Indholdsfortegnelse for March 10, 2023 i The Week Magazine

In its second year fighting for its survival, Ukraine says it urgently needs advanced fighter jets and longer-range missiles to repel Russia’s invaders from its soil. But President Biden insists that Ukraine “doesn’t need F-16s now,” and he’s resisting sending 190-mile range ATACMS missiles that could strike deep into Russian-held territory. Various rationales are offered, but the unstated reason for Biden’s reluctance to provide more advanced weaponry is not hard to discern: He and NATO allies still worry that if Putin is faced with total, humiliating defeat, he might made good on his threat to use battlefield nuclear weapons. The reluctance to give Ukraine’s valiant military what it truly needs raises a crucial question, says Julia Ioffe in Puck: Do the U.S. and NATO truly “want Ukraine to win on…

Good week for: Baseball fans, after a new pitch clock designed to reduce dillydallying by pitchers and hitters cut the average time of spring training games to 2 hours and 36 minutes—nearly a half-hour shorter than last season’s average. Grunge, after the digital director of BBC News advised the service’s on-screen journalists to dress down while reporting from the field, because appearing “sweaty and dirty” will make them “more trustworthy” to younger viewers. Silver linings, after the discovery of wild tomatoes growing in raw sewage along the banks of some British rivers led to sarcastic suggestions they could compensate for the current shortage of fresh vegetables caused by Brexit. Bad week for: Solving crimes, after a new analysis of FBI data found that the “homicide clearance” rate—the proportion of murder…

London The U.K. and EU reached a breakthrough this week after months of talks to resolve a thorny trade issue caused by Brexit. Because of Ireland’s history of violence, customs checks weren’t instituted between EU member Ireland and U.K. province Northern Ireland when the U.K. left the EU in 2020. Instead, checks were done between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, effectively treating the Northern Irish as separate from the rest of the U.K. Under the new deal, goods intended to stay in Northern Ireland can skip those checks, and only goods that might be shipped on to Ireland will pass through customs. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the plan “protects Northern Ireland’s place in our union,” but NI’s Democratic Unionist Party, which has been refusing to participate in provincial government…

Halle Bailey grew up watching Ariel in Disney’s animated version of The Little Mermaid, said Olive Pometsey in The Face (U.K.). So the Black singer and actress, 22, was shocked when she was approached to play Ariel in Disney’s upcoming live-action remake of the story. “Why would they ask me?” she wondered. The original Ariel had blue eyes; straight, flowing scarlet hair; fair white skin; and an angelic voice provided by the white actress Jodi Benson. In the remake, due in May, filmmakers encouraged Bailey to be herself, including her powerful vibrato singing voice and her natural Black hair. “As a Black woman, hair is spiritual,” Bailey says. “It was really cool for them to make Ariel a version of me with my locs. I feel like that’s what…

Thomas Friedman The New York Times Benjamin Netanyahu “is shattering Israeli society,” said Thomas Friedman. To return to power, the scandal-scarred prime minister had to ally himself with “messianic religious zealots” on the far right, “whose goal is to annex the whole West Bank.” Ultra-Orthodox, ultranationalist ministers are now in charge of West Bank policy, and retaliatory violence between Jewish settlers and Palestinians is spiraling out of control, with settlers setting fire last week to 200 buildings in four Palestinian villages. At the same time, Israel is on the verge of “civil war” over Netanyahu’s “judicial power grab,” which would empower his coalition to overturn any Supreme Court ruling. His goal there is to protect himself from an ongoing bribery and fraud trial that “could land him in prison.”…

“Adults over 40 perceive themselves to be, on average, about 20 percent younger than their actual age. We seem to have an awfully rough go of locating ourselves in time. A friend, nearing 60, recently told me that whenever he looks in the mirror, he’s not so much unhappy with his appearance as startled by it—“as if there’s been some sort of error” were his exact words. High-school reunions can have this same confusing effect. You look around at your lined and thickened classmates, wondering how they could have so violently capitulated to age; then you see photographs of yourself from that same event and realize: Oh.” Jennifer Senior in The Atlantic…

SWEDEN Peter Kadhammar Aftonbladet In its battle against mobsters, one Swedish city has conscripted an unlikely new soldier: the garbageman, said Peter Kadhammar. “It’s not a joke.” Södertälje, located about 40 minutes from Stockholm, is “notorious for organized crime,” which tends to control industries like transport and waste management—there’s actually more money in dumping than in drugs. The first “visible sign of lawlessness” in a neighborhood, police say, is the truckloads of construction waste or rotting cars dumped by the highway. So Södertälje created a new position, “coordinator against illegal waste,” and hired a man to patrol the city’s derelict areas in a Volkswagen with bulletproof windows, looking for piles of debris. It’s a dangerous job, so I’m using his first name only. “There are people you just don’t mess…

COLOMBIA Juan Gabriel Tokatlian El Tiempo Colombia is “the world’s most violent failed laboratory in the crusade against illicit drugs,” said Juan Gabriel Tokatlian. Even though FARC guerrillas and the government made a landmark peace deal in 2016 meant to end the decades-long civil war, militant groups, cartels, and rogue paramilitaries are still wreaking violence. All of these groups are fueled by the illegal drug trade, directly or indirectly. Colombia’s new leftist president, Gustavo Petro, says he wants to bring “total peace,” but to do so he’ll have to accept that the root of the problem is prohibition. Look at the U.S. in the 1920s: Drinking didn’t go away after booze was outlawed. Instead, gangsters emerged to control the illegal trade, crime skyrocketed, and alcohol consumption actually increased. The same…

“Look around you. Soak up the atmosphere of things. That’s the purpose of life.” Colette, quoted in The Guardian “The fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected from him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable.” Hannah Arendt, quoted in the London Review of Books “A luxury, once enjoyed, becomes a necessity.” Historian C. Northcote Parkinson, quoted in Pharmacy Times “The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.” Will Rogers, quoted in the Colorado Springs Gazette “If you are lonely when you are alone, then you are in bad company.” Jean-Paul Sartre, quoted on MovieWeb “The ideology of personal growth, superficially optimistic, radiates a profound despair and resignation. It is the…

Apple’s blood glucose test Apple has been quietly trialing a no-prick glucose test, said Mark Gurman in Bloomberg, part of a secret “moon shot” project that “dates back to the Steve Jobs era.” Millions of diabetics worldwide must currently poke their fingers to monitor their blood sugar, and many companies have worked on a noninvasive test; Google abandoned its own effort in 2018. Apple’s test uses a measurement process called optical absorption spectroscopy, scanning the interstitial fluid under the skin with a laser and assessing the light reflected back to determine the glucose level. Engineers are currently working to shrink the prototype down to the size of an iPhone, with the ultimate goal of incorporating glucose monitoring into the Apple Watch. While Apple’s technology is still years away from…

Doctors have long said that keeping your sleep schedule consistent helps stave off insomnia. New research suggests it’s also good for your heart. Researchers looked at a week’s worth of sleep data from 2,000 adults, all over 45. They found that those who had varying amounts of sleep each night, and who went to bed at different times, were more likely to have hardened arteries than those with more regular sleep patterns. The study might prove only correlation, not causation, and the authors emphasize that the occasional late night or early morning should not be cause for alarm. “An off day or two is OK,” co-author Tianyi Huang, from Harvard Medical School, tells The New York Times. “It’s more about the long-term pattern.” But the findings add to a…

Rupert Holmes is a novelist, playwright, and songwriter whose hits include 1979’s “Escape (The Pina Colada Song).” His new novel, Murder Your Employer, is a comic thriller set at a college that teaches students how to get away with justified homicide. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949). Reading this masterpiece in my teens, it felt like the tale of a nightmarish but thankfully distant future. Rereading it in the 2020s, it feels as if Nineteen Eighty-Four has been waiting patiently for us just around the next corner—or haven’t you noticed the word “Orwellian” popping up a lot lately? It’s also as searing a love story as Wuthering Heights. The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker (1944). People will enthuse, “I just loved all that witty Dorothy Parker–type dialogue!” But…

3 Iris DeMent “has never sung so freely,” said David Cantwell in The New Yorker. The 62-year-old singer-songwriter from Arkansas still drawls the way she did on her landmark 1992 debut, Infamous Angel. But her first collection of original songs in 11 years is “the most urgent recording of her career.” It also instantly ranks as “one of the most pointed and sustained political statements made by a musician working primarily in country.” Writing protest songs is nothing new for DeMent. In 1996, a Florida radio station lost its state funding for playing her country-rock lament “Wasteland of the Free.” Here, she risks making new enemies, said Jonathan Bernstein in Rolling Stone. But “the risk is the point.” She’s determined to use her country-gospel music to stand up for love…

The total value of U.S. homes dropped by $2.3 trillion in the second half of 2022, from a June peak of $47.7 trillion, according to real estate brokerage Redfin. The 4.9 percent drop was the biggest in percentage terms since a 5.8 percent June–December dive during the 2008 housing crisis. Bloomberg U.S. Millennials in their 30s had more than $3.8 trillion in debt in the fourth quarter of 2022, a 27 percent increase from late 2019 just before the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The Wall Street Journal Dollar stores accounted for more than one-third of the stores that opened across the U.S. in 2021 and 2022. Dollar General opened the most (2,060 locations) and now has a total of…

Over 50,000 people in Turkey and Syria have died since a magnitude-7.8 earthquake hit the two countries on Feb. 6, only to be followed by more than 9,000 aftershocks to date. Founded in 1988, International Relief Teams (irteams.org) is a humanitarian organization that provides health supplies and supportive services to victims of poverty and disaster. In the days following the earthquake, the charity responded quickly, and it remains on the ground in Turkey to help millions of displaced survivors. The organization is offering water, food, blankets, and emergency supplies to families whose homes were damaged or destroyed. In 35 years, International Relief Teams has delivered $623 million in medicine, food, relief supplies, and volunteer services to families in 75 countries worldwide. Each charity we feature has earned a four-star…

Sydney Ember and Ben Casselman The New York Times Chicago-based Home Run Inn Pizza might not have customers clamoring for its pies as it did at the height of the pandemic, but it is not laying off any of the staff, said Sydney Ember and Ben Casselman. Outside of the tech sector, it’s the same story across the economy, with layoffs “remarkably, even historically, rare” despite “a year of aggressive interest-rate increases by the Federal Reserve.” The unemployment rate, at 3.4 percent, is the lowest since 1969. The strength of the labor market might reflect how “the pandemic, and the persistently tight labor market that ensued, may have profoundly reshaped how the nation’s employers think about staffing levels and hiring.” Employers seem to be holding on to workers because they’re…

Walter Mirisch was the creative one. His two brothers, with whom he founded the Mirisch Corporation production company, focused on the wheeling and dealing around Hollywood, while Walter cared for the artistic part of filmmaking. Known for allowing directors total autonomy, he oversaw a string of legendary films in the 1950s and 1960s, including The Apartment, West Side Story, Some Like It Hot, and The Pink Panther. Mirisch films earned 28 Oscar wins and 87 nominations. “We offered these filmmakers what they needed,” he said in 1983. “We became, in effect, partners with our directors.” Mirisch was born in New York City to a family of Jewish immigrants from Poland, said Deadline. A movie usher as a teen, he studied at the University of Wisconsin and then at Harvard…

What happened Fox News chairman Rupert Murdoch’s testimony in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network became public this week, divulging how the 91-year-old blurred the lines between the news organization and the Republican Party. The testimony shows that Murdoch allowed Fox hosts to promote the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, though he knew the claims were false. Murdoch’s deposition comes in a lawsuit brought by voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems, which argues that Fox executives and stars knowingly lied about the election and Dominion’s machines to satisfy viewers loyal to President Trump. Previously released messages between hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham showed that they, too, knew they were peddling a conspiracy theory. Murdoch said that Hannity, as well as Jeanine Pirro,…

A Florida court has refused to release a pregnant murder suspect who claimed her fetus was a person being “held unlawfully” in jail. Natalia Harrell, 24, is awaiting trial on charges of fatally shooting another woman, but her lawyer told the court her “unborn child” has not “committed any crime” and has a constitutional right to due process. The court said it could not “properly resolve” that issue. A middle-school teacher in Orlando has been placed on leave after he asked white students to honor Black History Month by having them fan, feed, and bow to Black students. Teacher Ethan Hooper apologized, but insisted a video of the event was being “maliciously used” against him. “It was all in good fun,” said Hooper. In other news Migrant children forced into…

Brian Cox has no patience for pretension, said William Cohan in Town & Country. This resentment has spilled out on the set of HBO’s hit drama Succession, in which Cox, 76, plays a ruthless conservative media mogul reminiscent of Rupert Murdoch. Cox’s rebellious son on the show is played by Jeremy Strong, 44, a Yale graduate who—like Robert De Niro and Daniel Day Lewis—practices Method acting, inhabiting his damaged, tortured character even when the cameras aren’t rolling. Cox, a Scottish, classically trained actor, thinks Strong is “talented” and doesn’t need to be so intense. “It’s f---ing annoying,” Cox says. “Don’t get me going on it.” He cites a 2009 video, widely seen on YouTube, in which he successfully teaches a toddler Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy.…

Hundreds of newspapers last week said they would stop publishing the comic strip Dilbert after its creator, Scott Adams, called African-Americans a “hate group” and urged fellow whites to “get the hell away from Black people.” Adams’ rant came in response to a recent Rasmussen poll showing 53 percent of Black Americans agree with a meme promoted by far-right internet groups: “It’s OK to be white.” Adams, 65, said on his YouTube show, “I don’t want to have anything to do with [Black people],” adding, “It makes no sense to help Black Americans if you’re white. It’s over.” He also said he was “really sick” of Black people “beating up non-Black citizens.” Adams, who’s emerged in recent years as a Trump supporter and far-right troll, acknowledged that Dilbert and…

Ed Kilgore New York magazine Contrary to what some conservatives contend, Americans are not “equally divided” on abortion policy, said Ed Kilgore. A new survey of the nation’s views after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling “should make a lot of Republican politicians and anti-abortion activists fearful.” In a poll of all 50 states, the Public Religion Research Institute found that 64 percent of Americans say that abortion should be legal in most or almost all cases—including 68 percent of independents. Only one-third say it should be illegal in most or almost all cases. Even 36 percent of Republicans favor legal abortion. And it’s not just “coastal elites” who hold these views: Only in seven states do a slim majority of voters say abortion should be illegal, and there are…

SOUTH KOREA Lim Jae-sung Hankyoreh Because of our brutal colonization by Japan, South Koreans are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as victims of foreign aggression, not perpetrators, said Lim Jae-sung. But a recent court verdict about the Vietnam War is forcing some soul-searching. As part of the struggle against communism, about 300,000 South Korean troops fought on the American side of that war. Our soldiers were valiant allies to the U.S., and that’s the part we like to remember. But we also left “death and suffering” in our wake. South Korean soldiers massacred about 70 unarmed civilians in the central Vietnamese province of Quang Nam in 1968, and a survivor of that attack has now sought compensation for her family members who were murdered and for her own “serious injuries.”…

Common food dyes may be damaging your gut. That’s the conclusion of a new study into the health impact of colorants such as Red 40, Yellow 5, and Yellow 6, which are found in 90 percent of packaged foods in the U.S., reports the New York Post. Researchers injected chicken eggs with two kinds of food dye nanoparticles—titanium dioxide and silicon dioxide—at levels that a human might typically consume. The eggs were used to simulate a response comparable to that of a human. When the eggs hatched, the chicks had cellular-level changes in their blood and intestines—which suggests that the dyes could have a similar effect on the human digestive system. Previous research has shown that Americans tend to consume up to three times more food coloring than is…

(Grove, $26) At 208 pages, My Nemesis is “just the right length for a book with such an annoying narrator,” said Marion Winik in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. In the opening sentence of Charmaine Craig’s “spiky little feminist page-turner,” Tessa, a middle-aged memoirist, confesses to once spoiling a dinner outing by calling the other wife in the party of four “an insult to womankind.” Tessa’s target, Wah, has since died, though we don’t yet know how, nor why Tessa is describing the extended affair of the heart she had carried on with Wah’s husband, Charlie. But keep reading, because Craig “deals her narrative tricks with a sure hand.” Though many have tried to build novels around an unreliable narrator, “few have succeeded as well as Craig does,” said Carolyn…

A Mystery of Mysteries by Mark Dawidziak (St. Martin’s, $29) Quite possibly, Edgar Allan Poe’s death was “the most ordinary thing about him,” said William Tipper in The Wall Street Journal. In a book that’s “part high-speed tour of Poe’s tumultuous career and part cold-case investigation,” author Mark Dawidziak enlists scholars and forensic scientists to weigh the many theories that have been offered to explain Poe’s death at age 40. Though no conclusion is reached, the evidence points to tuberculosis, which killed 1 in 7 Americans in Poe’s era. The Curse of the Marquis de Sade by Joel Warner (Crown, $29) The 120 Days of Sodom, an 18th-century novel by the Marquis de Sade, is “both utterly vile and utterly tedious,” said Colin Dickey in Slate. But the manuscript…

4 The music of Atlanta’s Algiers “summons a sense of constantly looming chaos,” said Jon Pareles in The New York Times. On the band’s “explosive” new album, leader Franklin J. Fisher and his mates continue to traffic in “a noisy, unfettered eclecticism that encompasses rock, R&B, hip-hop, electro, punk, jazz, gospel, and blues.” As before, “portents of apocalypse and furious resistance” course through each track, and the group’s instinct for collage creates “the feeling that anything might happen—that the music could melt down or mount a vicious ambush at any moment.” Thematically, Shook is “a collective effort about collective efforts,” said Tom Breihan in Stereogum. Twelve rappers, rockers, and poets—including Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine—join forces with Algiers, making the album an act of joint resistance…

Among today’s craft brewers, “the siren call of pilsners is strong,” said Courtney Iseman in Punch. Though IPAs still sell better, pilsners get the pros excited because achieving that clean pils taste requires near-perfect execution. Below, three that exemplify the state of the art. Human Robot Hallertau Pils Human Robot of Philadelphia “knows how to stick to the script.” Hallertau is a “pitch-perfect” interpretation of German pilsners, combining a “bready” malt character with “herbal, floral” hops. Burial Beer Co. Shadowclock Asheville, N.C.’s Burial draws from several traditions to create its unfiltered pils with a “grain-sweet” foundation complemented by floral and earthy notes. Talea Al Dente Italian-Style Pilsner Italian pilsners get their distinctive flavor from dry hopping, and this Brooklyn product nails the balance between “clean crispness” and “a complex…

Limit sweets to mealtimes. Sugar is bad for teeth because certain bacteria in the mouth feast on it, producing a bath of acid that dissolves enamel. But when you eat a meal, your mouth produces extra saliva, which acts as an effective buffer against the acid and creates about a 15-minute window when sugar will do little damage. Never nurse a soda. If you do consume sweets between meals, don’t stretch out the indulgence. You expose your teeth to considerably more acid by sipping or nibbling all day than you do by downing a candy bar or soda all at once. Mind the coffee. Any acidic drink poses an acid threat itself. You needn’t swear off coffee, lemon tea, or orange juice, but because the acid weakens enamel, avoid brushing…

“Marjorie Taylor Greene has a dream,” said Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times. The once-fringe Georgia congresswoman, now a close ally of Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and a rumored vice-presidential candidate, declared last week that it’s time for a “national divorce” between “red states and blue states,” to liberate conservatives from “disgusting woke culture” that forces “their ways on us and our children with no respect for our religion/faith, [and] traditional values.” Greene suggested the post-divorce Disunited States could share a military, but otherwise let states determine their own policies on guns, elections, LGBTQ rights, Drag Queen Story Hour, pronouns, and other vital issues. Maybe Greene was “just trolling,” said Bonnie Kristian in The Daily Beast, but the idea of a national divorce is “more popular than…

Elvis Costello was deeply influenced by his longtime friend Burt Bacharach, the songwriter and producer who died last month at age 94, said Will Hodgkinson in The Times (U.K.). The English singer, 68, grew up studying Bacharach’s music, which he says is surprisingly complex despite being dismissed by some as lounge music. “The songs use an uneven meter because they’re conveying a feeling and a conversation,” Costello says. “Music tends to happen in a uniform way, but it’s not like that when you speak, with hesitations and so on, which is why orchestras find Bacharach’s music such a challenge.” They met in 1989 while recording in the same studios. “These are the chance encounters that don’t happen today because now everyone makes albums on their laptops,” Costello says. In…

Andrew McCarthy National Review “For all his woes, Donald Trump is a lucky guy,” said Andrew McCarthy. “On the cusp of being indicted in Georgia,” the former president “has been gifted Emily Kohrs,” a 30-year-old “publicity hound” who served as forewoman on the special grand jury investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. The judge overseeing the case opted recently to keep most of the jurors’ findings sealed, but Kohrs flouted that order, going on an “outrageous” media blitz last week with stops at CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times. In interviews, she strongly hinted that the special grand jury recommended charging Trump and many others with crimes, saying, “I don’t think that there are any giant plot twists coming.” The…

FRANCE Philippe Bernard Le Monde France is failing its prisoners, said Philippe Bernard. Since 1875, French law has required that every prisoner have a private cell, originally “to encourage moral rehabilitation” and later as part of France’s commitment to human dignity. But these days, it’s a law in name only. Overcrowding is rampant. When prison comptroller Dominique Simonnot visited the Bordeaux-Gradignan Penitentiary last summer, she found it at 240 percent capacity, with “people three to a cell,” one of them sleeping on the floor and “forced to plug his nose with toilet paper to avoid inhaling vermin.” Politicians have feigned indignation since at least 2000, when a Senate report called our prisons “a humiliation for the Republic.” Eighteen years later, President Emmanuel Macron declared “in a flamboyant speech” that incarceration…

Never let a tragedy “go to political waste,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. After a 141-car train carrying hazardous materials derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, last month, Democrats and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg decided to turn the disaster into “a parable of corporate greed.” The Democrats’ narrative was that the Norfolk Southern train left the tracks, spilling more than 100,000 gallons of vinyl chloride and other chemicals, because the railroad and Republicans had blocked and rolled back safety regulations. Among the regulations Buttigieg cited was an Obama-era requirement that certain trains be equipped with expensive, state-of-the-art braking technology. But this derailment was not caused by braking problems, and “there’s no evidence” that any of Buttigieg’s other regulatory fixes would have mattered. Showing up would have mattered,…

(Pantheon, $32.50) Matthew Connelly’s “harrowing” new book “dramatizes a hidden crisis,” said Brian Hochman in The Washington Post. We all know that Donald Trump and Joe Biden are both under investigation for the classified documents recently found in their private possession. But such discoveries point to how out of control the classifying of government documents has become. The federal government currently classifies another three documents every second, adding to an ever-expanding pile so vast that no one in Washington can even estimate its size. Connelly, who’s a Columbia University historian, warns that the public’s ability to monitor what its government is doing in its name has been gravely compromised, and he’s absolutely right. “The loss to historical understanding is catastrophic.” That’s hardly the only danger Connelly highlights, said Patrick…

“Raghavan Iyer has by some estimations taught more Americans how to cook Indian food than anyone else,” said Kim Severson in The New York Times. But for the book that he says will be his last, the 61-year-old chef, instructor, and author, who is dying of cancer, has not written a solemn farewell. Instead, On the Curry Trail celebrates the way bowdlerizers have helped spread Indian cooking around the world. In Iyer’s signature cookbook, 660 Curries, he stresses that curry is not a flavor but any dish that’s saucy. In the new book, he focuses on curry powder—an invention of British colonizers who wanted an easy way to reproduce the flavors of India. “No self-respecting Indian kitchen would have curry powder,” he says. Following curry powder’s spread, however, allowed…

3 The latest Gorillaz album “ranks with the best,” said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. More than 20 years after the concept’s debut, Damon Albarn’s shape-shifting “virtual band” remains a “remarkably flexible” medium for cross-genre collaboration, and this collection of “warm, twinkly,” melancholy electro-pop brings in several famous guests, including Bad Bunny, Thundercat, and Stevie Nicks. But whereas 2020’s Song Machine was overstuffed with cameos, this record foregrounds Albarn’s songwriting and his own world-weary voice. The album feels “more solid than exhilarating,” said Ben Cardew in Pitchfork. Though the singles “Silent Running” and “Skinny Ape” are strong, the rest of the record offers only routine blending of usual Gorillaz components: “a touch of hip-hop, a splash of dub, and big helpings of Albarn’s bighearted melodies.” But don’t judge…

More from the current horror renaissance… M3gan A Child’s Play for the technophobic age, this instant horror-comedy classic imagines a near future when AI robots assume a hybrid role as nannies and best friends to our children. It then compounds the nightmare, as M3gan goes to extremes to protect her young charge. Peacock Smile The inflection point at which a grin becomes sinister provides the nervous energy of this effective recent horror drama. Sosie Bacon is terrific as a terrorized therapist who is haunted by other people’s smiles after a disturbing encounter with a patient. Paramount+ Huesera: The Bone Woman This acclaimed new body-horror drama from Mexico should come with a “not for expectant mothers” disclaimer. The tale of a pregnant young woman cursed by a dark entity, it’s…

1Password is worth its $36 annual fee. The easy-to-use password manager generates complex passwords and fills them in on demand. The passwords are stored securely under AES 256-bit encryption, and a user only needs to remember a master password. Authy takes the hassle out of two-factor authentication. For any account you protect with two-factor authentication, such as Gmail or Facebook, it syncs access across multiple devices. The authentication tokens you receive from the free app are far more secure than tokens sent as SMS text messages. Dropbox provides only 2 GB of free cloud storage space, but that may be enough to store your most important documents, photos, and videos, and $10 a month buys 2 TB. Drafts provides a convenient place to draft texts, emails, social media posts, and…

After sustained and intense public pressure, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly announced this week it would cut the price of its most commonly prescribed insulin by 70 percent, said Ken Alltucker in USA Today. The drugmaker also said it would expand a program capping out-of-pocket costs at $35 per month. The price drop for the fast-acting injectable Humalog, Lilly’s biggest-selling insulin, takes effect in the fourth quarter and will save diabetes patients hundreds of dollars per month. FTX: New charges against Bankman-Fried Federal prosecutors this week charged Sam Bankman-Fried with four more financial crimes relating to the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, said Corinne Ramey and James Fanelli in The Wall Street Journal. The 30-year-old FTX founder pleaded not guilty last year to eight charges, including stealing billions in customer assets.…

The high cost of early Social Security It’s “no secret” most retirees are better off waiting to start collecting Social Security, said Lisa Ward in The Wall Street Journal. A recent study funded by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta showed just how costly taking benefits early can be. Monthly checks can be 76 percent bigger, adjusted for inflation, for those who start collecting at age 70, rather than at 62. That “would boost the typical worker’s median discretionary spending over a lifetime by $182,370, or around 10 percent,” and for the wealthiest 20 percent, the difference rises to $290,000. The math isn’t the same for everyone, but the researchers found holding off would be better for nearly 90 percent of people who are now 45 to 62. Still,…

Noah Smith Noahpinion.substack.com As the U.S. embarks on a $400 billion green energy plan, solar and wind projects are blocked over and over again because they “intrude on the scenic views of local landowners,” said Noah Smith. When they do go online, approvals to connect them to the grid “drag on for years.” Transit programs such as New York City’s recent subway extension cost “an order of magnitude”—10 times—more than similar projects in other countries, enriching teams of expensive consultants. And housing? Amid a historic shortage, a court has blocked a plan by the University of California to build student housing, “demanding that the university study whether students themselves constitute an environmental hazard.” I wish I were kidding. All these are examples of America’s “inability to build the things it…

This week’s question: A Miami art show attendee accidently knocked over a $42,000 Jeff Koons balloon dog sculpture, shattering it to bits. If the art world’s king of kitsch were to present the remnants of the dog as a new work, what should he name it? Last week’s contest: AMC Theatres is introducing tiered pricing in its cinemas, with prime seats in the middle rows costing $1 to $2 more than other areas. What would you name these rows to convince moviegoers of the value of paying extra? THE WINNER: “Prime Reel Estate” Daniel Hicks, Randolph, Mass. SECOND PLACE: “Jewel of the Aisle” Matthew Lane, Emporia, Kan. THIRD PLACE: “Central Casting” Walter Smith, Washington, D.C. For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go to theweek.com/contest. How to enter: Submissions…