Indholdsfortegnelse for March 28, 2025 i The Week Magazine

No administration in Washington has ever had trouble finding ways to spend money, but it’s unlikely that any was quite as proudly vocal about its spending as the Biden White House. Take the CHIPS Act, a centerpiece of the Biden administration’s industrial push (see Best Business Columns, p.34). The law allocated $52 billion in subsidies for projects that would have happened anyway, or for ones that are already imploding. Intel, the biggest beneficiary under the act, has pushed back the completion date of its new Ohio plant from 2025 to 2031—a date that sounds suspiciously like “never.” And then there is the Environmental Protection Agency, whose mandate the Trump administration is drastically rolling back (see Talking Points, p.17). The powers of the EPA, always expansive, multiplied after climate change…

■ Oklahoma’s Board of Education has approved new social studies standards directing high school students to “identify discrepancies in 2020 election results.” The standards cite President Trump’s debunked claims about mail-in ballot fraud and the “sudden halting” of ballot counting in swing-state cities. State superintendent Ryan Walters said the standards do not “support or negate a specific outcome,” and are merely intended to help teach kids to “think for themselves.” ■ Officials in Florida’s Miami-Dade County are considering a bill that would rename two dozen streets with the titles of local rap anthems. Commissioner Keon Hardemon, the bill’s sponsor, says names like Grind With Me Terrace will boost tourism while honoring local music heroes. Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins said the plan could hurt property values, adding, “I don’t want…

Helen Fielding has learned to laugh through tragedy, said Julia Llewellyn Smith in The Times (U.K.). In 2016, her ex-partner—Emmy-winning Simpsons writer Kevin Curran, father of her now 20-year-old son and 18-year-old daughter—died at age 59 after a long illness. “We have a saying in our family: ‘Don’t get too #deathy,’” says the Bridget Jones author, 66. “I’m always reluctant to be too personal, but the children’s father did die and he wrote for The Simpsons, so no joke was too dark to make. That made me see you don’t have to sit around feeling sorry for your loss.” Moments of black comedy arose as she tried to navigate grief with her young kids. “Children have this way—they’ll suddenly say, ‘Why can’t we live in a normal family like…

Michael A. Cohen MSNBC.com Nearly everyone assumes President Trump is just trolling Canada when he talks about turning our northern neighbor into the 51st state, said Michael A. Cohen. But he’s been insisting on this nutty notion for months now, and his White House press secretary, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have now joined him in urging Canada to consider joining the U.S. “We’re all too dumbfounded to acknowledge it,” but Trump is serious about annexing Canada. He believes a punishing trade war will force Canadians to surrender their sovereignty, and reportedly told former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the 1908 treaty finalizing the border between the two countries must be revised. But “why is Trump doing this?” He wants to go down in…

Richard Prebble The New Zealand Herald Normally, fact-checking a foreign leader “wouldn’t be a sacking offense,” said Richard Prebble. But when Phil Goff, our ambassador to the U.K., questioned whether President Trump “knows his history,” the government gave him the boot. Foreign Minister Winston Peters felt he had no choice. Someone in Goff’s position, he said, is “not able to free think—you are the face of New Zealand.” Translation: Trump is notoriously thin-skinned, and crossing him can backfire catastrophically on the entire country. This sensitivity, of course, doesn’t go both ways. Trump routinely blasts his counterparts in other countries as “nasty” and “two-faced.” But New Zealand is not a superpower. We have only been “able to have an independent foreign policy” recently. “Until Chinese warships did live fire drills…

■ Global sea levels rose 35 percent more than expected last year, climbing by 0.23 inches according to NASA satellite data. Melting ice sheets and glaciers account for part of the rise, but the biggest factor was an unusual amount of ocean warming that led to expanded water volume. The annual rate of sea-level rise has more than doubled since records began in 1993; sea levels have climbed by a total of 4 inches since then. ABCNews.com ■ Arlington National Cemetery has scrubbed information from its website about dozens of prominent Black, Hispanic, and female veterans, as part of a wider Defense Department purge of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) materials. Among the names removed from Arlington’s “Notable Graves” page are those of Gen. Colin L. Powell, first Black…

Archaeologists have uncovered a cache of 27 carved-bone tools in northern Tanzania that date back 1.5 million years—a million years before our hominin ancestors were thought to have developed the ability to systematically make such implements. While research has shown that humans started crafting tools from chipped stone about 3.3 million years ago, the earliest known bone tools were found at European sites thought to be 250,000 to 500,000 years old. The 27 tools excavated at Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge all came from the limbs of large animals, mostly elephants and hippos, and were shaped and sharpened in a similar fashion. Some were carved into elongated sticks with sharpened points at one end and notches at the other that could have been used as a grip. Others resemble pear-shaped hand…

For people with aching knees, a fix could lie between their eyes, reports The Times (U.K.). Cartilage, the rubbery tissue that cushions knees and other joints, doesn’t heal on its own. And so existing treatments for damage caused by injury or wear and tear—such as physical therapy and joint replacement surgery—are of limited effectiveness. A new approach devised by Swiss researchers involves removing a sliver of cartilage from a patient’s nasal septum, a procedure that can be done under local anesthetic. The cartilage cells are then grown on a soft-fiber scaffold, forming tissue that can be grafted into the patient’s knee. In a study of 98 patients split into two groups, one of which received grafts matured for two days and the other for two weeks, those who got…

“Laila Lalami has a knack for taking a flashy premise and underdelivering,” and “that’s a compliment,” said Sam Worley in NYMag.com. In Lalami’s “unsettling, meticulously observed” new novel, a woman who has turned to a brain implant to help her sleep has been detained for months with others like her because her monitored dreams have marked her as a potential crime threat. But while “events pile up that have the surface appearance of big drama,” Lalami stays focused on the effects of incarceration on her protagonist, Sara Hussein, an intellectual who is losing faith in her own innocence. Worse, the future Lalami paints looks alarmingly like our present, “which is to say corrupt, dumb, and terrifying.” Well into the story, the novel “takes a fascinating turn,” said Anita Felicelli…

Lion by Sonya Walger (New York Review Books, $16) The stories that actress Sonya Walger tells in her slim first novel “seem too good to be invented,” said Anna Mundow in The Wall Street Journal. The narrator is looking back on her relationship with her charming, mercurial, heedless father, and because her account is “littered with disappointments and betrayals,” the novel “might well have made grim reading.” Instead, it’s restless, seductive—a tragic semi-autobiographical love story lit up by its subject’s charisma and its author’s descriptive powers. See Friendship by Jeremy Gordon (Harper Perennial, $18) Jeremy Gordon’s smart debut novel only seems to be about a podcaster’s attempt to root out the story behind a high school friend’s early death, said Ryan Chapman in The New York Times. Though Gordon…

Playboi Carti “couldn’t be a normal rap star if he tried,” said Tom Breihan in Stereogum. On his long-awaited new album, the man who invented the rage-rap subgenre “seems to work entirely on impulse,” switching flows and vocal styles as the spirit moves him, and “if you’re willing to embrace the chaos,” the music on Music is “truly exhilarating”—“like running directly into a hurricane.” Carti is not a master of speech or message, and “from all available evidence,” he’s “not a good guy.” But “his electrified jabber is a whole new instrument, a vehicle for drug-dazed death-drive energy,” and “you can’t ignore Carti and remain fully tapped in with the things that are currently happening in popular music.” This star-studded record, his first album since 2020’s revolutionary Whole…

The French Connection Not to be upstaged by the soon-to-be iconic car chase in this classic 1971 crime drama, Hackman earned his first Oscar playing “Popeye” Doyle, a brash, bigoted New York City cop who’s also cunning and patient enough to bust a major heroin ring. Prime The Conversation In this tense 1974 thriller, Hackman is Harry Caul, a wiretapper hired by a mysterious client to record a couple conversing in a public square. As Harry obsesses over the conversation, Hackman patiently shows him to be a guilt-ridden wreck of a man. $4 on demand Hoosiers One of Hackman’s greatest skills as an actor was his ability to subtly reveal layers of character. He does it impeccably here, playing a basketball coach who’s handed a low-stakes comeback chance with…

“Is it even a Pakistani dawat if there is no korma?” asked Maryam Jillani in Pakistan: Recipes and Stories From Home Kitchens, Restaurants, and Roadside Stands (Hardie Grant North America). A dawat is a special-occasion feast, and most feature as the main dish this luscious curry, traditionally made with goat. I’ve adapted the recipe of Karachi-based cook Shumaila and her husband, Nawaz, who is a chef and restaurant owner focused on traditional Pakistani food. It’s an indulgent recipe, “but korma nearly always is.” And while korma is traditionally served with sheermal, a saffron-infused flatbread, it also pairs well with plain white rice and naan. Recipe of the week Lamb korma 4 green cardamom seeds (removed from the pod)3 black cardamom pods1 cup vegetable oil1 medium yellow onion, roughly chopped6…

To island-hop in the Caribbean, “you don’t need to charter a catamaran or find a friend with a private plane,” said Matt Meltzer in Thrillist. “All you need to do is find a flight to Sint Maarten”—because the island’s Princess Juliana International Airport (SXM) “serves as a hub for much of the Eastern Caribbean.” For fares of $80 to $200 per leg, carriers such as Winn Air and Air Antilles will ferry you by prop-engine plane to any of a dozen nearby islands in under an hour, and to St. Barts in just 15 minutes. “In a week, you could legitimately hop to five different islands.” And what could be more glamorous than “popping into beach bars from the British Virgin Islands to the Grenadines, greeting your other island-hopping…

Alan Simpson had an irreverent streak and a way with a quip. “We have two political parties in this country: the Stupid Party and the Evil Party,” the three-term Wyoming GOP senator liked to say. “I belong to the Stupid Party.” He likened pushing a 1986 immigration bill through Congress to “giving dry birth to a porcupine,” and said entitlements had turned the U.S. into “a milk cow with 310 million tits.” The towering conservative—he stood 6-foot-7—ticked off plenty of people. But he also won respect for his lack of pretense, his ability to forge bipartisan alliances, and his willingness to buck party orthodoxy. A fiscal conservative who called environmentalists “bug-eyed zealots,” he was also an early backer of same-sex marriage and a defender of abortion rights. Being a…

This week’s question: An amateur photographer in Ontario went viral after capturing images of a 20-minute battle between a Canada goose and a bald eagle; the clash on a frozen lake ended with the feisty goose fighting off America’s national bird. In seven or fewer words, come up with a photo caption for this symbolism-laden image. Last week’s contest: Alarmed podiatrists are urging young people not to participate in the #droppingthingsonmyfoot challenge, in which TikTok users record their reactions to dropping heavy objects—including air fryers, tables, and computer monitors—on their own feet. In seven or fewer words, come up with a PSA message warning teens against crushing their toes for likes and shares. THE WINNER: Crushing it will mean crutching it Rosemary French, Springfield, Ill. SECOND PLACE: Toes before…

Homecomings, after a SpaceX capsule carrying NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore—whose International Space Station mission was extended from eight days to nine months because of technical problems with a Boeing spacecraft—splashed down in the waters off Florida and was quickly surrounded by a pod of curious dolphins. Keepsakes, after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt rejected a suggestion by French lawmaker Raphaël Glucksmann that the U.S. mark its slide into autocracy by returning the Statue of Liberty to France. “Absolutely not,” said Leavitt. “It’s only because of the United States of America that the French are not speaking German right now.” Donald Trump, who, for at least the second year in a row, claimed to have won the annual golf championship at his club in Palm Beach,…

Unlike many of her Hollywood peers, Christina Ricci has no regrets about becoming a child actor, said Rosemary Rossi in Variety. She made her screen debut at age 9 in Mermaids (1990) and won worldwide fame playing Wednesday in the Addams Family movies. “From the time I was very young, I always felt completely comfortable in front of a camera,” says Ricci, now 45. At home, it was a different story: She has described her father, with whom she cut ties at 15, as a failed cult leader who was physically violent. Movies “rescued me from a childhood that was not very nice and a family that was not very safe.” She was spared the “most heinous” aspects of being a child in the movie business. “Nobody tried to…

David Brooks The New York Times Thanks to Donald Trump, “America’s whole reputation is shot,” said David Brooks. Our nation spent a century cultivating strong alliances with other democracies—but Trump has “smashed those relationships to smithereens.” Over the past two months, the president has divorced America from the era of “superpower peace” by virtually ending our defense commitment to Europe, launching a culture war against Western liberalism, and slapping punishing tariffs on our European and North American allies. In shock and “revulsion,” they now see that “America, the nation they thought was their friend, is actually a rogue superpower”—a “Judas” whose leader is aligning the U.S. with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Our spurned allies no longer blame Trump alone, since Americans re-elected him and thus chose to abandon our ideals.…

“If I want to know how Donald Trump is feeling about any given day’s events, I wait until 12:30 a.m. and then check his Truth Social account. Whenever Trump feels frustrated, or trapped by events, and is looking for some way out of his current political predicaments, he takes to venting. It’s not that the man lacks a filter, it’s that he does not properly grasp the difference between what he says and what those statements reveal on a deeper level. He gives far too much of himself away to the rest of the world—including America’s rivals and enemies—by living his emotional life out loud on social media.” Jeffrey Blehar in National Review…

Kim Eun-mi Korea JoongAng Daily “Korean society is ailing,” said Kim Eun-mi. Our birth rate is plummeting in tandem with measurements of happiness. The suicide rate just hit a 13-year high. And more and more people “pass away alone, unnoticed.” The thread tying together these “heartbreaking” warning signs is “unbearable loneliness,” which affects an estimated 1 in 5 Koreans. We share some of this with other advanced economies, where the elderly are isolated and the young isolate themselves, “watching YouTube alone” instead of hanging out with friends. But in South Korea, the loneliness epidemic is worsened by the “shrinking economy” that has pushed many older people into poverty and left our youth “overwhelmed by uncertainty about the future.” As a society, we’ve become withdrawn, missing out on normal social…

Terry Prone Irish Examiner Taoiseach Micheál Martin knows how to escape the lion’s den “smiling and all in one piece,” said Terry Prone. On a recent visit to Washington for the annual St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, the Irish premier skillfully avoided provoking the volatile President Trump. Throughout his stay, the Taoiseach grinned “in that slightly worried way he shares with golden retrievers” and “even managed to be warmly accepting of JD Vance’s shamrock socks.” When Trump groused that Ireland had stolen the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, Martin “mildly pointed out” that American firms “hadn’t done badly in Ireland.” He could have countered by noting that U.S.-owned companies have brought “a piddling number” of jobs to Ireland compared to the amount the U.S. generates each year. But world leaders have learned…

President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency “is ready to make polluters great again,” said Hayes Brown in MSNBC.com. EPA director Lee Zeldin last week said he’ll cancel 31 environmental regulations, declaring it “the largest deregulatory announcement in U.S. history,” while Trump vowed to promote the opening of “hundreds” of coal-fired power plants. Coal produces far more pollutants than other energy sources and was being rapidly phased out, but in a social media post, Trump called coal “BEAUTIFUL” and “CLEAN.” Instead of curbing pollution and combating climate change, Zeldin said, the agency’s mission is to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home, and running a business.” Policies being scaled back or repealed include rules on greenhouse gas emissions. More than 1,100 staff scientists are being fired; environmental justice…

A Chinese company is selling a smartphone built to withstand the apocalypse, said Florence Ion in Gizmodo. The Tank 3 Pro by Unihertz is “water, dust, and shock resistant,” and its 23,800 mAh battery is good for about a week without needing a charge. There’s “a 100-lumen projector built right into the smartphone chassis,” which lets you “stream a movie on the wall of a pitched tent”—or underground bunker. It has a navigation system that includes GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, and Galileo, and “if you forget your camping lights, the phone has one with adjustable brightness and a red and blue emergency warning light.” The biggest downside is that it weighs a pound and a half—about three times the weight of an iPhone 16 Pro Max.…

“The story of this excellent book is in one sense familiar,” said Edward Posnett in The Guardian. Author Chloe Dalton, a normally busy professional, befriends an animal—in this case, a baby hare, or leveret—and learns unexpected lessons about living wisely. “But there is much more going on here.” After Dalton happens upon the apparently abandoned leveret and hesitatingly takes in the creature, providing food and shelter, she gives it the freedom to come and go while learning from close observation. As human and hare grow and change, “theirs is a mutual dance, one without a leader.” But Dalton, for her part, is transformed by what becomes “a sustained attempt to see the world through the hare’s eyes.” There’s “something both wonderfully archaic and utterly contemporary” about this story of…

Samina Ali has been to oblivion and back, said Caitlin Gibson in The Washington Post. In her new memoir, Pieces You’ll Never Get Back, the author of a prizewinning 2004 novel recounts how she suffered a grand mal seizure during childbirth in 1999 and awoke as a different person. She didn’t recognize her husband. She no longer could speak fluent English. Her memory was a blank for two weeks and, even then, doctors predicted that her career was over. But her California doctors had been wrong when they dismissed her concerns about her pre-delivery symptoms, and she believed they were wrong again. Instead of putting away her novel-in-progress, she started over, forcing herself to sit at her desk each day to excavate her mind for her old ideas and…

“Lonesome Drifter continues Charley Crockett’s white-hot run of records that are remarkably even-keeled,” said Ben Salmon in Paste. “Like his fellow Texans in Khruangbin,” the 40-year-old country-blues veteran is “ultra-consistent, highly listenable, and effortlessly cool.” On his first album with a major label after releasing 14 independently, he’s still staking his claim where country, folk, and blues meet soul, and because “self-reliance and a healthy suspicion of The Man have been recurring themes in Crockett’s songs,” he gets only one song into this album before taking a shot at Nashville record execs. “You didn’t hear it from me,” he sings. “They can’t stand to see you free.” With “hooky songs about hardscrabble romance and life on the road,” Crockett “continues to advance his persona: rambling man, raconteur, philosopher,”…

The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady for a second consecutive time amid increasing economic uncertainty, said Amara Omeokwe in Bloomberg. Chair Jerome Powell said this week that the central bank is still “not in a hurry to adjust borrowing costs” as it waits for “greater clarity” on the impact of President Trump’s policies. The markets jumped up, however, after fresh projections showed Fed officials still expect two rate cuts to happen this year, “the same number as officials estimated when they last issued projections in December.” Turnaround: New Intel CEO makes AI chip push New Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan is considering “significant changes” to the company’s chip-making methods, said Max A. Cherney in Reuters. Tan, who was hired for the CEO job last week, had been on Intel’s…

■ The condo insurance blacklist “A fast-growing and mostly secret mortgage blacklist” is locking up the housing market in some areas, said Jean Eaglesham and Nicole Friedman in The Wall Street Journal. The number of condo developments that no longer meet Fannie Mae’s requirements for guaranteeing loans has grown to 5,175, up from a few hundred before 2021. Many of these complexes have hundreds of units, like Shadow Ridge, a 440-unit townhouse and condo development in Ventura, Calif. The blacklist, concentrated mainly in Florida and California, is making it harder for buyers to get loans and sellers to make deals. Both Fannie and its sister organization, Freddie Mac, “have long required a minimum level of insurance coverage.” But soaring insurance rates have forced some developments to agree to “pared-down…

Jack Shafer The Washington Post Let’s call the CHIPS Act what it really is, said Jack Shafer: “grand larceny” against the American taxpayer. The 2022 law set aside $52 billion in subsidies and other incentives for the semiconductor industry to build and upgrade U.S. chip factories. Consider two of its biggest beneficiaries. Intel has shed 50 percent of its market value over the past year. Now it is exploring a transfer of its U.S. manufacturing facilities to Taiwan-based TSMC, which in turn is getting CHIPS Act funds to build up its own factories in Arizona. Why are “a failing company, which is likely to waste its handout as it goes down the swirly,” and a profitable foreign chipmaking giant getting these government handouts? Because of a fabricated notion that…

Roy Prosterman single-handedly changed the way countries treat peasant farmers and landowners. Arguing that the Marxist idea of brute confiscation of land was too divisive, he proposed instead to compensate large landowners fairly. That, he said, would allow for peaceful redistribution of a nation’s resources, which would help emerging economies to develop. Over six decades, he worked with governments in some 60 countries, showing them how to lift up their poor. “If people don’t have a stake in the society,” Prosterman said in 1993, “they have a proclivity to explode.” Raised in Chicago, Prosterman was a whiz kid, graduating from the University of Chicago at age 18 and Harvard Law School at age 22. He was quickly snapped up by a top New York law firm, where he prospered…

“Clashes between executive and judicial power are all but certain to reach the Supreme Court in the weeks ahead,” said Jess Bravin in The Wall Street Journal. Amid the deportation fight, Trump has challenged the legality of preemptive pardons issued by former President Joe Biden before he left office. Trump claimed the pardons, designed to protect family members and officials who’d crossed or investigated Trump, were “null and void” because they’d been signed with an autopen, a common practice. Legal experts say there’s “little to no support in the law” for the gambit; Trump said it will “be up to a court” to decide. Meanwhile, in a “grievance-filled” speech at the Department of Justice, Trump vowed “vengeance” on his enemies, said Alan Feuer in The New York Times. He…

Social Security cuts phone service for many beneficiaries The Social Security Administration this week announced a change that could make it harder for many recipients to apply for benefits. From March 31, people who want to file for benefits or change the bank where their payments will be deposited will no longer be able to do so by phone, and must first verify their identity online or in person at a field office. The Trump administration said the policy change is needed to combat fraudulent activity. Advocates note that many older or disabled beneficiaries may struggle with online services or have difficulty in traveling to an office—dozens of them are being shuttered. The new ID system could lead to as many as 85,000 extra in-person visitors a week to…

Michael Sheen is a hometown hero twice over, said Emine Saner in The Guardian (U.K.). The Frost/Nixon and Good Omens actor is one of the most famous sons of Port Talbot, a former industrial hub in South Wales where 30 percent of residents now live in poverty. After finding success in Hollywood, Sheen decided a decade ago to move back to Port Talbot and to dedicate much of his time to charity. One of his first projects was leading nearby Cardiff’s 2019 bid to host the Homeless World Cup. When funding fell through, he sold his houses in Los Angeles and Wales to pay for it. “At first, I thought it was the end of everything. I was in massive debt—I’m still paying it off.” But he soon began…

■ Ben Affleck might be trying to win back ex-wife Jennifer Garner, reports the New York Post. Talk of a reunion between the two, who were married from 2005 to 2018, began earlier this month after paparazzi caught Affleck, 52, tightly hugging Garner, 47, at their son’s 13th birthday party. A source said that Affleck “would love another chance” with Garner now that he’s finalized his divorce from his most recent ex-wife, Jennifer Lopez. Images of the pair’s embrace reportedly led Garner’s long-term boyfriend, California burger magnate John Miller, 47, to warn her that he’ll “walk away” if he sees “anything like that again,” said an insider. But a source close to Garner suggests Miller has nothing to worry about, because she has no interest in getting back together…

Fareed Zakaria The Washington Post President Trump “is launching America’s version” of China’s “Cultural Revolution,” said Fareed Zakaria. To marginalize intellectuals, academics, and scientists, his administration is slashing billions in federal research grants in a “dramatic assault” on universities, which threatens to undermine one of our greatest competitive edges. Before he became vice president, JD Vance told an audience of conservatives that “professors are the enemy,” and that “we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities”—a view later echoed in Project 2025. That corrosive campaign is now underway, and it “resembles nothing so much as the early days of the Cultural Revolution.” That’s when Mao Zedong shut down China’s universities and sent professors out to the rice fields and factories. The Trump administration is now making deep cuts…

Asbjorn Svarstad Nettavisen Our European neighbors must think we’re “a nation of money-grubbers and war profiteers,” said Asbjorn Svarstad. Norway has amassed a huge windfall from the Ukraine war that could solve the continent’s defense problems instantly. Our sovereign wealth fund is now worth $1.8 trillion—and $118 billion of that came straight from our neighbors’ pockets. Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, Vladimir Putin cut off Russian gas supplies to Europe, sending energy prices skyrocketing. That left Norway, the continent’s biggest gas supplier, to lap up the profits. All the while, the same European allies we were gouging were pushing their budgets to the limit to help fund Ukraine’s fight. Now the war has reached a critical turning point, with “increasingly unfriendly signals from Washington” as President Trump squeezes Kyiv…

When Covid-19 was declared a pandemic five years ago, it “triggered a brief moment of radical unity,” said Janelle Nanos in The Boston Globe. “Huddled in our homes, we rallied” as the virus swept our communities and gasping victims flooded emergency rooms. We sewed masks, looked out for neighbors, and “celebrated first responders and frontline workers.” As the grim toll mounted—at one point, more than 4,000 Americans were dying every day from Covid—our political leaders “made enormous investments in those in need,” bailing out entire industries and “sending $1,200 checks to nearly everyone, no questions asked.” Meanwhile, scientists developed a vaccine at record speed, “and some of us wept with joy as the first shot went in our arms.” Political polarization dropped as a common foe brought us together.…

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.” Edmund Burke, quoted in Common Dreams “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” Plato, quoted in The Knowledge “I don’t want to be God—I don’t like the hours.” Rabbi Dovid Orlofsky, quoted in The Jewish Link “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” Journalist A.J. Liebling, quoted in MediaPost “Money is like manure. It stinks when you pile it; it grows when you spread it.” Indian philanthropist J.R.D. Tata, quoted in The Sunday Guardian (India) “If you don’t cheat, you look like an idiot; if you cheat and get caught, you look like a…

■ Chipmakers fear $50 billion reversal Semiconductor manufacturers are worried that President Trump could claw back federal funding, said Tripp Mickle and Ana Swanson in The New York Times. The $50 billion CHIPS Act to rebuild the U.S. chip industry “was one of the few things to unite much of Washington in recent years.” It has one notable detractor, however: Trump. During his recent address to Congress, Trump “veered off script” to attack the CHIPS Act, which he called “a horrible, horrible thing.” The Biden administration provided Trump with an opening to back out because it “was too slow to provide subsidies in the first place.” Intel, one of the biggest recipients, has struggled to turn its business around and recently delayed plans to build a factory in Ohio…

British scientists have identified a gene that could explain why some dogs, and people, are prone to overeating and obesity. Researchers at Cambridge University analyzed slobber samples from 250 Labrador retrievers, a breed notorious for an insatiable appetite and tendency to pile on the pounds. They found that the chunkiest labs tended to share five genes, one of which, DENND1B, had the biggest impact on weight. That gene affects the brain pathways that control energy balance and appetite. Labs with DENND1B had about 8 percent more body fat than their peers, possibly because they struggle to know when they’re full and so keep eating. When the researchers scoured a database of human genetic information, they found the gene was also linked with higher body mass in people. The discovery…

Linguist and Columbia University professor John McWhorter is a podcast host, the author of 20 books, and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. His new book, Pronoun Trouble, explores the recent evolution in how we present ourselves and address one another. James by Percival Everett (2024). Everett masterfully makes real the quieter agonies of slavery, including the looming threat of pitiless violence for even looking at a white person before they look at you. By having Huckleberry Finn’s Jim and other slaves speak standard English and use Black English only to assuage whites, Everett gives a richer sense of their humanity than is possible when we only read them speaking in dialect. The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley (2015). Here’s a master class on a key idea: that…

The new Throwing Muses album is, like much of the band’s earlier work, “beach music for an eclipse,” said Bill Pearis in Brooklyn Vegan. Formed in Rhode Island in 1981, the storied alt-rock group has endured through lineup changes and evolving styles, even a turn to mostly acoustic guitars on this record. Still, “the through-line remains Kristin Hersh’s off-kilter melodies and vocals that often feel like she’s channeling spirits from the beyond.” Despite sunny titles such as “Summer of Love” and “South Coast,” Moonlight Concessions has an “eerie, nocturnal vibe” owing to bluesy progressions, prominent use of cello, and Hersh’s usual “slightly sinister” delivery. She continues to be “a force of nature: ungovernable, volcanic,” said Stevie Chick in The Guardian. “Drawing on her inextinguishable survival instinct,” she sings…

Meet brunello’s “younger, fresher sibling,” said Jessica Dupuy in Food & Wine. While Tuscany’s most celebrated red wine carries a steep price tag and requires patience to allow for aging, you don’t even have to look outside brunello’s hilltop hometown of Montalcino for an excellent alternative that’s “perfect for everyday drinking.” Like brunello, rosso di Montalcino is made from sangiovese grapes, and its brighter style is winning over today’s wine drinkers. 2021 Poggio San Polo ($34). “Bright and easygoing,” this rosso is “juicy and fruit-forward, featuring lush cherry, plum, and soft tannins.” 2021 Canalicchio di Sopra ($42). A product of one of Montalcino’s historic estates, this bottle “balances freshness with depth,” and features “notes of ripe red berries, floral hints, and subtle spice.” 2021 Il Marroneto ($46). This “fine-boned”…

Camping with 130 rescue cats Guests like you aren’t exactly the priority at Purradise Springs in Fort White, Fla., said Andrea Sachs in The Washington Post. That honor goes to about 130 rescue cats who prowl the so-called glamping sanctuary, “blending into the landscape like lions in the Serengeti.” For owners Thom and Denise Howard, job one is making sure the felines are well cared for. “After that, it’s the guests,” Thom says. Self-selecting clientele spend their nights in canvas tents, called “Purrts” (as in yurts), that the cats roam in and out of and are outfitted with rugs and comfy beds. The tents also have AC and space heaters that, “on chilly evenings, draw cats like moths to a porch light.” Travelers who are allergic to cats “should…

Porch piracy is turning into a sophisticated and organized operation, said Esther Fung in The Wall Street Journal. Federal agents arrested 13 people last month “in connection with what they say was an international crime ring that targeted FedEx deliveries nationwide.” The gang “included dispatchers who managed runners” to steal the packages when a FedEx truck showed up to a house. At least two AT&T store employees in New Jersey helped track hundreds of shipments of iPhones and other electronic devices to customers. A cybercriminal known online as CookieNerd had also written software code “to get around FedEx limits on delivery-data requests,” enabling the thieves to track shipments as they approached their final destination. The group sent the stolen items to a New York business, Wyckoff Wireless, that later…

By the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the early 1990s, pop icon Elton John had witnessed many friends succumb to the disease. But it wasn’t until the death of his friend Ryan White, an American teen who contracted HIV from a blood transfusion, that he decided to create the Elton John AIDS Foundation (eltonjohnaidsfoundation.org). The nonprofit works to reduce stigma around HIV/AIDS and to make HIV/AIDS prevention, education, treatment, and testing available to all people, and especially for stigmatized groups vulnerable to the disease, such as the LGBTQ community, sex workers, and drug users. Since 1992, the foundation has sent $600 million to thousands of programs in 95 countries, putting thousands of people on the HIV prevention pill PrEP, providing more than 10,000 people annually with lifesaving antiretroviral…

Steven Levy Wired Mark Zuckerberg’s free-speech ethos fails its own test, said Steven Levy. Meta last week convinced an arbitrator to prevent the author of a new memoir from promoting or distributing Careless People, a tell-all about Facebook. The author, Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former global public policy director at Facebook, has some mildly explosive stories about Sheryl Sandberg, who allegedly “pressured her to share a bed,” and Mark Zuckerberg, who apparently reveres Andrew Jackson. Still, “this is a company that has had every nasty charge thrown against it, and it keeps getting bigger.” Why roll out the cannons on this one? As someone who “made millions of dollars” working on Facebook’s lobbying team, it’s fair to argue that Wynn-Williams was “one of the careless people, too,” who “stuck around…