Indholdsfortegnelse for September 19, 2025 i The Week Magazine

I miss the good old days of fake news. And by “old,” I mean at least 100 years. And by “fake,” I mean utterly, ridiculously, endearingly bogus. It’s the stuff author David Baron chronicles in his new book, The Martians, which details how Gilded Age America came to believe a thriving alien civilization existed on the red planet (see Books, p.22). “There is life on the planet Mars,” declared the front page of The New York Times on Dec. 9, 1906. In the story, reporter Lilian Whiting writes that astronomer Percival Lowell—a man of “brilliant genius”—had spotted more than 350 “marvelously designed” canals on the surface of our planetary neighbor using the observatory he’d built in Flagstaff, Ariz. The canals, Lowell deduced, had been carved by “conscious, intelligent, organic life”…

■ A new Texas law bans free speech on college campuses after 10 p.m. In effect since Sept. 1, the law prohibits student protesters from erecting tents, banging drums, and—most notably—from “engaging in expressive activities on campus between the hours of 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.” The nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is suing to block the law, arguing in part that “the First Amendment does not go to bed when the sun goes down.” ■ A proposed bill in Ohio would let energy companies remotely adjust the settings of residents’ thermostats. GOP Rep. Roy Klopfenstein, the bill’s sponsor, says homeowners would retain the ability to override any changes but that the measure is needed to help Ohio attract business investment. “If we want to have the data…

Orem, Utah Assassination: Prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot in the neck at a Utah rally this week, marking the country’s latest episode of political violence. Kirk, a 31-year-old father of two, was speaking at Utah Valley University for an “American Comeback Tour” event hosted by Turning Point USA, the youth organization he co-founded in 2012. Videos showed Kirk’s head jolting backward and blood seeping from his neck as audience members fled. The shooter fired from a building about 200 yards from where Kirk was seated in a tent; a person of interest was in custody as The Week went to press. Kirk was one of the country’s most visible young right-wing figures and had grown close to President Trump, helping vet Cabinet appointees and communicating regularly with…

Jen Hatmaker’s divorce shook the evangelical world, said David Marchese in The New York Times. In the summer of 2020, the best-selling author and Christian influencer was asleep beside her husband when she woke to the sound of him sending a voice text to his girlfriend. “That was the singular most shocking thing that has ever happened to me,” says Hatmaker, 51. “We were pastors. We were married for 26 years. We’d followed the rules.” They tried to keep things quiet, but a journalist soon dug up their divorce filing. After the story broke, Hatmaker—who in 2016 had revealed her support for gay marriage and her opposition to then–presidential candidate Donald Trump—bore the brunt of the backlash. “The response was to come for me, that this was my fault, that…

Megan McArdle The Washington Post Football is “exciting to watch, no doubt,” said Megan McArdle, but the thrill is dependent on young men destroying “their bodies and minds for our entertainment.” A recent survey of 546 NFL players from the 1988 season, who are now an average age of 62, found that a third of them experience “chronic pain severe enough to limit daily life or work activity most days,” including just climbing stairs or performing simple chores—far in excess of the 13% of similarly aged men from the general population. Former linebacker David Grayson, 61, said he feels such constant pain that “the whole battle is to stay upright and keep going.” Even worse, 47% of the players said they have “serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions,” compared…

Prasanth Nair Deccan Herald It takes “thick skin” to survive Indian politics, said Prasanth Nair. Some leaders thrive on “insults and counterattacks.” But ordinary public servants like local council members, police officers, and administrators are “bound by service rules” and “cannot fight back.” They must endure abuse silently, and sometimes it’s too much to bear. There has been a rash of suicides in Kerala state among civil servants, triggered by “humiliation, not proven guilt.” One Congress party village councillor took her own life after online trolls mocked her financial difficulties. “No legal case, no inquiry—just relentless ridicule.” A Kannur local magistrate faced bribery allegations amplified by the media but not supported by evidence. He died by suicide the day after being publicly accused. Between 2016 and 2024, 138 Kerala police…

“Free speech is dead in the United Kingdom,” said Preston Byrne in The Telegraph. The signs have piled up in “story after story”: the jailing of Lucy Connolly, a mom and nanny, for a 51-word anti-migrant rant on social media; the fining of a Turkish man for burning a Quran. But the fatal blow landed last week, when five armed Metropolitan Police officers arrested Graham Linehan—the “much-loved Irish comedian” behind the sitcoms Father Ted and The IT Crowd—at Heathrow Airport on charges of inciting violence against transgender people in three social media posts. “At what point did we become North Korea?” asked Nigel Farage, leader of the right-wing party Reform UK. Some of us have warned of “Britain’s drift into authoritarianism” for years, said Esther Krakue in the Daily Express.…

A House committee this week released the bawdy birthday card Donald Trump wrote to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003, said Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic. “Guess what? It’s real. And it’s bad.” Two months ago, The Wall Street Journal first reported the card’s existence as part of a “birthday book” of letters from friends compiled by accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell for the financier’s 50th birthday. Trump claimed the card either didn’t exist or was forged, and sued the Rupert Murdoch–owned Journal for $10 billion for “false, malicious, and defamatory” reporting. But now Epstein’s lawyers have turned over the card itself to Congress, and it’s “eyebrow raising.” Framed by a Trump sketch of a naked woman, the typewritten message from Trump to his pal includes the lines “Enigmas never age,” “We have certain…

Almost everything is more enjoyable when we have company—even reading, a new study has found. The researchers’ curiosity was piqued by the boom in reading parties across the U.S., at which strangers gather to read quietly together. To find out if reading, and other activities such as exercise, housework, and shopping, really are more enjoyable with others, the University of British Columbia team drew on four years of data from the American Time Use Survey, in which people told Census Bureau researchers how they’d spent the previous day. Some 41,100 participants were also quizzed in greater depth about three of the activities they’d described, including how happy they were while doing it and if they’d been interacting with anyone at the time. This provided data on more than 80 activities,…

“Helen Oyeyemi’s books are getting weirder—and I mean that in the best way,” said Ilana Masad in the Los Angeles Times. In the British novelist’s “thoroughly enjoyable” ninth novel, the narrator, Kinga, is a 40-year-old woman who has several personalities, each appearing once a week and none sure why there’s a man tied up in her pantry. “What is A New New Me about?” Not, as you might imagine, the challenges of dissociative identity disorder for one Polish expat living in Prague, but rather “the chaotic and unpredictable nature of storytelling.” And in this case, each Kinga is using diary entries to convey stories about her days to her other selves. Oyeyemi’s narrative boldness “would risk disorienting the reader if her voice were any less full-throated or enchanting,” said Jennifer…

The Colonel and the King by Peter Guralnick (Little, Brown, $38) If you think of Col. Tom Parker as the manager whose greed ruined Elvis Presley’s career, said Elizabeth Nelson in The Washington Post, you need to read this book. “A tirelessly researched counterargument” from the author of an “indispensable” two-volume Presley biography, it depicts Parker as a brilliant promoter who lived many lives before meeting Presley and then worked solely to secure the opportunities Presley himself wanted or needed, including that long detour into moviemaking. Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu (Little, Brown, $28) Stephanie Wambugu’s first novel is “one of the most emotionally rich debuts I can remember reading,” said Kate Tuttle in The Boston Globe. When studious Ruth and charismatic Maria first become friends, they’re among the only…

Four years after his debut album “reimagined what contemporary pop music could sound like,” said Brady Brickner-Wood in The New Yorker, Dijon Duenas isn’t standing pat. The follow-up finds the 33-year-old Los Angeles singer, songwriter, and producer celebrating the family he and his partner, Joanie, are building, yet it’s both a “thrilling” and “demanding” listen. While Prince and Frank Ocean are clear influences, this is R&B in which all 12 tracks sound like Top 40 singles “made by an artist with a kaleidoscopic, postmodernist mind.” Dijon and his collaborator Mk.gee recently added their signature elastic sound to Justin Bieber’s hit summer album, said Jeff Ihaza in Rolling Stone. But unlike Bieber, Dijon puts strong emotions first. “Lyrics here matter less than feeling,” and throughout the record, “fragments of sounds—fiery ad-libs,…

Young men must keep moving or else. Though the latest adaptation of a Stephen King novel could be described as Lord of the Flies on foot, said Alison Willmore in NYMag.com, “it’s really more like The Hunger Games for dudes,” in a good way. The established film franchise and this movie even have the same director, here dramatizing King’s decades-old story about a brutal contest in which dozens of young men seeking a cash prize agree to walk until all but one have been shot dead by military overseers for failing to keep the designated pace. As in a war movie, the brutal violence of this film “allows it to get sentimental,” with Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson playing contestants who form a believably complex biracial friendship that’s used to…

American Sweatshop Is there a more Kafkaesque 21st-century job than content moderator for a video-based social media site? Lili Reinhart (Riverdale) gives a star turn in this thoughtful but flawed new film about a moderation team and the one shaken member who takes it upon herself to catch the creator of a particularly disturbing fetish video. $15 on demand Architecton Architecture isn’t itself a strange profession, but the ways we employ it can be. Russian director Viktor Kossakovsky’s stunning recent documentary is a meditation on how we build, what lasts and what doesn’t, and what the difference says about us. $20 on demand Somnium In this new low-budget sci-fi horror film, an aspiring Hollywood actress takes an overnight gig at a sleep clinic where customers seeking self-improvement allow their dreams…

■ Steppin is a free app that forces you to work for the time you spend on the apps that eat up too much of your time. Create a list of apps you want blocked, and you’ll be able to access them only for as long as the time you’ve banked walking around in the world. For now, it’s iOS only. ■ One Sec bars you from designated apps until you’ve paused and been reminded to do breathing exercises before proceeding. It can also track your time spent on designated apps. It’s free when used to block one app and $20 a year for unlimited use. ■ Foqos, another free iOS app, takes things a step further. Select the apps you’d like to block and you’ll be able to access…

Patrick Hemingway was comfortable in the shadow of his famous father, Ernest Hemingway. Though the elder Hemingway was famously troubled and mercurial, their affection was deep and mutual. “I would rather fish with you and shoot with you than anybody that I have ever known since I was a boy,” Ernest wrote in a letter to his son. Patrick completed Ernest’s unfinished novel True at First Light and published Dear Papa, a collection of 120 letters the two exchanged over a period of 30 years. His father’s outsize reputation, Patrick said, “didn’t bother me because I don’t think that I was terribly ambitious.” Patrick Miller Hemingway was born in Kansas City, Mo., to Ernest and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, during a stopover in the family’s many travels. The middle…

Blue-state governors are “launching vaccine counteroffensives,” said Lisa Kashinsky and Brakkton Booker in Politico. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order protecting Covid vaccine access for all, and in Massachusetts, Gov. Maura Healey has required insurers to cover any injections recommended by the state health department, “regardless of federal guidelines.” California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii have formed an alliance aimed at preserving vaccine access; other blue-state efforts involve strategizing for “disease tracking and emergency preparedness” as the federal government guts funding. Shut out of power in D.C., many Democrats see vaccine access “as a winning issue.” Meanwhile, some Republicans fear it may become a losing one, said Ronald Brownstein in CNN.com. Public support for vaccination runs deep: In a recent KFF survey, 81% of parents, including 75% of…

Side hustles, after the Trump family netted $5 billion in the first 24 hours of trading for WLFI, the clan’s new cryptocurrency. When President Trump launched the family-owned firm behind the currency last year, he pledged it would make “America Great Again, this time with crypto.” Romance, after retired Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, 81, married his former secretary, Fawn Hall, 65, in a secret ceremony. In the late 1980s, North and Hall were central figures in the Reagan administration’s Iran-Contra scandal, though North in congressional testimony strenuously denied they’d engaged in “hanky-panky.” Speaking truth to power, after a British employment tribunal awarded damages to a woman fired for calling her bosses “dickheads” to their faces. While the remark was “not acceptable,” the court found, “this one-off comment did not…

Helen Mirren turned 80 in July, says Dominic Maxwell in The Times, and the experience is about what she expected. “You know, my mum said something very wise to me many years ago,” explains the British actress. “She said: ‘Never be afraid of getting older. An amazing thing happens. When you’re 18, the thought of being 35 is horrific. And you get to 35 and it’s actually a lot better than being 18. And when you’re 35 the thought of being 55…Then you hit 55 and you realize there are great things about being 55. Your life has moved on, you lose certain stuff, but you gain other stuff.’ That’s certainly the case for me.” She scoffs at others’ efforts to hold off the inevitable. “The tech bros think their…

Ezra Klein The New York Times In coming weeks, congressional Democrats will face a fateful choice, said Ezra Klein: “Join Republicans to fund a government that President Trump is turning into a tool of authoritarian takeover and vengeance or shut the government down.” Federal funding runs out on Oct. 1, and Republicans will need Senate Democrats to agree to a new appropriations package. Democrats went along with new funding in March, but since then, Trump has engaged in a breathtaking expansion of his powers, and “we are in the authoritarian consolidation stage of this presidency.” He’s put troops on the streets and is using mobster-like intimidation “to hound his enemies, to line his pockets, and to entrench his own power.” The Supreme Court is declining to intervene, so what can…

“What we haven’t seen before is Trump’s blatant embrace of authoritarian imagery—the preening pantomime of dictatorship. It’s not just the giant, creepy banners on federal buildings—unfurled by Trump’s Cabinet secretaries to literally display their unquestioning devotion. It’s also the refinishing of the Oval Office in gold leaf, along with plans for a monstrous matching ballroom. It’s Trump floating the idea of renaming the Kennedy Center in his honor, while Republican lawmakers rush to put his name on anything else they can find, like an offering to some supreme half-man, half-god. It is the grotesque transformation of our national identity into a celebrity selfie.” Matt Bai in The Washington Post…

Editorial Korea JoongAng Daily The Trump administration’s mass detention of more than 300 South Korean workers was a slap in the face for our country, said the Korea JoongAng Daily. ICE agents raided a Hyundai-LG battery plant in Georgia and “hauled away” frightened employees “in shackles and cable ties as if they were hardened criminals.” President Lee Jae Myung ordered a “full-scale effort” to bring them home quickly, but the damage has been done. It’s “undeniable” that many of the Koreans were in America under sketchy temporary visas. But making an example of them was unfair, especially since long-term U.S. visas for engineers and skilled staff are “notoriously scarce,” and full compliance with all U.S. immigration rules is “almost impossible.” The crackdown came a mere 10 days after a Korea-U.S.…

Jon Asberg Fokus Sweden’s progressives are “ablaze with indignation” over our new “cultural canon,” said Jon Asberg. For the past two years, a committee of government-picked experts has been drawing up a list of 100 artistic works, ideas, and brands that define Swedishness. The committee’s picks, published last week, include Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking, the Nobel prizes, IKEA, and Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. Some critics have griped about how ABBA and Swedish meatballs didn’t make the cut. But the real reason for the cultural elite’s fury is their “recurring fear of Swedishness itself.” After all, “if you define what Swedish culture is, you also determine what it is not.” The concern is that this sends us down a “slippery slope,” away from the “ideal of a multicultural society.” Before…

As “the U.S. isolates itself” economically and politically, said Katherine Kim in Politico, Chinese leader Xi Jinping is taking a “big victory lap.” Xi last week met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in China for the first time since 2018, then gathered with Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un and two dozen other foreign leaders in Beijing for a parade in which China showed off its massive military buildup. With President Trump’s tariffs and “America First” policies alienating India and other nations, China has started to “present itself as a trustworthy alternative” to lead a post-American world order. A furious Trump took Xi’s “performative” gathering of fellow autocrats as “a personal affront,” said Stephen Collinson in CNN.com, accusing him, Putin, and Kim of…

Though Miriam Toews’ engrossing second memoir addresses the deaths of both her father and sister by suicide, it’s “as fluent in the comic register as it is in the tragic,” said Lauren Christensen in The New York Times. As in her novels Women Talking and Fight Night, the Toews we meet here “doesn’t just toe the line between the two extremes; she proves there isn’t one.” This book began when Toews was asked a few years ago to explain why she writes, with her simple answer being that she does so because her beloved older sister, Marjorie, who suffered from severe depression, had asked her decades earlier to send letters when Toews was 18 and leaving her native Manitoba to see Europe with a boyfriend. “Yes, I’ll write,” Toews replied.…

It seems possible that Rebecca F. Kuang will never be satisfied with any of her many achievements, said Hua Hsu in The New Yorker. She wrote her first best-seller, The Poppy War, at 19, but describes it now, 10 years later, as “a pretty mediocre fantasy novel.” She wrote her second best-seller, Babel, while studying in England as a Marshall scholar and her third, the publishing satire Yellowface, just before entering a Ph.D. program at Yale. “Whenever I’m getting close to finishing one project, I start daydreaming about something else so that I can pretty quickly transition,” she says. “I’m very uncomfortable when I’m not working. If there’s nothing, then I start to panic.” Kuang, who writes as R.F. Kuang, had initially taken up writing fiction upon ending a multiyear…

“Even great bands aren’t safe from unexpected shake-ups,” said Sam Rosenberg in Paste, but the 2024 departure of bassist Max Oleartchik hasn’t tripped up Big Thief. Lead singer and songwriter Adrianne Lenker “remains peerless in her ability to weave vivid images and intense feelings into a rich, visceral tapestry of lyrics,” and she and her two remaining bandmates seem to have embraced the possibilities that enforced change unlocks, “recalibrating the band’s woodsy, folksy sound into a more percussive, psychedelic direction.” Though Double Infinity consists of only nine songs, it “rarely feels lean or lightweight.” These are songs “less inclined to tell a story from start to finish than transport you into a space of pure feeling,” said Vrinda Jagota in Pitchfork. Whether looking forward or back, they “endeavor to express…

The avowed capper to a beloved British series The new Downton Abbey movie is less a peak for the franchise than “a reverential goodbye,” said Tim Robey in The Telegraph (U.K.). Fifteen years after the debut of the British TV series, which spawned two previous feature-length movies, creator-writer Julian Fellowes must bid adieu to more than two dozen characters, both aristocrats and servants, and it’s “no easy task.” Michelle Dockery’s Lady Mary “gets easily the strongest arc.” As a recent divorcée, she battles ostracization at just the moment, a year into the Great Depression, that her father, played by Hugh Bonneville, prepares to hand over to her control of Downton Abbey, the Crawley family estate. Because the movie also packs in the impending retirement of the Crawleys’ cherished butler, class…

Baratza Encore A good burr grinder is essential to quality home brews, and this reliable, no-frills model “grinds coffee more evenly, and on a wider range of settings, than any other machine we’ve tested at its price level.” $150, crateand barrel.com Source: Wirecutter Breville Barista Express “A great all-in-one choice,” Breville’s original espresso machine “makes it easy to start pulling shots like a pro.” It has a built-in grinder and steaming wand, and while it’s easy to tweak settings, the timing of a shot is automatic. $700, bestbuy.com Source: America’s Test Kitchen NanoFoamer Pro Automated milk frothers are getting better, and this “understated yet eye-catching” device is “the best of the best.” You can adjust froth thickness easily, and the milk hits 140 degrees in 3 minutes. $159, subminimal.com Source:…

Tesla’s pay package for Elon Musk could make him a trillionaire, said Stephen Morris and Kana Inagaki in the Financial Times. The carmaker’s board revealed a plan last week giving Musk shares worth up to $1 trillion over the next decade if he meets a series of “extremely challenging” milestones. “Musk would have to boost Tesla’s market capitalization to $8.5 trillion from $1.09 trillion today,” sell millions of autonomous vehicle subscriptions and AI robots, and increase annual earnings to $400 billion. “The structure echoes Musk’s $56 billion deal from 2018, which was also thought to be unachievable” but “paid out in full,” though that deal was later unwound by a Delaware judge. Training data: Anthropic’s copyright settlement The AI startup Anthropic agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement with authors and…

Profiting off a college kid’s housing Some parents are buying houses for their college-enrolled children to avoid shelling out for room and board, said Jordan Pandy in Business Insider. An analysis of 121 colleges by Mortgage Research Network found that “buying a home was less expensive than room and board” in 23 markets. The widest gap was at Temple University in Philadelphia, where room and board tops $50,900 in a three-year period—$29,742 more than the cost of a mortgage. Candice St. Pierre bought a four-bedroom Victorian in Savannah, Ga., last year for $485,000 in order to become a landlord to her daughter and classmates at the Savannah College of Art & Design. “She collects $3,500 a month in rent” from her daughter’s roommates, covering the $3,494-a-month mortgage. And she believes…

Greg Ip The Wall Street Journal AI “research” threatens to sap humans of their vital curiosity, said Greg Ip. Large language models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude “excel at locating, synthesizing, and connecting knowledge.” However, they don’t contribute their own knowledge to the world. Humans, when researching a subject, “pursue novel avenues of inquiry” for a “variety of reasons: salary, wealth, fame, tenure, ‘likes,’ clicks, curiosity.” But when AI is answering the questions, those incentives shrivel. After all, “there is little reward to creating knowledge that then gets puréed in a large language blender.” Already we are seeing signs of this unfolding. Many LLMs are trained on Wikipedia, the human-edited online encyclopedia, yet as users have started turning to ChatGPT, they look less at the original…

■ Larry Pickett Jr., a 20-year-old West Point cadet and Army football safety, was taking an evening drive with his family around Fort Montgomery, N.Y., when they came across a white sedan that had crashed into a utility pole. Though a dangling power line was threatening to set the car alight, Pickett and his father rushed in and extracted the dazed driver, just moments before the car burst into flame. “People around me are telling me to be proud of this,” said Pickett, “but to me, this was just doing what I would always do.” ■ A 13-year-old New Hampshire boy nabbed a catch many older fishermen could only dream of: a 177-pound halibut. The massive fish, caught during an overnight Atlantic fishing trip, weighed 50 pounds more than Jackson…

Roberts’ order allows Trump to withhold foreign aid Chief Justice John Roberts this week granted the Trump administration temporary permission to freeze $4 billion in foreign aid approved by Congress in its last budget. The Trump administration was sued by the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council to release grants that the administration froze earlier this year. A judge had ordered the administration to spend the money by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. The administration argued in an emergency request to the Supreme Court that the order forced the government to spend money at a “breakneck pace” and posed “a grave and urgent threat” to presidential authority and the separation of powers. Roberts paused the order until the full court has a chance…

In 1992, Spike Lee hit a wall, said Zak Cheney-Rice in New York. The director had gone some $5 million over budget filming Malcolm X, and so Warner Bros. decided to shut down the biopic. The studio “fired all the people in postproduction who were editing, and I was at my wit’s end,” says Lee, 68. “I’d put a million dollars into the budget; I was broke.” But he was also determined to complete his passion project. “In doing this film, I had become a student of Malcolm. And Malcolm always talked about self-reliance, and finally that clicked in my mind. Like, ‘I know some rich Black folks.’” When Lee made his pitch to potential backers, he made it clear there’d be no tax write-off or return on investment—he was…

■ Jennifer Aniston this week went Instagram official with her new boyfriend, the hypnotist and life coach Jim Curtis. The Friends and Morning Show actress posted a carousel of photos recapping her summer, including pics with Courteney Cox, Adam Sandler, and other A-listers. But her fans were most focused on a photo near the end of the batch, which showed Curtis, 49, looking at the sunset with his back to the camera. “You think we wouldn’t notice photo number 17???” one follower wrote in the comments. The relationship first made headlines in July, when Aniston, 56, and Curtis were snapped on a yacht off the Spanish island of Majorca, where they were vacationing with actor Jason Bateman and other friends. “They do everything together,” a source told the Daily Mail…

Ashanty Rosario The Atlantic “AI is demolishing my education,” said Ashanty Rosario. As a New York City high school senior, I’ve seen fellow students rely on ChatGPT and other AI bots to write essays, solve math problems, and do both their classwork and homework. “The temptation to abuse these tools is always there.” During a recent lesson about Frederick Douglass, I watched a classmate discreetly “prop their laptop up on a crossed leg” and produce a ChatGPT summary of a chapter in his autobiography to hand in. I saw another use ChatGPT to produce “a step-by-step solution” to an algebra problem. Even on my debate team, students now rely on AI to create their arguments. Generative AI is so fast and effective that it “has led many students to avoid…

Editorial Le Monde The European Union has finally reached a trade deal with South America’s five-nation Mercosur bloc, said Le Monde, but it’s a far cry from the one the EU hoped for a quarter-century ago. Both blocs “are now vulnerable to the whims of a U.S. president capable of imposing tariffs on those who refuse to pledge allegiance,” so getting to a deal was “no longer just a question of expanding trade to stimulate growth.” In an “increasingly hostile environment,” the EU’s 27 members and their South American counterparts—Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay—were forced to swallow a tough compromise. Europe got “tariff exemptions on more than 90% of its exports to Mercosur” and expanded access to South American raw materials. In return, the EU has to commit to…

The Supreme Court will soon face “its most important test” of the Trump era, said Paul Rosenzweig in The Atlantic. The justices this week agreed to fast-track the Trump administration’s appeal of lower court rulings that found most of his sweeping tariffs to be illegal. Trump slapped levies of up to 50% on nearly 100 countries under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. But a federal appeals court noted last week in a decision invalidating those tariffs that the 1977 law does not mention the word “tariffs” or synonyms such as “duty” or “tax.” And, the court added, “the power of the purse (including the power to tax) belongs to Congress.” How the conservative-dominated Supreme Court responds to that ruling—stayed until Oct. 14—will be crucial, both for the economy and…

“Getting old is like climbing a mountain. You get a little out of breath but the view is much better.” Ingrid Bergman, quoted in The Knowledge “However much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing.” George Orwell, quoted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, quoted in Today.com “From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.” Will Durant, quoted in the Chattanooga, Tenn., Times Free Press “I think I’ve discovered the secret of life—you just hang around until you get used to it.” Charles M. Schulz, quoted in Parade “It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how…

■ The Pentagon’s AI war games As the Pentagon races to incorporate artificial intelligence into America’s weapons, almost all the AI models being used are eschewing diplomacy and urging leaders to intensify warfare, said Michael Hirsh in Politico. Last year, Jacquelyn Schneider, who directs the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative at Stanford University, conducted an experiment in which five AI tools were confronted with military crisis situations. She found that the bots preferred “to escalate aggressively, use firepower indiscriminately, and turn crises into shooting wars,” even potentially launching nuclear weapons. “It’s almost like the AI understands escalation but not de-escalation,” Schneider said. Another worry is that some AI-powered defense systems “move so fast against potential enemies that humans can’t keep up” to overrule their choices. ■ Musk’s anti-‘woke’ chatbot…

Chinese surgeons have transplanted a lung from a genetically modified pig into a brain-dead human for the first time, and the organ kept functioning for nine days. Doctors gave the patient medications to lower the risk of infection and rejection, and say that the 39-year-old man’s body initially accepted the new organ. But problems began after just one day, and the doctors ended the experiment when they saw signs of rejection. It is hoped that animal-to-human transplants will eventually help solve the organ-shortage crisis. About 48,000 organ transplants were performed in the U.S. last year, but more than 103,000 people were on waiting lists—and about 13 people die every day while waiting for a transplant. Scientists have enjoyed varied success transplanting pig kidneys and hearts into people in recent years.…

A little over a century ago, the U.S. and much of the rest of the world “had Martians on the brain,” said Chris Vognar in the Los Angeles Times. In 1906, The New York Times reported that evidence of life had been discovered on the red planet, and a year later, The Wall Street Journal asserted that the existence of intelligent human life on our planetary neighbor had been proven. “How this came to pass is the subject of The Martians,” David Baron’s “witty” and deeply researched new book about a cultural craze that had taken flight about 15 years earlier. It was an era when breakthroughs were common, the theory of evolution had changed how people understood their universe, and tabloid-style journalism fanned interest in barely justified scientific speculation.…

Something to Look Forward To, Fannie Flagg’s new story collection, spotlights Americans throughout the country who overcome life’s curveballs. Below, the author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe names six books that have had a big impact on her. Heidi by Johanna Spyri (1881). How could I not list my very first book? I was lucky enough to have a father who read Heidi to me. Here I was, a child of maybe 4 or 5, living in a small apartment in Birmingham, Ala. But every night I was transported all the way across the world to the beautiful Swiss Alps. Thank you, Dad. You really started something: my love of stories. The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene (1930). The boys were the ones…

“Hard as it is to believe at this late date, not everyone gets yet that Sabrina Carpenter is up to something a lot more wily than just being a sex goddess,” said Chris Willman in Variety. The 26-year-old pop star just scored her second No. 1 album with Man’s Best Friend, whose cover art shows her on hands and knees, playing dog to a man who’s holding a few locks of her blond hair. But understand: The former Disney teen star is “a comedienne at heart,” and “no other star of songland is nearly so dedicated to getting laughs out of the carnage in the battle of the sexes.” The photo spoofs her own readiness to do more for undeserving guys than they’d do for her, and the dozen songs…

Instant Classics (Vespucci) To get swept up with this new podcast about ancient Greece and Rome, “you don’t have to know Homer from Herodotus,” said Fiona Sturges in the Financial Times. That’s because authors and hosts Mary Beard and Charlotte Higgins “bring authority, accessibility, and humor to their subject,” while connecting the dots between past and present. Indeed, the first episode explores which Roman emperor is most like Donald Trump, and the figure they settle on is “unlikely to be who you think.” Though Instant Classics is nominally a video podcast, “I wouldn’t bother watching,” said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer (U.K.). You’d only see Beard and Higgins sitting in recording booths. The hosts are worth listening to, though, as they’re “enormously informed experts” whose “huge enthusiasm sold the whole…

An unlikely romance takes hold on Christmas Eve. Despite a title that sounds like an insult, Jay Duplass’ new movie could well be “the year’s most charming romantic comedy,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. On the day before Christmas, a failed Baltimore comedian played by co-writer Michael Strassner chips a tooth, tracks down a workaholic dentist willing to help, and winds up passing the holiday with her after overhearing that her plans for the evening have blown up. Liz Larsen is terrific as Didi, Strassner’s older co-lead, and as the pair’s unlikely May-December courtship plays out, Duplass’ first movie in 13 years becomes “a sweet story about seizing opportunities for joy no matter how ridiculous they seem.” To my eyes, the film “miscalculates its charm from the first…

“If a wine popularity contest were held, I’m convinced that prosecco would win,” said Lettie Teague in The Wall Street Journal. As overall wine sales in the U.S. decline, sales of the Italian sparkler keep rising, adding to a 10-year run in which prosecco consumption in the U.S. nearly tripled. And even entry-level prosecco deserves the love, providing everyday joy at an affordable and “remarkably stable” price point. 2023 Bisol 1542 Jeio Brut Prosecco Rosé DOC ($23).“By far” the best pink prosecco in my tasting, Bisol 1542 is fresh, crisp, and “bursting with ripe red berry flavors.” Nino Franco Rustico Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG ($20). A “remarkably consistent wine,” this bottling is, for me, “another perennial favorite.” La Marca Prosecco ($16). Along with Mionetto, La Marca is a good mass-market…

■ The proportions are off. “Sizing furniture and accessories correctly to a room—and to each other—is one of the toughest parts of design.” To get it right, take detailed measurements of each room and, before ordering any furniture in a shop or online, play with online software that allows you to see what the various elements will look like in context. ■ The lighting is flat. A home will feel like a dentist’s office if you rely solely on recessed overhead lights. Consider lighting design early when renovating so the installed wiring can support changes in mood and the layering of ambient, accent, and task lighting. ■ You’ve neglected the finishing touches. “Getting the foundation of a room right is half the battle, but you can’t stop there.” A room…

“Social media panhandling” is the latest form of wedding greed, said Jeff Jacoby in The Boston Globe. “At least bridal registries”—themselves arguably just “glorified shopping lists”—are consulted by friends and family. The latest trend among brides-to-be is “flooding companies with so-called PR requests for free merchandise to distribute as swag at their bachelorette parties,” with the promise to then post their “haul” videos on TikTok. Some bachelorettes “blast out hundreds of emails to companies at a time.” The appetite for handouts doesn’t stop with free merch. Women have started “displaying a Venmo ID” on their bachelorette caravans to “Buy the Bride a Drink,” turning parties into “rolling GoFundMe campaigns.” Some brands “set aside merchandise to ship out in response to bridal pitches.” But others refuse to say yes to the…

As the country’s oldest African-diaspora-focused multidisciplinary arts institution, the National Black Arts Festival (nbaf.org) has been a community pillar since its first annual event in 1988. More than 5 million people have participated in the Atlanta-based organization’s live performances, movie screenings, and craft market, which have featured such artists as Maya Angelou, Spike Lee, and Sonia Sanchez. Throughout the year, the nonprofit organizes concerts, auctions, and substantial artist funds supporting more than 20 professional artists. Black youth are highlighted, too: One program introduces dance lessons into Atlanta middle schools, and another includes a benefit event honoring student fashion designers. NBAF also hosts free arts workshops, mentorships, and residencies for budding filmmakers, muralists, and musicians. Each charity we feature has earned a four-star overall rating from Charity Navigator, which rates not-for-profit…

Michael S. Bernstam and Steven R. Rosefielde Barron’s The Ukraine war is costing Russia its oil empire, said Michael S. Bernstam and Steven R. Rosefielde. Output of oil and gas is down 9% so far this year, according to official statistics. The reality is worse: The world has learned to live without Russian energy. After launching its war with Ukraine, Russia cut its natural gas supply to Europe in response to the Western embargo on Russian oil. The attempt at blackmail backfired. Gas from Norway and the United States has easily filled the void, finally delivering “European independence from Russian energy.” Meanwhile, the U.S. now accounts for roughly 8% of the oil and 20% of the gas consumed globally. To compete for market share, members of OPEC are boosting output,…

This week’s question: A Kentucky nurse successfully used CPR to revive a drunken raccoon she found passed out in a distillery’s dumpster, where the critter had overindulged in moonshine-soaked peaches. If a country singer were to write a song about the raccoon’s boozy misadventure, what would it be titled? Last week’s contest: Jon Bon Jovi recently became a first-time grandfather, after his son Jake Bongiovi and his daughter-in-law, Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown, adopted a baby girl. If the ’80s rock icon were to rewrite a Bon Jovi song to address the joys and pains of grandparenting, what would it be titled? THE WINNER: “You Give Luvs a Bad Stain” Cathy Lacombe, Grantham, N.H. SECOND PLACE: “Livin’ for the Child Care” Laurel Rose, Pittsburgh THIRD PLACE: “I’d Diaper You”…