Indholdsfortegnelse for August 22, 2025 i The Week Magazine

‘We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters,” the venture capitalist Peter Thiel famously—or infamously, depending on your viewpoint—said of the disappointments of technology. It so happens that recent days have brought plentiful news of the flying-car variety. The U.S. announced plans to put a nuclear reactor on the moon (see Technology, p.20). A maker of actual flying cars announced a deal to take over the routes of a helicopter service. The prime minister of Sweden got dinged for consulting with AI on foreign policy (see Best Columns: Europe, p.15), a story that two years ago would have seemed like pure science fiction. And this is just a week’s haul. Each of these stories rests on a series of spectacular advances. Nuclear power is on the cusp of an…

■ A woman running for a seat in Arizona’s state senate is on record saying she doesn’t think women should hold office. Mylie Biggs, the daughter of hard-right GOP Rep. Andy Biggs, said on a podcast in 2024 that “I don’t know if I would vote for any female,” adding that while there are “some really great congresswomen,” her personal view is that women “aren’t built for” the rigors of lawmaking. So far, Biggs, 25, has not addressed her past comments. ■ Toy giant Mattel is suing political podcaster Ken Biberaj, claiming his show could be mistaken for a Barbie product. Launched five years ago, Coffee With Ken covers political and sociological topics for an adult audience. But Mattel argues it’s “highly likely” consumers will assume the podcast involves Ken…

Miami County, Indiana Detention boom: Amid growing allegations of inhumane and unsanitary conditions at the makeshift Florida Everglades immigrant detention center nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” the Department of Homeland Security last week revealed its next high-profile detention facility. Advertised as the “Speedway Slammer,” the site will comprise 1,000 new beds in the Miami Correctional Facility, a prison about 65 miles from Indianapolis. The Trump administration also announced $608 million in federal emergency management funding for states to build immigrant detention centers, with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) saying Texas has one in the works but hasn’t yet devised a “similarly attractive name.” DHS promoted the “Speedway Slammer” project on social media with an AI-generated image of an Indy car, eliciting protests from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Overall, U.S. immigrant detentions hit 60,000…

Yoko Mori was 5 years old when her world exploded, said Kana Nemoto in The Mainichi (Japan). On the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima; Mori’s home, just over a mile from the blast’s epicenter, collapsed in the shock wave. As she clambered from the wreckage with her mother and five siblings, Mori says she found “a living hell.” Neighbors screamed for help from under the rubble of their homes, and burned people wandered about with melted skin hanging off their bodies. Mori stepped barefoot over corpses; down by the river, bodies were stacked in piles. “The sight was beyond description.” After the war, she was taunted by elementary school classmates for being a bomb survivor: Run, children yelled, or “we will get…

Americans can’t get enough of the macronutrient. But how much do we really need? Are we eating more protein? Sixty-one percent of Americans said they upped their protein intake last year, according to a study by the food conglomerate Cargill. And they’re just getting started: In a year-end survey by Chobani, 85% said they aimed to power down more of the macronutrient in 2025. They won’t have to look hard to find it. Supermarket shelves are awash in items jacked with protein, long chains of amino acids that play an essential role in repairing cells, building and maintaining muscles, regulating metabolism, and other bodily processes. And it’s no longer just protein-loaded bars and powders that are for sale. There are protein-packed frozen waffles, cereals, pastas, snack chips, and even candies,…

William Kristol The Bulwark If President Trump’s cronies want to purge the administration of disloyal backstabbers, they should turn their gaze to JD Vance, said William Kristol. The vice president’s curious intrusion into the Epstein scandal would suggest he “already seems to be planning for life without Trump.” Last week, Vance held a private meeting to discuss how to handle the Epstein mess with Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI director Kash Patel, and other high-level officials. Then Vance “gave the simmering Epstein issue new oxygen” during a Fox Business interview, saying that “Americans want answers” on what the files contain and speculating “on how many Democrats were involved with Epstein, including Bill Clinton.” Vance’s call for transparency “increased curiosity about just what the files show,” including about Epstein’s close pal,…

Gonzalo Abascal Clarín Javier Milei has vanquished Argentina’s stubborn inflation, said Gonzalo Abascal, but now our abrasive libertarian president is trying something much more difficult. He has vowed to “stop using insults.” When Milei was running for office as an outsider, his venomous tongue was an asset. His barbs “resonated with the collective anger” Argentines felt after seeing our livelihoods demolished by triple-digit inflation. While his economist jargon explaining how his predecessors had ruined the economy were “inaccessible to the average citizen,” everybody cheered when he called them idiots. One news site actually counted and found that Milei had insulted more than 1,000 people in just over two years. He’s called opposition politicians and journalists “rats,” “whores,” and “garbage” and described a rival economist as a “useless Soviet.” At one…

■ A security team for Vice President JD Vance had the Army Corps of Engineers raise the water level of a river in Ohio ahead of an early August boating trip by the Vance family. The action was taken to ensure “safe navigation” for Vance’s security detail, said the Army; a source with knowledge of the matter said the request was also made to create “ideal kayaking conditions.” The Guardian ■ The number of cannabis-related calls to U.S. poison control centers has climbed from about 930 cases in 2009 to more than 22,000 last year, more than 75% of which involved children or teenagers. Pediatricians report treating growing numbers of young patients suffering hallucinations, seizures, and psychotic episodes after accidentally ingesting marijuana-infused gummies or cookies. The New York Times ■…

Administering small amounts of lithium can reverse Alzheimer’s disease and restore brain function in mice, a breakthrough new study shows. Researchers at Harvard Medical School found that giving a low-lithium diet to healthy mice caused them to lose brain synapses and struggle with memory. Conversely, feeding lithium orotate to aging mice that already had memory problems caused those problems to disappear. Lithium naturally occurs in the brain in just a tiny amount, but it is vital to brain function: It maintains the connections that let neurons talk to one another and helps guard against the buildup of amyloid plaques and tau tangles, which are seen in Alzheimer’s patients. Lithium taken orally is already used to treat bipolar disorder, and the amount required to make up for a deficiency in the…

Though Xenobe Purvis’ “outstanding” debut novel unfolds in 1700s Oxfordshire, “the atmosphere of paranoia and bloodthirsty groupthink often feels uncomfortably familiar,” said Joumana Khatib in The New York Times. A local drunk claims to have witnessed five orphaned sisters transform into a pack of dogs, and because the sisters aren’t fully integrated into the community, the accusation spreads. In Purvis’ “clever riff on a vampire story,” the horror the townsfolk experience lies in the thought that the girls have harbored a deviant wildness for years. In a way, they have. “Unlike so many other girls in town,” they’ve “been encouraged to dream of rich, full lives, and in the process developed a shared idiom and wit that outruns anyone else’s in town.” Still, Purvis’ peripheral characters “give her story its…

The Accidental Garden by Richard Mabey (NYRB, $18) “A garden is an especially emphatic demonstration of the collaborative nature of the human-plant relationship,” said Becca Rothfeld in The Washington Post. In Richard Mabey’s “charming” new book, the 84-year-old British nature writer describes the 2-acre plot that he and his wife have tended for the past two decades. The Accidental Garden is “a work of ecological philosophy” that’s “rooted in the real,” and it teaches us that we should collaborate with nature, not seek to control it. The Feather Detective by Chris Sweeney (Avid Reader, $30) We should all know the name Roxie Laybourne, said Chris Hewitt in The Minnesota Star Tribune. The largely self-taught ornithologist “helped put murderers behind bars, solved the mystery of why jets kept crashing, and contributed…

If Ethel Cain’s second album reminds you of the music from TV’s Twin Peaks, it’s no accident, said Chris Kelly in The Washington Post. Last year, Cain tracked down the same synthesizers that Angelo Badalamenti had used on the 1990 series soundtrack. The result is a stately paced concept album that “drips with the yearning of young love and the pain of your first real heartbreak.” It marks the 27-year-old singer-songwriter as “the true heir to Lynch” because she’s “the musical artist most capable of capturing the beauty of all-consuming love, the terror of man’s capacity for evil, and the traumatic toll taken by both.” While Cain’s world is “a landscape of despair,” said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal, she presents her Gothic tales with “a tender, almost…

Directed by Spike Lee (R) A kidnapping threatens a mogul’s legacy. “A new Spike Lee movie is still a calendar-clearing event,” said David Fear in Rolling Stone. The latest addition to his canonical but up-and-down oeuvre bears the title Highest 2 Lowest yet “falls ironically right smack dab in the middle.” Denzel Washington, in his fifth Spike Lee joint, stars as David King, a once-mighty music mogul who is pursuing a crowning business deal when he’s told that his teenage son has been kidnapped. Despite an intriguing plot twist—the discovery that the kidnapper grabbed the son of David’s right-hand man and driver—the next hour “risks being sluggish.” Still, “when Spike wants to turn it up, he rises to the occasion.” After the movie’s “bafflingly rough start,” said Alison Willmore in…

Jaws The 1975 Steven Spielberg classic remains the king of the genre for a reason. Sure, the bloodthirsty great white looks a bit robotic and outdated, but the setup and story remain a beach-vacation nightmare spun into a shiver-inducing survival tale. Netflix Dangerous Animals This summer’s scariest new shark movie stacks its predators: Jai Courtney, playing a serial-killer version of Robert Shaw’s Quint, is a salty boat captain who kidnaps young women, takes them out to sea, and delights in feeding them to ravenous sharks. $10 on demand Open Water This 2003 film loosely based on a true story is proof that no big-budget robots or CGI effects are needed to provoke terror. Its story of a scuba diving couple left behind in shark-infested waters pares the genre down to…

Don’t aim for mastery if you have limited time to learn a new language before traveling, said Ruffin Prevost in The New York Times. Instead, “aim to reach a ‘survival level,’” and your efforts will be rewarded. Focus first on memorizing a core group of verbs, such as “go,” “see,” “eat,” “drink,” “do,” and “be,” then add a small vocabulary of nouns and pronouns. You might speak only at the level of a toddler, but you’ll be able to construct hundreds of sentences, and doing so “can elevate you from mere tourist to sympathetic traveler.” Plan on daily practice, and sample various language apps, such as Babbel or Duolingo, before choosing one. You can also practice speaking with an AI chatbot or use apps such as HelloTalk or Tandem to…

Unexpected honors, after Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa said he’s “not too sure” how he ended up being named to President Trump’s Council on Sports, Nutrition, and Fitness. He added that “while I don’t know too much about it,” the appointment was “pretty cool.” Slurs, after NPR reported that “clanker” is catching on as a term of abuse for robots, drones, AI chatbots, and other mechanical challengers to human supremacy. “We have a social need right now to respond to the proliferation of AI,” said linguist Adam Aleksic. With clanker, “finally, it seems like that cultural need is being met.” Scrap metal, after the U.S. Air Force announced plans to buy a pair of Tesla Cybertrucks for “live missile fire testing.” While the angular electric pickups have underperformed in the…

London Pro-Palestine group banned: London police last week arrested more than 500 people, most for waving signs, at a protest against the ban on the group Palestine Action. British lawmakers outlawed the organization under the Terrorism Act last month after some of its activists broke into a Royal Air Force base and damaged planes. The ban makes it a criminal offense to be a member of the group or express support for it, even by holding a poster or wearing a T-shirt. Half the people arrested were over age 60, and while most are expected to face no prison time, a few could get up to 14 years. “This is a violent organization,” said a spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer, “that has committed violence, significant injury, and extensive criminal…

Lindsay Lohan has spent almost her entire life in front of cameras, said Jonathan Dean in The Times (U.K.). She was modeling at 3 and acting on soap operas at 10. Then, at 12, she pulled double duty playing identical twins in 1998’s The Parent Trap. After filming the movie in London, “I went back to school and told everybody I had just been on holiday with my family,” says Lohan, 39. “I hadn’t told anybody that I’d done the movie, but it played at all the summer camps my friends were at that year, and then life was just different.” More blockbusters followed, and in her 20s, tabloids chronicled Lohan’s every move. “It is kind of what you sign up for. You want to achieve acclaim, though maybe not…

Nicole Gelinas The New York Times American parents no longer “have a right to let their children go for a walk,” said Nicole Gelinas. Several months ago, Jessica Ivey Jenkins and her husband, Sameule Jenkins, let their 10- and 7-year-old sons go unaccompanied to their local grocery store in Gastonia, N.C., provided that the kids remain on the phone with them the entire time. On the way home, the younger boy stepped off a curb and was struck and killed by a car. Gaston County’s district attorney, Travis Page, had the grief-stricken Jenkinses arrested and jailed on involuntary manslaughter charges, with $1.5 million bail. They were released on a suspended prison sentence only when they pleaded guilty to felony child abuse—a criminal record that may prevent them from holding jobs…

“Right now, the world wants to go solar—but the Trump administration is bucking that trend, pulling out all the stops to destroy renewable power. I mean, what the hell—we’re bathed in free energy every daylight hour. Why should the Chinese and the Australians and the Germans get access to the sun while you’re denied it? One possibility is that America will simply sit out the global solar boom in the same way Cubans, thanks to endless embargoes, still drive ’57 Chevys. Perhaps, having self-embargoed from the clean energy future, America will someday be a living museum of coal-fired power plants and basement furnaces.” Bill McKibben in Mother Jones…

Christine Mungai The Continent (Pan-African) William Ruto has caused “widespread uproar” with his plan to build a megachurch at the official presidential residence, said Christine Mungai. Ruto, Kenya’s first evangelical Christian president, thought he could avoid criticism by promising to pay for the $9 million, 8,000-seat house of worship out of his own pocket. But activists sued, arguing that footing the bill “does not cure the unconstitutionality” of enshrining what’s effectively a state religion. Ruto is ramming this through even as anti-government protests are roiling Kenya; just last month, police killed over three dozen protesters. He might want to look at the experience of other African leaders who sought to glorify God while in office. Ghana’s former President Nana Akufo-Addo promised to raise donations to build a cathedral as thanks…

Enric Sierra La Vanguardia Spanish lawmakers just love telling people what to do, said Enric Sierra. Our local, regional, and national legislators have passed more than 8,000 new laws a year for the past 20 years. But it’s Catalonia that leads the way. Authorities there have declared that “smoking on Catalan beaches is going to end,” while the regional capital, Barcelona, is outlawing pub crawls. The bans on these “two harmful activities” were “born of good intentions.” Locals are sick of drunken tourists singing and shouting as they lurch their way to the next bar in the middle of the night. And nobody, local or tourist, wants a whiff of stinky smoke while trying to enjoy a sea breeze. But “if you’re reading these lines lying on the sand with…

The 1965 Voting Rights Act, which turned 60 last week, is “being attacked from every angle,” said Ari Berman in Mother Jones. The biggest assault is coming from the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts, who “worked strenuously to weaken the law” as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration and has been at war with it ever since. The VRA successfully stopped Southern states from using poll taxes, literacy tests, and other discriminatory tactics to block Black people from voting. But the high court gutted “the heart of the VRA” in 2013, when it ruled that “states with a long history of discrimination no longer needed” federal approval to change their voting laws. A few years later, a Roberts-led majority found that federal courts had no authority to…

Male leopard seals in Antarctica sing songs that bear a striking resemblance to human nursery rhymes, a new study has found. During the October to January mating season, the 1,000-pound predators spend up to 13 hours a day crooning, taking breaks to surface for air about every two minutes. “They’re incredibly committed,” co-author Tracy Rogers, from the University of New South Wales, tells Discover. “They’re like the songbirds of the Southern Ocean.” Rogers and her colleagues analyzed recordings of 26 male seals and discovered that each seal’s song followed a predictable pattern. Each song used the same five sounds, but the seals arranged them into unique sequences to form individual vocal “signatures” not unlike human names. When measured for information entropy—a gauge of predictability—the seal songs fell strikingly close to…

“Gwyneth Paltrow, once known as an Oscar-winning actress, is perhaps our finest unrelatable relatable,” said Karen Heller in The Washington Post. “A woman who has been beautiful, tall, thin, rich, and famous for most of her 52 years,” she is now widely known as a wellness mogul who has built her Goop empire on a “girlfriend-y” vibe, presenting as “an oversharer seeking sexual bliss.” Amy Odell’s “dishy, often delicious” new biography of this singular celebrity is thin on Paltrow’s pre-stardom years, when she was growing up in L.A. and Manhattan as the daughter of actress Blythe Danner and producer Bruce Paltrow. By 26, Gwyneth was the first lady of Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax Films—an uncomfortable position that apparently hastened her retreat from screen acting a few years later. Fortunately, Odell’s book…

If Linn Ullmann had labeled her new novel a memoir, she’d have been justified in doing so, said Rachel Vorona Cote in The Atlantic. She is, after all, the protagonist of Girl, 1983, and makes no effort to hide that the character’s parents are film legends Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann, or that the central incident also occurred in real life. In late 1982, while living in New York City, Ullmann, at 16, met a famous and much older photographer in an elevator and agreed to travel with him to Paris a month later to be the subject of a magazine shoot. During the brief Paris sojourn, the two began a short-lived sexual relationship that Ullman, at 58, has difficulty remembering in detail. She also struggles to connect the self…

Amaarae’s “hugely enjoyable” third album “requires a slight resetting of expectations,” said Shaad D’Souza in The Guardian. The Ghanaian American singer’s previous album, Fountain Baby, was “sensual and musically dense,” establishing her as a creative force on a level with Rosalía and Charli XCX. But because that record didn’t break through commercially, “this is her take on a club record, weaving elements of house, trance, and EDM into Afrobeats and spiky rap cadences.” The new sound comes with a heaping side of hedonism: The songs “exalt drinking, drugtaking, and rowdy sex in such an unapologetic way that they would elicit blushes even from the Weeknd, pop’s reigning king of smut.” On Black Star, Amaarae is “pursued by hangovers and hangers-on,” said Walden Green in Pitchfork. While the album’s rave-ups sound…

Directed by Zach Cregger (R) A town spins into madness after 17 children disappear. Last week’s U.S. box-office champ “begs to be seen in a theater, where a moviegoer can ride the communal waves of horrified delight,” said Ty Burr in The Washington Post. As Zach Cregger’s “nerve-shredding” yet “almost absurdly enjoyable” follow-up to his 2022 sleeper hit Barbarian begins, 17 third-graders in a small American town have mysteriously fled from their homes in the middle of the night, vanishing without a trace. The town quickly turns on the children’s teacher, and as the mystery deepens, Cregger “slowly and fiendishly turns up the heat.” With Weapons, he “vaults into the esteemed company of modern horror maestros like Ari Aster, Robert Eggers, and Jordan Peele.” The movie’s story unfolds by way…

President Trump last week nominated Stephen Miran, a member of his economic inner circle, to fill a vacancy at the Federal Reserve, said Bryan Mena in CNN.com. Miran will replace Adriana Kugler, a Biden appointee who announced her resignation. Miran made headlines last fall with a paper “outlining a tariff-centric approach to rebalancing U.S. trade deficits,” and he has also called the Fed’s independence “an outdated ‘shibboleth.’” If confirmed, he is expected to bring another voice in support of lower interest rates, as Trump has demanded. EVs: Ford aims for cheaper electric platform Ford is doubling down on EVs, said Joann Muller in Axios. The automaker said this week that “a new electric vehicle platform” inspired by the Model T will enable it to produce a cheaper family of EVs,…

■ Trump order opens 401(k)s to crypto President Trump signed an executive order last week to widen access to private equity, crypto, and other assets in 401(k)s, said Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Allison McNeely in Bloomberg. The order “directs the Labor Department to re-evaluate guidance around alternative asset investments in retirement plans” within six months. Trump did something similar in his first term, when he ordered the Labor Department to issue “guidance that retirement plan administrators wouldn’t violate their responsibilities” by mixing private-equity funds into portfolios. Former President Joe Biden rolled back that order. The crypto industry has vigorously lobbied to allow crypto in retirement accounts; Trump and his family have launched multiple crypto ventures of their own. ■ The office ‘friendship recession’ The office is not nearly as social…

David Mamet The Wall Street Journal To the billionaires prepping for doomsday in your fortified bunkers, I say, “Good luck,” said David Mamet. The fantasy of living out the apocalypse in a New Zealand compound “thoughtfully stacked with all that the group would require—air, water, food, entertainment”—is flawed. Think for a moment: How would you get there? Surely the pilots of some of the getaway planes would have families. Logically, some would “insist the families come along for the ride rather than stay and die.” The same goes for the ground crews who service the jets. If staying behind means death, what would they risk by demanding a seat? “What’s the rich guy going to do, stop their paycheck?” The only limitation to the growing size of this passenger manifest…

Jim Lovell was more than 200,000 miles from Earth when he realized he wouldn’t make it to the rocky surface of the moon. The commander of NASA’s 1970 Apollo 13 mission, Lovell, by then an experienced astronaut, was slated to make his first moon landing along with fellow crew member Fred Haise. But on Day 3 of the mission, as the men prepared to enter lunar orbit, an oxygen tank exploded in the command module, leaving them scrambling to survive. Jack Swigert, the third crewmate, was the first to utter the famous phrase “Houston, we’ve had a problem,” and Lovell then repeated it to ground control. With their lives on the line, the trio followed engineers’ instructions to rejigger the tiny but thankfully undamaged lunar module as a lifeboat, and…

The Trump administration is drawing up plans for a National Guard strike force that would respond to “unrest” in U.S. cities, said Alex Horton and David Ovalle in The Washington Post. Internal documents detail plans for a “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force,” made up of 600 troops split between military bases in Alabama and Arizona. They would be on standby and ready to “deploy in as little as one hour,” according to the documents, which “contain extensive discussion about the potential societal implications” of such a program. With his Guard deployments in Los Angeles and now Washington, Trump is inching toward “what seems to be his desired outcome,” said Aaron Blake in CNN.com: “a fuller militarization of the homeland.” It’s the exact scenario numerous top generals and military officials…

IRS director pushed out amid agency upheaval President Trump removed Billy Long last week as head of the Internal Revenue Service, after less than two months on the job. A former GOP congressman with little background in tax policy, Long had a strained relationship with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and made some high-profile errors. Last month, he told tax practitioners that filing season would start late next year, an announcement the IRS called premature. Just hours before his dismissal, the IRS reportedly clashed with the Trump administration over demands to supply tax data to help locate undocumented immigrants. Long had tried motivate the agency’s demoralized staff, often telling employees to leave early on what he called “FriYays.” Bessent will now serve as acting IRS commissioner, making him the tax agency’s…

Leanne Morgan came to stardom after decades as a stay-at-home mom, said Belinda Luscombe in Time. Growing up in a small Tennessee farming town, she dreamed of being a professional comedian. But she wanted children as well, and after she married in her 20s, raising three dominated her life. Touring the comedy circuit was out, but she did charity auctions and corporate gigs. “I would just get onstage anytime anybody would let me,” says Morgan, 59. For a stretch, she sold jewelry at parties and would crack jokes about her home life. At one affair, “I was pregnant with my second baby, and I bent over and someone could see the seat of my underwear and I just went with it.” In the ensuing comic barrage, her host laughed so…

■ Emma Thompson joked last week that she “could have changed the course of American history” by accepting a dinner-date invitation from President Trump. Speaking at a Swiss film festival, the Oscar-winning British actress recounted how she was in her trailer on the set of Primary Colors in 1998 when she got a phone call from the then–real estate mogul. “I thought it was a joke and asked: ‘How can I help you?’” said Thompson, 66. She said Trump, who’d recently split from his second wife, Marla Maples, invited her to stay at one of his “beautiful” hotels where they could also enjoy dinner together. “I said, ‘Well, that’s very sweet. Thank you so much. I’ll get back to you.’” Thompson, a lifelong left-winger, later realized that Trump had called…

Amanda Marcotte Salon The bait and switch President Trump pulled on women struggling with infertility “was predictable,” said Amanda Marcotte, “but still outrageous.” After vowing during the 2024 campaign to make in-vitro fertilization free—and creepily calling himself the “fertilization president”—Trump admitted to reporters last week that he was breaking his promise on free IVF. Some women who voted for Trump on this issue expressed dismay, but the Christian right “celebrated.” That’s because fundamentalist Christians oppose IVF about as fiercely as they oppose abortion. They’re already offering an alternative called “Restorative Reproductive Medicine” (RRM), a quack program that claims to tackle the “root causes” of infertility. The right-wing Heritage Foundation—the primary mover of Project 2025—backs RRM, and claims birth control pills cause infertility, calling them “a daily medication with no therapeutic…

■ A black bear who entered a home in Vancouver, British Columbia, was chased out by the owners’ 6-pound Pomeranian, Scout. The bear had entered the kitchen unseen and was eating from Scout’s bowl when the tiny fluff ball “came sprinting around the corner, and he chased it out,” said owner Kayla Kleine, whose security cameras captured the scene. Scout then chased the bear through the garden and over a fence. “He’s super cuddly and affectionate, but he’s really feisty and really protective of me and my husband,” said the proud owner. “We call him the alpha dog.” ■ Adult pacifiers are becoming popular in China as a stress reliever, according to the South China Morning Post. Some online shops say they’re selling more than 2,000 each month. “When I…

Nathan Warren Dagens Naeringsliv The “world’s most renowned university” is “no longer welcome in the United States,” said Nathan Warren. President Trump is persecuting Harvard, slapping immigration restrictions on researchers and students, slashing funding, and strangling academic freedom. The Harvard Corporation, the nonprofit in charge of the university, needs to get creative to save the treasured institution from Trump’s “political attacks.” This presents a “historic opportunity” for Scandinavia. Norway’s “open and globally oriented society” is a “perfect fit for Harvard.” With our $2 trillion Oil Fund, we can buy the whole lot, import the faculty, and build a brand-new campus. Such a move would “improve the lives of all Norwegians” by making us a “hub of global intellectual discourse, economic growth, and societal development.” And Harvard—a champion of everything liberal,…

Have you ever written words you thought might get you or “someone you love killed?” asked David French in The New York Times. That’s the terrifying reality now faced by federal judges across the country. Threats against jurists have rocketed since President Trump took office, with 162 receiving threats in the six-week period from March 1—more than double the number in the preceding five months. At a recent panel event, five of those judges spoke of the relentless intimidation and harassment they’ve endured. Judge Jack McConnell, who in March blocked the administration’s initial attempt to freeze federal funding, said he’d received six credible threats on his life. Judge John Coughenour, who ruled against the president’s birthright citizenship order, was swatted after making that decision. And Judge Esther Salas, whose son…

“The most useful books are those that the readers write half of themselves.” Voltaire, quoted in The New York Times “The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.” Henry Kissinger, quoted in The Daily Article “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.” Comedian Miles Kington, quoted in Veg Out “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.” Carl Jung, quoted in The Hub (Canada) “That which we cannot forgive, we have a duty to understand. Otherwise we will get more of it.” British jurist Jonathan Sumption, quoted in The New Statesman (U.K.) “The way to right wrongs is to turn the…

■ Judge strikes down deepfake law A federal judge last week struck down a California state law banning AI-generated content during elections, said Chase DiFeliciantonio in Politico. The ruling from Judge John Mendez comes as a victory for Elon Musk, who challenged the law with several other content creators last year, “arguing the restrictions could infringe upon freedom of expression.” The legislation would have blocked websites from hosting deceptive, AI-generated content related to an election in the months before a vote. Gov. Gavin Newsom had signed the law partly to rebuke Musk, who had posted a heavily doctored video shortly before the 2024 election depicting Vice President Kamala Harris calling herself “the ultimate diversity hire.” In the lawsuit challenging the legislation, Musk claimed the measures were “designed to make computer-generated…

The FDA has approved a first-of-its-kind implant that can reduce symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. The inch-long device, called the SetPoint System, is surgically placed in the neck and delivers a one-minute daily electrical pulse to the vagus nerve, helping “reset” the immune system and reduce inflammation. In a yearlong trial of 242 patients, more than half of those using the implant achieved remission or saw major improvement, with marked falls in measures of joint pain (down 60%) and swelling (63%). And unlike most RA drugs, which can increase patients’ risk of severe infections, the device doesn’t suppress the immune system. The most common complication was temporary hoarseness after surgery, experienced by just 2% of patients. The implant is part of a shift toward bioelectronic medicine that could lead to new…

Garrett Graff’s new book, The Devil Reached Toward the Sky, is an oral history of the first atomic bomb. Below, the best-selling author of The Threat Matrix, The Only Plane in the Sky, and Watergate: A New History recommends six World War II books. Tower of Skulls by Richard B. Frank (2020). This first volume of a coming trilogy traces the first five years of Japan’s war in East Asia, all but the final months occurring before the U.S. entered the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Tower of Skulls will forever reframe how most Americans understand the war’s roots and scope. Last Stand of the Tin Can Soldiers by James D. Hornfischer (2004). This is an incredibly detailed and propulsive narrative that captures one of the great naval…

“President Trump is still defending the Confederacy in 2025,” said Sara Pequeño in USA Today. Early this month, his administration announced plans to reinstall two monuments to the treasonous Americans who fought in the Civil War to preserve slavery, including a National Park Service–owned statue of disgraced Confederate Gen. Albert Pike. The bronze figure, erected in a small Washington, D.C., park in 1901, celebrated Pike as a Freemason, but the city recommended its removal in 1992 and it was finally toppled by protesters on Juneteenth 2020. Pike was a racist who was admonished by Confederate higher-ups for losing control of his troops in battle. “So why is Trump hell-bent on bringing back a monument to a man who wasn’t even good at being a Confederate general?” Because he “wants the…

“The Black Keys’ clockwork competence is a durable wonder,” said Jon Dolan in Rolling Stone. Sure, the duo’s last album, 2024’s Ohio Players, and accompanying tour were market flops. But more than a dozen years since they broke through as unlikely retro-rock hitmakers, guitarist-singer Dan Auerbach and drummer Pat Carney didn’t mope. Instead, they retreated to their Nashville studio, gathered a few high-profile collaborators, and put together “one of their most precision-tuned LPs yet.” The 11-track set evokes the song list of a radio station of yore that leaps from “bubble-funk workouts” to Bee Gees–style falsettos to a “fuzzed-out blues-metal stomp.” It’s all “seamlessly smooth” and “a poppy far cry from the garage-grind they built their career on, but it’s not without heart.” Unfortunately, the title track is “massively cheesy,”…

New York City Center, New York City “It’s not a disaster, but any play about Ava Gardner that is this dull is definitely a disappointment,” said Rex Reed in Observer. Elizabeth McGovern wrote and stars in this look at the mid-century Hollywood icon in her twilight years, and having once interviewed Gardner, “I can attest to the humor this play ignores.” The basis is Peter Evans’ 2013 book about working with Gardner in the 1980s on a catty memoir she wound up dropping. But Evans is “not an appealing character,” and Ava too often makes him the protagonist. Still, if you adore Gardner, “you won’t want to miss it.” “The play makes the most sense as a vehicle for McGovern, who relishes the chance to mix up her own star…

Among wine collectors, “Chablis is booming,” said Elin McCoy in Bloomberg, and it’s easy to understand why. Produced in Burgundy, “Chablis is a chardonnay that’s the opposite of those old-style buttery rich, oaky California examples,” yet global warming has given the wine “a slightly rounder, easier-to-drink profile than in the chillier past.” 2023 Patrick Piuze Chablis Terroir de Courgis ($38). This “bright and precise” village-level Chablis ranks with the premiers crus. “It has aromas of flowers, orange peel, citrus, and apple, and a zesty, succulent taste.” 2023 Domaine Isabelle and Denis Pommier Chablis ($40). “This is a fresh, lively basic Chablis,” offering the style’s “trademark smoky gunflint hints” plus “zingy acidity.” 2022 Julien Brocard Chablis Boissoneuse ($44). An organic Chablis, this wine “just keeps getting better and better,” and it…

The beach cities of L.A.’s South Bay Los Angeles’ “best-kept secret” is a string of three beach cities on the city’s South Bay, said Patricia Doherty in Travel + Leisure. Viewed as a single stretch of oceanfront, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, and Redondo Beach “offer all you need for a perfect vacation—any time of year.” The attractions begin with miles of scenic, bustling beachfront. At one end sits El Porto, “one of L.A.’s most legendary surf spots,” while the Manhattan Beach Pier houses a free aquarium and the Redondo Beach Pier gathers together 30 shops and restaurants. The Beach House, a boutique hotel in Hermosa Beach is “ideal for a car-free vacation,” but almost any place on the ocean puts you in walking distance of attractive shopping and dining areas,…

The doodle-selling business is a dog-eat-dog world, said Allie Conti in Bloomberg Businessweek. Originally bred as a way to “create a hypoallergenic guide dog,” the “mutt with a funny name” is, on its own, an industry worth “easily north of a billion dollars.” Demand for doodles is so intense that one breeder “posts a minimum of 40 Instagram stories per day” so potential buyers can follow her pups’ lives before they hit the market for $3,200 apiece. It’s enough to rankle a very protective community of purebred breeders and the American Kennel Club, “which has final say on what is and is not considered an official breed.” Efforts to get labradoodles, goldendoodles, and bernedoodles into the club have been rebuffed, and the turf war is getting testy. One breeder uses…

Founded in 1995 amid the national HIV/AIDS epidemic, the nonprofit Camp Dreamcatcher (campdreamcatcher.org) has been a judgment-free haven for more than 6,000 children living with or affected by the disease. The one-week camp stay is free of charge. Young people ages 5 to 17 from across the East Coast gather in the Pennsylvania woods to swim, hike, ride horses, try archery, build campfires, play laser tag, and race in go-karts. Last year, 110 kids attended the camp, where counselors and therapists help campers express their emotions through yoga, art therapy, and psychotherapy. Throughout the rest of the year, the nonprofit also offers a mentoring program, as well as a separate retreat for HIV/AIDS-impacted teens that includes therapy as well as zip lines and canoeing. Each charity we feature has earned…

Dominic Pino National Review President Trump has nominated an unqualified sycophant to take over one of America’s most important statistical agencies, said Dominic Pino. The previous commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer, was fired by Trump earlier this month after the agency reported disappointing jobs data. The president claimed those numbers had been “rigged” to make him look bad, and he’s now tapped E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, to head the bureau. “A relentless booster of Trump’s policies on social media,” Antoni has “demonstrated time and again that he does not understand economic statistics.” A recurring theme in Antoni’s posts is that “routine data revisions” represent “some kind of conspiracy in favor of Democrats.” In reality, the BLS’s monthly jobs report is based on…

William Webster is the only person ever to head both the FBI and the CIA, and he was tapped for each job for the same reason: to restore trust in an agency that had lost its way. A former judge, he was chosen by President Jimmy Carter to head the nation’s top law enforcement agency in 1978, when the FBI had been tarnished by revelations that it had illegally spied on Americans and targeted civil rights and anti-war groups for decades under J. Edgar Hoover. Leaving in 1987, he was immediately drafted to run the intelligence agency by President Ronald Reagan, whose administration was reeling from the Iran-Contra affair. The arms-for-hostages scandal had implicated CIA Director William Casey and other top agency officials. What drew both presidents to Webster, a…

Jack McAuliffe single-handedly launched the $80 billion-a-year craft beer industry. Opened in Sonoma, Calif., in 1976, his New Albion Brewing Co. was the first microbrewer since Prohibition, selling distinctive, small-batch ales. The company lasted just six years but inspired a generation of craft brewers eager to move beyond industrial-scale lagers. When McAuliffe began, America had just over 100 breweries; now there are nearly 10,000. “It’s amazing what’s happened,” McAuliffe said in 2010. “The United States has become a first-class brewing nation.” John Robert McAuliffe was born in Venezuela, where his father was working as an FBI code breaker, but the family eventually settled in Northern Virginia. In high school McAuliffe “became enthralled with welding,” said The New York Times, and joined the Navy as a submarine tech. Stationed in Scotland,…

This week’s question: Adult pacifiers are becoming popular in China as a stress reliever, with some online stores saying they’re selling more than 2,000 each month. In seven words or fewer, come up with an advertising slogan that a U.S. manufacturer could use to sell anxious American adults on the benefits of a binky. Last week’s contest: 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? THE WINNER: The Paleolith-ick Diet Andrea Carla Michaels, San Francisco SECOND PLACE: The Fetid-terranean Diet John Bregoli, Weymouth, Mass. THIRD PLACE: Larv Loading Larry Hance, Barboursville, Va. For runners-up and…