Indholdsfortegnelse for May 12, 2023 i The Week Magazine

Sometimes, going bankrupt can look like an awfully profitable line of work. This week, Bed Bath & Beyond started wrapping up its operations with a liquidation sale. Back in 2021, in the flush of euphoria in the markets, a bunch of clownish speculators—oh, sorry, investors—on online message boards came up with a theory that everything Wall Street said was wrong. No one really believed this, but it was a good excuse for very-online hustlers to buy up a bunch of stock in troubled companies like Bed Bath & Beyond and the movie theater chain AMC, and thumb their noses at the experts who said investing in struggling mall stores and theater chains was not a great idea. When the price of shares rose, the meme lords got out with their…

Good week for: Populism, with a pledge from Thailand’s right-of-center Democrat Party—which is trailing badly in polls—to legalize sex toys if they win. Democrat Ratchada Thanadirek said legalization “could lead to a decrease in prostitution as well as divorce due to a mismatch of sexual libido.” Getting flood insurance, after forecasters predicted the 2023 hurricane season will be “very active,” with five major hurricanes hitting coastal areas in the Southeast and Gulf Coast. Crescendos, after a female concertgoer had what was described as a “loud full-body orgasm” during the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. Ear-witness Lukas Burton described the woman’s moaning as “an expression of pure physical joy.” Bad week for: Tucker Carlson, after a newly revealed text message from the Dominion lawsuit revealed what he thought…

Smokey Robinson wants to show that older folks can still be sexual, said Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian (U.K.). His first album of new songs in 14 years is entirely about sex, with the not-so-subtle title Gasms. “When I hear of grandfathers and grandmothers who are 60 years old being talked about as if you’re putting them out to pasture, I think it’s ridiculous,” says Robinson, 83. “This is a new era of life. I feel 50.” He’s been married for two decades to his second wife, interior designer Frances Glandney, 74. During his first marriage, he had a yearlong affair with Diana Ross, whom he’d had a crush on since he was 10, when her family moved to his street in Detroit. “She was fine!” he says. “We…

Nathan E. Sanders and Bruce Schneier The Atlantic Soon, artificial intelligence “will completely change the nature of campaigning,” said Nathan E. Sanders and Bruce Schneier. Last week, the Republican National Committee previewed the future of politics by using AI to create realistic-looking scenes of the dystopia that would occur in a second Joe Biden term: China invading Taiwan, a U.S. financial collapse, a flood of immigrants across an open border, troops patrolling cities overrun with crime. The RNC included a small disclaimer that it had used “AI imagery,” but before long, political operatives will use AI to create remarkably realistic photos, videos, and news stories that voters don’t know are fake. Campaigns could use AI “to appeal to the individual proclivities of each voter,” using easily obtainable data to…

“What would happen once a non-human intelligence becomes better than the average human at telling stories, composing melodies, drawing images, and writing laws and scriptures? Through its mastery of language, AI could even form intimate relationships with people, and use the power of intimacy to change our opinions and worldviews. People may come to use a single AI adviser as a one-stop, all-knowing oracle. Why read a newspaper when I can just ask the oracle to tell me the latest news? If we are not careful, we might be trapped behind a curtain of illusions, which we could not tear away—or even realize is there.” Historian Yuval Noah Harari in The Economist…

UNITED KINGDOM Neil Mackay The Herald It’s “boom time all around” for British banks, said Neil Mackay. But I’m not talking only about our financial giants, which are once again reaping the sort of multibillion-dollar profits they did before the 2008 crash. Other kinds of banks are doing brisk business, too. Food banks, virtually unknown in this country just a decade ago, are suddenly everywhere, handing out meals to British families whose children would otherwise go hungry. Last winter, we even had “warm banks,” heated community shelters where more than half a million Britons who couldn’t afford their fuel bills went to avoid freezing in their homes. This is simply as it should be, claims Bank of England chief economist Huw Pill. Last week, he told workers that they should…

MEXICO Pamela Cerdeira El Universal Mexican authorities are tricking the mothers of the disappeared by pretending to search for their children, said Pamela Cerdeira. This country has more than 100,000 missing persons, victims of the drug war who were killed either by drug gangs or by police—their families will never know which, because the bodies are never found. Members of the Madres Buscadoras, the Searching Mothers, go out to look at sites of possible mass graves, and authorities are supposed to assist. But that help is a sham, as I discovered when I went along on one of their searches. “Accompanied by police, a pedantic forensic anthropologist,” sniffer dogs, and an official with the State Commission for Victims, we went into an abandoned mine. But it was a perfunctory search.…

“Is Trump inevitable?” asked Jonathan Martin in Politico. It’s still early, but “a sense of fatalism” is setting in among Republican elected officials and party leaders about the former president’s chances of winning the GOP 2024 presidential nomination. House members are “lining up to take their turn at Mar-a-Lago” to kiss Trump’s ring, which could lead to “a snowball-down-the-mountain effect.” An NBC poll revealed that a substantial plurality of 46 percent of Republican primary voters would vote for him, while an NPR–PBS NewsHour–Marist poll found that 63 percent of Republicans think Trump should be re-elected even if he’s convicted of criminal charges. There are plenty of moderate Republicans who think nominating Trump would be suicide, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Trump alternatives are struggling. So with the…

The yearlong feud between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Disney Corp. has erupted into a bitter legal fight “with no end in sight,” said Arian Campo-Flores and Robbie Whelan in The Wall Street Journal. The giant entertainment company sued DeSantis and other state officials last week, accusing DeSantis of a “targeted campaign of government retaliation” for Disney’s exercise of its free-speech rights. The war began when Disney criticized Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, which bars teachers from talking to young children about gender identity and sexual orientation. DeSantis struck back by undermining Disney’s self-governing powers over a special district containing Disney World in Orlando, and stocking the governing board with conservative loyalists. When Disney outsmarted him by having the old board preserve the company’s authority just before it…

(Penguin Press, $32) We know from the start of The Best Minds that its story of a friendship and a struggle with schizophrenia will end in tragedy, said Lori Gottlieb in The Washington Post. But author Jonathan Rosen “tells this story with such a keen mix of compassion and eloquence we can’t help but hope there will be a twist that somehow saves everyone.” Rosen was 10 when he met Michael Laudor, and the two suburban New York boys quickly became best friends, both of them basketball-playing book lovers who eventually attended Yale together. But shortly after his 1984 graduation, Laudor began experiencing paranoid delusions, and his promising career in business consulting was paused for an eight-month stay at a neuropsychiatric clinic. Following a subsequent stint in a group…

Rainn Wilson knows what your first question will be, said Rachel Martin in NPR.org. Why did the guy who played Dwight on The Office write a book about spirituality? The 57-year-old actor argues there’s a subtle link between his signature sitcom persona and his interest in spirituality. “It’s so not cool to be religious,” he says. “And I’ve always identified as being a dork and a misfit. Maybe that’s why I played Dwight so effectively.” Wilson was raised in the Baha’i faith, which highlights the major religions’ connective tissue. Though he drifted away from the tradition, he returned to it in his 30s, and he says he now has no doubt that God exists. “How do I know? I know that I love,” he says. “All of these things…

4 “Disco has taken hold of the modern pop milieu,” said Julianne Escobedo Shepherd in Pitchfork. Jessie Ware helped to kick-start the genre’s comeback with 2020’s What’s Your Pleasure, and while Dua Lipa, Lizzo, and Beyoncé scored bigger hits by embracing 1970s dance music, “Ware is a true believer.” The British vocalist is “one of her generation’s preeminent white belters,” and her second ode to excess is “classic disco revival done right.” Going “beyond vibes,” Ware “delves into the well-oiled mechanics of bands like Chic, Sister Sledge, and a little P-Funk, pulling out all the parts to see if she can piece them back together.” All 10 tracks on this record “have bulletproof melodies and killer choruses, while snappy lyrics abound,” said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. Because That! Feels…

For more than four decades, The Tibet Fund (tibetfund.org) has worked to preserve the culture and identity of the Tibetan people in exile. Since China dissolved the Tibetan government in 1959, tens of thousands of Tibetans have lived as refugees in India, Nepal, and Bhutan. The Tibet fund provides health care and economic aid, as well as funding for cultural development programs to keep Tibetan language and traditions alive. Tibetan refugees continue to cross the border into Nepal to this day, in a dangerous journey made harder in recent years by China’s crackdown. Over its life, the Tibet Fund has welcomed 90,000 refugees who have made the crossing, and it remains the primary source of initial aid and support for new arrivals, including political prisoners and torture victims. Each…

Joanna Stern The Wall Street Journal Get ready for the attack of personalized AI deepfakes, said Joanna Stern. Recently I recorded about 30 minutes of video for a company called Synthesia, which used it to train my own “artificially intelligent avatar.” Through the Synthesia platform, I can now create a video using my clone saying just about anything. “It was like looking at my reflection in a mirror, albeit one that removes hand gestures and facial expressions.” The video clone’s “perfect posture and lack of wit” betrayed a certain obvious bot-ness. “All this will get better, though.” And AI voice cloning is already scary enough. I simply uploaded 90 minutes of my voice recordings to a web-based tool called ElevenLabs. Minutes later, I could “type in any text, click Generate,…

What happened With the prospect of a catastrophic default looming, President Biden called a meeting to discuss the debt ceiling with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other House and Senate leaders next week. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that the U.S. will likely exhaust its “extraordinary measures” to prevent a breach of the government’s $31 trillion debt ceiling “by early June, and potentially as early as June 1.” House Republicans are threatening to force the U.S. into default if Biden doesn’t agree to a list of spending cuts and policy concessions. The administration insists on a “clean” increase untethered to the GOP’s demands. House Republicans’ “Limit, Save, Grow Act,” passed last week, ties a $1.5 trillion debt-ceiling hike to steep discretionary spending cuts. Senate Democrats will ignore it, but…

An Oklahoma woman with a life-threatening pregnancy complication says hospital staff advised her to “sit in the parking lot” until she was close to death. Mother-of-three Jaci Statton, 25, was diagnosed with a cancerous, nonviable “molar” pregnancy, but she says hospitals cited state anti-abortion laws and told her to wait outside until her condition worsened. “‘We cannot touch you unless you are crashing in front of us,’” she says she was told. A Vermont elementary school has removed the words “male” and “female” from its fifth-grade reproductive biology class. Principal Sara Jablonski told parents the school’s “equity policy” required lessons to say “person who produces sperm” in place of “male” or “boy” and “person who produces eggs” instead of “female” or “girl.” In other news Justices to hear case on…

Anthony Fauci was treated like a savior at the start of the pandemic, said David Wallace-Wells in The New York Times Magazine. By the time he retired in January after four decades as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci, 82, had become a lightning rod for anger about masks, vaccines, and government Covid policy. Fauci admits to mistakes in the early days of the pandemic, when little was known about the virus’ spread. “If you knew many of the things then that now you know, definitely you would want to do things differently,” he says. People blame him for shutting down schools and businesses, but he says those decisions were not his; he was solely focused on public health. “An economist sees it from…

Prince William received a “very large” payoff in a secret 2020 settlement with Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper group, the royal’s younger brother, Prince Harry, revealed in London court filings last week. Harry didn’t specify how much William took to settle phone-hacking claims, but The Telegraph (U.K.) reports it was about $1.2 million. Harry has brought his own lawsuit against Murdoch’s tabloids, alleging that his voicemails were hacked from 1994 to 2016. Harry claims the royals settled to avoid having to testify about embarrassing voicemails, including King Charles alluding to his affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles in 1989 while he was married to Harry and William’s mother, Princess Diana. William was furious with his brother for disclosing the settlement and “will never trust Harry again,” a friend of William’s told The…

Matt Lewis The Daily Beast Democrats aren’t “immune from the seductive lure of conspiracy theories,” said Matt Lewis. That’s the only explanation for the fact that the “crackpot” anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is polling close to 20 percent in recent surveys of Democratic voters for the 2024 presidential nomination. The late Sen. Robert Kennedy’s son, who recently announced his presidential candidacy, has little chance of beating Joe Biden for the nomination. But why is “an imbecile with no qualifications” being taken seriously by anyone? Kennedy’s name is no doubt giving him a boost, and for decades, he also benefited from positive coverage of his environmental extremism and anti-nuclear scaremongering by “the mainstream liberal media.” For two decades, Kennedy has been claiming childhood vaccines cause autism, refusing to back…

ISRAEL Daniel Hoffman Ha’aretz To American Jews, klezmer music is charming, if a bit old-fashioned, said Daniel Hoffman. It reminds us of weddings and bar mitzvahs. Israelis, though, simply despise it. To them it represents the European past, and those who are stuck in the past, obsessing over the Holocaust. As an American violinist, I knew about the Israeli dislike for the genre even before I moved here from California two decades ago. But back then I was sure that “the beauty and artistry of this music”—with its clarinets and violins, its minor keys and folk-dance rhythms—would eventually win Israeli hearts. It hasn’t happened. Because klezmer is assumed to be the music of the Orthodox, it is tainted by association with the “toxic religious political agenda” of the far-right Orthodox…

The Supreme Court has decided fewer cases at this point in its nine-month term than at any time in the past 100 years. So far it has decided just 15 cases, with 44 left to go before the term ends next month. In 2019, the court had decided 28 cases by this point in the term; in 2018 it was 30 cases.NBCNews.com States that have adopted stand-your-ground laws have had a 55 percent higher gun homicide rate over the past two years than states that did not adopt them. These laws remove the duty to try to retreat from a threat before using deadly force.The Washington Post Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis married his wife, Casey, at Disney World in 2009. The couple exchanged vows at a pavilion overlooking Cinderella’s Castle…

“Good taste is death.” Mary Quant, quoted in Harper’s Bazaar “You’re either a fighter or a runner. And runners always run out of road.” Dennis Lehane, quoted in The New Yorker “This kindness, this stupid kindness, is what is most truly human in a human being.”Vasily Grossman, quoted in The Wall Street Journal “Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour, than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.” Edmund Burke, quoted in The Atlantic “The past couple years, I’ve done a lot of work on myself, and I’ve realized that I’ll be fine as long as I get constant attention.” John Mulaney, quoted in Vulture “I’m not conceited. I’m convinced.” Little Richard, quoted in the Los Angeles Times “Dreaming, after all, is…

Clubhouse loses its mystique “If there was a poster child for the tech industry’s irrational exuberance during the Covid pandemic, it was Clubhouse,” said Ari Levy in CNBC.com. The audio-only social-networking app closed an investment round valuing it at $4 billion in April 2021, when it boasted 14.2 million downloads. Invitations to Clubhouse were a sign of being in the know in Silicon Valley, and ordinary internet users followed the insiders’ lead. But “the Clubhouse fad faded quickly.” Last week, the company announced it was laying off half its staff as part of a “reset” to design and launch “the next evolution of the product.” After raising hundreds of millions of dollars in 2021, Clubhouse’s founders “insist they have enough capital to keep going,” and claim they are working…

Even a mild knock to the head can cause long-lasting brain damage, reports The Times (U.K.). Researchers at Cambridge University examined the brain scans of 108 people who had suffered a concussion—the sort typically sustained in falls, car crashes, cycling accidents, and contact sports. They found that after six months, only about half the concussion patients had made a full recovery. What’s more, in the 45 percent of patients who had long-lasting symptoms—such as fatigue, poor concentration, and headaches—there were changes in the way different parts of their brain communicated with one another. Even some of the patients whose initial scans didn’t display any obvious neurological problems, such as inflammation or bruising, still suffered damaging changes in the thalamus region, where sensory information is integrated and relayed around the…

J. Ryan Stradal is the author of the best-selling novels Kitchens of the Great Midwest and The Lager Queen of Minnesota. His new novel, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club, focuses on a mother, a daughter, a grandmother, and the family business. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (1989). I wasn’t ready for this book when I read it in high school, but it recalibrated my notions of long-form narrative, genre conventions, and food writing all at once. Esquivel’s novel remains a load-bearing wall of food fiction, and its magnificent descriptions are as sensuous and moving as any in the intervening decades. The Cook by Maylis de Kerangal (2016). A painfully short book I didn’t want to end. I could’ve read it in an afternoon, but instead…

3 “A supergroup of superstar jazz musicians might bring all sorts of supersized soloing to mind,” said Kate Hutchinson in The Guardian. Dinner Party, however, takes a “less noodlesome” and “more egoless” approach to playing jazz, one that “feels distinctly L.A.” Pianist Robert Glasper, saxophonist Kamasi Washington, multi-instrumentalist Terrace Martin, and producer 9th Wonder “bring serious chops,” but the quartet keeps things low-key with their second record, a collection of “easy-breezy electro-R&B.” Though there is some funky heft to “Watts Renaissance,” Enigmatic Society is not as weighty as 2020’s Dinner Party, said Andy Kellman in AllMusic. It’s “a more romantic work,” often buoyed by the main guest vocalist, Phoelix, who “sounds like he’s transmitting from the beyond” when he harmonizes with Glasper’s piano on “Answered Prayer.” These are children of…

It’s “hard to believe” but true that Greece was a latecomer to the modern wine world, said Katrina Yentch in Imbibe. The Greeks were among the earliest recorded wine drinkers, but centuries of tumult delayed the establishment of standards and appellations. A half-century of growth has made quality far easier to find, as these bottles show. 2020 Ktima Biblia Chora ‘Areti’ ($27). Assyrtiko grapes flourish on Santorini, but this wine from mainland Greece shows their charms: “tangerine and orange notes on the palate” before a “zingy lemon finish.” 2017 Tselepos Blanc de Gris Moschofilero ($26). Extended skin contact gives this moschofilero “an impressive rose-gold color and notes of citrus and stone fruit.” 2017 Domaine Katsaros Valos ($27). The xinomavro grape produces hearty reds. This one delivers “full flavors of…

“California is on the brink of a whitewater rafting season for the ages,” said Jack Dolan in the Los Angeles Times. Snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is the deepest it’s ever been, and as it melts, “it’s sending immense volumes of water cascading through some of the most beautiful rafting rivers in the world: the Kern, the Tuolumne, and the American.” One family-owned rafting company, Sierra South Mountain Sports, hopes to stay open until Halloween, thanks to the deluge. Last week, the Kernville-based outfitter took me to the Upper Kern, a free-flowing torrent where tangles of uprooted trees lined the banks. The area offers Class I, II, and III rapids for first-timers, but if you’re feeling brave, the thrilling and sometimes dangerous IVs and Vs will really make your…

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates this week in what may be the end of a long round of hikes, said Jeff Cox in CNBC.com. The quarter-percentage-point increase marked “the 10th consecutive increase since March 2022, taking the Fed’s benchmark borrowing rate to a target range between 5 percent and 5.25 percent,” the highest since 2007. While Chairman Jerome Powell said there was no decision yet on whether the Fed will stop raising rates, the central bank no longer said it “anticipates” further hikes will be needed, a dovish shift from prior statements. IBM: Hiring pause for jobs vulnerable to AI IBM will pause hiring “for roles it thinks could be replaced with artificial intelligence,” said Brody Ford in Bloomberg. CEO Arvind Krishna said this week he could “easily see…

Leasing an electric vehicle A loophole enables you to get the EV you want and still qualify for a full $7,500 tax credit, said Keith Naughton in Bloomberg. All you have to do is lease instead of buy. “Fewer than a dozen electric vehicles qualify for the credit if purchased by the consumer,” thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act. The bill significantly cut down the number of credit-qualifying vehicles because it imposed restrictions on where parts are made, in order to boost American manufacturing. Most EV companies, including Tesla, source parts from overseas. But worry not: After lobbying by international automakers, “all battery-powered models” will qualify for full credit “if they’re leased, because in that case the IRA categorizes them as commercial vehicles.” Rocky road for small-cap stocks Small-cap…

Bud Light put itself in the middle of the culture wars with “a single commemorative can of beer,” said Danielle Wiener-Bronner in CNN.com—which “wasn’t even for sale.” The controversy started with a beer can sent to Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender TikTok star, to “mark a milestone in her transition.” A conservative backlash ensued, and sales plummeted, off 26 percent for the week ending April 26 compared with a year earlier. By this week, Bud Light’s maker, Anheuser-Busch, was in full damage-control mode. Between the initial promotion and Anheuser-Busch’s defensive reaction, the beer maker managed to anger both sides. A “milquetoast statement” from Anheuser-Busch’s CEO and putting two marketing executives on leave failed to placate conservatives. Meanwhile, the vitriolic response and Budweiser’s failure to defend Mulvaney confirmed liberals’ worst suspicions.…

Jay Clayton and Gary D. Cohn The New York Times Are we really going to let Europe dictate how our companies behave? asked former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Jay Clayton and former National Economic Council director Gary Cohn. Britain’s regulators blocking Microsoft’s purchase of the video game company Activision Blizzard is “just the latest example of the tail wagging the dog.” Historically, U.S. law would likely allow this kind of transaction, but the Federal Trade Commission under the Biden administration, “which is unapologetically anti-merger,” hoped to block it. The solution was simply to encourage Britain to do it. This is not an isolated example, or we might shrug it off. In April 2021, the FTC reportedly invited the Europeans to assert jurisdiction over a biotech merger between Illumina and…

Harry Belafonte was an American legend. An electrifying performer, he was the first Black Emmy Award winner, the first Black man to win a Tony, and the first person of any race to have a record sell more than 1 million copies. But he also made history beyond the entertainment world. A major bankroller of his friend Martin Luther King Jr. and a key liaison between Black activists and Hollywood, he helped the civil rights movement gain wider public acceptance. The cause of justice animated nearly everything he did. Even “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song),” the playful calypso tune that became his calling card, had a political message. “It spoke about the struggles of the people who are underpaid, who are the victims of colonialism,” he said in 2011.…

Jerry Springer was the king of trash TV. Over 27 years and 4,000 episodes, The Jerry Springer Show brought a parade of humanity’s worst impulses into American living rooms. There were cheating spouses, white supremacists, and feuding relatives. There were episodes with titles like “Threesomes With Grandma,” “I Married a Horse,” and “Stripper Wars.” Secrets were revealed, wrongdoers confronted, and quite often fists and chairs flew, with bouncers racing to separate combatants as the audience chanted “Jer-ry, Jer-ry.” A genial character, Springer maintained a wry calm amid the fray. Regularly lambasted for debasing the culture, he defended his show as escapist entertainment, but acknowledged he wouldn’t watch it himself. Given the choice, “I would have politics on every day,” he said in 1998. “But I was hired to be…

After a series of exonerations and botched executions, prison officials are increasingly reluctant to do the killing, said Isaac Willour in The Dispatch. Just participating leaves many with PTSD. Ron McAndrew’s third execution was the last he would ever oversee. On March 25, 1997, McAndrew, then the warden of the Florida State Prison in Raiford, watched as guards escorted Pedro Medina into the death chamber at the prison and strapped him into “Old Sparky,” the electric chair that had been in use since 1923. Medina had been convicted of the gruesome 1982 murder of Dorothy James, a 51-year-old elementary school teacher. “I am still innocent,” Medina said when asked for his last words. Guards strapped his limbs into the chair, placed a saline-soaked sponge atop Medina’s head, then latched an electrode on top…

This week’s question: Belgian officials destroyed a shipment of Miller High Life beer because the slogan “Champagne of Beers” violates European Union laws requiring anything labeled “champagne” to come from France’s Champagne region. In seven or fewer words, come up with a new slogan Miller can grudgingly use that doesn’t violate this rule. Last week’s contest: An Indian farmer has spent the past 13 years building a three-story, ship-shaped house modeled after the Titanic. What would you call a cinematic epic about his quest to make a live-in version of the doomed vessel? THE WINNER: “My Hearth Will Go On” Joel Nelson, Goleta, Calif. SECOND PLACE: “I’m King of the Porch!” Larry Rifkin, Glastonbury, Conn. THIRD PLACE: “Hold the Ice” Len Rosen, Wilmington, Del. For runners-up and complete contest…

Beatriz Flamini recently emerged from a dark cave where she’d spent the past 500 days alone, said Sam Jones in The Guardian (U.K.). The Spanish mountaineer descended 70 meters below ground near Granada, Spain, in November 2021, as part of a study designed to find out how her mind and body would deal with extreme deprivation and solitude. Flamini, 50, says it mostly went swimmingly. “I got on very well with myself,” she says. Flamini says she lost track of time after Day 65 and asked the research team not to send any updates about the world above. She passed time by writing, drawing, knitting, exercising, and reading 60 books, and taking photographs inside the cave. She left her excrement at a collection point, and the team sent down…

Jonah Goldberg Los Angeles Times “Is the GOP becoming a dysfunctional chat room?” asked Jonah Goldberg. The comments sections on online articles have always been dominated by obnoxious trolls, who inevitably drive away “the decent folk.” The Republican Party has succumbed to that same dysfunctional phenomenon. State GOP organizations across the country “are being slowly taken over by Trump worshippers, conspiracy theory enthusiasts, et al., who think worrying about ‘electability’ is the stuff of losers, cucks, RINOs and globalists.” In Georgia, the popular Gov. Brian Kemp is distancing himself from the Trumpified state GOP, telling donors to give money to his PAC rather than the party. Sane conservatives appalled by Jan. 6 and continuing election denial are fleeing party organizations, leaving them in the hands of loonies. In 2022,…

UKRAINE Maryna Danylyuk-Yarmolaeva Espreso.tv China is posing as peacemaker in Ukraine, said Maryna Danylyuk-Yarmolaeva, but it is no neutral party. Chinese President Xi Jinping, who speaks frequently with Russian President Vladimir Putin, stalled for more than a year before finally deigning to phone our own Volodymyr Zelensky last week. Our president called the talk “long and meaningful,” but we all know his words were simply platitudes. Xi has abetted Putin at every turn, buying his oil and gas and promoting a so-called peace plan that would cement Russian territorial gains. The truth is, Xi felt compelled to call only because his ambassador to France had just made a huge gaffe by claiming that Ukraine had no right to sovereignty of its own. European countries were appalled at that outburst, and…

Popping a common sleeping pill before bed may help stave off Alzheimer’s, a small new study suggests. Poor sleep has long been linked to an increased risk of the neurodegenerative disease, although it’s unclear whether the insomnia is a cause or a symptom. For the trial, 38 participants between ages 45 and 65 slept in a university research unit for two nights and had a small amount of cerebrospinal fluid removed via a spinal tap every two hours. Those given a large dose of the sleeping pill suvorexant (sold under the brand Belsomra) saw drops of between 10 and 20 percent in their levels of amyloid and tau, two proteins linked to Alzheimer’s. The drug didn’t actually increase the length or quality of participants’ sleep, but the researchers speculate…

(Harper, $30) Small Mercies is “Dennis Lehane at his best,” said J. Courtney Sullivan in The New York Times. In this “unflinching” Boston crime drama set just after the 1974 court ruling that ordered the desegregation of the city’s public schools through busing, a white teenage girl from South Boston goes missing on the same night a young Black man is found dead at a neighborhood subway stop. The girl’s working-class mother, Mary Pat, gets angrier the more she digs into the case, coming to question the racism she’s steeped in as well as the local mob boss who helps enflame it. She turns against the South Boston she’s known, and “it is a thrill to watch her burn it all down.” Lehane “makes you want to read fast…

Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $35) Christina Sharpe’s new book models a new way for Black Americans to see the world, and it all begins with her mother, said Jenna Wortham in The New York Times. “A deft blend of memoir, theory, archival documents, and lyrical reflections on daily life,” the book assembles 248 brief observations. Some note the persistence of anti-Blackness; others attend to the richness of Black life, particularly manifestations of mutual care. Sharpe’s mother, because she insisted on joy, becomes the book’s lodestar. Honey, Baby, Mine by Laura Dern & Diane Ladd (Grand Central, $30) Many actor memoirs are fluff, but not this one, said Helen Brown in The Telegraph (U.K.). Diane Ladd had been told she had months to live when…

3 “The hallmarks of a National song—wry lyrics, earthquake-proof song structures, painterly arrangements—seem tailor-built to sound more graceful with age,” said Clayton Purdom in Rolling Stone. The group founded by five Ohioans in 1999 released some of its best music during its second decade, and this follow-up to 2019’s relatively diffuse effort proves “a remarkable reassertion of the band’s potency.” Matt Berninger’s lyrics “sound wrenched from someplace primal,” while Bryce Dessner’s arrangements “have never been more spare.” Too often, though, “they lean on what they know best: subdued, boilerplate indie rock,” said Abby Jones in Consequence. “At what point does consistency slip into tedium?” There are times when this record “comes across as too polite,” said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. “But once you tune into the National’s…

For oenophiles… Drops of God More than a few viewers may acquire a taste for wine-world drama from this stylish new series. The daughter of a deceased oenologist stands to inherit his highly valuable collection of rare wines but to do so must best her father’s foremost acolyte in a tasting competition. Apple TV+ Sour Grapes When the market for rare wines took off in the early 2000s, a young wine enthusiast drove up prices, then started selling. This edge-of-your-seat documentary details how he fooled elite collectors by selling them counterfeits. YouTube A Year in Burgundy Winemaking is romantic, but it’s also very hard work. Live the life vicariously in this fantastic documentary that embeds with seven Burgundian families as they navigate the seasons and ply their craft. Prime…