noise kind of fear punctuated by the occasional stab of terror when we watched a TV show like The Day After. My own teen, though, has been raised to hide under desks and barricade doors not against a rain of missiles from above, but to thwart an active shooter stalking the hallways of her school. And while her generation does fear an apocalyptic future in climate change, nuclear war doesn’t really register. Still, the threat is real. Russian President Vladimir…

What happened Russia launched a new offensive aimed at capturing the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine this week, stepping up its bombardment of strategic areas in preparation for a major assault. “The next phase of this special operation begins now,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, calling its goal the “complete liberation” of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Ukrainian forces succeeded in driving back “numerous attempted Russian advances,” according to the U.K. Ministry of Defense, and U.S. officials said Russia had made no territorial gains. The Pentagon called the Russian operations a “prelude” to a larger offensive, for which troops and artillery are still being moved into place. The Russians are thought to have some 75,000 soldiers surrounding the Donbas, including up to 20,000 foreign mercenaries. The offensive…

What happened Twitter’s board of directors scrambled this week to fend off a hostile takeover threat by Tesla CEO and prolific tweeter Elon Musk, who claims the social media company turns off users by stifling free expression. Musk has been buying shares of Twitter for months and now owns over 9 percent. While he declined a seat on its board, he said last week he wants to take the company private and announced an offer of $43 billion. The next day, the board adopted a “poison pill” measure, saying it would sell discounted shares if any investor’s stake exceeded 15 percent. But analysts doubted that many sellers would accept Musk’s purportedly final offer of $54.20 a share, more than the $45 the stock had been recently valued at but…

Idaho father Chad Kempel recently ran a half-marathon in an impressive 2 hours and 19 minutes—with all five of his quintuplets in tow, setting a new Guinness World Record. Then, Kempel continued past the finish line until he had run a total of 27.3 miles, representing the 27 weeks and three days that his wife, Amy, had carried their children. As Kempel sweated to the point of exhaustion, his 4-year-olds cheered him on from their stroller. “The kids were saying ‘Run faster, Dad!’” Kempel recalled. “They thought it was hilarious.” When eighth-grader Joslyn Diffenbaugh saw the books being banned books from school curricula, she noticed that many of the books in question were ones that had given her valuable insight into subjects like racism and police brutality. So, the Pennsylvania…

America has a “gerontocracy problem,” said David Graham in The Atlantic. Washington’s halls of power are filled with people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s—a problem that was thrown into sharp relief last week when the San Francisco Chronicle published a remarkable story claiming that 88-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has become “mentally unfit to serve.” In the piece, four senators and three former staffers recount moments over the past two years when Feinstein has failed to fully recognize longtime colleagues and seemed confused during discussions of policy issues. Feinstein has denied she’s in mental decline, but she is only the tip of the iceberg, said Peter Suderman in Reason.com. This is the oldest Senate in American history, with an average age of 64. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell…

Good week for: Insecure MAGA men, after Fox’s Tucker Carlson began promoting a documentary called The End of Men, with tips on how to raise testosterone levels, including “testicle tanning,” which involves exposing male privates to red LED light. TobyKeith, a 21-year-old chihuahua in Florida just recognized as the oldest dog alive by Guinness World Records. “People can’t believe how good he looks for his age,” said his owner. Grand theft Gouda, after thieves broke into a dairy farm in the Netherlands and stole 3,500 pounds of the classic Dutch cheese worth over $22,000. Investigators are trying to figure out how the thieves managed to escape with 161 massive wheels of cheese. Bad week for: Historical examples, after Tennessee Republican state Sen. Frank Niceley cited Adolf Hitler as proof that…