Indholdsfortegnelse for July 22, 2022 i The Week Magazine

A 40-foot Christian cross can stand on public land. A public-school football coach can pray to Jesus on the field. A U.S. state must extend its vouchers to Christian schools that teach “a Christian worldview.” The newly activist Supreme Court has given a green light to all these government-sanctioned expressions of religious belief, in defiance of previous rulings that the Constitution bars official endorsement of a particular religion. Since John Roberts became chief justice in 2005, the court has ruled for religious organizations 85 percent of the time. And while past courts often protected minority faiths, this one showers freshly discovered rights on the Christian majority. Under Roberts, says Northeastern University law professor Wendy Parmet, “almost all of the decisions are issued on behalf of Catholics or evangelicals.” That is…

Good week for: Drunks, after the city council of Kalamazoo, Mich., decriminalized public urination. “It’s kind of crude,” explained city attorney Clyde Robinson, “but we are a college town,” and students filled with beer often “can’t seem to find a restroom.” Awakenings, after Marta Kauffman, co-creator of the sitcom Friends, issued a public apology for a 2001 episode which repeatedly misgendered a trans woman character. “Pronouns were not yet something that I understood,” Kauffman said. Hunting for aliens, after NASA announced that the new James Webb Space Telescope had clearly detected water vapor in the atmosphere of an exoplanet 1,150 light-years away. “This is just the beginning,” said astrophysicist Knicole Colón. Bad week for: Colorful ethnic analogies, after first lady Jill Biden had to apologize for praising Latino Americans during…

Dakota Johnson has very mixed feelings about her breakout movie, said Britt Hennemuth in Vanity Fair. The daughter of actors Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, Johnson, 32, became a global star after 2015’s Fifty Shades of Grey, the first installment in the sex-charged trilogy about a young woman’s erotic initiation into sadomasochism. “I’m a sexual person,” she says. “[But] I signed up to do a very different version of the film we ended up making.” Author E.L. James, who wrote the best-selling novels, had creative control and “demanded that certain things happen,” Johnson says. “There were parts of the books that just wouldn’t work in a movie, like the inner monologue, which was at times incredibly cheesy. It was always a battle.” She and her romantic co-star, Jamie Dornan,…

Peter Bergen CNN.com “A cynic is rarely disappointed by the actions of his fellow human beings,” said Peter Bergen. President Biden’s trip this week to make amends with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will amuse cynics, because it “is so entirely predictable.” Biden came into office vowing to make the kingdom “a pariah” for its 2018 murder of U.S.-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and its many other human rights abuses, including mass arrests and executions of political opponents. But now high gas prices are contributing to inflation, angering Americans, and hurting Biden politically, “so Biden will go to Riyadh and meet with MBS,” and nicely ask him to produce more oil. This gives Prince Mohammed a chance to cleanse his image by posing alongside America’s president. “To be…

“Joe Biden is on political death row. [A New York Times poll] found that Biden’s approval rating is at 33 percent and that ‘more than three-quarters of registered voters see the United States moving in the wrong direction.’ And yet, in the same poll that has delivered his death warrant, he still beats Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup, 44 percent to 41 percent. As a political matter, Trump is a spent force. If Republican primary voters look at this information and decide to nominate Trump again anyway, they will have nobody to blame for the consequences but themselves.” Charles Cooke in National Review…

LITHUANIA Migle Valaitiene Delfi The Russian dog “is on the rampage in Ukraine today,” and we in tiny Lithuania are “trying to put a muzzle on it,” said Migle Valaitiene. This Baltic country of less than 3 million, which shares a land border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, has stood firmly behind Ukraine from the start, sending heavy weapons and other military aid. Then, last month, Lithuania barred the transport of Russian goods through its territory to Kaliningrad, cutting off Kaliningrad from many of its supplies and prompting Russia to warn ominously of serious consequences. Now Russian lawmakers are calling Lithuania’s independence from Moscow—achieved with the breakup of the USSR in 1991—“illegal” and are referring to “historic Russian land.” This is the same kind of rhetoric they hurled at…

CANADA Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz The Globe and Mail There’s something “awfully fishy” going on with Canada’s beloved Atlantic salmon, said Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz. To hear the $20 billion salmon industry tell it, the fish are raised more “naturally and sustainably” than livestock. “But the reality is disturbingly different.” Farmed salmon are condemned to spend their lives in crowded and unsanitary conditions, much like “feedlot cattle and factory chickens.” A single salmon farm can contain “a million fish, jammed into a dozen cages made of plastic netting,” where they are fed processed food “laced with pesticides and antibiotics.” Their excrement and chemical residue create a “noxious stew” that settles on the ocean floor, killing marine life and breeding dangerous pathogens. The organization Seafood Watch has advised consumers…

It was “an injustice so grave it makes my stomach ache,” said Kady Ruth Ashcraft in Jezebel. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh had to sneak out the back door of a Washington, D.C., Morton’s steak house last week before the dessert course when protesters gathered out front to heckle him for voting to overturn Roe v. Wade. Conservatives expressed deep outrage that Kavanaugh’s fancy steak dinner was spoiled—rather ironic, given that he and his conservative brethren just canceled the “bodily autonomy” of tens of millions of women. According to my “own originalist analysis,” said Matt Ford in The New Republic, “a right to dinner is not deeply rooted in American history and tradition.” That’s the standard the court just used to arrive at the conclusion that women in 2022…

The Supreme Court just agreed to hear a case that poses “the gravest threat to American democracy since the Jan. 6 attack,” said Ian Millhiser in Vox. As the court recently closed out its tumultuous term, it announced that next session it will take up Moore v. Harper, which could give partisan state legislatures total, unchecked power over elections. The case is about North Carolina’s highest court invalidating the GOP-controlled state legislature’s gerrymandered congressional map; the redistricting, the state court ruled, gave Republicans “extreme partisan advantage” in violation of the state constitution. Republicans sued to reinstate that map, basing their argument on a right-wing legal theory known as the “independent state legislature doctrine.” This theory holds that the Constitution gives state legislatures sole power to set election laws, with…

(Norton, $32.50) Miranda Seymour’s “slyly compelling” biography of the novelist Jean Rhys is “shot through with madness,” said Rachel Cooke in The Guardian. “Half its cast are half crazy”—Rhys included—and “most of the rest are as creepy as hell.” Rhys (1890–1979) is best known for Wide Sargasso Sea, a 1966 novel that capped the British septuagenarian’s late-in-life rediscovery. But she had gained ardent supporters with four novels from the 1920s and ’30s that featured female protagonists who were as alienated as their creator. Born in Dominica, she was whipped at home by her mother and taunted on the streets for being white, then ostracized for her island accent when she moved to London at 16. Later, she lived a patchwork adulthood bouncing between unreliable lovers and husbands. “Quite how she…

When much of the world was reading Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel about idleness, the author herself wasn’t idle at all, said Barry Pierce in i-D. Stuck at home in 2020 like most everyone else, the California-based writer noticed that sales had resurged for My Year of Rest and Relaxation, her best-selling 2018 tale about a beautiful New Yorker who attempts to drug herself into sleeping through 12 months of life. “I’m wondering if the book provided people with a ‘cool’ way of looking at lockdown,” Moshfegh says. Her novel had helped make wallowing glamorous, yet she didn’t have it in her to join the craze. “I wasn’t bored. I have too much anxiety to be bored,” she says. Instead, she put aside a slow-gestating project to start writing a new…

Best comedy specials of 2022 so far… Jerrod Carmichael: Rothaniel Carmichael’s latest special, directed by Bo Burnham, stretches stand-up’s boundaries. Extended bits about family secrets give way to the star’s big reveal—that he’s gay. The performance then shifts, with the audience chiming in with questions and advice. HBO Max Taylor Tomlinson: Look at You Riffing on a parent’s death, or the awkwardness of straight guys falling in love, Taylor Tomlinson always seems to know just how to get a laugh. But she’s more than a comedy technician. Like the mothers of her boyfriends, you can’t help but want to get to know her. Netflix Ali Siddiq: The Domino Effect It’s a testament to Ali Siddiq’s storytelling power that when he recounts his upbringing in patient detail, including moving in…

The exchange rate between the euro and the U.S. dollar reached parity this week for the first time in 20 years. The euro has fallen 12 percent since the start of the year. An American who bought a 15 euro sandwich in Paris a year ago paid about $17.80. CNN.com Almond exports are down by about 13 percent this year due to supply chain issues. About 1.3 billion pounds of unsold almonds are still sitting in piles at processing and packing facilities. While the costs of production and water supplies are at an all-time high, the price of almonds has fallen to an all-time low of about $2 per pound. Los Angeles Times The U.S. had 6,377 newspapers at the end of May, down from 8,891 in 2005, according to…

Summer camp offers a vital opportunity for children to develop a sense of independence and learn new skills, but it remains out of reach for many low-income families. For two decades, Summer Camp Opportunities Promote Education, or SCOPE (scopeusa.org), has worked to provide camp scholarships to children across the U.S. who would otherwise be unable to attend. The organization currently partners with nearly 50 overnight camps throughout the country, including camps in the Northeast, South, Midwest, and West. Every child who participates pledges to stay in school, and SCOPE offers college scholarships to some of those campers who graduate from high school. Since 1991, SCOPE has funded about 25,000 camp scholarships, providing children from low-income families with 8.4 million hours of summer fun. Each charity we feature has earned…

Catherine Rampell The Washington Post The stimulus that the Biden administration and a Democratic Congress passed last year may end up hurting Democrats in the midterms, said Catherine Rampell. At least 27 states plus the District of Columbia have passed “significant tax cuts so far this year,” and most of them are red states. Lower taxes are surely “welcome news to Americans struggling to afford the rising cost of living.” But the cuts reflect a misguided policy. The states are feeling generous partly because their coffers were replenished by the $1.9 trillion stimulus package of March 2021. The American Rescue Plan “was supposed to help states struggling with budget crunches.” As it turned out, they didn’t need much help—the pandemic downturn was very different from the 2008 financial crisis—but…

Willie Lee Morrow was a barber on San Diego’s east side when a friend walked into his shop in 1962 with a comb he’d brought from Nigeria—one with long tines for teasing out kinky hair. The Afro was just gaining popularity as a symbol of Black pride, and with a ready eye for a business opportunity, Morrow designed a plastic version he called the Afro Tease. Soon he was selling 12,000 a week, and the comb became known as the Afro pick. Morrow went on to build an empire of Black hair-care products, including a chemical hair straightener that gave birth to the phenomenally popular 1980s hairstyle the Jheri curl. His salon, which featured a towering 10-foot Afro pick out front, employed 200 people. Born in Eutaw, Ala., to…

What happened A sixth Covid wave rolled across the country this week, thanks to a variant that seems to evade immune protection from vaccines. More than 100,000 Americans are reporting new infections every day, and the BA.5 subvariant of Omicron is responsible for about two-thirds of them. Because most home test results go unreported, the true number of infections could be many times higher. Worse, BA.5 appears to be three times less vulnerable to antibodies built up by existing vaccines than the initial Omicron strain was. That means a previous Covid infection offers little protection against it, and some unlucky patients can succumb to BA.5 more than once. Hospital admissions, although far from last winter’s levels, have doubled since May to about 5,100 a day, and most of the…

A pregnant Texas woman is fighting a $215 ticket by claiming the end of Roe gives her the right to use the HOV lane. Brandy Bottone says that when officers pulled her over for driving “alone” in the high-occupancy lane, she said that her fetus now counts as a person in Texas, but they ticketed her anyway. Bottone says Texas can’t have it both ways. “My blood is boiling,” she said. Williams College in Massachusetts has scrapped as racist its 229-year-old requirement that students who can’t swim take a swimming course. Since 81 percent of students who needed the course were minorities, the faculty decided the requirement had “disparate impact.” In dissenting, Professor Dan Barowy noted that learning to swim “lowers your chance of dying a preventable death.” In other…

Kelsie Whitmore is easy to spot on the Staten Island FerryHawks, said Zach Schonbrun in The New York Times. The 24-year-old’s dark chestnut hair hangs past her uniform number, helping fans spot one of the few women ever to play professional baseball. Whitmore, a former Cal State Fullerton softball star, plays outfield and pitcher in the Atlantic League, an independent minor league considered on par with class Triple-A, the top of Major League Baseball’s farm system. For the 5-foot-6 Whitmore, playing hardball comes naturally, and she spits and curses like her male teammates. At age 6, her father signed her up for Little League, but she resisted until he gave his word that she wouldn’t need to wear her long hair in a ponytail. “I guess part of me…

Elon Musk secretly fathered twins last fall with an employee, bringing the kid count of the world’s richest man to nine. Court records from Austin, published by Insider last week, indicated that the Tesla CEO, 51, had twins in November with Shivon Zilis—a 36-year-old executive at Musk’s company Neuralink, which is developing computer chips to implant in human brains. Musk appeared to confirm the report, tweeting, “Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis.” The twins arrived just weeks before Musk welcomed his second child with Canadian pop singer Grimes. Musk has five children with his first wife, author Justine Wilson, and they lost a sixth child to sudden infant death syndrome. Declining global birth rates have long been a pet issue of Musk’s. “If people don’t have more…

Elizabeth Bruenig The Atlantic If pro-life advocates want to show how much they care about the well-being of mothers and infants, here’s an idea: “make birth free,” said Elizabeth Bruenig. Immediately after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, anti-abortion groups pledged to turn their attention to delivering support and resources for pregnant women. They meant “charity, not policy.” Instead of using taxpayer dollars to hand out diapers at Christian-run crisis pregnancy centers, why not something more ambitious? The high costs of pregnancy, childbirth, and months of post-partum care are largely responsible for this country’s disgraceful maternal and infant mortality rates. Even for women with private insurance, childbirth can lead to more than $3,000 in out-of-pocket expenses and soar above $20,000 for high-risk births. “The federal government could—without much…

CHINA Dechen Palmo Asia Times China’s regime drew kudos last year when it “proudly announced” the establishment of five new national parks, said Dechen Palmo. It said the parks would protect threatened species. But there’s a terrible human cost. One park, Sanjiangyuan, lies on the northeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Nearly 14 times the size of America’s Yellowstone, it encompasses lands renowned for their “otherworldly beauty”—lands where Indigenous nomads have been grazing their livestock for thousands of years. Those nomads, known in Tibetan as drokpa, or “people of the high pasture,” have now been evicted. Beijing claims that was necessary because their cattle were denuding the grasslands and causing desertification. Ecologists, though, argue that the nomads’ relocation is just another example of “colonial conservation”—in which Indigenous people are removed…

“You forgive people a lot when you’re distracted by how gorgeous they are.”Madonna, quoted in Interview “Of all forms of injustice, none is more flagrant than that of the hypocrite who, at the very moment when he is most false, makes it his business to appear virtuous.”Cicero, quoted in Rte.ie (Ireland) “A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain upon the affections.”George Eliot, quoted in Forbes “Everything I know most surely about morality and duty, I owe to football.”Albert Camus, quoted in The Scotsman (U.K.) “Equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: We all have it, or none of us has it.”Maya Angelou, quoted in Newsweek “The opposite of despair is not hope. It’s struggle.”Warsaw ghetto uprising leader Mordechai Anielewicz, quoted in The New York…

Chip demand softens Demand for some computer chips is finally starting to ease, said Asa Fitch in The Wall Street Journal. Intel, Nvidia, and other semiconductor makers are suddenly “warning of rockier times ahead” as the “frenzy to buy laptops and other electronic gadgets early in the pandemic has vanished.” Many consumers had to endure “waiting lists, raffles, and quotas just to have the opportunity to buy Nvidia’s latest graphics hardware,” but that’s no longer the case. Personal-computer shipments are expected to fall by more than 8 percent after two consecutive years of double-digit growth. The shortage of semiconductors remains acute in other areas, though, “such as chips for cars and data centers.” With that business still humming, factories were “running near full capacity in the first quarter.” Blocking…

There may be a biological reason why certain people become besties—they smell the same. In a small study, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel used an “electronic nose” to sniff T-shirts worn by 20 pairs of nonromantic, same-sex friends who said they had clicked when they first met. The nose found that each person smelled more like his or her chum than like the other members of the group. The researchers then recruited 17 strangers, analyzed their body odors with the electronic nose, and had them play a nonverbal game together. Sure enough, the pairs that smelled more alike were more likely to say they had an instant connection. The findings make sense, says study co-author Inbal Ravreby, as we tend to befriend people of a…

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is an award-winning short-story writer and associate professor of English at Georgetown University. Her debut novel, Big Girl, is a coming-of-age story set in Sullivan’s native Harlem in the late 1980s and 1990s. Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo by Ntozake Shange (1982). Shange’s dazzling novel is a portrait of Black girl magic and an exemplar of narrative craft. It shifts between the perspectives of three brilliantly artistic sisters who come of age during the American civil rights and Black Arts movements. Incorporating songs, recipes, incantations, and more, the novel follows the women as they discover themselves, their desires, and the collective power that lives in creative expression. Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid (1990). In this story of a young woman who has left the West Indies to work…

James Caan could be a human powder keg onscreen. He had varied roles in more than 130 films and TV shows over six decades but remains best remembered for playing Sonny Corleone, mob don Vito Corleone’s volatile, womanizing oldest son, in The Godfather. Still, even for someone who was nicknamed “killer Caan” as a boy growing up in Queens, the tough-guy persona didn’t always come easily. Sonny’s gruesome killing by a half-dozen machine gun–wielding hitmen at a toll booth required Caan to wear 147 miniature explosive devices. “When they went off, it felt like I was being punched all over,” he admitted in a 1999 interview. “I wouldn’t have done it if there hadn’t been so many girls around the set to impress.” The son of German Jewish immigrants,…

Mavis Staples is determined to keep singing, said David Remnick in The New Yorker. The gospel icon, 83, grew up singing with her family ensemble, the Staple Singers, and in recent decades recorded unexpected collaborations with artists like Prince, Arcade Fire, and David Byrne. During the worst of the pandemic, Staples, who lives in Chicago, where she grew up, sang to overcome the tedium of isolation. “Mostly our old stuff,” she says, “the songs we started singing when I was a kid: ‘Didn’t It Rain,’ ‘Help Me Jesus.’” Her family was a loving cocoon for her entire life, but now her father, mother, brother, and three sisters are all dead. She’s left with memories of performing with them, including at a rally before a Martin Luther King Jr. speech.…

David Super The Washington Post When can a federal agency enforce regulatory laws passed by Congress? Only when the conservative justices of the Supreme Court decide it can, said law professor David Super. That was the chilling warning in the West Virginia v. EPA decision two weeks ago, when the court ruled 6-3 that the federal agency cannot rely on the Clean Air Act to broadly regulate greenhouse gas emissions from energy plants. The ruling goes “far beyond dramatically limiting the federal government’s ability to address climate change”—it challenges the government’s authority to enforce any regulations. The court conceded that the Clean Air Act authorized the EPA to select “the best system of emission reduction” for power plants. But the court threw “textualism” in the trash and ruled that…

BELGIUM Christophe Lamfalussy La Libre Belgique Should Belgium release an Iranian terrorist to free its own citizens held in Iran? Do we “favor the fate of a compatriot, or stick to the principle that we do not compromise” with terrorists? It’s “an agonizing decision,” said Christophe Lamfalussy, and unfortunately “there are no right answers.” Iran arbitrarily arrested a Belgian national in February, likely as a “bargaining chip” to obtain the freedom of Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi, convicted as a terrorist in Antwerp. Parliament last week took the first step toward ratification of a treaty that would allow just such a trade. The United States has warned us not to trade Assadi back to Iran, because the terrorist would “be pardoned by the Iranian authorities even before he set foot on…

“Weekend warriors” who pack all their exercise into Saturday and Sunday may get the same benefits as those who work out regularly. A team led by Jiangnan University in China examined data on 350,000 American adults, average age 41. Those who met public health guidelines for exercise—150 minutes of moderate exertion or 75 minutes of vigorous activity—were split into two groups: the weekend warriors, who did two sessions a week, and the active, who did three or more. Vigorous activity was defined as anything that causes hard and fast breathing, such as running, swimming, and soccer; moderate exercise included brisk walking and doubles tennis. Overall, the weekend exercisers were 8 percent less likely to die in the following 10 years, while the regularly active were 15 percent less likely.…

(Riverhead, $28) “Lidia Yuknavitch’s new novel is the weirdest, most mind-blowing book about America I’ve ever inhaled,” said Ron Charles in The Washington Post. Set in and around New York Harbor and spanning two centuries, Thrust opens in the 1870s as workers construct the Statue of Liberty, then leaps to 2079 to show the statue nearly submerged by a rising ocean. As one young character time-travels between those poles, the resulting story offers “a radical critique” of our nation’s founding ideals and yet I couldn’t summarize the plot “because I’m afraid I’ll accidentally reveal how little I followed it.” The connecting figure is a so-called water girl named Laisv, said Nina MacLaughlin in The Boston Globe. She links every other character, from the statue’s sculptor to an opinionated turtle. “But…

The Last Resort by Sarah Stodola (Ecco, $28) In this “sharp and exhaustive” history of beach resorts, it’s all been downhill since the Romans built a party town near Naples, said Lauren Groff in The Atlantic. Author Sarah Stodola focuses on the damage that luxury hot spots have done to local economies, traditions, and habitat, and her culprits include Monte Carlo, Waikiki, and every other storied seaside getaway you could name. Still, it’s upsetting to see anyone “so perceptive and ethical” repeatedly choosing to jet to the very resorts she decries. Cabin Fever by Michael Smith & Jonathan Franklin (Doubleday, $30) This true account of a cruise that embarked at the outset of the pandemic “grabs you by the throat and won’t let you stop reading,” said Laura McCallum…

Persona: The French Deception (Pineapple Street/Wondery) “There’s grimy enjoyment to be had from Persona, though you might feel you need a shower after listening,” said Fiona Sturges in the Financial Times. The series tells the remarkable story of Gilbert Chikli, a Franco-Israeli swindler who, by posing as a high-powered boss and telling elaborate lies, persuaded midlevel employees at some 20 companies to transfer him huge sums of money. The smartly scripted podcast “functions both as a character study and a cautionary tale about the persuasion tactics of globe-trotting con artists,” who lower their victims’ defenses by tapping into vanities, insecurities, or a sense of citizenship. But, unsettlingly, it also paints Chikli as a genius. “The scam show is a popular part of today’s audio lexicon, in danger of being…

Soju is no longer solely a cheap spirit for getting drunk fast, said Giaae Kwon in Punch. Korean producers are slowly returning to the methods used before a 1965 ban on distilling alcohol from rice, creating a new class of sojus that “blend history with innovation.” Sojus like these are made for sipping, not slugging. Hwanggeum Bori Golden Barley Soju ($17). “A great starter soju,” this spirit is made from both barley and rice, resulting in a unique product that features “notes of gingersnap and toasted grain.” Enjoy it neat and chilled. Hwayang Co.’s Pungjeong Sagye Winter ($31). A traditional soju made with just rice, water, and a fermenting agent, this “bright and clean” spirit is great for cocktails. Hwayo XP ($69). “Best served neat,” this single-rice soju rests…

A trip to Glacier National Park is “the closest you’ll get to feeling like you’re inside a fairy tale,” said Ashley Dunne in Sunset. “Home to some of the most epic views in America,” the popular summertime destination in northwest Montana is a land of turquoise lakes, waterfalls, lush coniferous forests, and towering granite escarpments. Seeing regal mammals such as moose, elk, grizzly bears, bighorn sheep, and mountain goats in these dramatic alpine environments “makes you feel as if you’re in a magical wonderland.” Try to nab a reservation at Many Glacier Hotel, a historic, Swiss-style lodge overlooking Swiftcurrent Lake. (The employees wear lederhosen, playing to the park’s “America’s Switzerland” nickname.) From there, you can spend a day hiking to Grinnell Glacier, recoup at the lodge, then spend another day…

U.S. employers may actually be adding too many jobs, said Neil Irwin in Axios. “Employers added 372,000 jobs last month,” according to figures released by the Labor Department last week, far outpacing what Wall Street expected. Normally, such a positive employment outlook would be cheered. But policymakers—and even the White House—“are looking for more moderate job creation as the economy cools, lowering inflation pressures.” President Biden has said the ideal job growth should be around 150,000 a month. However, “most U.S. businesses are still hiring aggressively to meet high demand.” Fintech: Klarna’s valuation gets a price check “Once Europe’s most valuable private tech company,” Klarna had its price tag slashed from $46 billion to $6.7 billion in its latest fundraising effort, said Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan in the Financial Times. That’s the…

Child care shortage hurts women The difficulty of finding affordable child care and elder care continues to hold women back in the labor market, said Lydia DePillis in The New York Times. An estimated 500,000 child-care and nursing-home workers have left the industry since 2020, and the impact is still being felt—primarily by working moms. The share of women participating in the workforce, or looking for jobs, has recovered “roughly as much as the share for men” since 2019. But federal data shows the comeback has been shaky. Many mothers have turned to self-employment. Others have sought reduced hours “to balance care responsibilities” at home. Among the slowest to return to work have been single moms, “a sign that the shortage of care is making them vulnerable.” Shock to…

Parmy Olson Bloomberg Uber’s success story follows a too-familiar dark path, said Parmy Olson. According to an exposé by The Guardian this week that draws on a trove of 124,000 leaked emails and text messages, Uber acted “above the law” for years—and joked about it. Executives admitted to one another that many of their tactics were “f---ing illegal,” such as a “kill switch” that prevented authorities from accessing the company’s computer systems. They purposely broke local laws against their gig-economy model and wooed higher government officials to bail them out. Uber says it “is a different company from the one” portrayed in the documents, which cover a five-year span from 2013 to 2017 under founder Travis Kalanick. Fortunately, the landscape it is operating in has changed, too. It used…

This week’s question: An American competitive archer says she is “objectum sexual,” or sexually and romantically attracted to inanimate objects. She claimed to marry the Eiffel Tower in 2007; now she says she deeply desires a geometrically “perfect” wooden fence. If she were to write a memoir, what should she call it? Last week’s contest: An heiress donated $10 million to a Southern California college in exchange for her paintings—which a Los Angeles Times critic called “frankly terrible”—being featured in an on-campus museum named after her. What should an exhibit of pay-to-play art be called? THE WINNER: “Abstract Extortionism” Larry Heycock, Livingston, Mont. SECOND PLACE: “Self-Louvre” Piper Ozmer, Roswell, Ga. THIRD PLACE: “Quid Pro Show” Dave Grossman, Petaluma, Calif. For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go to theweek.com/contest.…