Indholdsfortegnelse for June 13, 2025 i The Week Magazine

Do humans still need such big brains? Sure, parts of our cranial gloop continue to do useful work, like instructing our lungs to expand and contract, jaws to chew, fingers to swipe on touch screens. But everything beyond that basic stuff, it seems, could now be outsourced to AI. Students are already using the tech to glide through high school and college, getting chatbots to write papers that would once have exercised their developing gray matter (see Technology, p.20). Grooms, best men, and maids of honor are turning to AI to craft wedding speeches that previously would have required them to search through their mental catalog of memories for poignant and funny personal tales. Tech companies are laying off software engineers, the professional class that once defined brainwork, and…

■ A Florida congressman has introduced a bill that would block funding for Washington’s rail system until it rebrands itself the “Trump Train.” GOP Rep. Greg Steube said the change would give the D.C. metro “a fresh identity that aligns with efficiency.” Steube’s bill would also rename the metro’s administrative body, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), to the Washington Metropolitan Authority for Greater Access, or WMAGA. ■ A West Virginia prosecutor is warning that pregnant women who miscarry may face criminal charges. Women who have abortions cannot be prosecuted under the state’s anti-abortion law, but Raleigh County prosecutor Tom Truman says some state attorneys are considering using human-remains statutes to charge women suspected of self-aborting. Women who miscarry, said Truman, should promptly call “911 and just say,…

Clovis, Calif. Trans sports: A transgender California athlete last week took three medals at what some consider the nation’s most competitive state track-and-field meet, reigniting a heated national debate about trans girls competing in girls’ sports. Sixteen-year-old AB Hernandez, a high school junior, shared first place in the triple jump and high jump and second place in the long jump at the CIF State Track and Field Championships in Clovis. While Hernandez had the better scores in those events, a last-minute rules change let the athletes who finished with the next best distance share the medal and the podium. President Trump had pressured Hernandez to withdraw, threatening to cut California’s federal funding if state officials allowed her to participate. Polls show that while most Americans support transgender rights, they…

Brendan Liaw is unbothered by his lack of a career, said Callum Borchers in The Wall Street Journal. The Jeopardy champion, who has no job and lives with his parents, had host Ken Jennings introduce him on air as a “stay-at-home son.” The phrase is “tongue-in-cheek,” says Liaw, 27, and “sounds better than ‘unemployed.’” But Urban Dictionary, which added the term in 2007, defines it as “an unmotivated man-child,” and that doesn’t quite fit Liaw. He has a master’s in political science, and was studying for the LSAT when he got the call for Jeopardy. Immediately, he began training intensively for the show, memorizing trivia and practicing how to respond quickly under stress. “It was about a month of something like a Rocky montage. I practiced with a buzzer,…

David Corn Mother Jones “What happens when extremism becomes the mainstream?” asked David Corn. That’s exactly what’s transpiring “in MAGA World,” where white supremacists and neo-Nazis are now “treated as normies.” Just look at some of the Trump administration’s latest hires. The Pentagon’s new press secretary, 26-year-old Kingsley Wilson, is a far-right troll who has “cheered on the Great Replacement theory” that non-whites are being imported to replace whites, and has claimed Black Lives Matter had an “affinity for race-based violence.” She’s dredged up disproven lies about Leo Frank, a Jewish man lynched by a mob in Georgia in 1915. To lead the special counsel’s office, President Trump nominated 30-year-old Paul Ingrassia, who called for Trump to impose martial law after the 2020 election and praised the Jan. 6…

Tati Bernardi Folha de São Paulo You’ve heard of lovebombing, right? said Tati Bernardi. That’s when a man “bombards a woman with his infinite capacity for love” only to turn abusive, or ghost her, once she falls for him. I’ve been seeing this same phenomenon in the Brazilian media world—let’s call it “workbombing.” As a novelist, I’m always being approached by TV and film producers saying they want to option my latest story. They’ll call me “a genius, a room manager, a showrunner, a finally-found-the-author-I-have-wanted-my-whole-life person.” Just please first “go home and turn that synopsis you wrote for free into 10 outlines that you’ll also write for free.” Then they disappear and the show never materializes. The same thing happens with rich boys who “return from their colleges in…

■ The National Institutes of Health has terminated a $258 million research program aimed at developing an HIV vaccine. It’s the latest in a series of cuts to HIV-related initiatives by the Trump administration, which has also paused funding for a clinical trial of a Moderna HIV vaccine and withheld state funds for HIV-prevention efforts. The New York Times ■ The first report from the presidential Make America Healthy Again Commission, touted by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as being based on “gold-standard” science, cites numerous studies that do not exist and misrepresents the findings of many real studies. Such errors are characteristic of the use of generative artificial intelligence. NOTUS ■ Companies are pulling back on support for this month’s Pride celebrations, citing a rise in anti-LGBTQ…

Scientists have developed a new tool that delivers genes to malfunctioning brain and spinal cells to treat neurodegenerative diseases like ALS and Parkinson’s, reports The Washington Post. Over 300 researchers working with the National Institutes of Health’s BRAIN initiative created a system that maps how neural cells work together and how diseases interrupt their pathways. Then they engineered a virus that can act as a delivery truck to drop off a package of genetic material in only the affected cells, without damaging surrounding cells. So far, researchers have successfully applied the delivery system to mice, rats, nonhuman primates, and to human brain tissue in a lab, and it shows great promise. Because it can cross the blood-brain barrier, such a therapy could theoretically be given via intravenous infusion, without…

(Riverhead, $28) “What surprised me most about Sleep is that out of its careful, orderly prose—every word neatly placed as if on a well-set table—grew an exceptionally moving novel,” said Fiona Maazel in The New York Times. First-time novelist Honor Jones “takes her cues from writers like John Cheever, Richard Yates, and Virginia Woolf, all masters of the repressed and unsayable,” and she focuses her keen observational skills on Margaret, a divorced 35-year-old mother of two. Margaret is haunted by memories of being repeatedly molested by her older brother when she was 10, and Jones proves “very good at capturing how trauma can taint even small moments.” The novel’s opening stretch, depicting Margaret in childhood, is “a masterpiece of carefully crafted perspective,” said Ron Charles in The Washington Post.…

The Afterlife of Malcolm X by Mark Whitaker (Simon & Schuster, $31) Mark Whitaker “has a gift for streamlining gobs of material into a smooth, readable narrative,” said Chris Vognar in the Los Angeles Times. In his new book about Malcolm X, the former Newsweek editor deftly weaves together two disparate story strands, tracking the civil rights leader’s ongoing influence while also constructing a legal thriller about the three men convicted in Malcolm’s assassination. The result is “an engaging reminder that the likes of Malcolm never really die.” Dianaworld by Edward White (Norton, $33) In his study of Princess Diana’s enduring impact on today’s culture, Edward White “grasps for a new approach to very familiar material,” said Wendy Smith in The Boston Globe. Though the author’s sharp prose is…

Something Beautiful is “another Miley Cyrus grab bag,” veering from dream-pop balladry to clubby R&B to goth rock and more, said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. “That sounds like a criticism, but it’s really not.” With guest appearances that include Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes and Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Cyrus’ ninth album “goes places you would never expect.” And despite a second half dominated by electronic dance tracks that waste Cyrus’ vocal talents, her “willingness to confound” is welcome when so many other pop acts are content to be predictable. The “very grand claims” Cyrus has made about Something Beautiful ask us to consider it as a grand statement, said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. She has called it an attempt to medicate…

The Ex Files (Global) “The Ex Files is built on an odd premise,” said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer (U.K.). It’s a global affairs show in which Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s “vastly experienced” international anchor, discusses current events with her ex-husband, Jamie Rubin. “But once I listened, I quite understood why Rubin is there.” He was a top State Department official in both the Clinton and Biden administrations and adds valuable experience of his own, including his having helped almost broker a cease-fire last year between Israel and Hamas. “Both Rubin and Amanpour are so impressive,” and from their debut episode, “I learned more than I have from innumerable reports on Gaza.” The Ex Files is “a brilliant listen,” said Kerri-Ann Roper in The Independent (U.K.). In the second episode,…

Sinners Ryan Coogler’s hit thriller folds a grand meditation on the Jim Crow South, the birth of Delta blues, and white appropriation into a dark, gory, delightful vampire flick. Michael B. Jordan is as terrific as usual as twin brothers pursuing a nightclub dream. $25 on demand The Ugly Stepsister Fresh off festival screenings, this body horror romp does with the Cinderella fable what Sinners does with Robert Johnson’s deal-with-the-devil myth. A family seeking a reversal of fortune pins its hopes on an awkward daughter and a program of rudimentary plastic surgery. Shudder Companion A weekend getaway for several friends becomes horrifically complicated when one friend’s robot girlfriend turns violent. Scares and satire combine in this recent modest hit, which pairs Jack Quaid with contemporary scream queen Sophie Thatcher.…

■ Keeper is one of the password managers that makes it easy to securely share passwords with family members or friends. It’s not smart to do so by text or email, but with Keeper, the information is accessible only on the device it was sent to, and the recipient doesn’t need to use Keeper to access the information. ■ NordPass has a similar sharing function, and it also allows you to decide when access to the password will expire. ■ Dashlane is a great option if you’re sharing login credentials among a family group of up to 10 people. Parents can grant limited rights to children, letting them log in but not change settings or share access. ■ LogMeOnce offers robust “digital inheritance” features that allow you to designate…

Étienne-Émile Baulieu made access to abortion easier for generations of women. The French biochemist developed the synthetic steroid RU-486, now known as mifepristone, in the 1980s. Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone, which is necessary for a pregnancy to proceed. First approved for use in France in 1988, it drew condemnation from the start. Baulieu maintained that his medication saved lives. “Women die in botched abortions, 200,000 every year,” he said. “RU-486 can save them.” Though proved safe, the drug wasn’t approved in the U.S. until 2000. Born Étienne Blum, he was raised by his widowed Jewish mother, a lawyer, in Paris. When the Nazis invaded in 1940, he joined the French Resistance and changed his name. After the war, he became a doctor like his late father and then…

What happened A man accused of yelling “Free Palestine” as he threw Molotov cocktails at a Boulder demonstration in support of Israeli hostages was charged this week with a federal hate crime and 16 counts of attempted murder—the latest in a string of antisemitic attacks across the U.S. Police said the suspect, Egyptian-born Mohamed Sabry Soliman, told them that he wanted “to kill all Zionist people.” Soliman, 45, allegedly planned the attack for a year, waiting until his daughter graduated from high school to act. Fifteen people, including an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor, were injured in the attack, which took place at a weekly event called Run for Their Lives, intended to keep attention on Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. Two victims had to be airlifted…

Visual learners, after reports that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is considering reformatting the president’s daily intelligence briefing to make him pay attention, potentially as a Fox News–style broadcast, delivered by professional news anchors. “The problem with Trump is that he doesn’t read,” an insider explained to NBC. Fatalism, after a constituent warned Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst at a town hall that “people are going to die” as a result of the Medicaid cuts in President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” leading the Republican to reply, “Well, we’re all going to die.” Ernst later noted that “eternal and everlasting life” does await those who “embrace my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.” Parenting, after ultra-runner Stephanie Case won a 100-kilometer race over mountains in Wales, despite stopping three times to…

Patti LuPone was for years the tempestuous queen of Broadway, said Michael Schulman in The New Yorker, as brassy and pushy as New York City. Like a commuter elbowing through Manhattan’s rush-hour crowds, the three-time Tony winner and Evita star has always fought her own battles, but that doesn’t sit well with some people. “On a woman they don’t like that smell,” says LuPone, 76. “I’ve been punished for wondering what’s going on since I was 4.” She has had beef with everyone from Andrew Lloyd Webber, who fired her from the original London production of Sunset Boulevard, to fellow icon Audra McDonald, whom she calls “not a friend.” At one point, she stopped a play to snatch a cellphone from a texting audience member. Perhaps that’s why many…

Megan McArdle The Washington Post Republicans “need to ask whether they’ll do any better than Democrats” should President Trump experience a Biden-like cognitive decline, said Megan McArdle. A “good deal” of what Trump says is incoherent nonsense, but it’s the same “nonsense he’s been spewing for years.” So there’s no strong evidence he’s suffering from dementia. Still, Trump will soon turn 79, and when people reach their 80s, “faculties often diminish sharply.” Republicans have judged Democrats harshly for enabling the “Biden cover-up,” but “the sudden Republican piety” is “a little hard to swallow.” After Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election results and triggered the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Republicans lined up behind him, failing to “put their country over partisanship, money, and personal loyalties.” Would they react any…

“It’s hard to think of a more anti-conservative figure than President Trump or a more anti-conservative movement than MAGA. The president and his family are engaging in a level of corruption that was previously unfathomable. He and his administration have shown no qualms about using the federal government to target private companies, law firms, and universities; suing news organizations for baseless reasons; and ordering criminal probes into former administration officials who criticized Trump. The Trump administration is a thugocracy, and almost every principle to which Republicans once professed fealty has been jettisoned.” Peter Wehner in The Atlantic…

Daniel Johnson The Daily Telegraph You think right-wing populists are the only ones tough on immigration? Take a look at Mette Frederiksen, said Daniel Johnson. Denmark’s Social Democratic prime minister has always believed that the poor suffer the most when immigrants arrive, driving up housing costs and taking jobs. That’s why she sees “no contradiction between left-of-center politics and rigorous—some would say draconian—policies to protect her country’s borders.” In 2016, her party supported the controversial “jewelry law” that obliges migrants to surrender their cash and valuables to offset the costs of their stay. And when her party went on to gain office in 2019, it proceeded to pass laws that have made Denmark, often seen as a staunchly liberal country, one of Europe’s toughest migration regimes. Denmark now usually…

Zhang Xi China Daily Donald Trump’s attack on universities is a “spectacular act of self-sabotage,” said Zhang Xi, one that “threatens to unravel decades of academic dominance by the U.S. while achieving little beyond petty ideological victories.” Trump wants to keep out foreign students, barring them first from Harvard and then from all U.S. universities, and his State Department says it will “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students.” The courts are trying to block the moves, but even if they ultimately succeed, the damage has already been done. Trump has shown the world that “the U.S. is a country where education is hostage to political whims, where visas can be revoked over a tweet, where academic freedom lasts only until a president takes offense.” Already, the best and brightest…

A “white-collar bloodbath” could be imminent, said Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen in Axios.com. Dario Amodei, “one of the world’s most powerful creators of artificial intelligence,” warned last week that this rapidly advancing technology could wipe out half of all entry-level jobs and send unemployment soaring to 20% within five years. Most workers and lawmakers “just don’t believe it” and aren’t preparing for the coming transformation of workplaces, said the CEO of the AI firm Anthropic. But as AI rapidly approaches “superhuman intelligence,” Amodei believes employers will start replacing tens of millions of workers in “as little as a couple of years.” In software engineering, it’s already begun, said Kevin Roose in The New York Times. Amodei recently unveiled a tireless AI coding program that can replace engineers earning…

Bedbugs were likely the first human pests—and Neanderthals gave them to us, reports Discover. Researchers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute found that the bugs leaped from bats to our cave-dwelling Neanderthal cousins some 60,000 years ago. Once they began adapting to Homo neanderthalensis, it was easy to make the jump to Homo sapiens. Bedbugs stayed with us as we developed agriculture and then cities and spread all over the world. By comparing the complete genome sequences of the bat and human bedbug lineages, which are now genetically different, researchers can gain insight into how pests adapt to thrive in urban developments. “What will be interesting is to look at what’s happening in the last 100 to 120 years,” says co-author Warren Booth, an urban entomologist. “Bedbugs were pretty common in…

(Norton, $40) Sue Prideaux’s “gruesomely fascinating” Paul Gauguin biography opens with a bit of myth busting, said Anne Higonnet in The Wall Street Journal. In 2000, four of the celebrated painter’s teeth were found in a well near his onetime home in French Polynesia, and later testing of the teeth indicated that he had probably never contracted syphilis. “This twist surprises,” as we’ve long been told that the Paris-born postimpressionist was a sex tourist who died of the sexually transmitted disease after spending the last dozen of his 54 years spreading it among the teenage girls he impregnated in French Polynesia. Prideaux acknowledges that Gauguin had left his wife and children to move to pursue his art in Tahiti. But maybe he was professionally selfish in a relatively ordinary…

Jeanine Cummins no longer regrets writing the novel that made her infamous, said Alexandra Alter in The New York Times. Five years ago, American Dirt was a runaway best-seller before it became a target of fierce backlash fueled by the perception that the book’s tale of a widowed Mexican migrant and her young son was “trauma porn” dreamed up by a culturally insulated author. Cummins’ book tour was canceled owing to threats of violence, and she was shaken. “I was sort of the lit match to dry kindling,” she says, noting that the ensuing conversation about the overwhelming whiteness of the publishing trade was “long overdue.” But because Cummins is of Irish and Puerto Rican descent, being caught in the middle was especially dizzying. For a long time, she…

Garbage is “alt-rock royalty,” and the band’s eighth album reaffirms as much, said Neil Z. Yeung in AllMusic. “Confident and driven,” it’s “a potent rallying cry” for the fight against impending darkness, whether that’s mortality or the erosion of American democracy. The songs were created when singer Shirley Manson, 58, was recovering from a second hip-replacement surgery, adding lyrics to her bandmates’ instrumental tracks. The result is an album fueled by the quartet’s “signature” blend of “jagged guitar riffs, elastic bass, precision drumming, and electronic-kissed atmospherics,” all held together by “Manson’s inimitable vocals.” Since reuniting in 2010, this band born in the 1990s has issued “one rock-solid album after the next,” said Andrew Sacher in Brooklyn Vegan. This one’s “certainly fresh enough” to be mistaken for the work…

The Executioner Better than a flyswatter for killing bugs mid-flight, this racket-like device can zap many at once with the electric current that runs across its face. Because a pop and spark confirm each kill, “it’s also a whole lot of fun.” $40, walmart.com Source: Wirecutter Original Tick Key When ticks make their way past repellents and tucked-in clothes, the Tick Key will remove even the smallest of them “quickly and efficiently.” It won’t leave the head behind, and you can use it for pets, too. $10, amazon.com Source: Popular Mechanics Terro Liquid Ant Baits When you need to defeat an ant invasion, a pack of Terro bait traps is one of the simplest and most effective options. Place several around your home and the whole colony will be…

Jamie Dimon isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, said Steve Dickson in Bloomberg. The JPMorgan Chase chief executive said this week that “his retirement from the top post is still ‘several years away,’” unless the board feels differently. Speculation has swirled for years about when Dimon, 69, might step down from the nation’s biggest bank, and filling his shoes is one of the biggest open succession questions in corporate America. In January, Dimon’s right-hand man, Daniel Pinto, announced he was retiring in 2026, and other would-be successors will now have to wait even longer. Power grid: Meta signs deal for nuclear energy Meta this week signed a 20-year agreement with Constellation Energy’s nuclear site in Illinois to help meet its surging energy needs, said Pippa Stevens in CNBC.com. The agreement…

■ Who gains from a higher SALT cap? A proposed new increase in the state and local tax, or SALT, deduction could be a windfall to high-earning singles in high-tax states, but may offer only a modest benefit to upper-middle-class couples, said Ashlea Ebeling and Richard Rubin in The Wall Street Journal. The budget bill passed by the House and now being considered by the Senate would boost the deduction to $40,000, four times what it is now. The standard deduction for single taxpayers is $16,000, and $32,000 for a couple. “For married couples, the SALT cap is the same as it is for single taxpayers. Yet they get a doubled standard deduction, so it is harder to get over the threshold” where itemizing, rather than just taking the…

Mihir Sharma Bloomberg President Trump’s plan to tax the money that immigrants send home will make Americans less safe, said Mihir Sharma. “Hidden on page 1,054 of President Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ is a threat to impose a 3.5% tax on all remittance transfers” made by foreigners to accounts outside the United States. Like many Trump administration policies, this one is intended to make the lives of migrants and their families even harder. Vice President JD Vance has said in the past that a remittance tax will “disincentivize illegal immigration” as well as “reduce the cartels’ financial power.” He has it backward. If less money is available for poor families in Central America, it increases the incentive to try to come to the U.S. As for the cartels, they’re…

This week’s question: The Treasury Department announced that it will soon stop producing pennies, after determining that each 1-cent coin costs 3.7 cents to manufacture. In seven or fewer words, come up with an epitaph for our smallest denomination of currency. Last week’s contest: A South Carolina nudist resort has signed up a record 160 participants in its annual clothing-optional 5K race, the Buck Creek Streak. Using PG-rated language, what would you call a sports film that follows the race’s unattired competitors? THE WINNER: The Curious Race of Benjamin, Unbuttoned Jeff Jarrett, Pittsburgh SECOND PLACE: Marathon Tan Barry Cutler, Palm Desert, Calif. THIRD PLACE: The Hind Side Tim Mistele, Coral Gables, Fla. For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go to theweek.com/contest. How to enter: Submissions should be emailed…

■ Metal scrapper Nathan Barlow knew he had something more than “backyard art” when he bought 3,000 pounds of tarnished bronze busts from a fellow dealer. The Chalmette, La., business owner contacted artist Kate Garr, who realized the busts were made by the late Bill Ludwig, creator of New Orleans’ statue of Ignatius Reilly, the protagonist of A Confederacy of Dunces. Garr cleaned the sculptures, and organized a show. “My business is destroying things,” Barlow said, but Ludwig’s “was creating.” ■ Faizan Zaki, 13, won this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee—a victory he savored after coming in second last year in a lightning-round spell-off. Faizan first made the national bee when he was 7. He was considered the favorite last year, but lost in a tiebreaker in which competitors…

FEMA starts hurricane season unprepared As hurricane season began this week, the Federal Emergency Management Agency faced mounting concerns about its readiness. Acting FEMA director David Richardson—appointed last month after FEMA’s former leader was fired for saying he didn’t agree with President Trump that the agency should be scrapped—told staff in a meeting he didn’t know the U.S. even had a hurricane season, The New York Times reported. A spokesperson brushed off the comment as a joke. Richardson, who has no disaster response experience, told staff last month that FEMA was only “80% or 85%” prepared for the Atlantic hurricane period, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30. The agency has lost about a quarter of its full-time staff since the start of the Trump administration. An administration…

Kathy Bates’ own father didn’t think she looked like a movie star, said David Canfield in Vanity Fair. He told her hometown acting teacher that his daughter, who would go on to win an Academy Award for her role in Misery, was “not conventionally attractive.” Similar comments followed her throughout her five-decade career, Bates says, and when she was younger, they would devastate her. “You’re not Michelle Pfeiffer,” one journalist informed her. Later, Garry Marshall refused to cast her in Frankie and Johnny, even though she had originated the role onstage to great acclaim—because, she says, “he couldn’t make the leap that people would see me on screen kissing someone.” The role went to Pfeiffer. On another occasion, a journalist asked Aidan Quinn, Bates’ onscreen husband in another film,…

■ A jubilant Taylor Swift last week bought the master recordings for her first six albums, ending the pop superstar’s yearslong battle for control of her own music. The right to distribute and license those albums—from her 2006 self-titled debut to 2017’s Reputation—was acquired by music executive Scooter Braun in 2019, when he snapped up her former record label. Swift had bad blood with Braun, accusing him of complicity in the “incessant, manipulative bullying” against her by Kanye West, one of his clients. The following year, Braun sold Swift’s catalog to private equity firm Shamrock Capital for $300 million, leading Swift to re-record the albums and release them as “Taylor’s Versions,” effectively shrinking the value of the master tapes. Shamrock sold the recordings back to Swift, 35, for about…

Jonathan Cohn The Bulwark “RFK Jr. may have just ruined our best weapon against bird flu,” said Jonathan Cohn. The kooky health secretary last week canceled a $766 million contract to develop a human vaccine against the virus that’s currently “ravaging poultry farms”—and could potentially mutate so that it can easily pass among people. With human mortality rates as high as 50% in previous isolated outbreaks, a bird flu pandemic could dwarf the impact of the Covid pandemic, which killed more than 7 million people. That’s why the Biden administration awarded a contract to develop a bird flu vaccine to Moderna, the biotech company that created one of the original Covid vaccines. Moderna’s “secret sauce is mRNA technology,” which allows for much quicker vaccine production than traditional methods. But…

Esther Krakue Daily Express “The disgraceful case of Lucy Connolly reads like satire,” said Esther Krakue. Connolly, the 42-year-old wife of a Conservative Party local council member, was sentenced last year to 31 months in prison for a post on X, and now she’s lost her appeal. Connolly was reacting to the killing of three little girls at a Taylor Swift–themed dance class in Southport. Misinformation spread online had falsely identified the knife-wielding killer as a foreign-born asylum seeker, and she posted: “Mass deportation now. Set fire to all the f---ing hotels full of the bastards for all I care,” adding, “If that makes me racist, so be it.” Look, “no one is defending” her “despicable comment.” But she took the post down after just a few hours, and…

President Trump “wants to put big deportation numbers on the scoreboard,” said Philip Bump in The Washington Post, and the Supreme Court just gave him an assist. In a 7-2 emergency ruling last week, the justices cleared the way for the Trump administration to revoke the Biden-era humanitarian parole protections awarded to 530,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela while litigation continues in lower courts. Those people “came here legally and with the government’s blessing”—just like the 350,000 Venezuelans who lost temporary protected status after a similar ruling in May. But Trump is frustrated that he’s lagging on his pledge to remove “millions” of undocumented migrants—about 17,200 people were deported in April, 29% more than a year earlier—and so his administration is trying to deport “just about anyone…

“When bad things happen, good people ask, ‘What did I do wrong?’ They put their house in order. But bad people ask, ‘Who did this to me?’” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, quoted in Aish.com “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” Eleanor Roosevelt, quoted in the Samoa Observer “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10.” Bill Gates, quoted in American Lawyer “Painting is not made to decorate apartments. It’s an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy.” Pablo Picasso, quoted in ArtNews “An election is no time to discuss serious issues.” Former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell, quoted in the National Post (Canada) “Markets can remain irrational longer…

■ An Anduril-Meta VR alliance Meta and its former VR wunderkind, Palmer Luckey, are back in business together, this time working on high-tech gear for the U.S. military, said Heather Somerville in The Wall Street Journal. Luckey started one of Silicon Valley’s earliest virtual-reality headset companies, Oculus VR, when he was just 15 years old. Meta bought it in 2014, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg fired Luckey in 2017 after a series of disagreements, including his backing of a pro–Donald Trump political action group. Luckey has since become “a rising star within the Pentagon” with his defense company, Anduril. Meta and Anduril are now working on a joint bid for a $100 million defense contract to build a line of equipment with “sensors that enhance soldiers’ hearing and vision” and…

Arctic sea ice has been retreating by more than 12% each decade. That loss fuels climate change, because white ice reflects the sun’s heat back out to space while dark water absorbs it. And it also creates its own feedback loop, with warming water melting ever more ice, to the point where the North Pole ice cap is expected to disappear entirely in summer by 2040. The British research company Real Ice has hatched an ambitious plan to reverse the trend by thickening the winter ice so that it lasts longer into the summer months. It could do so, the company says, by drilling holes into the ice and pumping in water, which quickly freezes. As it congeals, “the water acts almost like lava,” Real Ice co-founder Cían Sherwin…

Andrea Long Chu is a book critic and essayist for New York magazine who the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2023. Her new book, Authority, collects her published reviews and essays and adds a statement of purpose and a short intellectual history of criticism. Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag (1966). The title is so good that it can trick you into agreeing with it on instinct. Sontag’s approach to criticism is always grounded in her undeniable stylishness, even when her actual claims about art are preposterous or insufferable. (To her credit, she later acknowledged this in an afterword.) Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabella Hammad (2024). A lucid lecture from a talented novelist, delivered just nine days before Oct. 7 and published a year later. Hammad…

Is a fourth album harvested from a single 2016 European concert tour “too much of a good thing?” asked Mike Gates in UK Vibe. “Not when it’s Keith Jarrett.” New Vienna arrives as the celebrated pianist, who ceased performing after suffering strokes in 2018, turns 80 and observes the 50th anniversary of his landmark Köln Concert album. The performance recorded in an 1870 Vienna concert hall finds him “in spirited mood, shaping new music in the moment,” music that’s meaningfully different from what he played at other stops on the tour. This is Jarrett “in his perfect element: simply improvising the moment he takes the bench,” said Michael Toland in The Big Takeover. Stringing together nine short pieces, he “hits on every aspect of his multifaceted playing,” opening…

In the world of whiskey, “cask-strength offerings are all the rage right now,” said Brad Japhe in Bloomberg. “Whether right or wrong,” a common belief among today’s whiskey lovers is that true devotees ought to drink the stuff uncut. Distillers are catering to the trend, putting aside the value previously placed on the way a touch of water lowers the alcohol content and thereby reveals more layers of flavor. George T. Stagg ($800) is “a master class” on how to maintain drinkability in a Kentucky whiskey that’s “dialed up to 11.” It “flaunts tobacco spice tonalities atop a rich, creamy mouthfeel.” Oban 15 Year Cask Strength Single Malt ($150). “Well worth the asking price,” this scotch “sings with unctuous notes of candied ginger and rancio.” Kavalan Oloroso Cask Strength…

■ Apply more heat. “It may seem counterintuitive,” but if a hot mug or pot has created a white ring on your wood tabletop, one way to erase it is with more heat. Heat causes the stain by expanding the wood’s pores and drawing in moisture. Heat can also let moisture escape, if you act quickly. So try holding a hair dryer set on low heat a few inches from the surface. If that fails, grab an iron dialed to a dry, low setting, place a dry towel over the stain, and run the iron over the towel for several minutes. ■ Try toothpaste. If you have some plain white toothpaste in the house, combine one part paste with two parts baking soda. Apply the mixture to the stain,…

A virtual-gardening game is sprouting into an online juggernaut, said Cecilia D’Anastasio in Bloomberg. Developed by a teenager “who still owns about half the game,” Grow a Garden, which can be found on the kid-favorite platform Roblox, “has quickly become one of the most-played titles in its history”—despite having a strangely provincial premise. Players “plant seeds, grow crops, and raise animals to ramp up the beauty of their virtual gardens.” Crops can be sold for virtual currency, which can be used to buy more seeds. Sellers are taking to online marketplaces and social media to advertise rare offerings, like “virtual grape seeds, dragonfly pets, and mangoes” that can spawn “more valuable fruits and vegetables.” Exotic animals also help players establish even more vibrant gardens. “Prices range from 5 cents…

About 70% of the population is under 30 years old in sub-Saharan Africa, where HIV is a leading cause of teenage deaths, and the rate of teenage pregnancy is twice the global average. In 2002, soccer players in Zimbabwe founded the nonprofit Grassroot Soccer (grassrootsoccer.org) to provide play-based health education. Its pioneering HIV-prevention syllabus has been running for decades in more than 60 mostly sub-Saharan African countries, reaching more than 25 million teenagers. Trained, local coaches lead programs, including one that improves mental-health awareness and management skills through soccer language. Another community-based program helps HIV-positive teenagers navigate relationships, teaching about antiretroviral therapy and transmission prevention, and matching the teens with HIV-positive mentors. Each charity we feature has earned a four-star overall rating from Charity Navigator, which rates not-for-profit organizations…

Michael Saltsman The Wall Street Journal Give Los Angeles a gold medal in economic stupidity, said Michael Saltsman. The city’s bid to host the 2028 Summer Olympics “was contingent in part on having enough hotel rooms for athletes, spectators, and officials.” Hotels had to sign agreements guaranteeing a certain amount of rooms at a given rate during the Games. Eight hotels are now threatening to pull out of the deal after Los Angeles recently passed a law hiking the minimum wage for hotel and airport workers to $30 an hour, plus $8.35 hourly in required health-care benefits. Unionized hotels were already on the hook for paying housekeepers as much as $35 an hour by 2027 after “a strike in 2023 that cost the city untold tourism dollars.” The hospitality…