Indholdsfortegnelse for August 15, 2025 i The Week Magazine

Our collective grasp on reality seems to be slipping. Millions of TikTok users last week shared or favorited a joyful video of bunnies bouncing on a trampoline in the middle of the night. The original poster said he’d captured this adorable footage on a backyard security camera, but online sleuths soon spotted signs that the remarkably real-looking video was in fact AI-generated. Savvy young TikTokers who once thought that AI slop would fool only their parents were shocked to discover that they too could fall for fakery. “Now I feel like I’m gonna be one of those old people that get scammed,” said one 25-year-old influencer. That sense of not being able to trust your own eyes is spreading fast. Online gardening forums are now littered with AI-created photos of…

■ The Los Angeles City Council has voted to prohibit the N-word and the C-word at public meetings, and to ban repeat offenders from future meetings. The move is intended to improve the tone of the meetings, but some legal experts say it could violate speakers’ First Amendment rights. Attorney Wayne Spindler, known for his use of offensive language at council meetings, has pledged to violate the ban and then “file my $400 million lawsuit that I already have prepared.” ■ An elderly Chicago woman has been hit with a $233,439.90 water bill for a vacant property with no plumbing. Diane Carli, 82, inherited the building in 2017, and in 2024—despite its lack of plumbing—the city demanded she install a water meter. It subsequently billed her for 500,000 gallons she…

As director of the Vatican Observatory, Brother Guy Consolmagno often has to explain how he marries his belief in science and God, said Rebecca Mead in The New Yorker. “If people think you have to be a weird kind of scientist to be religious, or a weird kind of religious to be a scientist, then we’ve missed the point,” says Consolmagno, 72. “The point is that our faith—our ordinary faith—fits perfectly with our ordinary, but wonderful, delightful science.” The Michigan-born astronomer’s path to the Holy See began in the late 1970s, when he started to grow dissatisfied with his postdoctoral work in planetary science at Harvard and MIT. “Why am I beating myself up writing papers about the moons of Jupiter when there’s people starving in the world? Papers that…

Megan McArdle The Washington Post “For good and, often, ill, the Trump revolution is probably here to stay,” said Megan McArdle. Even if a majority of Americans turns against the president’s tariff, immigration, and anti-DEI policies, in our political system, “it is at least as hard to unmake major changes as it is to make them.” We saw that with Obamacare, which Republicans forcefully vowed to repeal but haven’t, since that “would have meant removing parts of the law that voters liked.” We’ll likely see the same with Trump’s innovations. Tariffs “are bad policy,” but no future administration is likely to repeal those import taxes and lose the revenue they generate. “Cruel raids” by masked ICE agents have been met with horror, but that doesn’t mean the public will want…

Luis Felipe Alpaca Lima Gris If you got the lowest performance review of any employee in history, would you deserve a raise? said Luis Felipe Alpaca. President Dina Boluarte’s approval rating has plunged to a laughable 2%. Yet she had the gall to more than double her own salary, from $4,400 per month to $10,000, even as she refused to countenance modest hikes for public employees making poverty wages. There could be no clearer “sign of contempt for citizens who struggle daily to survive.” Peruvians endure “extortion, murder, and unemployment” and have lost hope that Boluarte’s incompetent government will do anything to help. Her council of ministers tried to hide her salary hike in a document marked “confidential,” and when the news leaked, they tried to justify it by claiming…

Students learning first aid have been taught to go through the A-B-C sequence for CPR: Check airway, then breathing, and finally circulation. But doctors say the focus on clearing the airway is a potentially fatal waste of time. “A quick response—especially chest compressions and early defibrillation—is critical,” Dana Viskin of Tel Aviv University tells The Guardian. “Time spent checking the airway or trying to prevent ‘tongue swallowing’ only delays lifesaving treatment.” Viskin says the tongue can obstruct airways in rare cases of paralysis but because the muscle is anchored in the mouth it is basically impossible to “swallow.” She and her colleagues looked at footage of 45 athletes who collapsed between 1990 and 2024. In the 30 confirmed cardiac arrests, 27 athletes received “inappropriate” responses—such as efforts to ensure the…

(Penguin Press, $29) “For those who wonder if the American novel has anything new to offer, Pan is exhilarating,” said Matthew Specktor in The Washington Post. The author, Michael Clune, was previously known for two memoirs. Here, he puts readers inside the busy mind of Nick, a precocious 15-year-old who is suffering from an anxiety disorder, and the world we see through Nicholas’ eyes is “saturated with a grand, psychedelic spirit, the sort of holy mania one finds in writers like William Blake.” As the novel tracks a year in its young narrator’s suburban Chicago life, “don’t expect much in the way of big narrative twists,” said Kaveh Akbar in The New York Times. Nick starts hanging out in a barn to banter with friends who are smoking weed. He…

Theater Kid by Jeffrey Seller (Simon & Schuster, $30) Jeffrey Seller has a talent for turning unconventional musicals into hits, said Thomas Floyd in The Washington Post. In a memoir that’s “more of an origin story than a tell-all,” the producer who helped usher Rent, Avenue Q, In the Heights, and Hamilton into Broadway’s canon offers “an inspiring road map” for how a gay, theater-mad kid from the Midwest can make his dreams come true. The book’s New York City chapters are “packed with insider nods and insight.” The Very Heart of It by Thomas Mallon (Knopf, $40) Novelist Thomas Mallon is “a gossip of the highest order,” said Thomas Beller in Air Mail. When I picked up his new book, a collection of his 1983–94 diary entries, “I had…

A sequel that doubles the body-swap madness “Freakier Friday has defied the odds,” said Esther Zuckerman in Bloomberg. Twenty-two years after Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis turned in “genius comedy performances” in 2003’s adaptation of a classic teen novel, the two stars have reunited for a sequel that’s “charming and genuinely sweet.” It “made me both giggle and tear up,” and “that alone is a win.” Lohan’s Anna is now a relatively hip single mother whose teen daughter, Harper, played by Julia Butters, is a rebel of the surfer-girl variety. After Anna falls for the father of Harper’s high school nemesis, the two girls are in imminent danger of becoming stepsisters when a psychic effects a body swap between mom and daughter and another between Curtis’ Grandma Tess and…

A Biden-appointed member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors announced she’s resigning, said Bryan Mena in CNN.com. The decision this week by Adriana Kugler to step down months before her term ends opens a key vacancy within the Fed for President Trump. He “has bashed the Fed for months,” pushing for lower interest rates, and now he can replace Kugler with an appointee who can eventually succeed Fed chairman Jerome Powell. Trump is choosing from a short list of contenders for the chair’s spot and said this week that it did not include Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a rumored contender. Cashing in: Trump sons back manufacturing SPAC President Trump’s sons Eric and Don Jr. are likely to take away tens of millions of dollars from a SPAC, said George…

■ The great Millennial wealth boom Sorry, Millennials, said Joe Pinsker in The Wall Street Journal, you have nothing to complain about anymore. The tough-luck generation that graduated during the 2008 financial crisis and then endured the pandemic now somehow has “net worths that are higher than those of previous generations at similar ages, adjusting for inflation.” In 2016, the median net worth of those born in the 1980s “was more than one-third lower than expected,” but Millennials’ fortunes have turned around fast. The latest numbers show Millennials have close to 40% more wealth than earlier cohorts had at the same age. Yet nearly 7 out of 10 still say financial success “is much harder for them to achieve” than it is for other generations. ■ Bots learn how to…

David Mack The New York Times Why do we keep falling for the allure of the airport lounge? asked David Mack. “There have never been more airport lounges,” and yet we still fight to get in them. The lines to enter them are some of the longest in the airport. “In our iPhone age, we have been sold on the idea that travel” is “about being seen to be traveling—and being seen to do so in style.” We still believe, fancifully, that the restricted lounge offers a taste of luxury. And then we arrive to what looks like “a breakfast buffet at a budget hotel.” Not exactly James Bond sipping a martini. These experiences have had me questioning my lounge loyalty lately, especially after being alerted that the annual fee…

Dirty laundry, after an unwashed crystal-adorned sock once worn by Michael Jackson, the late pop superstar and alleged child abuser, sold at auction in France for $8,822. “It really is an exceptional object,” said auctioneer Aurore Illy. Romeo and Juliet, after an interfamily gun battle that broke out in Mamasapano, Philippines, ended several hours later with both sides laying down their weapons and joyfully announcing the wedding of the two young family members whose surprise elopement had triggered the hostilities. Blood sport, after beachgoers were treated to the spectacle of a hammerhead shark fighting a stingray in the sparkling blue-green waters off the coast of Panama City, Fla. Although the encounter ended without a clear winner, one witness called the experience “really amazing.” Bad week for: Mr. Nibbles, after Denmark’s…

If you want to see Jamie Lee Curtis get angry, said Emma Brockes in The Guardian (U.K.), just ask her about plastic surgery. The actress says the “cosmeceutical industrial complex” is guilty of “genocide.” Curtis, 66, recognizes her use of the word “genocide” might cause offense but insists it’s accurate. “I use it specifically because it’s a strong word. I believe that we have wiped out a generation or two of natural human [appearance]. The concept that you can alter the way you look through chemicals, surgical procedures, fillers—there’s a disfigurement of generations of predominantly women who are altering their appearances.” AI apps that let people “beautify” their selfies are now pushing even more young women toward cosmetic surgery. “The filter face is what people want. The minute I lay…

Quinta Jurecic The Atlantic “Total sycophancy to the president can be a fantastic career move,” said Quinta Jurecic. While working as a defense attorney for President Trump last year, Emil Bove seemed like just another Republican lawyer. But rewarded with a Justice Department job after Trump’s election win, he cast himself as the “feared enforcer of presidential will.” Bove fired the attorneys who prosecuted Jan. 6 rioters, instructed prosecutors who complained of unethical orders to resign, and allegedly suggested the department should consider telling judges, “F--- you.” Such behavior would have been punished under any other presidency. But it has landed Bove, 44, a lifetime appointment as a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where he “will have a hand in shaping the law for decades to…

“The U.S. government used to be much more flagrantly corrupt in the 19th century—but it was also much, much smaller and had only a tiny effect on the economy. We are now moving toward the worst system: Big Government with its tentacles everywhere, but run on the personal whims of the president or anyone who can influence him. We are going backward, creating a system of personalism that pervades our society and makes the economy run on the president’s will, not the rule of law. It’s an orgy of corruption in which innovation and initiative will be sacrificed to fill the pockets of political parasites.” Robert Tracinski in Discourse magazine…

Editorial The Hindu Hindu nationalists are using hysteria over religious conversions to harass Christians, said The Hindu. Just last month, two Catholic nuns were arrested at a railway station in Chhattisgarh state and charged with “human trafficking and forced conversion.” Their crime: escorting three tribal girls who were coming to the convent for work. A Hindu nationalist militant group filed a complaint, and the state accused the nuns of luring the young women into Catholicism. The girls’ families said the charges were ridiculous and that their children hadn’t been pressured, and now lawmakers across the political spectrum have condemned the state’s overreach. But this isn’t the first time a “proselytization row has erupted” under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has governed India since 2014. Other…

Albert Martínez López-Amor Diario de Burgos “In the absence of better ideas” for drawing tourists, there’s always the ginormous roadside attraction, said Albert Martínez López-Amor. The French city of Bordeaux has a built a “gigantic, winding vine” out of glass and aluminum as a museum to wine, the region’s most famous export. Not to be outdone, the Spanish Academy of Bullfighting has proposed building a 1,000-foot-tall, open-weave metal statue of a bull to celebrate one of Spain’s most famous—or infamous—traditions. Plenty of Spanish cities better known for bullfighting than Burgos, including Madrid, have wisely rejected the idea of hosting such a monstrosity. But leaders in the far-right Vox party here love the idea. Burgos Deputy Mayor Fernando Martínez-Acitores says the colossus would be a “terrific emblem” of the city. He…

“The transformation of Israel’s image from David to Goliath, from righteous to wrathful” has tarnished its reputation in the U.S., said Jackie Calmes in the Los Angeles Times. A Gallup poll published last week found that only 32% of Americans back Israel’s military action in Gaza, down from 50% in late 2023. The survey was conducted last month, largely “before the torrent of heartrending photos of malnourished babies” spread around the world. The reduced support “was driven by increased opposition among Democrats and independents,” only 8% and 25% of whom, respectively, back Israel’s war aims. Some on the American right are also lashing out, said Jacob Magid in The Times of Israel. According to a Pew Research poll from April, 50% of young Republicans view Israel unfavorably, up from 35%…

(Da Capo, $32) It goes without saying that between 1957 and 1962, Don and Phil Everly “imprinted themselves into the pop-music canon,” said Marc Weingarten in the Los Angeles Times. But why did the brothers then seem to disappear, and where did their pioneering blend of country, rock, and pop come from? Barry Mazor’s “rigorously researched” new biography gives the Everly Brothers a “long overdue” close look, and the author proves “quick to refute many of the myths that have accreted around the pair.” Yes, Don was born in Kentucky, and he and his younger brother were coached by their guitarist father to perform as a duo from a young age. But the family moved often, exposing young Don and Phil to the sounds of Chicago and, later, Nashville. Their…

Stephen Starring Grant might be the best champion today’s U.S. Postal Service could hope for, said David Von Drehle in The Washington Post. In his charming new memoir, Mailman, the Blacksburg, Va., native recounts how, at 50, he spent a year as a mail carrier serving rural Appalachia and was humbled and inspired by the experience. Grant took the job when his white-collar business-consulting position vanished at the advent of the pandemic, leaving him with no health insurance just after he’d been diagnosed with treatable prostate cancer. “Letter carrier is one of those jobs that everyone seems to think they could do,” he writes. The position paid only $18.50 an hour, but the demands were heavy: “Sorting mail in route order. Driving one-handed on dirt roads—I was overwhelmed.” And that’s…

Broadway’s “ultimate feel-good underdog story” has just hit its first snag, said Jason P. Frank in NYMag.com. Maybe Happy Ending, the Tony-winning musical about two obsolete robots who fall in love, broke boundaries last fall when it opened with a majority Asian-American cast. The Seoul-set show won six Tony awards, including one for Darren Criss, the first Asian American performer named best lead actor in a musical. Now Criss is leaving, and the choice to replace him with Andrew Barth Feldman, a white Broadway star, has embroiled the show in a messy debate. “This is a fumbling misstep that could have been easily avoided,” said Naveen Kumar in The Washington Post. Co-creators Will Aronson and Hue Park had many talented Asian American performers to choose from. But after instead choosing…

The son of Lt. Frank Drebin tackles a new case. While some Naked Gun fans may claim the new reboot is sacrilegious, “the only profane thing about Akiva Schaffer’s redo is its hellishly funny humor,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. In truth, all three movies in the original crime-spoof trilogy were “hit-or-miss efforts,” and Schaffer’s “smartly dim-witted” sequel is “no different, throwing so many jokes against the wall that some inevitably don’t stick.” But “led by a great Liam Neeson,” who wisely doesn’t mimic original star Leslie Nielsen, 2025’s Naked Gun “goes over-the-top until the last frame.” The “first 20 or so minutes” are “a rapid-fire lark, filled with awful (and thus good) puns, dopey misunderstandings, sight gags so corny they’re brilliant, and some genuinely sly satire about…

“Grüner veltliner has quietly taken root in Oregon’s Willamette Valley,” said Dennis Fraley in Food & Wine. The region’s cool climate and volcanic soils make it “an ideal match” for the grape. No pale imitations of Central Europe’s grüners, Willamette’s wines “show orchard fruit, citrus, and spice, with a brined edge or mineral streak.” 2023 Illahe Estate Mount Pisgah ($25). Produced at the vineyard that gave grüner its start in Oregon, this wine combines “silky mouthfeel,” bright acidity, and flavors of peach, apricot, ginger, fresh-cut herbs, and brined citrus. 2023 Ridgecrest Estate Ribbon Ridge ($30). In this wine, “the nose of pear, chamomile, lime zest, and white pepper carry through to the palate,” while “a sturdy core of acidity elicits a salty tang.” 2023 Abbey Road Farm Yamhill-Carlton ($35). Classic…

Companies looking for a new CEO keep choosing from the menu at a single fast-food conglomerate, said Amelia Lucas in CNBC.com. Yum Brands, which owns Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut, “has quietly become an incubator for future industry leaders,” including Starbucks’ Brian Niccol, Kevin Hochman of Chili’s, and Cracker Barrel’s Julie Felss Masino. Its roots in leadership training “trace back to its days as part of PepsiCo,” which has always had a strong reputation in talent development. Having three global brands gives it another edge. “Yum veterans aren’t only found in the restaurant industry” either. Harley-Davidson announced this week that an ex–Pizza Hut CEO, Artie Starrs, will take over as the legendary motorcycle company’s head honcho. The downside is that star executives don’t often stick around. In October, Yum’s…

Since 1996, Equine Advocates (equineadvocates.org) has rescued thousands of wild and domestic horses, donkeys, and mules from abuse and slaughter. Operating out of an upstate New York sanctuary, the nearly 100 equines there are encouraged to socialize with one another. Each one, sponsored by individuals from across the country, has a detailed profile and accompanying portrait displayed at the sanctuary and on the website. Each animal lives in its own fanned and lined barn stall the size of a typical human bedroom, with easy access to fresh air. There are also dedicated medicine, feed, and wash stalls, and alternatives to hay are available for horses allergic to dust. The newest rescues include wild donkeys Dylan, Sly, Willie, and Bruce, all named after musicians. Each charity we feature has earned a…

Noah Smith Noahpinion “Sweatshops are bad” is one of those things that decent Americans are supposed to believe, said Noah Smith. The idea is rooted in guilt that greedy Americans are hurting “poor people in countries like Bangladesh” just so we can have cheap shirts and blue jeans. This guilt rests on two progressive notions. One is that “factory owners unfairly exploit workers.” The other is that “we’re stealing Bangladeshis’ labor” by “paying them wages far lower than what they deserve.” But anti-sweatshop activism can end up hurting the people it is intended to help. “Countries do not start out rich; they start out poor, and they get rich by figuring out how to make things people want.” Bangladesh figured out how to make clothing. Twenty years ago, most of…

A Harvard-trained mathematician, Tom Lehrer looked the picture of high-minded respectability but moonlighted as a savagely brilliant musical satirist. During the 1950s and early ’60s, he lampooned everything from interventionist U.S. foreign policy (“Send the Marines”) to religion (“The Vatican Rag”) to sexual mores (“The Masochism Tango”) in catchy melodies he sang to his own jaunty piano accompaniment. Even the threat of nuclear annihilation wasn’t too dark a subject: “We will all bake together when we bake / There’ll be nobody present at the wake / With complete participation / In that grand incineration / Nearly 3 billion hunks of well-done steak.” Later parodists, including Randy Newman and Weird Al Yankovic, would cite Lehrer as an inspiration, but he maintained that his snarky songs were simply an “attempt to prolong…

As Trump attempts to “unilaterally remake global trade,” lawsuits are moving through the courts that “could grind his tariff regime to a halt,” said Grayson Logue in The Dispatch. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last week heard oral arguments in a case challenging Trump’s legal standing to impose tariffs, a power the Constitution grants to Congress. Brought by five small businesses and a dozen Democratic-led states, the suit argues that Trump exceeded his constitutional power in issuing tariffs under a 1977 act that empowers the president to use economic sanctions “to deal with foreign threats and emergencies.” Many of the panel’s 11 judges “appeared skeptical” of Trump’s argument, said Elisabeth Buchwald in CNN.com. Several questioned the administration’s claim that trade deficits constitute an emergency—we’ve “had trade…

RFK Jr. ends funding for mRNA vaccine development Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this week continued his attack on the nation’s vaccine development, cutting nearly $500 million in funding for new mRNA shots. He terminated 22 contracts for vaccine projects supported by the government’s biodefense agency, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. First used to combat Covid, mRNA vaccines were considered a major scientific achievement because they can be quickly tweaked as viruses evolve. But Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, has questioned their usage, despite studies proving their safety and efficacy. Kennedy claimed that shifting the funding would lead to safer vaccines. Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown University’s Pandemic Center, called that “wildly incorrect,” saying that Kennedy is pushing toward a “long-held goal of sowing…

Alice Cooper is the original “shock rocker,” said Michael Odell in The Times (U.K.) He’s been draping himself in snakes and dressing up like Count Dracula since 1968. But off stage, the “School’s Out” singer is famously straitlaced, devoted to his golf game, clothes shopping—he owns more than 600 pairs of pants—and his marriage of nearly 50 years to Sheryl Goddard. It’s not that the rocker hasn’t faced romantic temptation: In the 1970s, he was pursued by Hollywood sex symbol Raquel Welch. “Nobody had ever said no to her,” says Cooper, 77. “When I did, it made her insane. She’d turn up at my golf course and my golfing buddies’ jaws would be on the floor when they heard me say, ‘No, Raquel. You cannot be my caddie.’ My wife,…

■ Romance could be in the air for pop star Katy Perry and former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, sources told People this week. The pair were recently spotted together in Montreal, taking a stroll through Mt. Royal Park before enjoying dinner at the swank Taverne Atlantic. A few days later, Trudeau was seen at Perry’s concert in the city, singing along to “Firework.” The “timing seems good for them,” said a source, given that Perry, 40, split earlier this year from her longtime partner, actor Orlando Bloom, while, Trudeau, 53, separated from his wife, Sophie Grégoire, in 2023. Another source said the potential couple are taking it slow for now, because she’s traveling the world on tour and he’s “figuring out his life now that he is no longer…

David French The New York Times On the ropes over the Jeffrey Epstein affair, President Trump is yet again harping on the “Russia hoax,” said David French. Attorney General Pam Bondi this week directed prosecutors to launch a grand jury investigation into allegations that Obama administration officials had manufactured intelligence to make it look like Russia intervened on President Trump’s behalf in the 2016 election. Those allegations are “utterly ridiculous” and distract from a crucial fact: that Russia did attempt to swing the election to Trump “through inflammatory social media posts and a hack-and-leak campaign” against top Democrats. So concluded a bipartisan 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report—co-authored by Marco Rubio, now Trump’s secretary of state—that exposed many “disturbing contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Russians or Russian assets.”…

■ Rescue workers in British Columbia who responded to reports of a camper in distress instead found an outdoorsman screeching his favorite songs. The crew sprang into action after a pair of hikers called 911 to say they’d heard “repeated cries” near a popular climbing spot. The rescuers sent ground teams and drones into the dense woods and soon found the source: a solo camper belting out the greatest hits of rock band Nickelback. “He wasn’t in trouble,” said search manager Duane Tresnich. “Unless you count his singing.” ■ A New Zealand cat has earned the nickname “Leonardo da Pinchy” for his habit of stealing from neighbors. Leo, a 14-month-old Tonkinese, has brought home at least 150 pilfered items, said owner Helen North. “Stuffed toys, loads of underpants and socks,…

Bo Heimann Jyllands-Posten Copenhagen is fast becoming a “Disneyland just for the rich,” said Bo Heimann. Denmark’s capital is a fabulous place to live, with its rich history, stunning architecture, and enviable quality of life. The problem is, everybody knows that. We’re now being mobbed by wealthy expats and tourists who have driven up real estate by 70% in 10 years. In hot neighborhoods, speculators snap up homes to convert into short-term rentals on platforms like Airbnb and 9flats. “Ordinary Copenhageners—nurses, educators, bus drivers, academics”—are pushed out, unable to “keep up with the prices.” What will become of Danish culture? Cities are “not just bricks and pavement.” When the “living, playing, working, and shopping people” move out, “cities collapse—both culturally and socially.” Residents of other European magnets have already rebelled:…

President Trump’s White House makeover is “both awful and fitting,” said Mona Charen in The Bulwark. Having adorned the Oval Office with golden cherubs and paved over the Rose Garden lawn to create a Mar-a-Lago-esque patio, the president unveiled a new plan last week to append “a huge, gaudy ballroom” to the East Wing. At 90,000 square feet, the white-and-gold structure will dwarf the 55,000-square-foot main building. The stately presidential residence will be “transformed into something tasteless and embarrassing,” perfectly suited to a president who has been “a walking wrecking ball of law, tradition, civility, manners, and morals.” Trump’s plans predate his presidency, said Kevin Liptak in CNN.com. He proposed building a White House ballroom in 2010, only to be rejected by then-President Barack Obama. Now, with construction set to…

“It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.” William Carlos Williams, quoted in Elle “Somewhere rummaging around in the backs of our brains is this fallacy that the longer I talk, the more convincing I’m going to be.” Bill McGowan, quoted in The Wall Street Journal “When we Americans are done with the English language it will look as if it had been run over by a musical comedy.” Finley Peter Dunne, quoted in The Washington Post “A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.” John le Carré, quoted in National Review “When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you, but when you tell people…

■ AI-driven schools to open in more cities An Austin-based AI-powered private academy has national expansion plans, said Pooja Salhotra in The New York Times. The Alpha School forgoes the traditional classroom structure and uses AI tutors and adaptive learning platforms to teach elementary school and high school. Students spend two hours a day learning reading and math with the automated tutors. The remaining hours are devoted to AI-assisted workshops that teach skills like entrepreneurship, public speaking, and financial literacy. The school’s founders say that leaving lesson plans to AI “frees teachers to attend to students’ emotional needs.” Critics, though, call this just a variation on the “shopworn,” decades-old pitch for computers in classrooms. Alpha, a for-profit operation, has established branches in Miami and Brownsville, Texas, and now plans on…

Prolonged exposure to extreme heat doesn’t just sap your energy—it may actually accelerate your biological aging. That’s the conclusion of a growing body of research, reports CNN.com, that suggests excessive heat can trigger stress at the cellular level, leading to faster deterioration of tissues and organs. Chronological age marks the years you’ve lived, whereas biological age reflects how well your cells function. When that internal clock runs fast, the risk of diseases like cancer, diabetes, and dementia rises. In one recent study, researchers at the University of Southern California used “epigenetic clocks” to analyze blood samples from more than 3,600 Americans over 56. They found that those who endured 140 or more “extreme heat” days a year—with a heat index of over 90 degrees—aged up to 14 months faster than…

Helen Schulman’s Fools for Love collects 10 of her short stories, including a new one about the marriage of a playwright and her gay husband. Below, the award-winning author of This Beautiful Life, Lucky Dogs, and five other novels names six favorite story collections. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver (1981). When I was in college at Cornell, I dated a literary boy who was a protégé of Harold Brodkey’s—who I’d never heard of—and this boy gave me a copy of Carver’s collection as a gift. My first thought was, “People who are alive now write short stories?” Today I still read these stories. My favorite is “Why Don’t You Dance?” Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers by Stanley Elkin (1966). “A Poetics for…

The Shrouds In the latest striking feature film from body-horror master David Cronenberg, a tech guru develops a graveyard that allows the living to view the buried remains of their loved ones as those bodies decompose. And then things get stranger. Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger co-star. $6 on demand Watch the Skies This recent Swedish release wears its Spielberg influences proudly as it unspools a story about a teen in foster care who believes her UFO-hunter father was abducted and goes looking for him when his old car suddenly falls from the sky. With English overdubbing. $6 on demand The Life of Chuck Walt Whitman’s “I contain multitudes” line informs this sentimental recent adaptation of a Stephen King story about an apparent connection between an unfolding apocalypse and the…

Mori Nozomi Los Angeles A female sushi chef with an all-woman team is still a rarity, even in Los Angeles, America’s sushi capital, said Tejal Rao in The New York Times. “But the thrill of Mori Nozomi is in Nozomi Mori’s distinct style as a chef—the way she annotates the singular focus of the omakase with some of the more complex, seasonal digressions of kaiseki and rituals of the Japanese tea ceremony.” Behind an eight-seat counter in an airy, sparsely decorated room, she proceeds serenely as soft music plays. She “carves sheer petals out of swordtip squid” and “etches her blade into the milky top of a scallop so it yields its sweetness more immediately.” In this $250, two-dozen-course meal, there are no caviar bumps or torched Wagyu. “The closest…

■ T-Mobile Home Internet is racing Verizon to build the nation’s best 5G network, and for now, T-Mobile has “a slight edge,” owing to its wide availability and high customer satisfaction scores. “Even though fixed wireless internet rarely reaches the same top speeds as cable or fiber,” the services are improving performance and they don’t charge hidden fees. T-Mobile offers three tiers of service for $50 to $70 a month, with T-Mobile cellphone users getting a $15 discount. ■ Verizon 5G Home Internet doesn’t reach as many areas, but it’s faster and more reliable, with average speeds of 300 megabits per second compared with T-Mobile’s 100 mbps. Verizon plans are $50 to $75 a month, with $15 discounts for the company’s cellphone subscribers. ■ AT&T Internet Air “has some catching…

Chuck Mangione brought smooth jazz to the pop charts. Over a six-decade career, the long-haired, brown-fedoraed flugelhornist scored 17 albums on the Billboard 200 and was nominated for 14 Grammys, winning two. A trained bebop player who worked with A-list bandleaders like Woody Herman and Art Blakey, Mangione made his own new sound, fusing jazz with melodic hooks and other pop elements. He scored his biggest hit in 1978 with “Feels So Good,” a buoyant single cut down to a radio-friendly three and a half minutes from a nearly 10-minute album version. It was a smash, hitting No. 4 on the Billboard pop chart. “I had a pretty strong base audience,” he said, but the song “took it to a whole other level.” Charles Frank Mangione grew up in Rochester,…

This week’s question: New research suggests that Neanderthals, once thought of as “hypercarnivores” who mostly ate fresh kill, often subsisted on the fatty maggots that infested rotting animal carcasses. What name would you give a diet based on the maggot-heavy meals favored by our prehistoric cousins? Last week’s contest: The married CEO of tech firm Astronomer was forced to resign after he was caught canoodling his firm’s also-married head of HR on a kiss cam at a Coldplay concert. If Coldplay were to write a song about this very public love-cheat saga, what should it be titled? THE WINNER: “A Rush of Blood to the Cheeks” Jon Harper, Cary, N.C. SECOND PLACE: “Conscious Uncuddling” Laurel Rose, Pittsburgh THIRD PLACE: “Can You Conceal the Love Tonight?” Vincent Vigorita, Paterson, N.J. For…