Indholdsfortegnelse for June 20, 2025 i The Week Magazine

If you zoom in on Nevada’s notorious Area 51 on Google Maps, you will see a couple of runways and a collection of ordinary buildings on the edge of a great salt flat. That salt flat, Groom Lake, shows up as an almost featureless block, making you wonder if it might somehow be shielded from satellites until you realize it is just reflecting the light that falls on it. And that’s exactly what the long saga of Area 51 does, too: It reflects back every wish and suspicion thrown at it. In this week’s torrent of news, the revelations about Area 51 (see The U.S. at a Glance, p.7) can easily get lost. That’s too bad, because thanks to excellent reporting from The Wall Street Journal we now have…

What happened Elon Musk waved the white flag in his feud with President Trump this week, just days after writing a series of social media posts in which he denigrated the Republican spending bill, threatened to deny NASA use of SpaceX spacecraft, and linked the president to the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. After Vice President JD Vance and chief of staff Susie Wiles urged the Tesla and SpaceX CEO to make peace, Musk deleted several of his posts, including the one about Epstein, and called Trump to apologize. He then posted a public retraction, saying he “regrets some” of the barbs he hurled because “they went too far.” Trump, who had threatened to cut “billions and billions” in federal subsidies and contracts with Musk’s companies, was magnanimous, if aloof.…

■ The Trump administration has threatened to pull federal education funds from New York unless the state scraps its ban on the use of Native American mascots. On a visit to Massapequa High School, Education Secretary Linda McMahon praised the school’s “incredible” headdress-wearing chief mascot, and vowed “the Trump administration will not stand idly by as state leaders attempt to eliminate the history and culture of Native American tribes.” ■ A North Carolina high school has agreed to pay $20,000 to a student suspended for using the “racially motivated” term “illegal alien.” Christian McGhee, 17, was given an assignment to write about “aliens.” Seeking clarification, he asked, “Like space aliens or illegal aliens without green cards?” and was suspended. McGhee’s mother welcomed the settlement, but wishes that instead of…

Wenatchee, Wash. Manhunt: Police said this week that they believe they had picked up the trail of a Washington father accused of kidnapping and murdering his three daughters. The Chelan County Sheriff’s Office spent last week searching by land, air, and water for 32-year-old Travis Decker after the bodies of his three daughters—ages 5, 8, and 9—were found near a campsite east of Seattle. The girls never returned from a visit with Decker, an Army veteran who the sheriff’s office warned had extensive military training. A sheriff’s deputy found Decker’s pickup truck about 40 miles from the girls’ home in Wenatchee. Their bodies were spotted nearby with plastic bags over their heads, and an autopsy concluded they died from suffocation. Their mother said she was concerned that Decker was…

Oleksii Yukov spends his days engaged in the most macabre of tasks, said Anthony Loyd in The Times (U.K.). With a team of nine volunteers, he recovers the remains of soldiers killed in Russia’s war in Ukraine. They’ve gathered over 3,000 bodies since the war began in 2022. The volunteers bag the corpses, along with uniforms, letters, and scattered teeth—anything to help identification. The dead are sorted at the morgue: Russians are sent into storage to await repatriation, while Ukrainians are returned to their families. Yukov, 39, doesn’t distinguish between bodies on the battlefield, saying his “task is only to connect the dead with those who loved them.” It’s risky work: In September 2022, he lost his right eye to an antipersonnel mine; four months later, a 21-year-old member…

Kelsey Piper Vox Artificial intelligence is about to change privacy “in a way that I find pretty terrifying,” said Kelsey Piper. I recently uploaded a photo of my son playing on a beach to OpenAI’s o3 tool. To my horror, the AI used the pattern of the waves, the sand, and the sky to pinpoint our exact location to Marina State Beach in Monterey Bay, Calif. Most of us don’t worry about our digital footprint because we believe our data will be used only to serve us personalized ads. We’ve relied on our relative obscurity for privacy, since it would take “an extraordinary amount of work” to collect and store in one place all the data your online activities can reveal—your address, phone number, movements, face, web history, friends,…

Partha Sinha The Indian Express “India is built on the crowd,” said Partha Sinha. “We don’t just gather—we perform our existence in multitudes.” We’ve all experienced the kind of communal joy that erupted last week after the long-hapless Royal Challengers Bengaluru finally won a cricket title. On the day of the victory parade, fans “swarmed the streets” outside the home stadium, waiting for the players to arrive on a bus. At some point, a heaving mass of people surged the wrong way, and “a celebration became a stampede” that killed 11 people. It was the second such horror this year, after 30 died in a crush at the Kumbh Mela Hindu festival in January. Each time, we are shocked, “as though chaos isn’t the inevitable consequence” of drawing thousands…

■ Lawmakers in more than a dozen states have introduced or passed legislation aimed at supposed chemtrails left behind by airplanes. According to a debunked conspiracy theory, the white lines contain chemicals that are spread for population and weather control. In fact, the contrails are primarily composed of water vapor from engine exhaust. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has signed a law banning the intentional release of airborne chemicals to modify the climate; similar bills have passed legislatures in Florida and Louisiana. Associated Press ■ The Department of Homeland Security’s main hub for terrorism prevention is now led by a 22-year-old former Trump campaign worker with no apparent national security experience. Thomas Fugate, head of the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, graduated from college last year and worked in…

Regular exercise can reduce the risk of death in colon cancer patients and prevent the recurrence of tumors—and it works as well as or better than many drug treatments. That’s the conclusion of a landmark study that could transform health guidelines around the world. Researchers took 889 colon cancer patients from six countries and split them into two groups. The first group was given a booklet on healthy lifestyles. The second was put on a structured exercise regime, with two personal-trainer sessions a month, and instructed to walk 45 to 60 minutes three or four times a week. After five years, those in the exercise group had a 28% lower risk of recurrent or new cancers than the control group; after eight years, they had a 37% lower risk…

You could call Susan Choi’s new novel a mystery, but that’s too reductive, said Ron Charles in The Washington Post. In truth, “it’s catholic in its genre, shifting deftly from domestic drama to international thriller, from academic satire to bildungsroman.” Choi opens her first book since 2019’s award-winning Trust Exercise with a father’s tragic disappearance. And as she drills into the psychology of that lost Korean parent, his American wife, and their daughter, Louisa, she leaps back and forth in time and from continent to continent. “A hundred pages in, I felt I was developing Stockholm syndrome with this novel: I couldn’t wait to escape its fierce control and then couldn’t wait to crawl back to it.” With one family’s story, said Dwight Garner in The New York Times,…

I Regret Almost Everything by Keith McNally (Gallery, $30) At least in New York City, “Keith McNally is the exception to the rule of restaurateur obscurity,” said Serena Dai in The Atlantic. In his best-selling recent memoir, the owner of the enduring hot spots Balthazar, Pastis, and Minetta Tavern opens up about his career. And while “McNally doesn’t explicitly say that he considers his work to be an artistic endeavor,” he shares enough tales about writers and filmmakers who’ve inspired him that the book becomes “a portrait of the artist as a restaurateur.” Cellar Rat by Hannah Selinger (Little, Brown, $29) “Hannah Selinger’s time working in restaurants left her simmering with rage,” said Maura Judkis in The Washington Post. The veteran New York City sommelier “names names” as she…

“For generations of Americans, lagers were synonymous with beer,” said Dylan Garret in Food & Wine. The craft-beer boom changed that, but because lagers still dominate sales, we decided to put the top 20 in a blind taste test. Michelob Ultra was last. Brooklyn Lager and Samuel Adams finished Nos. 1 and 2. Here, though, were our favorites of the true mass-market brands. Modelo Especial ($12 per six-pack). Our third overall choice is “fresh and light-bodied,” and among Mexican beers “had the most robust profile” and “a slightly longer, bitter finish.” Narragansett Lager ($9). Rhode Island’s “cheap beer of legends” finished fourth overall. It’s “well-balanced, with a bready finish,” and its 16-ounce cans mean “more bang for your buck.” Coors Banquet ($9). Sorry, Bud and Miller High Life. Coors…

The thrift scene in McAllen, Texas In the Lone Star State, “creative scenes burst forth outside major cities like flowers budding out of a crack in a rock,” said Katy Vine in Texas Monthly. The latest bloomer is McAllen, a border town in the Rio Grande Valley, where the current flowering is closely tied to a heavy trade in used clothing. There are mountains of discarded clothing piled in McAllen’s massive warehouses, and every day, “young buyers crawl all over them,” picking out fashionable items, at 40 cents a pound, many to fill the boutiques that have popped up on North Main Street and in the 10th Street Plaza. The plaza’s “tiny bubblegum-colored shops” also sell handmade soaps and matcha-flavored cheesecake, catering to the town’s growing traffic of shoppers…

■ Meta is planning to invest $14.8 billion for a 49% stake in the artificial intelligence firm Scale AI and hire its chief executive, Alexandr Wang. The nine-year-old company provides data for AI training, managing more than 100,000 contractors from around the world who label images, write sentences, and type out stories. The Wall Street Journal ■ The World Bank projected that the U.S. economy in 2025 will grow at an annual rate of 1.4%, 0.9 percentage points slower than its January forecast and half the 2.8% growth of 2024. The Washington Post ■ The number of millionaires across the world hit a record 23.4 million last year, growing by 2.6% from the year prior. The U.S. alone added 562,000 millionaires, while Europe’s overall population of millionaires fell 2.1%.…

Recently laid off? Join the club, said Eve Upton-Clark in Business Insider. Losing a job used to be a taboo subject. But today there’s no shame in workers “declaring themselves #OpenToWork” on LinkedIn or following any of the “layoff influencers”—people who typically share advice about how to handle getting pink-slipped—and even buying “layoff merch.” A network of layoff support groups is also forming. Melanie Ehrenkranz has more than 10,000 subscribers for her Substack newsletter, Laid Off, which shares stories from other workers. “There’s no ‘Everything happens for a reason’ or ‘You’ll get the next one,’” Ehrenkranz said. “People don’t want to hear that.” Private online groups also offer a cathartic experience. After getting laid off from her job, Christine Reichenbach “was introduced on Discord to The Labor Club, a…

Founded in 1997, Puppies Behind Bars (puppiesbehindbars.com) brings service-dog training into prisons, pairing inmates with puppies who are destined to help trauma survivors. Over roughly 18 months, prisoners raise the dogs, teaching them to assist veterans with PTSD and disabilities. Veterans credit the dogs with helping them overcome traumatic experiences, restoring both their physical and emotional health. Other dogs are trained in police skills like explosive detection, and the Manhattan district attorney’s office uses dogs from the program to help reassure abused kids. For inmates—some in one of the toughest maximum-security prisons in New York state—the program fosters empathy and responsibility, and a sense of doing something extraordinary. The trainers, all volunteers, are fiercely committed to their mission and their dogs. Each charity we feature has earned a four-star…

Bethany McLean The Free Press The saga of the U.S. Steel–Nippon deal shows why Democrats are losing the working class in places like Minnesota’s Iron Range, said Bethany McLean. Nippon Steel first offered to buy struggling U.S. Steel in 2023, but President Biden blocked it in a political calculation. “The United Steelworkers union hierarchy opposed it, so Biden did, too.” Even as union leaders tried to kill it, pushing for a worse offer from the more union friendly Cleveland-Cliffs, many steelworkers “always understood that a deal with Nippon was their best hope.” Now Cleveland-Cliffs, which “bet big” on a Canadian acquisition, is “reeling” from tariffs and laying off workers. And President Trump, who initially opposed the sale, has handily reversed course. Except for the addition of a so-called golden…

This week’s question: The 2024–25 Broadway season was the highest-grossing in history, at $1.89 billion, with tickets to celebrity-filled shows selling for upwards of $800. If a Broadway composer were to write a song-and-dance number about how expensive it is to see a show these days, what would it be titled? Last week’s contest: 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. THE WINNER: Forever in our hearts and couch cushions Jonathan Venazindis, Zelienople, Pa. SECOND PLACE: You made cents, but we lost interest Jessica Lefort, Saline, Mich. THIRD PLACE: Here lies Penny, spent Cary Wiger, New Albany, Ind.…

Free assembly, after a federal appeals court ruled that San Diego’s ban on yoga classes in city parks and beaches was unconstitutional. “I personally see this as a triumph of community over a handful of elites,” said yoga fan John Noack, who blamed the now-overturned ban on the influence of wealthy beachfront-property owners. Sob stories, after physicists at Britain’s Loughborough University created the world’s smallest violin. The instrument, etched from platinum using nanolithography, is 13 microns wide. That’s thinner than a human hair, which can measure up to 180 microns in diameter. Loopholes, after New Mexico prosecutors dropped charges against a 16-year-old baseball player who admitted to urinating in an opposing team’s water jug during a game. “While the act is gross and not right,” said Chief Deputy DA…

Miley Cyrus conquered stage fright by stepping outside herself, said Lulu Garcia-Navarro in The New York Times. The pop star developed a fear of performing as the Covid pandemic faded, and she found herself singing to packed arenas again after two years of near isolation. To cope with this jarring transition, she signed up for a therapy technique called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. In EMDR, patients are instructed to move their eyes from side to side while being guided to access past traumatic events. “Saved my life,” says Cyrus, 32. Her therapist instructed her to picture her life passing by through a train window and to detail the anxiety she felt onstage. “In my hypnotic place, I said, ‘I just want them to love me so bad.’ And…

Jonathan V. Last The Bulwark When immigration officials arrested and imprisoned beloved local waitress Carol Hui in April, said Jonathan V. Last, her neighbors in Kennett, Mo., were outraged. Donning “Bring Carol Home” T-shirts, they rallied around the hardworking mom of three, who delighted waffle house customers since arriving in the U.S. from Hong Kong 20 years ago. Hui was released last week pending further hearings. But this isn’t some “heartwarming story” about the strength of small-town bonds. “It’s an indictment” of the “worst people in America.” More than 80% of people in Dunklin County, where Kennett is located, voted for Donald Trump, who vowed to deport 20 million immigrants. These voters are “culpable for Carol’s imprisonment,” but somehow are blind to their complicity. They also seem oblivious to…

“It’s pretty clear that the U.S. needs large-scale immigration in order to support its economy. Small declining towns especially need immigrants. Without immigrants, they’ll wither away. But the MAGA movement hates immigration—not just of the illegal variety, but all types. The ‘Great Replacement’ theory, which holds that liberals are importing immigrants in order to demographically drown and disempower the white race and the Republican Party, has become canon on the Right, turning immigration into the Right’s core culture-war issue. This belief is the biggest single reason why the issue will be so hard to resolve.” Noah Smith in his Substack newsletter…

Pablo Vaca Clarin Javier Milei’s chain saw can’t fix everything, said Pablo Vaca. The president’s austerity measures have definitely helped the economy in many ways: Since he took office in 2023, inflation has fallen to 2% monthly, the exchange rate has stabilized, and the budget is actually running a surplus. But none of that is enough to persuade Argentines to stop stashing their U.S. dollars “inside the mattress.” Milei says the next step in his program is to remonetize the economy by encouraging people to start spending the $250 billion in hard currency they have squirreled away at home. Penalties will be waived, he says, and all will be forgiven. But Argentines have been traumatized by decades of failed attempts at monetary reform. There was the Convertibility Law, which…

Senan Molony Irish Independent Gerry Adams’ “high-stakes gamble” paid off, said Senan Molony. The former longtime leader of Sinn Féin, the party that was once the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, has triumphed in his libel suit against the BBC. Adams was irate over a decade-old Spotlight documentary that alleged he had authorized the 2006 murder of Denis Donaldson, an IRA and Sinn Féin member outed as a British spy. On the stand, he swore that he’d never been in the IRA. Even though many of its members have identified him as a key IRA figure in Northern Ireland during the bloody decades of the Troubles, the Dublin jury sided with Adams and awarded him $113,000. But this case wasn’t just about money. Republicanism was long known…

Welcome to the “gratuitously cruel sequel” to one of Donald Trump’s most infamous first-term policies, said Moustafa Bayoumi in The Guardian. In an expanded repeat of the January 2017 “Muslim ban,” the president last week ordered a ban on arrivals from 12 mainly poor, majority non-white countries and severe restrictions on seven more. Trump cited security concerns, including “the recent terror attack in Boulder.” But the alleged attacker was from Egypt, which was not on the list; Trump explained that it’s “a country we deal with very closely.” The contradictions don’t end there: The order also cited the problem of foreigners overstaying their visas, yet Spain, the source of more than 20,000 overstays in 2023, had more than all seven banned African countries combined but remains exempt. The ban…

Author Amy Larocca is “far from the only woman who has chased the idea of being not just healthy but well,” said Sheila McClear in The Atlantic. But the former New York magazine fashion editor has now also thrown herself into exploring the full depth and breadth of the wellness craze. Larocca “can’t deny being a willing participant as well as a skeptic.” When she submits to a colonic cleanse and says she hopes it will help her reach a higher plane, “she’s being somewhat facetious—but only somewhat.” She understands that as the dysfunction of the U.S. health-care system has driven people to seek alternative paths to health and serenity, wellness has grown into not just a $6.6 trillion global business but a new religion with adherents on the…

In at least one way, Molly Jong-Fast is just like her famous mother: “She holds nothing back,” said Alexandra Alter in The New York Times. The 46-year-old New Yorker has made a name for herself as a novelist and dart-throwing political commentator. Her latest book, however, is a memoir that uses the occasion of her mother’s decline into dementia to blast her on the page for having been an alcoholic narcissist who was often a terrible parent. “It feels like a huge betrayal: I sold out Erica Jong,” she says. “But it’s sort of an honor to her.” Jong, after all, had built a career on startling candor, beginning with her sexed-up debut novel, Fear of Flying, and continuing with memoirs and semi-autobiographical novels that sometimes put her only…

Mr. Loverman Heartbreaking, lyrical, and award-winning, this newly arrived British series plumbs the six-decade-old secret affair maintained by Barry, a dapper Antiguan-born Londoner, and Morris, the soulmate he met in childhood. The men’s love is sublime, but Barry is closeted, and that has taken a toll on his wife, Carmel. Britbox Pose Ryan Murphy’s bold series from a few years back immerses viewers in the ballroom subculture of the late 1980s, a world of costumed dance battles that inspired both Madonna’s “Vogue” and Ru Paul’s Drag Race. The characters also fight for love and acceptance in a society that shuns them. Hulu Queer as Folk Set in a liberal, post-AIDS-crisis Pittsburgh, this groundbreaking 2000–05 series included graphic depictions of gay sex that still surprise. But its most radical feature…

When I saw SSSS on my boarding pass, “my heart skipped a beat,” said Natalie B. Compton in The Washington Post. A quick web search revealed not only its meaning, “Secondary Security Screening Selection,” but also travelers describing the code as “the kiss of death.” In truth, it’s not so very bad. Before I boarded, airline staff looked through my carry-on and swabbed parts of my body, submitting the sample to a machine that detects traces of explosives. “Five minutes later, I was on the plane.” The TSA says SSSS is one of its “unpredictable” security measures, as some travelers are randomly selected. Others may be flagged because their name matches someone on a no-fly list. If you’re consistently being screened for no clear reason, apply to the Department…

The Trump administration is entering “a new phase” in its immigration crackdown, said Lydia DePillis and Ernesto Londoño in The New York Times. The operation that swept up garment workers and day laborers in Los Angeles was “not an isolated incident” but part of a strategy to hit a quota of at least 3,000 migrant arrests a day. Enforcement “will increasingly focus on workplaces,” a shift from the administration’s earlier decision to “prioritize detaining hardened criminals.” Last week, federal agents raided a construction site in Tallahassee, a flood control project in New Orleans, and a restaurant in San Diego. “You’re going to see more worksite enforcement than you’ve ever seen in the history of this nation,” vowed border czar Tom Homan. As citizens recoil, we’ll see more protests like…

Supreme Court grants DOGE access to Social Security data The Supreme Court ruled last week that members of the Department of Government Efficiency can access data collected by the Social Security Administration—including the Social Security numbers, medical records, and banking information of millions of Americans. In a 6-3 decision, the conservative majority granted an emergency application by the Trump administration to lift an injunction issued by a federal judge in Maryland. DOGE has said that access to the information will help it modernize systems and eliminate waste and fraud at the agency. In a dissenting opinion, liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson criticized the majority for granting DOGE unfettered access to sensitive data “before the courts have time to assess whether DOGE’s access is lawful.” In a separate 6-3 order,…

At age 89, Alan Alda is busier than ever, said Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian. The former M*A*S*H star hosts a podcast series, heads the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, and continues to write, produce, and act—all despite being diagnosed with Parkinson’s a decade ago. “At the moment,” Alda says of his onscreen work, “I can play anyone with Parkinson’s.” His shakes are pronounced, but he says he’s adapted to the disease. “I just plan for the fact that everything takes three times longer to do or more. Getting your clothes on, taking your pills. I have to type every email three times before I stop saying rude things. I write emails to women I don’t know, and unless I check, before my signature…

■ Jared Leto was accused of sexual misconduct by nine women last week, some of whom said they were underage when they were first approached by the Requiem for a Dream actor. One woman told Air Mail she was 16 when, in 2006, Leto grabbed her arm at a Los Angeles café and asked for her number. She said that in the following weeks, Leto—then in his early 30s—would call her in the early hours and ask about her sex life. “The way he talked,” she said, “it scared me.” Another woman said the actor, now 53, began texting her when she was underage, then masturbated in front of her after she turned 18. Los Angeles–based DJ and producer Allie Teilz last month reposted a Facebook status from 2012,…

Glenn Thrush The New York Times When Elon Musk last week accused the Trump administration of hiding parts of the “Epstein files” to protect the president, another MAGA conspiracy theory backfired, said Glenn Thrush. Attorney General Pam Bondi and the “partisan showmen” running the FBI, director Kash Patel and deputy Dan Bongino, have championed conspiracy theories such as that accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was killed in jail to conceal his ties to powerful people—Democrats, they hoped, but not Trump. Having promised the MAGA base they would “reveal Deep State secrets,” these Trump law enforcers now find themselves “in a trap of their own making,” as the true believers demand results. Witness Bongino’s “glum” recent admission that he’s concluded Epstein killed himself in jail, just as the FBI said.…

Is the enemy of your enemy really your friend? asked Amit Yagur in Maariv. Israel is about to find out. Last week, opposition lawmaker Avigdor Lieberman made the bombshell accusation that the Israeli government was arming criminal gangs in Gaza—some of them with former ties to ISIS—so they could fight Hamas. And now Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted that it’s true, calling it a “good thing” because it could save Israeli soldiers’ lives. Critics are up in arms, saying the weapons we give to these Palestinian militias will one day be “turned on us.” Yet this could in fact be a useful interim step. Israel’s focus needs to be on creating “a temporary transition period between Hamas rule and something else.” As it seeks a non-Hamas militia to…

Libby Purves The Times Britons are becoming “like clutch-phobic Americans, unable to ‘drive stick,’” said Libby Purves. Just 1 in 5 new cars sold here has a manual transmission. The trend was probably inevitable given the rise of EVs, “and maybe the soothing quality of leaving decisions to a robot suits fretful souls.” Yet “I cleave to my gear stick.” There is “something masterful and deliberate” about downshifting on a curve or popping into high gear on a straightaway. The “smooth growl” focuses you, reminding you that “despite this age of button pushing and screen swiping you are not playing video games, but in personal control of a big, heavy, dangerous machine.” Most of us, even older workers, no longer do much requiring manual dexterity, while the younger generations…

You may not know it from all the crime-filled tabloid headlines, but murder rates are in free fall across the U.S., said Sophie Clark in Newsweek. So far this year, homicides in big cities are down 20% over the same period in 2024, with murders dropping by a whopping 55% in Denver, 24% in St. Louis and Baltimore, and 25% in New Orleans, according to data from independent analyst Jeff Asher. “If rates continue to fall this year, then 2025 could see the lowest murder rate ever recorded in the U.S.” It’s a remarkable turnaround from the bloodiest days of the pandemic: Murders spiked 30% in cities in 2020—the biggest single-year jump since 1960—and stayed high for the next two years. The Trump administration is claiming its tough-on-crime policies…

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” Douglas Adams, quoted in the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette “Toil is the seasoning of delight. Without desire and longing, no dish, however costly, could be sweet.” Greek philosopher Xenophon, quoted in The Dispatch “If you can laugh about a dark reality, you rise above it.” Ukrainian novelist Maria Reva, quoted in the Los Angeles Times “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, quoted in The Atlantic “Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.” French philosopher Jean de La Bruyère, quoted in The Knowledge “A government big enough to give you…

■ The next stage in cybercrime AI-enhanced hacking is what keeps cybersecurity experts up at night, said Matthew Gault in Wired. Generative AI has given anyone the tools “to spit out a Python script using ChatGPT.” That means it’s just as easy for anyone to become a hacker. Despite existing guardrails around creating malicious code, “there are whole communities online dedicated to bypassing those guardrails.” Security researchers have even found that they could prompt ChatGPT into creating malware simply by telling it they were competing in a cybersecurity exercise. “The primal fear that chatbot code sparks is that anyone will be able to do it,” but experts are primarily worried about what AI-generated code is capable of “in the hands of someone who already knows the code in and…

Researchers may have found a cure for multiple myeloma, a common and often deadly blood cancer, reports The New York Times. In a clinical trial, 97 patients who had exhausted other treatments for the disease and were preparing for hospice were given a new type of antibody-based immunotherapy. While two-thirds of the patients showed no improvement, in the other third the cancer disappeared—and hasn’t returned in the five years since treatment. “In my 30 years in oncology, we haven’t talked about curing myeloma,” says Norman Sharpless, a former director of the National Cancer Institute. “This is the first time we are really talking seriously about cure in one of the worst malignancies imaginable.” First developed in 2015 by the Chinese company Legend Biotech—now headquartered in the U.S.—the CAR-T treatment…

John Kenney’s debut novel, Truth in Advertising, won the 2014 Thurber Prize for American Humor and his Love Poems for Married People was a national best-seller. In his new novel, I See You’ve Called in Dead, a newspaper hack accidentally publishes his own obituary. Someone by Alice McDermott (2013). I don’t know how Alice McDermott pulls off what she does in this book in a mere 240 pages. The uneventful life of a woman from Brooklyn and her Irish-immigrant parents. Her priest brother. Her neighbor Pegeen. Their seemingly small lives, writ large, with nuance and empathy and grace, in what is a painfully beautiful telling. Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997). A sweeping, majestic book—the history of the second half of the 20th century told through a remarkable cast of…

Inflation remained moderate in May, adding pressure on the Federal Reserve to lower borrowing costs, said Augusta Saraiva in Bloomberg. The Consumer Price Index rose 2.4% in May from a year ago, the Labor Department said this week, just above April’s 2.3% rate. The numbers suggest that President Trump’s tariff hikes haven’t yet reached consumers’ pockets, “perhaps because the most punitive levies have been temporarily paused, or thanks to companies so far absorbing the extra costs” for many items. However, “the costs of major appliances posted the largest advance in nearly five years.” Entertainment: Warner Discovery to split off cable Warner Bros. Discovery announced this week it was splitting into two companies, said John Koblin in The New York Times. “One will operate the cable networks, like TNT and…

■ Crypto creeps into the 401(k) The Labor Department opened the door for crypto to enter your 401(k), said Tara Siegel Bernard in The New York Times. In late May, the agency that oversees retirement plans adopted “a neutral stance toward crypto, neither endorsing nor disapproving of plan managers who decide to include digital assets on 401(k) investment menus.” It’s a deliberate reversal from the position of the Biden administration, which, while not banning crypto retirement products, placed a warning sign on them and urged fiduciaries to exercise “extreme care” around them. The shift is not expected to set off a crypto rush inside retirement plans. Already there are about 70 crypto asset investment options available to 401(k) participants. But at the same time, “increasingly mainstream crypto vehicles have…

Patrick Clark Bloomberg Businessweek Hampton Inn is “cookie-cutter, just OK, decidedly average,” and still the envy of the travel industry, said Patrick Clark. Born “as a cheaper subchain of Holiday Inn in 1984” and later bought by Hilton in 1999, Hampton Inn is now “the world’s largest lodging brand,” filling close to 90 million rooms worldwide last year and bringing in almost $12 billion in revenue. On the scale of cheap to luxury, a Hampton Inn falls around the middle. But as “the reigning purveyor of American Mid” it has tracked “the rising spending power of the middle class,” and a few well-placed amenities have kept travelers coming back. The chain’s biggest innovation (now copied by others) was a free hot breakfast. The breakfast bar costs less than $5…