Indholdsfortegnelse for September 30, 2022 i The Week Magazine

At the end of a recent vacation trip to the Virginia and Maryland shore, my wife, Karla, and I made a brief detour to Washington, D.C. I felt an urge to make a pilgrimage to the National Archives to see the original copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. These blueprints for self-rule, liberty, and human flourishing created a flawed but resilient democracy that has endured through 246 years of sharp, often bloody disagreement, evolution, and struggle. The fragile parchments are now encased in inert argon gas under protective glass in a darkened room, where people file by in the hushed silence of a secular cathedral. It is with some awe that you inspect the familiar words in handwritten script and the signatures of…

What happened A tense hearing with court-appointed special master Judge Raymond Dearie this week appeared to diminish Donald Trump’s chances of succeeding with efforts to keep the Justice Department from using documents seized from Mar-a-Lago in a criminal investigation. Dearie, whom U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon charged with evaluating executive and attorney-client privilege claims over the documents, criticized the lawyers’ refusal to present evidence that would show that Trump ordered the declassification of the 100 or so documents marked classified. Without such evidence, Dearie said, he’d have no reason to second-guess their classification markings, and “that’s the end of it.” The semi-retired district judge also estimated he needed only until Oct. 7 to finish his evaluation of the 11,000-plus documents. That’s far sooner than the Nov. 30 deadline…

An Alabama poll worker was fired after asking the state Republican Party chairman to show ID before voting. GOP chair John Wahl admits he complained about poll worker Clyde Martin, who had repeatedly asked Wahl and his family to present IDs required by state law. “I felt like I was being harassed,” Wahl said. Martin says he still can’t understand why Wahl, a proponent of voter-ID laws, wanted “preferential treatment.” A Phoenix water official says she won’t impose water restrictions during the Southwest’s megadrought because the saved water would just be used by residents of other states. Water-management adviser Cynthia Campbell says she won’t ban lawn watering to reduce demand on the Colorado River, because “that water would go to some other user in California, probably.” In other news Eliminating…

Nick Cave fell into a pit of despair after the 2015 death of his teenage son—and credits the fans of his music with helping him pull out of it, said David Marchese in The New York Times. After 15-year-old Arthur fell off a cliff near the family home in Brighton, England, “I was thrust into the darkest place imaginable,” he said. Getting letters from fans who’d been through similar tragedies was a lifeline, as was his return to live performance. “The care from the audience saved me,” he said. “People say, How can you go on tour? But for me it’s the other way around. How could I not?” The notoriously dark songwriter and former punk rocker recently lost a second son, Jethro, and the suffering has moved him…

Brothers Prince Harry and Prince William and their respective wives, Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton, are “trying their best” to overcome resentments while spending time together since the death of Queen Elizabeth II, The Times (U.K.) reported this week. Harry, 38, and William, 40, feel “uncomfortable” in the first period of extended contact since Harry publicly complained in 2021 about the treatment he and Meghan received from the royals and suggested racism was a factor. Just before the queen died, William and other royals flew to Scotland on a Royal Air Force aircraft to be present, but Harry had to book a private charter and reportedly only learned of his grandmother’s passing from his father, King Charles III, five minutes before the public announcement. The king is expected to anoint…

Editorial Washington Examiner “When the weed wagon reaches your state, filled with false hopes and dubious promises of smoking one’s way to prosperity,” take a hard look at California, said the Washington Examiner. The state legalized recreational marijuana use by referendum in 2016, with advocates promising it would “squeeze the illegal trade out of business.” But as a Los Angeles Times investigation revealed last week, “the exact opposite is happening now: It has spread crime out into the rural areas and turned local politics across the state into a morass of corruption.” Local politicians are now demanding six-figure bribes from the cannabis industry for growing licenses and legislative support. Meanwhile, as the use of weed becomes more widespread, “illegal and completely unregulated” growing operations have popped up across California,…

Buckingham Palace’s royal beekeeper, 79-year-old John Chapple, carried out an unusual duty after Queen Elizabeth II’s death: informing the bees the queen had passed and that their new master was King Charles III. Chapple also placed black mourning ribbons on the hives. The tradition, thought to date back centuries, is built on a superstition that bees not told of important changes in their keepers’ lives might fail to produce honey or leave the hive. “You knock on each hive and say, ‘The mistress is dead, but don’t you go. Your master will be a good master to you,’” Chapple explained. A Chinese electrician has become a social media star for balancing offbeat objects in stacks that appear to defy gravity. Since taking up the hobby in 2017, Wang Yekun has…

AUSTRALIA Geoffrey Robertson The Sydney Morning Herald With the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, Australia now has a new head of state in King Charles, said Geoffrey Robertson. But why, exactly? Most of us had affection for his mother, but Australia changed a great deal over the 70 years of her reign. Charles, after all, is king “only by virtue of his descent from a 17th-century German princess,” not a particularly fitting symbol for an increasingly diverse Australia. What is the point of stamping his face on our coins? And why have a Royal Australian Navy when it serves not London but Canberra? The last time we had a chance to weigh in on the issue, in a 1999 referendum, a majority of Australians did in fact want to dump…

In response to a question, 12 Republican candidates for governor and the Senate either would not commit to accepting the election results in November or declined to provide an answer. All of the Democrats in those races said they would accept the results.The New York Times Less than 8 percent of the world’s population live under a monarchy, down from more than a third in 1950.The Wall Street Journal A great-great-grandmother of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was an illiterate immigrant from Italy who would have been barred from entering the U.S. if she’d arrived three months later. Luigia Colucci arrived at Ellis Island on Feb. 21, 1917, pregnant and with two teenage daughters; in May of that year, a law aimed at stanching the flow of “undesirable” immigrants went into…

“All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.”Jean-Luc Godard, quoted in The New York Times “The pure taste of the apple is as much contact with the beauty of the universe as the contemplation of a picture by Cezanne.”French philosopher Simone Weil, quoted in The Catholic Spirit “You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them.”Michael Jordan, quoted in CBSSports.com “Good luck is what is left over after intelligence and effort have combined at their best. Luck is the residue of design.”Baseball great Branch Rickey, quoted in Politico “I have no possessions so real as those which I have given away to deserving people.”Seneca, quoted in The Atlantic “Sometimes hating yourself is a fair response to the data.”TV writer David Milch, quoted…

A big step up for Sony VR PlayStation’s new VR headset is “a major upgrade from the original in nearly every way,” said Jay Peters and Victoria Song in The Verge. There are all sorts of new bells and whistles in the VR2 headset from Sony, which is expected to arrive in early 2023. “The screens looked great.” The new orb-shaped “Sense controllers were a marked improvement” over Sony’s original Move controllers, which “looked like funky wands with glowing balls on the end.” On these, “the haptics were excellent,” allowing you to “interact with objects in a more natural way.” As for the games, we were “impressed at how much thought went into building an interactive world” like that of Horizon Call of the Mountain, which was created specifically…

Scientists at Oxford University have developed a malaria vaccine that has what they call “world-changing” potential, reports BBC.com. In a trial involving 450 children in Burkina Faso, the injection, called R21, provided up to 80 percent protection against the deadly mosquito-borne disease. Most important, it’s cheap to produce, costing only a few dollars per treatment. The Oxford team will soon begin seeking regulatory approval, although a final decision might have to wait for results to come in at the end of the year from a much larger trial. If regulators give the green light, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, the Serum Institute of India, will produce more than 200 million doses a year. Doctors have been trying for more than a century to make a vaccine for malaria, which…

Andrew Sean Greer, the author of Less, has followed up that Pulitzer Prize–winning comic novel with Less Is Lost, a sequel that tracks struggling gay novelist Arthur Less on a Southern road trip. Below, Greer names six of his favorite travel novels. Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene (1969). This is one of Greene’s mere “entertainments,” as he called his comic novels, but I think it’s one of his best books: a life-affirming story of a grumpy old aunt who drags an utterly average man across the world. Out from under the shadow of his colonial novels and their problems, Greene shines, and shows travel as a mischievous, life-changing event. The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh (1957). More an inner journey than an outer one, this…

Museum of Modern Art, New York City, through Jan. 1 Wolfgang Tillmans “helped change what photos look like—not just his but yours and mine as well,” said Jerry Saltz in NYMag.com. The 54-year-old German photographer, who 22 years ago became the first in his field to be awarded the U.K.’s Turner Prize, shot to fame in the ’90s for his candid, unfussy photographs that mixed landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and abstractions and frequently seemed inspired by the rave, dance-club, and youth fashion scenes that emerged after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The new retrospective of his career proves him to be “a visionary who has melted the borders between high and low, insider and outsider, commercial and esoteric.” His photos, which prefigured the aesthetics of the smartphone era,…

  3 Death Cab for Cutie’s 10th album “powerfully makes a case for their continued relevance,” said Rick Quinn in Pop Matters. Having secured their place in the indie rock pantheon at the start of this century, Ben Gibbard and his mates from Bellingham, Wash., continue to prove that melodic pop can be a medium for existentially heavy themes, with a record that “expands and deepens their signature sound.” Seventeen years past “I Will Follow You Into the Dark,” the band’s best-known single, Gibbard is still fighting off anxiety and dread with glimpsed hope and a faith in romantic love, supported as always by “a superbly performed buffet of pop hooks.” Given how long Death Cab has been at it, Asphalt Meadows “sounds surprisingly urgent,” said Neil Yeung in AllMusic.…

Frantoio Muraglia Olive Oil Inside is a half-liter of award-winning cold-pressed extra virgin Italian olive oil. And “look at that bottle”—also Italian made, it’s hand-painted, and can be used for years for fresh olive oil or even for flowers. $53, williams-sonoma.com Source: The New Yorker Republic Playing Cards These first-edition cards created by a Michigan design studio feature graphics inspired by Nordic folk art. They come in an “eye-catching” gold-accented box and the linen-finish cardstock gives them a “nicely grainy” feel. $30, uusi.us Source: The Wall Street Journal Le Creuset Classic Whistling Kettle This retro-chic kettle—great for a new home—“strikes the tricky balance between classic and contemporary.” In cherry red, it’s so “fantastically chic” that it may never leave the stovetop. $115, lecreuset.com Source: Women’s Wear Daily Hasami Porcelain Mugs…

The number of people in the world with at least $50 million in assets rose by 46,000 last year to a record 218,200, according to Credit Suisse. The country with the biggest jump in mean average wealth was New Zealand, which saw a $114,000 average increase to $472,000. The Guardian Sixty percent of credit-card debtors say they have been in credit-card debt for at least a year, up from 50 percent a year ago. The share of those who have been in debt for more than two years also increased, to 40 percent from 32 percent. Bloomberg A jersey worn by Michael Jordan in Game 1 of the 1998 NBA Finals sold for $10.1 million, the most ever paid for an item of sports memorabilia. That surpasses the $9.28 million…

This fall, many actors and companies will return to the stage after losing much of the last two years to Covid. The American Theatre Wing (americantheatrewing.org) has been working to assure the resilience of the theater since 1940. The nonprofit recognizes theater excellency with the Tony and Obie awards and looks ahead to the next generation of masterpieces. It offers training to underrepresented communities with programs such as the mentoring-focused “Springboard to Design,” supports artists in the musical theater with $10,000 Jonathan Larson grants, and offers grants for theater in schools through the Andrew Lloyd Webber Initiative. Additionally, National Theatre Company Grants, given to theater companies across the country, expand the national audience and empower actors and other theater professionals. Each charity we feature has earned a four-star overall…

Alicia Adamczyk Fortune Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard received worldwide plaudits last week for his selfless decision to give the entirety of his $3 billion company away to a trust and a nonprofit devoted to combating climate change. But his decision “is benefiting from a type of deal more and more billionaires are making,” said Alicia Adamczyk. Because 98 percent of the Chouinard family’s holding now belongs to a newly established nonprofit, the Holdfast Collective, “they don’t have to pay what could be $700 million in the federal capital gains tax that would have resulted from a standard sale.” Had Chouinard decided to leave the company to an heir, the tax bill would have been even higher: over $1 billion. The Chouinard family isn’t making money from the transfer, but it…

In 1972, artist Diane Noomin dressed for Halloween in leopard print and a blond bubble wig. The costume inspired a pioneering cartoon character she introduced a year later: DiDi Glitz, a flamboyant single mother trapped in suburbia who loved decorating and boozing and had a series of unfortunate hookups. Based partly on Noomin’s own anxieties and eccentricities, and partly on the Brooklyn housewives she grew up around, DiDi debuted in Wimmen’s Comix, a comic-book series by San Francisco–based underground feminist cartoonists. The character also featured in the influential 1976 comic Twisted Sisters, which Noomin wrote with fellow artist Aline Kominsky. The back cover had a pie chart illustrating DiDi’s priorities: 21.7 percent love affairs, 19 percent gorgeous outfits, and 1 percent sex. Noomin was born Diane Robin Rosenblatt in…

This week’s question: A Nebraska power-plant worker recently celebrated his 60th birthday by sailing 38 miles down the Missouri River in a carved-out 846-pound pumpkin from his garden. What would be a good name for this seaworthy vegetal vessel? Last week’s contest: To help certain patients overcome their fear of vomiting, a phobia clinic in Amsterdam wants to hire someone who can regurgitate on command. What should that person’s job title be? THE WINNER: “Ejecutive Assistant” Suzy Kruppa, Sequim, Wash. SECOND PLACE: “Bile Clerk” Ken Kellam III, Dallas THIRD PLACE: “Reverse Engineer” Troup Miller, Austin 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 include your name, address, and daytime telephone number for verification; this week, type “Sailing…

Loudon Wainwright III has had difficult family relationships throughout his life, said Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian (U.K.). The singer-songwriter had a fierce rivalry with his father, Loudon Wainwright Jr., a well-known journalist, and the fact that they had the same name didn’t help. “I didn’t like that at all,” he says. “I was the son of the Life magazine writer and I was really annoyed by it.” Such tension is inevitable, says Wainwright, 76. “Every young person is competing with their parents. They have to at least equal them if not surpass them.” He feels he emerged the winner. “I’m now more relaxed in the world than he ever was. He was a depressive guy, an alcoholic.” Now he has a rivalry with his children Rufus and Martha…

Michael Itzkowitz Los Angeles Times Are the U.S. News & World Report college rankings “a joke?” asked Michael Itzkowitz. The 2022 rankings came out last week, amid the scandalous news that Columbia University—No. 2 in 2021’s list—had fallen to the 18th spot following accusations that administrators had submitted doctored data. Does the drop in rank mean Columbia is no longer as “good” a school as schools higher on the list? That depends on how you define a “good” education. With endowments of billions of dollars and tuitions of upwards of $70,000 a year, elite private colleges mostly educate children of already wealthy families, “and do more to reinforce socioeconomic inequality than to mitigate it.” Fortunately, there are hundreds of fine colleges, both public and private, that fulfill a more…

UNITED KINGDOM Stephen Glover Daily Mail King Charles III reportedly wants to create a “slimmed-down” monarchy, said Stephen Glover, which is a “superficially attractive idea”—as long as he gets it right. Charles plans to “prune the royal family” to just the “inner core” of himself and Queen Camilla along with their children and grandchildren. That sounds fine, as most subjects, like me, wouldn’t miss the “often tiresome” minor royals. But how far will he go in his craze for modernization? Some are predicting the British royal family will become like those in Denmark and Sweden, casual and approachable, without any of the “gilded carriages,” frequent multigun salutes, or “the rest of the colorful rigmarole.” But is that what the British people want? We are not Scandinavia, where the royals wear…

If you want to stay healthy, don’t fret too much about hitting 10,000 steps a day—just crank up your walking pace. That’s the conclusion of a new study by researchers in Australia and Denmark, reports The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). The findings were based on the health data of 78,500 British adults, ages 40 to 79, who wore a wrist accelerometer to measure their physical activity for at least three days of the week. The researchers found that every 2,000 steps that they walked each day incrementally lowered the risk of premature death by 8 to 11 percent. The optimal amount was 9,800 steps, which was linked with a 50 percent reduced risk of dementia. But the researchers found that increasing step intensity or pace was linked to better outcomes…

(MCD, $27) This brash debut novel about a struggling Jamaican-American immigrant family “stomps on the delicate vessel of the trauma plot,” said Katy Waldman in The New Yorker. Poverty doesn’t engender nobility in Jonathan Escoffery’s “thrillingly” inventive novel-in-stories set in greater Miami. Instead, we see the primary narrator, Trelawny, living out of his car and using a beach shower before a job interview. His brother, Delano, steals a bucket truck to secure a landscaping job. Escoffery leaps between perspectives and time frames, displaying a “technical exuberance” that “stands in stark contrast” to the humiliations his protagonists soldier through each day. The best of the stories crystallize a turning point, “looping the reader into the heartbreak of fatherly rejection,” say, or “the desperation of needing just another 20 bucks,” said…

Fairy Tale by Stephen King (Scribner, $32.50) Stephen King’s latest “will remind you how much fun reading can be,” said Laura Miller in Slate. “Good, evil, a kingdom to save, monsters to slay—these are the stuff that page-turners are made from.” The author’s new genre-bender follows a high schooler on a quest that “combines Grimmian fairy-tale elements with Lovecraftian cosmic horror.” The book is “sometimes grisly, sometimes tense, and sometimes a bit goofy.” You’ll “inhale Fairy Tale in big 100-page swaths.” Telluria by Vladimir Sorokin (NYRB Classics, $19) “Telluria, in its formal eclecticism and beautiful strangeness, reads like a microcosm of Vladimir Sorokin’s career,” said Jennifer Wilson in Harper’s. This 2013 novel by the esteemed Russian iconoclast, newly available in English, consists of 50 widely varied vignettes set in…

  3 Sudan Archives’ sophomore album “traverses sonic dimensions with ease,” said Eric Ducker in The Ringer. The pop experimentalist, born Brittney Parks, has been doing her own thing since she emerged in 2017, fusing Sudanese fiddle music with electro funk and alt-R&B. The scope of her sound has only expanded, and the new record is particularly unpredictable. “Genres get blasted through Parks’ prismatic outlook, often multiple times within the same song. Yet it all holds together.” On the second track, “NBPQ (Topless),” the 28-year-old violinist, producer, and singer-songwriter somehow slips a Greek bouzouki into a club banger—before heading off in several additional directions, said Ben Salmon in Paste. On “OMG Britt,” a trap song, she even works in a zither. “Sometimes, the album switches styles so quickly, you can…

Eight years after the podcast Serial made his case a global obsession, Adnan Syed has been released from prison, said Jaclyn Diaz in NPR.org. Syed, a Muslim American, was 18 and a high school student in Baltimore in 2000 when he was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. But it was Serial’s seminal 2014 first season that alerted tens of millions of listeners to troubling questions about the investigation, said David Leonhardt in The New York Times. Early this week, a Baltimore judge vacated Syed’s conviction on the recommendation of prosecutors, who cited unreliable evidence while revealing the existence of two alternate suspects. A day after Syed’s release, a new episode of Serial was released that details the story’s surprising turn.…

These days, good Beaujolais is “not at all hard to find,” said Eric Asimov in The New York Times. “The original thirst-quenching wine,” the French red, made from gamay, underwent “a revolution in quality” a generation ago, and the change, rooted in natural winemaking methods, has touched all price points. 2020 Michel Guignier Beaujolais ($16). “More than cheap and cheerful,” this Beaujolais “has grip and depth, and is full of earthy and fruity flavors.” 2020 G. Descombes Beaujolais-Villages ($22). Georges Descombes can be counted on for pure, energetic wines, like this one, which is “fresh and tense,” but with a “succulent” plumminess. 2020 Domaine des Billards St.-Amour ($24). This wine from the northernmost of Beaujolais’ 10 crus is “rich, ripe, and well-focused, with stony, earthy raspberry flavors.”…

Good week for: Stoners, with new British research suggesting that regular marijuana users are no more “lazy” or “unmotivated” than the general population. The belief that cannabis users are apathetic couch potatoes, researchers said, “is itself a lazy stereotype.” Following the evidence, after customs officials at Germany’s Duesseldorf Airport found an 8-inch-long snail on an airport baggage truck and followed its slime-trail to a sack containing 93 other giant snails being shipped from Nigeria for sale as meat. Afternoon activities, after a Taiwanese nursing home admitted it had hired an exotic dancer dressed in skimpy lingerie to entertain wheelchair-bound veterans. A spokesperson for the home said the staff had no idea the dancer would be so “enthusiastic and fiery.” Bad week for: Tourism, after Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the…

David Graham The Atlantic “From the start, the probe was a red herring,” said David Graham. In 2019, Attorney General Bill Barr appointed U.S. attorney John Durham to investigate the origins of the FBI investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s extensive ties with Russia. Barr and President Trump hoped Durham could prove that the investigation was a scandalous Deep State/Democratic conspiracy against Trump. On the Right, hopes were high that Durham would find damning proof of FBI perfidy, because “Trump’s political con requires the promise of total vindication right around the corner.” But after more than three years, Durham’s inquiry is now wrapping up with little to show—the conviction of one FBI lawyer for fudging a warrant application. In stark contrast, Robert Mueller’s team got seven convictions or guilty…

“Hereditary royalty is a conceit, a fairy-tale illusion. [Queen Elizabeth II] never gave a hint that she thought of herself as anything but a special human being, anointed by God to reign supreme over Britain and the Commonwealth. Elizabeth was born into an age when it was possible to hold such a belief without question and without a hint of irony. King Charles III comes to the throne in a very different era. The question is whether a smaller, more modern, less grand, more open monarchy can still captivate hundreds of millions of people in Britain and around the world.” Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post…

FRANCE Valerie Mazuir Les Echos Legalizing assisted suicide “may be the great societal reform of Emmanuel Macron’s second five-year term,” said Valerie Mazuir in Les Echos. The French president has long been known to support “death with dignity.” Last week, after a national ethics board ruled that assisted suicide should be allowed “under certain strict conditions,” Macron announced a “citizens’ consultation” to discuss what those conditions should be, with the goal of passing such a law next year. It’s not the first time France has had such a debate. In 2003, 22-year-old Vincent Humbert, left quadriplegic, mute, and nearly blind after a car crash, wrote then–President Jacques Chirac begging for euthanasia. After he was denied, his mother injected him with barbiturates to send him into a coma. “The tragedy shook…

INDONESIA Akhmad Mustain Media Indonesia “It’s good to be a criminal” in Indonesia, said Akhmad Mustain, at least if you’re rich and well connected. Many corrupt officials who swindle the state don’t get caught at all, while those who do can simply bribe their prison guards to get all kinds of perks. It’s not uncommon to see a white-collar criminal being “pampered” in a cell decked out like “a five-star hotel, equipped with air-conditioning and a refrigerator.” And even that cushy detention will only last for a short while, because paying bribes to the right people can shave years off a sentence. Just two weeks ago, the Justice Ministry granted shockingly early parole to 23 convicts who were in for corruption—some of them top officials—with no good explanation as to…

The rollout of updated boosters is “terrific news” in our continuing battle against Covid, said Zeynep Tufekci in The New York Times. “Bivalent” boosters targeting the dominant Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 are newly available to anyone over 12 who has received the first two vaccine doses, and research suggests that these shots will greatly reduce “the likelihood of infection and severe illness,” as well as “decrease the likelihood of developing long Covid.” But it is “vaccinations, not vaccines, that save lives,” and while 72 percent of those polled said they plan to get the new booster, the uptake has been discouragingly slow in the first weeks of availability. Sadly, only about one-third of the population got the previous boosters, which dramatically reduced the risk of serious illness for…

Welcome to “an era of debate avoidance,” said David Jackson in USA Today. In this midterm election cycle, there are no debates scheduled in a host of “key statewide contests,” including Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio. Two that could determine which party controls the Senate only recently settled on one October debate each. In Pennsylvania, Democrat John Fetterman agreed to debate Republican Mehmet Oz on Oct. 25. In Georgia, Republican Herschel Walker agreed to share a stage on Oct. 14 with Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, but this week Walker warned supporters to temper their expectations, saying, “I’m just not that smart.” Debates are “a time-honored tradition” in American politics going back to the 18th century, said David Smith in The Guardian, and provide voters with a valuable chance to…

(Graywolf, $17) “If ever we needed a reminder of laughter’s transformational ability, now is the time,” said Melissa Holbrook Pierson in The Washington Post. Nuar Alsadir’s new book celebrates spontaneity of all kinds, including nighttime dreams and the surprising observations of children. But her argument for the value of such breaks from everyday routine begins with an appreciation of laughter that erupts from somewhere deep inside. Alsadir, a psychologist and poet, champions psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott’s theory that a “true self” resides in each of us, and that spontaneity offers access to it. She also engages here with philosophers from Nietzsche to Derrida, but lightheartedly. “Although the concepts are sometimes knotty, the writing never is.” The result is a book that’s “an inspiring endorsement of shredding the filters of propriety.”…

Kate Beaton was in a bad place when she emerged as one of the great comics artists of her generation, said Graeme McMillan in Wired. Just out of college and eager to shed her student debt, the 21-year-old Cape Breton native had traveled across Canada to toil in the Alberta oil sands, and the setting was grim: open mines, toxic air, men outnumbering women 50 to 1. While there, Beaton began drawing Hark! A Vagrant, a playful webcomic that eventually produced two best-selling books. Her remarkable new graphic memoir, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, marks a major departure. But its story is one she longed to tell. “If I started talking about the oil sands to someone, I couldn’t stop,” she says, “because there was no point…

  3 Like the best power-pop outfits before them, the Beths “make music that has a sugar-rush immediacy and a craftsman-like attention to detail,” said Laura Snapes in Pitchfork. Four years after breaking through with a debut album of giddy punk-spirited pop, the New Zealand quartet has delivered a third full-length recording that’s “richer and less hurried,” yet still bursting with energy and the smart, openhearted lyrics of lead singer Elizabeth Stokes. The choruses of these songs “have an anthemic ease,” while the arrangements are “visceral and complex,” as if the guitars and drums are charting the course of messy emotions. On the “dumbfoundingly great” title track, Stokes asks what to do after a breakup with all the intimate knowledge one has about an ex, said Chris Deville in Stereogum.…

Sweater weather vibes… When Harry Met Sally Harry and Sally’s courtship unfolds across a decade, but the scenes that linger in the mind’s eye play against a full-blown New York City fall backdrop. The Central Park leaves, Meg Ryan in a bowler hat and tweed. Is this the quintessential fall movie? HBO Max Autumn Sonata The sole collaboration between Ingmar and Ingrid Bergman, from 1978, was also the actress’ final big-screen performance. She plays a famed concert pianist whose strained relationship with her adult daughter comes to a head during a short visit. Liv Ullman co-stars. HBO Max Dead Poets Society As the fall session begins, students at a fictional New England all-boys boarding school encounter a new teacher, played by Robin Williams, whose enthusiasm for the printed word…

WeParent is designed to reduce conflict in divorced parents’ relationships. The subscription-based app “helps you manage every part of the process, including the custody schedule, document sharing, and expenses.” CoParently provides a similar digital tool set, including a color-coded calendar that “keeps track of which parent a kid is with each day.” CoParently makes it easy to loop in grandparents and caregivers. TalkingParents gives parents a dedicated place to communicate. The app’s record of communications is time-stamped, unalterable, and easy to download. A premium version makes transcripts of in-app phone calls—records that are admissible in court. SupportPay keeps a record of child-support payments, as well as key tax documents. Co-parents can also use the app to track expenses and make payments. A dispute-management tool helps settle disagreements. Source: Romper…

The Federal Reserve hiked its benchmark interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point this week for a third consecutive time this week as it continues its assault against inflation, said Jeff Cox in CNBC.com. After the latest increase, the Fed’s benchmark rate now sits between 3 and 3.25 percent, “the highest the fed funds rate has been since 2008.” And it is not expected to rest there. Fed officials raised “the point where they think they can stop raising rates,” to 4.6 percent, suggesting they anticipate rates to continue rising well into 2023. Courts: Damning testimony in trial of Nikola founder Nikola CEO Mark Russell told a New York federal jury this week that Trevor Milton, founder of the troubled zero-emissions truck company, was “prone to exaggeration” to the…

Welcome back to the office maze Once reviled, cubicles are making a comeback, said Callum Borchers in The Wall Street Journal. “‘Seated privacy’ is the latest buzzy term in office design,” as walled-in workstations and private offices are increasingly returning to the post-pandemic workplace. It may be a welcome sight to the many workers who loathed the “open office layouts designed to foster collaboration.” Even less popular have been the “hot” desk systems that numerous companies adopted for hybrid workers. Employees are the ones pushing for layout changes, indicating their desire “to put their heads down and focus sometimes—and a few walls can help.” Even WeWork, known for its freewheeling environments, is creating “quiet zones” for workers that are intended to be like “quiet cars on the train.” A…

Liam Denning Bloomberg Your water and sewer systems are becoming a hot new investment for private companies, said Liam Denning, and there will be a price to pay. In June, NextEra Energy announced “it was buying the wastewater system of Towamencin Township, a community of around 18,000 people about 30 miles north of Philadelphia.” The $115 million that NextEra—a company worth $167 billion—is paying is more than seven times Towamencin’s $16 million annual budget. It lets the town “fund all sorts of popular projects” without having to raise taxes. But “there is no such thing as free money.” NextEra is paying 21 times annual revenues for the sewer system, a multiple more often seen in biotech deals. NextEra expects to more than double wastewater rates within five years, to over…