Indholdsfortegnelse for December 9, 2022 i The Week Magazine

“Give me liberty or give me death.” Protesters in cities throughout China were actually chanting Patrick Henry’s revolutionary war cry from 1775 this week, as tens of thousands poured into the streets in defiance of the authoritarian regime in Beijing. The demonstrators, mostly young, chanted “We don’t want emperors!” and held up blank pieces of paper to symbolize their inability to speak freely. Thus far, President Xi Jinping has not ordered a violent crackdown, but police cleared streets and photographed protesters’ faces. Those images will be fed into China’s Orwellian face-recognition database, which tracks every citizen’s cellphone and monitors everything from their internet activity to jaywalking. It takes unimaginable bravery—and the pent-up anger created by suffocating repression—for people to defy authority in a society where “bad” citizens can be dragged…

Good week for: The U.S. men’s soccer team, which advanced to the next round of the World Cup by beating Iran, 1-0. Before the game, the U.S. Soccer Federation posted an image of an Iranian flag without the Islamic Republic’s emblem to support protesters in Iran. Rebranding, with an announcement by the World Health Organization that the globally circulating virus known as “monkeypox” will henceforth be called “mpox,” to make the name less “racist and stigmatizing.” McNuggets, after a woman went into labor in an Atlanta McDonald’s restroom and three staff members helped deliver a healthy baby daughter. Franchise owner Steve Akinboro called it “the epitome of a feel-good moment for my team.” Bad week for: Going with the floe, after about 200 ice fishermen and women had to be…

Paris A French consulting firm that fired an employee because he wouldn’t join in happy hours and weekend social functions must pay him at least $3,000 in damages, an appeals court ruled last week. Cubik Partners fired the man, whose name was not made public, in 2015 for failing to fit into the “fun” company culture. But the court found that Cubik’s mandatory seminars at hotels, where employees had to share rooms and sometimes beds, “often ended in excessive alcohol consumption encouraged by associates who made very large quantities of alcohol available,” and that those who didn’t participate in raunchy team-building exercises were bullied. The man could yet win much more compensation: He’s asked for more than $480,000, and a separate court will consider how much to award. NATO aids…

James Cameron has one unrealized goal—to make a film in outer space, said Zach Baron in GQ. The man who directed Titanic, Terminator, and Avatar—groundbreaking for their computer-generated visual effects and massive box-office successes—is known for the colossal technical ambition (and eye-popping cost) of his projects. “Difficult is a magnet for me,” says Cameron, 68. “There are lots of smart, really gifted, really talented filmmakers out there that just can’t do the difficult stuff. So that gives me a tactical edge to do something nobody else has ever seen.” Before he turned his attention to Avatar, Cameron was captivated by the idea of filming a documentary in outer space. He asked NASA’s then-administrator Daniel Goldin if he could shoot inside the International Space Station. Goldin said that wasn’t feasible,…

Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe Republicans are aghast at the “stunning decline of support for the GOP among younger voters,” said Jeff Jacoby. In House races, voters under 30 supported Democrats by a staggering 28-point margin. Why? Some of my conservative colleagues are blaming indoctrination by left-wing professors, while ignoring the elephant in the room: Donald Trump. “No president in memory has so alienated younger voters” with his repellent rhetoric and barbaric behavior. As these voters formed their political identities, they saw Republicans defend and even celebrate “a boorish, insult-spewing narcissist.” As a result, an entire generation is “probably lost to the GOP for good.” This wasn’t inevitable. In the 2000 election, voters under 25 were evenly split between George W. Bush and Al Gore. When Ronald Reagan ran for…

“Merriam-Webster has chosen “gaslighting” as its Word of the Year for 2022. This is likely to surprise neither the perpetrators of gaslighting, who had yet another banner year, nor the rest of us trying to avoid being gaslit. Undergirding all the gaslighting is the unfortunately correct belief that there is no particular cost anymore to being widely regarded as a liar. [Donald] Trump taught his party that shamelessness is a kind of superpower, liberating you to keep lying. The worst among us have the advantage in this battle, and they always will. If we never forget that, we can hope, from time to time, to defeat them.” Paul Waldman in The Washington Post…

SLOVAKIA Michal Horsky Pravda Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán wastes no opportunity to flaunt his nationalist vision of Greater Hungary, said Michal Horsky. At a recent World Cup match, he wore a scarf showing a map of Hungary four times its current size, engulfing parts of Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Austria. These were the borders of the Kingdom of Hungary before World War I, and right-wing Hungarian nationalists pine for those glory days. Orbán’s scarf was intended as a message of solidarity with that crowd, “the most toxic element in Hungary.” I doubt Orbán actually wants to reclaim former territories, as Russia’s Vladimir Putin is attempting to do with his imperialist war on Ukraine. Still, “he has more in common with Putin” than a European leader ought…

BRAZIL Cida Barbosa Correio Brazilense Brazil is drowning in guns, said Cida Barbosa. Over the past four years, President Jair Bolsonaro issued some 40 decrees loosening weapons restrictions “under the pretext” of self-defense. His supporters went on a buying spree, and the number of privately owned guns in Brazil nearly doubled to 1.9 million. Any citizen can now buy up to six guns, along with 200 rounds of ammunition for each annually. Sport shooters can register up to 60 weapons, including semi-automatic rifles, while those deemed gun collectors can hoard as many weapons as they want. This “arms binge” is having predictable results, including a surge in accidental shootings such as the recent tragedy in São Paulo, where a 36-year-old woman unintentionally killed herself while posing for a selfie with…

Elon Musk has gone down the “right-wing rabbit hole,” said Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times. Over the past two weeks, he’s made it clear that the primary reason for his failing $44 billion purchase of Twitter was to use the platform to—in his words—“establish an even playing field” for far-right views, and provide what he calls “a counter-narrative” to “the woke mind virus.” Last week, Musk announced that virtually all banned Twitter accounts would be restored, including those of white supremacists, anti-Semites, and misogynists; traded approving tweets with election deniers like Dinesh D’Souza and anti-immigrant activists; and even tweeted an image of Pepe the Frog, a symbol of the racist alt-right. Musk used his platform to attack advertisers who’ve fled Twitter, and endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis…

It’s easy to feel numbed to Donald Trump’s offensive, attention-seeking antics, said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times, but “I confess to being astonished that the former president dined last week with one of the country’s most influential white supremacists,” Nick Fuentes. The 24-year-old podcaster and YouTube personality was brought along by Kanye “Ye” West, whom Trump invited to his Mar-a-Lago club shortly after Ye’s rants about going “death con 3” on the Jews. Fuentes is a Holocaust denier who has endeared himself to the GOP’s MAGA wing by arguing that “Christians should have all the power,” said Matt Lewis in The Daily Beast. He’s also suggested executing lawmakers who voted to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, and stripping women of the right to vote. Fuentes and Trump…

(Belknap, $30) Any parent wondering if their child might be a musical prodigy will at some point stumble upon the Suzuki method, said David Mehegan in The Arts Fuse. The approach—built upon the belief that every child has the capacity to play well—has spread around the world since World War II and remains particularly influential in North America. “Still, probably few people know much, or anything, about Shinichi Suzuki himself, the determined, mild Japanese visionary who began the movement that bears his name.” Eri Hotta’s new biography, the first by a non-follower, proves to be “a revelation on many levels.” Suzuki’s own love of music grew organically, said Meghan Cox Gurdon in The Wall Street Journal. Born in 1898 into a family that manufactured stringed instruments, he fell in…

No one would ever call Bonnie Garmus an overnight success, said Sadie Stein in The New York Times. Now 65, the career copywriter had accumulated nearly 100 rejections of previous book proposals before a fragment of Lessons in Chemistry launched a bidding war and the novel went on to become the likely best-selling debut of 2022. The story, about a female scientist who overcomes circa-1961 gender barriers by using a TV cooking show to empower herself and other women, was inspired by the author’s own experiences of what she calls “garden variety misogyny.” But the layered tale has struck a chord with a variety of readers—the only exceptions seeming to be the early buyers who sent hate mails because the book’s bubblegum-pink cover and flirty depiction of the heroine…

3 “This is Nas’ best rapping performance in quite some time, which is saying something,” said Marcus Shorter in Consequence. Three decades into his career, the influential New York City rapper born Nasir Jones has become newly prolific. After doing little in the 2010s except take a couple victory laps, he’s been on fire since he teamed up with the producer Hit-Boy for 2020’s Grammy-winning King’s Disease. The pair’s fourth and most confident collaboration gives us “Nas at his most introspective, observational, and musical.” Over a layered mix of soul samples and jazz loops, the 49-year-old “experiments with flows, rhythms, and cadences” more than he has since the ’90s. “We’ve heard Nas’ rags-to-riches story,” and his self-mythologizing can sometimes get “monotonous,” said Peter Berry in Complex. “Very few rappers have…

Death of an Artist (Pushkin Industries/Somethin’ Else) Ana Mendieta’s 1985 death “drove battle lines through the New York art world,” said Max Pearl in NYMag.com. The 36-year-old Cuban native had been a rising star; her husband, Carl Andre, was a leading minimalist sculptor, and he stood trial for murder after Mendieta died in a fall from their 34th-floor apartment. Andre was acquitted in 1988, but art historian Helen Molesworth decided to revisit the case and the two artists’ contrasting work. For all the true-crime intrigue of her podcast, its “most novel element is its analysis of what came after Mendieta died: the war of ideas waged by lawyers, artists, journalists, critics, and activists that turned her from flesh and blood into the loaded symbol she is today.” The series…

When you remove the rum from certain cocktails, “they lose their entire vibe,” said Allison Robicelli in The Washington Post. Fortunately, quality nonalcoholic rums are proliferating. While my search didn’t turn up a white rum worth its price, each of these dark rums deliver the strong, complex flavor that makes a mojito or daiquiri a treat. CleanCo ($30). With its “toasty notes of clove, star anise, and cayenne pepper,” this beautiful caramel-hued rum is wonderful in sweetened drinks like hot buttered rum. Seir Hill Biscayne ($35). Built for cocktails, this one delivers “bold notes of dark molasses and charred oak” and a “fierce gingery bite that cuts through any mixer.” Rumish ($35). Any cocktail brightened by sugar and citrus will find a worthy playmate in this “boisterous” spirit, whose…

Annie Lowrey The Atlantic “The prototypical face of crypto is young, white, techy, and male,” said Annie Lowrey, “but perhaps no other demographic has been hit harder by the crypto bust than Black Americans.” Black investors were late to the crypto frenzy, but they joined with gusto. By 2021, Black Americans were “more likely than their white counterparts” to invest in digital assets. Such alternative investments “held practical appeal” for members of a historically marginalized community. “Discriminated against by banks, overlooked by investment managers, redlined and saddled with educational debt,” you can understand why so many turned to esoteric opportunities. Crypto was touted as a disruption to Wall Street, appealing to Black investors who distrusted traditional finance. “You could buy Bitcoin on Cash App without a credit check.” The surge…

What happened Kari Lake, a 2020 election denier, denied this week that she lost the race to be Arizona’s next governor. The Donald Trump–endorsed Republican is suing Maricopa County, alleging voter fraud after Secretary of State Katie Hobbs beat her by 17,000 votes. In swing states, almost every election denier who lost a prominent midterm race has accepted defeat. Lake, however, maintains that vote tabulation issues disenfranchised her supporters. Maricopa, which includes Phoenix and is the country’s fourth most populous county, experienced some technical problems that caused long lines, but officials said everyone was able to vote. At a contentious public hearing this week, Lake supporters demanded that the county’s Board of Supervisors nullify the election. “This is a war between good and evil, and you all represent evil,”…

A Florida woman is suing Kraft Heinz, claiming the firm’s microwavable mac-and-cheese cups take longer than the advertised three-and-a-half minutes to prepare. Amanda Ramirez’s class-action suit states that the label is “false and misleading” because it takes additional time to unlid the cups, combine the contents with water, stir, and “thicken.” Ramirez is seeking $5 million. San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors has voted to let the police department use robots to kill criminals. The 8-3 vote will enable the SFPD to arm the city’s 17 robots with bombs that will only be used in “extreme circumstances” such as terrorism. “This is opening up a Pandora’s box that could change our society in a significant way,” said Supervisor Hillary Ronen, one of the three “no” votes. In other news Student loan-payment…

Emma Thompson seemed to have found her match, said John Lahr in The New Yorker. The British actress was introduced to American viewers with the 1987 TV miniseries Fortunes of War, in which she co-starred opposite Kenneth Branagh. During a break in filming, Branagh sang to her in his slight falsetto. “I burst into tears because he sounded exactly like my father,” says Thompson, 63. Branagh was reminiscent of her father, an actor, in another way: a charismatic man whose attention Thompson had to fight for. Branagh “was incandescent with ambition and performance energy,” she says. They wed in 1989, then, in 1995, she got a shock. While directing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Branagh started a relationship with actress Helena Bonham Carter. Thompson was publicly humiliated. “I was utterly, utterly…

Mariah Carey may dominate the holiday-season airwaves thanks to her 1994 smash “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” but she cannot legally claim to be the official “Queen of Christmas.” The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied Carey’s application last week to trademark that title, along with “QOC” and “Princess Christmas,” which Carey, 53, reportedly had planned to use on products ranging from dog leashes to coconut milk. Her application cited a 2021 Billboard article declaring her the “undisputed Queen of Christmas.” But Carey’s trademark request was disputed by several other singers, including Elizabeth Chan, who has made 11 albums of Christmas songs. She accused Carey of trying to “monopolize” a title that’s also been bestowed on Chan, Darlene Love (“Christmas: Please Baby Come Home”), and “Rockin’ Around…

Chavi Eve Karkowsky Slate Just as doctors like me warned, said Chavi Eve Karkowsky, abortion bans are creating medical nightmares for women experiencing dangerous pregnancy complications. A recent medical journal article describes this new reality in Texas, where abortion laws prohibit doctors from intervening unless there’s an “immediate threat to maternal life.” At two major hospitals, 28 pregnant women experienced serious complications at less than 22 weeks’ gestation. Their agonized obstetricians were forced to “wait for something terrible to happen” for an average of nine days, as the women suffered. During those pointless delays, 27 of the pregnancies ended in miscarriages. The one surviving baby had massive complications, including brain swelling and bleeding and liver and lung dysfunction, guaranteeing a short life with major disabilities. Most of the 28 women…

UGANDA Mable Twegumye Zake Nile Post Ugandan children are growing up way too fast, said Mable Twegumye Zake. Many drop out of school to pay the bills or take care of their younger siblings. Psychologists call this “parentification,” when kids are forced to take on adult roles in the household. I witnessed it just the other day, when I got a flat tire. The mechanic who came to my aid was a “short, skinny young boy clad in an oversized dark blue coverall.” Just 8 years old, the boy told me most of his siblings worked—because, he said, “we have to help put food on the table.” The problem stems from the collapse of Uganda’s traditional, community-based model of child-rearing. In the old days, the parents were only part of…

“I do not wish women to have power over men but over themselves.”Mary Wollstonecraft, quoted in Blasting News “It is human nature to hate him whom you have injured.”Tacitus, quoted in Forbes “There is no more wretched prison than the fear of hurting someone who loves you.”Rainer Maria Rilke, quoted in The New York Times “If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on somebody else’s path.”Joseph Campbell, quoted in The Atlantic “Through 99 percent of our time on Earth, we have been wanderers—and the next place to visit is Mars.”Carl Sagan, quoted in the Uniontown, Pa., Herald-Standard “Happy is the land that has no need of heroes.”Bertolt Brecht, quoted in the Financial Times “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.”F. Scott Fitzgerald, quoted in The…

Hurdles for Microsoft-Activision deal The Federal Trade Commission will likely file an antitrust lawsuit to block Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of video game maker Activision Blizzard, said Josh Sisco in Politico. “A lawsuit would be the FTC’s biggest move yet under chair Lina Khan to rein in the power of the world’s largest tech companies.” Central to the agency’s concerns is whether acquiring Activision, which makes popular titles like Call of Duty and Candy Crush, “would give Microsoft an unfair boost in the video game market.” Sony has emerged as the deal’s primary opponent, arguing that Microsoft could make Activision’s titles exclusive to Xbox, harming makers and players of other consoles. Seeking to mollify opponents, Microsoft has promised to keep Call of Duty available on Sony’s PlayStation, and offered…

It’s widely assumed that being stressed out can lead to high blood pressure. But a new study suggests that the reverse is true—that hypertension can cause neuroticism. Researchers examined blood pressure readings from more than 700,000 people in Europe and compared them with data showing how the individuals scored for anxiety, depression, neuroticism, and well-being. By measuring variations in genes—a technique known as Mendelian randomization—they were able to identify a causal relationship between high diastolic blood pressure and neuroticism, but no link with the other conditions. Those with neuroticism tend to be excessively self-critical. Although doctors have long known that high blood pressure can harmfully impact the heart, this is one of the first studies to suggest it can also affect personality, reports The Times (U.K.). Lead author Lei…

Stephanie McCarter, a classics professor at the University of the South, is the translator of an acclaimed new version of Ovid’s narrative poem Metamorphoses. Below, McCarter recommends six other translations of classic works of literature. If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho translated by Anne Carson (2002). Sappho is one of the few female poets we have from Greco-Roman antiquity, though her work survives mainly in tantalizing fragments. Like the source text, Carson’s translation brilliantly evokes a world of female eroticism in sharp contrast with the political maneuverings of men. The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice translated by A.E. Stallings (2019). Attributed to Homer by the Romans, this mock Greek epic humorously describes a battle between frogs and mice, complete with gods taking sides and lending aid to…

3 Weyes Blood’s previous album won her comparisons with Carole King and Joni Mitchell, and her new one “easily matches its acclaimed predecessor,” said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. Natalie Mering, the 34-year-old singer-songwriter who performs as Weyes Blood, “instantly went from indie favorite to major artist” with 2019’s Titanic Rising, and her “icily beautiful” follow-up is another ambitious collection of lush chamber pop. Atmospheric strings, horns, and woodwinds envelop Mering’s “clear and precise” voice as she sings of loneliness and the search for connection in a fractured world. Though her themes are overly common on pandemic-era albums, “her idiosyncrasies as a writer and a performer keep the music personal and alive,” said Andy Cush in Pitchfork. Her gossamer voice is “so poised that small deviations convey depths…

Top recent documentaries… Fire of Love Maurice and Katia Krafft loved volcanoes. One of the best documentaries of 2022 tells the story of the married volcanologists, who shot spectacular footage during their daredevil travels and died in 1991 during the eruption of Japan’s Mount Unzen. Disney+ Three Minutes: A Lengthening A certain Oscar contender, this hourlong film breaks down, and then breaks down again, three minutes of 16 mm film that was shot in a Polish village in 1938. The footage captures a lively Jewish community that would be erased by the Nazis a year later. $1 on demand The Territory Director Alex Pritz’s documentary plays like a thriller as it chronicles the fight of the Uru-eu-wau-wau, a Brazilian indigenous tribe, to save their way of life while farmers…

Emory the Elephant Hugimals are stuffed animals that are as comforting as a weighted blanket. Like his puppy, teddy bear, and sloth cousins, Emory weighs about 4.5 pounds and makes a calming snuggle buddy. $64, hugimalsworld.com Source: Time Mario Kart Ride-on Racer Jakks Pacific’s 24-volt rechargeable race car “will be the talk of the neighborhood.” It can hit 8 mph, and the fat plastic rear wheels “allow for drifting action, just like in the game.” $398, walmart.com Source: The Toy Insider PlanToys Drum Set This toddler-size kit features drums made entirely of rubberwood, a cymbal, a working kick-drum pedal, and two rubber sticks. $250, plantoys.com Source: Architectural Digest Lego Eiffel Tower At nearly 5 feet tall, Lego’s new Eiffel Tower is the brand’s loftiest creation yet. The 10,001-piece kit…

Elon Musk stepped into an ongoing fight over Apple’s App Store fees, said Kate Conger and Tripp Mickle in The New York Times. In a series of tweets this week, Twitter’s new owner “accused Apple of threatening to withhold Twitter from its App Store,” and promised to “go to war” over the 30 percent commission that Apple demands from app store transactions. Musk’s new business plan for Twitter is “predicated on subscription sales,” and he has “set the stage for a power struggle” with Apple. Musk accused Apple of “censorship,” and said that Apple, Twitter’s biggest single advertiser, had halted ads on the platform. Transportation: U.S. steps in to force rail labor deal The House this week approved legislation “to head off a looming nationwide rail strike,” said Kevin Freking…

Microsoft leads hedge fund ‘VIPs’ Microsoft has replaced Amazon as the most popular large holding among hedge funds, said Alexandra Semenova in Yahoo. According to strategists at Goldman Sachs, which analyzes positions across 786 hedge funds, “82 have Microsoft among their top 10 long positions; Amazon appeared across the leading cohort of picks 79 times.” Facebook parent Meta, which is down 66 percent this year, fell out of the top five for the first time since 2014, while Uber and Netflix rose into the top five. “Mega-cap tech giants continue to dominate,” despite their struggles in 2022. Goldman’s “VIP” basket of the 50 stocks that appear most often among hedge funds’ top 10 holdings is down nearly 30 percent this year, “on pace for its second-worst year” in two…

Javier Blas Bloomberg Europe wants to “look tough on Russia” with oil price caps, but not so tough that it causes Europeans real pain, said Javier Blas. European leaders are currently wrangling over the prices at which wholesale natural gas and Russian oil exports should be capped ahead of the winter. The idea is to squeeze President Vladimir Putin’s funding for the war in Ukraine. However, in practice they don’t cap much. The European Commission has proposed a price cap on natural gas of $286.40 per megawatt hour. That’s more than double where current prices are. Conditions imposed on when the caps can be triggered make them even less likely to go into effect. Russia’s income might fall “if EU governments introduce a hard cap on demand. But no one…

At 20, Irene Cara was brimming with talent and ambition. In the Academy Award–winning title track of 1980’s Fame, the self-assured performing arts student she played ecstatically proclaims to the world, “I’m gonna live forever/I’m gonna learn how to fly/I feel it coming together/People will see me and cry.” Director Alan Parker knew she could act but initially wasn’t sure she was a strong enough singer for the role, but in a studio tryout Cara proved herself a powerhouse. Three years later, “Flashdance…What a Feeling,” the title track to another blockbuster film, proved she could write and sing an Oscar-winning song as well. “I don’t mean to sound immodest,” she said in a 1985 interview, “but I’d never had any doubt that I’d be successful.” Cara was born Irene…

Cissy Marshall had an employment office clerk to thank for finding both her calling and her husband. The clerk got her a job with the NAACP, where she began a lifetime of civil rights activism and met Thurgood Marshall, who would become the first Black justice on the Supreme Court. “She saw my dark skin, and she sent me to the NAACP,” Marshall said in 2016. “And to this day, I thank her, because had it not been for her, I wouldn’t have known anything about a race problem.” She was born Cecilia Suyat in Maui, to parents who’d immigrated from the Philippines. Her mother died when she was young, and her father sent her at age 20 to live with relatives in New York to get her away…

Riverside, Calif. A Virginia law enforcement officer drove across the country last week to meet a California teenager he had communicated with online, allegedly attempting to kidnap her after killing her mother and grandparents. Austin Lee Edwards, a former Virginia state trooper, was chased down by a SWAT team on the highway and killed in a shootout, during which the teen was rescued by police. Edwards is believed to have “catfished” the girl, taking on a false identity to obtain her personal information. Police think Edwards parked in a neighbor’s driveway and entered the teen’s home, killing Mark Winek, 69, Sharie Winek, 65, and Brooke Winek, 38, before setting the house on fire and leaving with the girl in his SUV. Virginia State Police said Edwards, who left the…

Bob Weir thinks it’s ridiculous to treat pop musicians like gods, said Jonathan Williger in The Washington Post. A founding member of the Grateful Dead, Weir has complex feelings toward the band’s famously dedicated Deadhead fanbase. On the one hand, he’s played rhythm guitar for thousands of shows, known for cracking jokes in his slight drawl between songs. But he’s sickened by the way some fans worship lead singer Jerry Garcia. “I won’t have it,” says Weir, 75. “The deification that those folks made of Jerry is basically what killed him. It disgusted him, and rightly so.” Overworked, overweight, and obsessed with maintaining the band’s high standards, Garcia died of a heart attack at the age of 53 in a drug treatment facility. Weir refuses to let anyone idolize…

Edward McCaffery CNN.com The House Ways and Means Committee is finally getting its hands on Trump’s tax returns, said Edward McCaffery. A yearslong legal battle ended last week when the Supreme Court denied Trump’s bid to block their release. “So now what?” The returns, which may or may not be released to the public, are not likely to contain any big surprises, despite fantasies about “smoking guns” involving his connections to Russia. Most likely, the returns will confirm what The New York Times revealed in 2020 after it obtained 20 earlier years’ worth of Trump’s returns: Despite his ownership of a real estate company with hundreds of millions in revenue, “he paid little or no taxes in most years.” That simple fact may not shock us, but it should. “Something…

UNITED KINGDOM Fraser Nelson The Daily Telegraph To understand why the British economy is floundering, consider the fashion brand Next, says Fraser Nelson. Since Brexit dried up the flow of cheap East European labor, the 150-year-old British company hasn’t been able to recruit enough staff to operate its warehouse in Rotherham, England, at full productivity. CEO Simon Wolfson blames immigration restrictions. “We have got people queuing up to come to this country,” he complained recently. “And we’re not letting them in!” Wolfson is a Conservative and a baron who voted for Brexit, so his pro-migration stance is noteworthy. But here’s an even more noteworthy fact: Some 16 percent of Rotherham’s working-age residents are unemployed. And the city is no outlier. Across the U.K., a “staggering, scandalous” 13 percent of the…

Having just one glass of wine a week during pregnancy may be enough to alter the structure of your baby’s brain. That’s the conclusion of a new study of fetal development. The researchers scanned 24 fetuses between 22 and 36 weeks’ gestation whose mothers said they had consumed alcohol while pregnant. The alcohol intake varied: Some subjects said they had drunk to intoxication, but 17 of the 24 said they averaged less than one drink a week. Yet all of the scans showed a significant reduction in brain development compared with the babies of mothers who hadn’t drunk at all. The change was particularly pronounced in the right superior temporal sulcus, an area of the brain involved in social cognition and language development. “Unfortunately, many pregnant women are unaware…

(Ecco, $28) Kevin Wilson’s latest novel feels “destined to become a cult classic, if not just a classic, period,” said Tod Goldberg in USA Today. In the summer of 1996, two 16-year-old misfits in small-town Tennessee have just initiated a formative romance when they create a poster bearing a cryptic 21-word message and anonymously hang copies all over town. The posters inspire copycats, then a deadly moral panic. As one of the two instigators looks back on the events of that summer years later, Now Is Not the Time to Panic achieves “a sepia-toned realism that never ceases to entertain.” Wilson’s first book since 2019’s Nothing to See Here could have been just another sojourn into “arty-girl-meets-arty-boy” territory, said Alexis Burling in the San Francisco Chronicle. But it’s “so…

The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama (Crown, $32.50) Michelle Obama can be “so intent on finding the good” that at times she costs herself credibility, said Aida Edemariam in The Guardian. Still, the former first lady has managed to follow up her hit 2018 memoir with an advice book that reads like “a carefully worked-out manifesto for surviving, and hopefully thriving, in the world.” The chapter on parenting is “worth the price of admission alone,” and every page makes clear that staying positive can be a “grinding, moment-by-moment” challenge. Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami (Knopf, $28) Haruki Murakami’s baggy new collection of essays adds up to “a generally charming excursion through the mind of one of the world’s most beloved novelists,” said Priscilla Gilman in The…

  3 “Caitlin Rose was never one to fit squarely in any genre,” said Maeri Ferguson in No Depression. Though her music has been called alt-country, the 35-year-old Nashville singer-songwriter has always “toed the line of pop songwriting,” and her first record in nearly a decade “embraces her gift for soaring melodies and earworm choruses.” Rose’s clear, sweet voice has been “sorely missed” since critics hailed her 2013 album, The Stand-In. This buoyant follow-up “feels like a reunion with an old friend.” The album frequently gives off a “late ’70s, California vibe,” said Hal Horowitz in American Songwriter. But because so many of Cazimi’s 12 songs have the sterile, glossy feel of multitrack studio efforts, “it’s hard to shake the nagging feeling that it could have been much better with…

The maximum size of home-mortgage loans eligible for backing by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will rise to $1,089,300 next year from $970,800 this year. It’s the first time the federal government is backstopping home loans of more than $1 million. The Wall Street Journal Home prices fell in September for a third straight month, slipping 0.8 percent, for a total decline of 2.2 percent over three months. Declines in some markets have been much steeper, with San Francisco prices down 10.4 percent from their height. Fortune In an interview this week, bankrupt crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried said he was down to his last $100,000. His estimated wealth had peaked earlier this year at $26.5 billion. Axios Tesla controlled about 65 percent of the growing U.S. electric-vehicle market during the…

Since 1997, the 56,000 square feet of the Plains Art Museum (plainsart.org) have connected art, artists, residents, and visitors of Fargo, N.D. The nonprofit houses 4,000 American and global objects, including a collection of Native American art with both traditional crafts and more contemporary work, and a collection of African art focused on West Africa. The museum’s Creativity Among Native American Artists initiative fosters understanding and appreciation of Native American culture, sponsoring an artist-in-residence program as well as an intensive educational program for young Native American artists. The museum also incorporates the Katherine Kilbourne Burgum Center for Creativity, a multipurpose space that offers classes in ceramics and other arts for adults and youth, as well as family programs. Each charity we feature has earned a four-star overall rating from…

This week’s question: A 68-year-old man who uses a walker allegedly robbed a bank in Fresno, Calif., and was caught two blocks away. Come up with the title of a crime movie about this slow-moving bandit. Last week’s contest: A Gainesville, Texas, landlady insists one of her rental properties is haunted by ghosts who are making sexual overtures to tenants. Come up with the PG title of a movie about a group of paranormal researchers who attempt to rid the building of these promiscuous presences. THE WINNER: “The XXX Files” Matthew Lane, Emporia, Kan. SECOND PLACE: “The Best Little Haunted House in Texas” Dale Bagley, Macon, Mo. THIRD PLACE: “Kinky Boos” Hunter Burgan, Los Angeles For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go to theweek.com/contest. How to enter: Submissions…