Indholdsfortegnelse for April 29, 2022 i The Week Magazine

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…

More than 200 Texas state troopers must slim down or face disciplinary action. Under a new policy, male troopers with waists over 40 inches and women over 35 inches must track and share weight-loss efforts. “I will drink no more than one diet soda each day,” one officer pledged in an improvement plan. Another vowed to “drastically cut sugar intake in all its forms.” Two members of a Scottsdale, Ariz., Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee accused a DJ at a disco-themed school charity event of dressing up in blackface, only to be told the DJ, Kim Koko Hunter, is a Black man. DEI Committee member Stuart Rhoden amended his accusation, saying Hunter appeared to be “at the very least in darker makeup if not ‘Black face.’” In other news Bidens…

David Hyde Pierce shares at least one quality with Niles Crane: an ability to commit, said Catherine Shoard in The Guardian (U.K.). The fastidious psychiatrist he played on the sitcom Frasier secretly but unflaggingly pined for physical therapist Daphne Moon for seven out of the show’s 11 seasons before confessing his feelings and marrying her. And though he couldn’t always afford to be open about his own love life, Pierce has remained with his husband, actor turned screenwriter Brian Hargrove, for four decades. “I’m completely devoted to one person,” he said, “so I know what that feels like.” He and Hargrove met at an audition, and they learned how to weather their careers’ ups and downs without resentments. “We kept trading places in terms of who was more successful,”…

Far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is drowning in legal fees resulting from his false claims about the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, forcing his media outlet Infowars and two other businesses to file for bankruptcy this week. Courts in Connecticut and Texas, where Jones, 48, lives, have found him liable in three defamation cases brought by families of the slain children, after Jones said that the elementary-school massacre was a government hoax staged with child actors, designed to justify confiscating gun owners’ weapons. Jones’ companies have already spent $10 million on legal fees, and anticipate massive damages in the defamation cases. Plaintiffs in one case rejected Jones’ offer to pay them $120,000 each, saying it was a “desperate attempt by Alex Jones to escape a public reckoning.” Britney Spears…

Catherine Rampell The Washington Post The GOP has abandoned one of its core beliefs, said Catherine Rampell. The party that once stood for “free markets, rather than government,” now has embraced the authoritarian idea that the power of the state should be used to “reward friends and crush political enemies.” Just look at the tantrum Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is throwing over Disney criticizing his “Don’t Say Gay” law. This week, he asked the state legislature to cancel Disney’s special status that enables the company “to effectively govern itself on the grounds of its theme parks.” In Georgia, Republicans have “punished private companies for taking supposedly ‘woke’ stands on issues such as gun violence.” In Texas, Republicans are threatening to penalize companies who’ve decided to reimburse employees “for travel…

VIETNAM Nguyen Hanh VnExpress A heroic rescue of a drowning family is the feel-good story of the moment in Vietnam, said Nguyen Hanh, but it is a rare exception in a land where most people in a medical emergency get no help. Thai Ngo Hieu, a fire and rescue officer, was traveling near a beach when he spotted four people being pulled away from the shore by the waves. He quickly dragged them to safety and administered CPR, saving their lives; a fifth had already drowned. Had he not been there, though, it’s unlikely anyone else would have known what to do, because “knowledge of first aid in this society is almost nil.” Unlike most of Southeast Asia, Vietnam has no network of paramedics to respond to emergencies or provide…

The world has hit 500 million documented cases of Covid. Driven by the highly contagious BA.2 variant, the number of known cases has surged since the beginning of the year, hitting 300 million in early January and 400 million a month later. About two-thirds of the global population—more than 5.1 billion people—has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine.The New York Times U.S. border authorities arrested 210,000 migrants attempting to cross the Mexican border last month, the highest monthly figure in two decades. Half of those detained in March were immediately expelled under Title 42, a pandemic provision that the Biden administration is lifting on May 23.Reuters Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch and pro-Kremlin opposition leader with close ties to Vladimir Putin, was captured last week as he…

“Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case.”Novelist William Saroyan, quoted in the Monroe, Miss., Daily Journal “The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good.”Hannah Arendt, quoted in The Bulwark “Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.”John Lennon, quoted in American Songwriter “Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”Walt Whitman, quoted in The Christian Beat “I always wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific.”Lily Tomlin, quoted in Parade “In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.”J. William Fulbright,…

Return-to-office perks Tech companies with money to burn are rolling out the perks to lure workers back to the office, said Daisuke Wakabayashi in The New York Times. Earlier this month, Google booked a private show with pop star Lizzo for its employees after they were asked to come back to the office. Microsoft treated its returning office workers in Redmond, Wash., to “lawn games such as cornhole and life-size chess,” as well as plenty of “free food,” something the tech giant had not previously offered. For now, industry experts say, “companies are opting for the carrot over the stick.” But not every tech firm is feeling quite so magnanimous. Meta, which has allowed workers to retain a hybrid schedule, announced last month it would eliminate some of its…

The active ingredient in magic mushrooms, psilocybin, may be able to treat depression better than some conventional drugs, reports The Times (U.K.). Researchers at Imperial College London recruited 43 people with severe depression and gave them either psilocybin or the common antidepressant escitalopram (Lexapro) in conjunction with psychotherapy. They took MRI scans of the participants’ brains before the first dose and three weeks after the final dose. Those who received escitalopram reported a mild improvement in their condition, but their brain scans still showed that neural activity was constrained—a telltale sign of the rigid thought patterns that can trap depressed people in a downward spiral of doom and despair. By contrast, those who had taken psilocybin reported a quick and sustained improvement, and their MRI scans showed much more…

In Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s new novel, Take My Hand, a Black nurse looks back with regret to 1970s Alabama and to two teenage girls she tried to help. Below, the author of the 2010 best-seller Wench recommends six other recent historical novels. The Great Mrs. Elias by Barbara Chase-Riboud (2022). Chase-Riboud, an acclaimed sculptor and author of the 1979 novel Sally Hemings, has written six historical novels about “invisible” Black women. Here, her inspiration is Hannah Elias, a sex worker who rose out of poverty to become a millionaire property owner and stock investor in early 1900s New York City. The Women of Chateau Lafayette by Stephanie Dray (2021). I love putting my trust in the hands of a top-tier historical researcher. It’s even better when that person writes a…

3 Vince Staples never stays still for long, said Craig Jenkins in NYMag.com. “After throwing listeners for a loop with each of his first four projects,” the Long Beach, Calif., rapper “surprises us again” with his fifth, an album whose sound draws deeply from West Coast hip-hop tradition in a way that “feels calculatedly commercial without ever sounding gimmicky.” The music, however, suits the lyrical content. This is an album that’s at once “a love letter to street life” and Staples’ lament about the cycles of violence that have long placed young men like him in constant physical danger. He’s 28 now, and his detail-rich lyrics here “belie an existential exhaustion,” said Matthew Ismael Ruiz in Pitchfork. “To call this album entertainment would almost feel disrespectful,” because it’s “a document…

Refugees International (refugeesinternational.org), which has advocated for protection for displaced people since 1979, investigates conditions for refugees around the world and creates policy solutions. Just days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Refugees International had a team in Poland to measure the scale of the crisis and start finding longterm solutions. Driven by its findings in Poland, it was one of the first organizations to call for a war crimes investigation of the Russian invasion, and among the first to push the United States to accept displaced Ukrainians. The organization has also been aiding the resettlement of Afghan refugees and working with other displaced groups—such as the Rohingya who have fled Myanmar—who are still as urgently in need as refugees of the Ukraine tragedy. Each charity we feature has earned a…

Jon Hilsenrath and Nick Timiraos The Wall Street Journal  The Federal Reserve is entering an economic noman’s land, said Jon Hilsenrath and Nick Timiraos. The U.S. central bank wants to lower soaring inflation by 4 percentage points. Fed officials believe “they can curb demand, causing employers to eliminate vacancies without laying off existing workers, and tamp down inflation,” orchestrating what economists refer to as a “soft landing.” But previous examples of a “soft landing,” such as in 1994, occurred when the Fed was taking steps to prevent inflation from rising—not tame inflation that has already skyrocketed. In the past, the Fed has never succeeded in cutting inflation by a lot without also significantly raising unemployment. Many economists are already predicting that will require a classic hard landing, like the sharp…

Art Rupe changed the trajectory of popular music in 1955, when he picked up a scratchy audition tape by a young singer from Macon, Ga. Rupe liked the exaggerated, hyperemotional delivery of Richard Penniman enough to sign the singer to his independent label, Specialty Records. Before long, Penniman, using the stage name Little Richard, released the risqué “Tutti Frutti,” the first of a string of manic-sounding hits including “Long Tall Sally” and “Good Golly, Miss Molly” that ushered in rock ’n’ roll. Though white and Jewish, Rupe played a major role bringing blues, R&B, and gospel—known at the time as “race music”—to the mainstream. “Few white people fooled around with this kind of music,” Rupe said. “I had no idea that it would ever appeal to so many.” Rupe…

Atlanta A federal judge this week cleared the way for a lawsuit seeking to disqualify Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) from running for re-election because of her role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, escalating a legal battle over a little-tested constitutional provision. Greene had asked Judge Amy Totenberg to dismiss the liberal-backed suit, which seeks to bar Greene from this fall’s ballot based on the 14th Amendment’s “disqualification clause,” which prohibited Confederate officials and supporters of “insurrection” from returning to federal office. “This case involves a whirlpool of colliding constitutional interests,” Totenberg wrote. Greene denies encouraging the attack, and her attorney called the lawsuit “fundamentally anti-democratic.” Similar lawsuits have targeted GOP Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs of Arizona, and Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina. In March, a…

Don’t call Robert “Robby” Silk a couch potato, said Laura Kiniry in Atlas Obscura. The pursuit he invented may involve nothing but occupying a folding chair for hours at a time without any electronic devices or ways to keep time, but he cautions that “extreme sitting” is no easy undertaking. “I don’t do calisthenics beforehand for nothing,” he said, because it involves “dealing with physical discomfort.” Silk chooses harsh environments, and his first attempt, in Sedona, Ariz., in 2000, lasted less than four hours after he was stung by a bee. In 2020, he managed a 14-and-a-halfhour stretch in California’s Joshua Tree National Park, which he spent watching beetles and lizards skitter past and thinking about whether a horse or a greyhound is a better racer. He performed similar…

Nicholas Goldberg Los Angeles Times At the start of the pandemic in March 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that the U.S. could face as many as 240,000 Covid deaths, said Nicholas Goldberg. President Trump and his allies scoffed, urging Americans to get back to “normal” after just a few weeks. “We all know how that worked out.” We’re now closing in on 1 million deaths, and the U.S.’s death rate per 100,000 population is far higher than that of all other wealthy countries. Yes, hospitalizations and deaths have finally dropped, thanks to vaccination and immunity from prior infections, but scientists warn that immunity wanes against Omicron, and “in the U.S. and abroad, new variants are still emerging.” We may be at a pause in the pandemic rather than the…

GERMANY Lenz Jacobsen Die Zeit Germans have no cause to feel so miffed that Ukrainians don’t want to receive our leaders, said Lenz Jacobsen. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has hosted several Western politicians in recent weeks, including from Poland, Slovenia, and the U.K. Yet when Germany tried to send President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Zelensky apparently told him to stay home. Many Germans, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz, are offended by the perceived snub. But instead of “trying to explain to the Ukrainians what is best for their country,” perhaps they should put themselves in Zelensky’s shoes. Steinmeier, whose role is largely ceremonial, advocated closer economic ties between Russia and the West for years, and he was one of Germany’s loudest cheerleaders for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project that would have delivered…

An experimental drug has been shown to halve the death rate among critically ill Covid patients, reports The New York Times. Current treatments for the virus are primarily aimed at people with mild or moderate infections. The new drug, sabizabulin, was tested on 150 seriously ill patients, with about a third receiving a placebo and two-thirds receiving the medication. After 60 days, roughly half the people given a placebo had died—compared with just 20 percent of those who received the drug, which blocks viral replication. The results were so striking that monitors stopped the trial early. While the study has not yet been published or peer-reviewed, the FDA gave the treatment fast-track status toward approval, and Veru, the company that developed it, will seek emergency-use authorization. “Sabizabulin is the…

(Knopf, $25) Emily St. John Mandel’s new centuries-spanning novel “provides a strange comfort,” said Natalie Zutter in NPR.org. “Given enough time,” as it turns out, “there will always be a new pandemic.” The author of Station Eleven plays with that inevitability in this book by splitting its story between four time lines, starting in 1912, culminating with a visit to a lunar colony in 2401, and folding in a glimpse of a future author who, like Mandel before her, wins recognition of her prophetic powers by writing a novel about a fictional pandemic before a real one grips the world. Though this novel’s time-travel conceit sometimes wears thin, “the prose never stutters.” As always with Mandel, the writing is “poetic without being overwrought,” said Greer Macallister in the Chicago…

Life Without Children by Roddy Doyle (Viking, $25) Covid posed a unique writing challenge for Ireland’s Roddy Doyle, “an author best known for easy dialogues, big, raucous families, and pubs,” said Katy Guest in The Guardian. But Doyle has brought “his usual tenderness and humor” to his latest book, a collection of stories set during the pandemic shutdown. Many of the characters are men whose children are grown and gone, yet “there are happy endings, too—rooted in moments of connection, in finding new ways to talk to each other.” The Emergency by Thomas Fisher (One World, $27) This new memoir is, among other things, “the best account I’ve read about working in a busy hospital during Covid,” said Dwight Garner in The New York Times. Thomas Fisher, a Black…

Brooklyn Academy of Music 3 James McAvoy’s title turn in this century-old drama is “a performance I’ll remember for the rest of my life,” said Helen Shaw in NYMag.com. In a “heart-stopping” production that employs a radical script update by Martin Crimp, McAvoy doesn’t have the central character’s signature big nose or need it to convey that he feels ugly and worthless. His fiercely gym-toned body conveys male insecurity more powerfully, while he spits out verse that makes his mind appear forever in overdrive. This London-born adaptation is less about the nose and “more about Cyrano’s first love: language,” said Nick Romano in Entertainment Weekly. Crimp at times seems to give the actors poetry slam–style dialogue “just for the sake of how cool it sounds.” Even then, the virtuosity of…

3 If you’ve never listened to Calexico, “dig in,” said Hal Horowitz in Holler. For 25 years, the Tucsonbased band has been making music that blends alt-rock and alt-country with mariachi, conjunto, and cumbia, and the group’s latest release is “a moving, occasionally ominous set that plants its feet firmly in Mexico with liberal use of staccato trumpets, sawing violins, and enough percussion to make Santana jealous.” Inspired by the desert’s harsh beauty, these 12 songs “vacillate between sunny and shimmering, and dangerous and simmering,” said Maeri Ferguson in No Depression. Many “vibrate like living, breathing beings” thanks to John Convertino’s shakers and cymbals, while Joey Burns’ vocals sound “as smooth as sand-brushed gems.” A festive tone prevails on tracks such as the irresistible “Cumbia del Polvo,” said Heather Phares…

The arrival of spring “does something to the air that makes a beer taste that much better,” said Zach Mack in Thrillist. Fortunately, the season is “ripe with great beer releases,” including the three below, all sporting flavor profiles capable of straddling the change in weather from cool to “ever-so-slightly warm.” Industrial Arts Spring Landscape Industrial Arts, an upstate New York brewery, greets spring with a Helles bock featuring “freshly baked bread flavors” and “hints of honey and herbs.” 18th Street Brewery Best Patio Pils This “sessionable sipper” from a Black-owned Indiana brewery is an aromatic, slightly hoppy lager with a smooth mouthfeel and crisp finish. Saison Dupont “Tart flavors and strong carbonation dazzle the palate” with this Belgian classic, a favorite of beer geeks everywhere.…

Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson and Antoine Gara Financial Times John Paulson, the man who famously made billions shorting subprime mortgages, has a new big bet, said Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson and Antoine Gara: pianos. In 2013, still flush with cash before a series of reversals, Paulson paid $512 million to buy Steinway, the venerable piano builder. Nine years later, he is pitching investors on a public offering for the 169-year-old company. Steinway has tried this before (it originally went public in 1996), but this time, Paulson believes there are “numerous tailwinds” to lift the company. Much of the tailwind, though, is coming from China, a direction many other investors seem to be fleeing. China has more practicing pianists (40 million), than any other country, yet Steinway “currently sells only half as many grand pianos…

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…

Viola Davis draws on her own life to project anguish so authentically on screen, said Jazmine Hughes in The New York Times. The Oscar-winning actress, famous for her heartrending vulnerability in dramas such as Doubt and Fences, was born the granddaughter of sharecroppers and grew up in Dickensian circumstances in Central Falls, R.I. Her father drank and beat her mother, and their dilapidated home was so overrun with rats that they chewed off her dolls’ faces. Classmates bullied her, and teachers shamed her for being unable to wash regularly. But when Davis saw the defiant dignity of Cicely Tyson in the movie The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, it punctured the hopelessness. “My heart stopped beating,” said Davis, 56. “It was like a hand reached for mine, and I…

Charles Blow The New York Times Democrats are facing “a Biden bloodbath” in November, said Charles Blow. Just seven months from a pivotal midterm election, President Biden’s popularity has plunged to the lowest of his presidency, with one poll last week putting him at only 33 percent approval. His successful nomination of the Supreme Court’s first Black woman did not give him a boost, and his once-positive numbers among Hispanics—a fast-growing voting bloc—have plunged to 26 percent. Democratic pollsters blame poor messaging about Biden’s accomplishments, but “I think the problem is more on ground level, a gut level.” With inflation and crime rising and the culture war raging, most Americans feel “stuck and angry,” and they blame the president. Biden is “a decent man,” but he’s not very visible…

“In just two years, Covid has become the third most common cause of death in the U.S., which means that it is also the third-leading cause of grief in the U.S. Each American who has died of Covid has left an average of nine close relatives bereaved. Deaths from Covid have been unexpected, untimely, particularly painful, and, in many cases, preventable. In 1 million instants, the disease has torn wounds in 9 million worlds. The U.S. seems intent on brushing aside its losses in its desire to move past the crisis. But the grief of millions of people is not going away.” Ed Yong in The Atlantic…

ITALY Linda Laura Sabbadini La Repubblica Rape by soldiers is not “a side effect of conflict,” but an intrinsic part of war, said Linda Laura Sabbadini. The agonizing stories coming out of the Russian invasion of Ukraine include repeated accounts of Russian soldiers brutally violating Ukrainian women, leaving them “wounded in the depths of their soul and body.” In just one incident, Russian troops in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha raped 25 women and girls and got nine pregnant. That is not a case of soldiers disobeying orders or losing control of themselves, because such atrocities aren’t about the “desire of men to possess and dominate women.” Instead, they are political expressions of a “will to annihilate an entire community,” using women as “spoils of war” to symbolize the “conquest…

COLOMBIA Haidy Sánchez Mattsson El Tiempo Racism in Colombia has “reached exorbitant levels” now that we have a Black vice-presidential candidate, said Haidy Sánchez Mattsson. Even though most of us are probably some “mix of Indigenous, European, and African,” fewer than 15 percent of us identify solely as Black or Indi genous, and the country has long been dominated by “a light-skinned elite.” That’s why minorities were heartened when leftist presidential front-runner Gustavo Petro chose Francia Márquez as his running mate. If Márquez, an award-winning environmental activist, took office, she would be the highest-serving Black woman in Colombia’s history. But the racist backlash was swift. Radio host Paola Ochoa sneered that any light-skinned woman running against Márquez would look “prettier, more presentable,” and more chic than the activist, then offered…

The Supreme Court’s six conservatives are expected in June to overturn or “significantly weaken” Roe v. Wade, “but red states aren’t waiting,” said Oriana Gonzalez in Axios. Last week Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a 15-week abortion ban, making “no exceptions for rape or incest.” GOP governors of Arizona, Kentucky, and Oklahoma recently signed similar laws, modeled after the Mississippi abortion ban before the high court. Oklahoma’s law would criminalize nearly all abortions, and anyone providing one would face up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine. At least 25 states are poised to outlaw or dramatically restrict access to abortion “as soon as Roe falls,” said Rebecca Traister in New York magazine. Women in half the country will soon face “a geographic nightmare.” Perhaps…

The Republican Party has struck “yet another blow against the norms of American democracy,” said the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in an editorial. Citing a pattern of supposed bias against Republicans, the Republican National Committee voted unanimously last week to pull its candidates from debates run by the Commission on Presidential Debates, the bipartisan commission that has organized face-offs in every presidential election since 1988. This cynical move comes after Donald Trump complained nonstop in the 2020 debates about bias, which he defines as “any fact he doesn’t like or question that challenges him.” GOP Chair Ronna McDaniel claimed the committee would seek out “newer, better debate platforms,” but the likely result is that voters won’t see candidates face off in a public forum. “What is the Republican Party afraid…

The next time your pet pooch tries to give you a sloppy kiss, you might want to politely decline, says the New York Post. A new study suggests that dog tongues may harbor an antibioticresistant strain of E.coli. Researchers examined human and animal fecal samples from 41 homes in Portugal and 45 in Great Britain. Some 16 percent of the dog poop contained the superbug—the highest proportion found compared with other household pets and humans. The bacteria showed up in 13 percent of human samples, and in just 5 percent of feline ones. Because dogs use their tongues to lick their rear ends as well as their owners, the researchers say, they may be helping to spread the bacteria. Lead study author Juliana Menezes, from the U.K. Royal Veterinary…

(Pantheon, $27) If Margo Jefferson’s new book qualifies as experimental, said Molly Young in The New York Times, “her experiment is instantly effective.” In her acclaimed 2016 memoir, Negroland, the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic described growing up as a member of Chicago’s Black cultural elite. For this follow-up, she presents a portrait of her adult self by focusing not on a string of lived experiences but on the artists, movies, books, and songs that have enthralled her and thus defined her. “A quick flip through the pages might set off alarm bells for those fearful of italics, bold type, capital letters, and chunky quotations. But this is a book for deep submergence, not quick flipping. This is appointment reading.” “One might describe Constructing a Nervous System as Margo Jefferson in…

Delia Ephron was a widow already past 70 when her life took a turn worthy of one of her own romantic comedies, said Scott Simon in NPR.org. Six years ago, the novelist and screenwriter wrote a wry-sorrowful essay for The New York Times about having to battle Verizon to get her late husband’s phone line disconnected, and the piece caught the eye of a man across the country who sent her an email and soon captured her heart. Ephron, who co-wrote the screenplay for You’ve Got Mail after collaborating with her sister Nora on Sleepless in Seattle, had seen this movie before. “I couldn’t believe it,” she says. “It was an amazing connection between us.” But as Ephron details in her new memoir, Left on Tenth, this love story…

3 Syd Bennett’s second solo album “could fill a room of romantic company with swirling ambiance,” said Mankaprr Conteh in Rolling Stone. The “impossibly cool” frontwoman of the alt-R&B band the Internet has an “angelic” voice that she knows makes for good mood music. Yet this record isn’t merely atmospheric. Its 13 songs trace the arc of a failed relationship—from euphoric infatuation to sorrowful split. In the world this maturing artist shows us, “meaningful relationships don’t just fall apart. They erode.” On 2017’s Fin, Syd played the flirt, pursuing serial flings with other women while being cavalier about breakups, said Sheldon Pearce in The New Yorker. Here, for the first time, the Los Angeles–based singer-songwriter-producer “puts herself out there,” presenting as smitten and vulnerable, then hurt. All the while, the…

The games of summer… The Endless Summer California surfers Mike Hynson and Robert August wander the Southern Hemisphere in search of the perfect wave in Bruce Brown’s gorgeous 1966 documentary. In surf cinema, it’s still unrivaled. Amazon Prime The Battered Bastards of Baseball If the Bad News Bears had played into adulthood, they might have resembled the Portland Mavericks. Catch the rebel spirit of a low-level minor-league team of hasbeens and never-would-bes who played their hearts out and created their own misfit 1970s field of dreams. Netflix Doin’ It in the Park Summer in New York City means pickup basketball. Made by a couple of first-time filmmakers with close ties to the game, this documentary travels to courts in all five boroughs and captures the culture so well that…

Start Stretching has some great tips for anyone feeling stiff. The free iOS app walks users through five-minute stretching routines with clear instructions and images. Bend, another iOS app aimed at beginners, assigns daily stretching routines tailored to your personal needs. The “Wake Up” routine, for example, promotes early-morning mobility. StretchIt is worth its $20 monthly fee if you want to make stretching a habit. The Android and iOS app has a huge database of video classes, which can be filtered by theme and difficulty level. New classes are added weekly, and a personal trailer will recommend programs based on your goals. ROMWOD, or Range of Motion Workout of the Day, is for people who exercise regularly. The $14-a-month service provides daily videos about stretching exercises that optimize athletic performance.…

The International Monetary Fund said the global growth prospects for 2022 have “worsened significantly,” said Chris Giles and Colby Smith in the Financial Times. In its World Economic Outlook released this week, the fund expects a “global growth of gross domestic product this year of 3.6 percent, down 0.8 percentage points since January projections” and 1.3 points lower than predictions six months ago. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “likely to have a bigger impact on European growth.” The fund also more than doubled its inflation forecast for the U.S. to 7.7 percent for 2022. Tesla: Workers to stay in locked-down Shanghai plant Tesla is requiring workers at its Shanghai factory to sleep there overnight amid citywide lockdowns, said Charlie Zhu and Chunying Zhang in Bloomberg. After a weeks-long suspension, the…

A mandatory four-day week? California lawmakers proposed a bill to make a four-day workweek standard for large companies, said Jennifer Kingson in Axios. According to a new law making its way through the state legislature, companies with more than 500 employees would be required to pay time-and-a-half to workers whose hours run over 32 per week. “The legislation is a long shot,” but it comes as more companies, including Kickstarter, Shopify, Toshiba, and Shake Shack, “have been giving the four-day workweek a go.” Proponents point to experiments in countries like Iceland and Japan that have found the reduced hours “boost worker productivity, work/life balance, and mental and physical health.” However, Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford economist, called the proposal “terrifying,” saying businesses would drastically reduce their employment if it was…

It took years for Jack Higgins to strike gold. The best-selling British novelist—whose potboilers have sold more than 250 million copies—received less than $100 for his first novel in 1959. He wrote over 30 others before revisiting a rumor he’d heard during his military service of a Nazi plot to kidnap Winston Churchill. That became the premise for The Eagle Has Landed, and its runaway success shocked even him. Shortly after its 1975 release, his accountant asked about his plans. “It would be nice to make a million by the time I retired,” Higgins recalled telling him in jest. “He then said: ‘Well, you’re a bloody fool. Because you’ve just earned that much this week.’” Higgins, real name Harry Patterson, was born in Newcastle and raised in part in…

Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife has emerged as arguably the world’s most influential philanthropist, said Nicholas Kulish and Rebecca Ruiz in The New York Times. But as she gives away billions, she shuns the spotlight. The billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott once recounted, in a television interview, a Chinese folk tale sometimes known as “The Lost Horse.” The story is about the reversals of fortune a farmer experiences after his prized stallion runs away. It can also be read as a summary of Scott’s philosophy. “You never know where it’s going to end up,” she told television host Charlie Rose in 2013, after relating the parable to him. “Good luck, bad luck, it’s not the way that we really need to look at things.” The hardships we experience “are the things that we’ll look back…