Indholdsfortegnelse for October 17, 2025 i The Week Magazine

During my previous travels abroad, I have encountered a variety of reactions as an American: admiration, envy, resentment, disdain—but never pity. On a recent trip to Portugal and Spain, I was surprised that no one seemed angry at me because our country is now dominated by aspiring authoritarian Donald Trump. People shook their heads sadly, as if in sympathy with someone who’d suffered a great and painful fall. They pitied me. “It’s so terrible,” a Portuguese tour guide said over lunch. “We used to look up to you.” She spoke of her own country’s four decades under fascismo and the rule of dictator António de Oliveira Salazar. “Why,” she asked, “don’t people learn from history?” Americans have long enjoyed the privilege of viewing dictatorship from a safe distance, with no…

■ A conference on censorship at Utah’s Weber State University has been canceled amid allegations of censorship. According to professor Richard Price, a scheduled speaker, Weber State vice president Jessica Oyler emailed him in advance to demand he not discuss “legislation or policies in ways that take a side.” After talking with Price and other speakers, organizers canceled the event, saying they could no longer deliver the “experience our community expects and deserves.” ■ A Kentucky man has been arrested on charges that his Halloween decorations constitute “terroristic threatening.” Police said Stephan Marcum adorned his yard with five “bodies” in trash bags, one hanging, labeled with the job titles of town officials involved in a hearing where Marcum was fined $250 for zoning infractions. “If you’re going to express yourself,”…

Colorado Springs Conversion therapy: The Supreme Court this week appeared ready to overturn Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors in the first major case to be heard by the court in its new term. Colorado Springs evangelical therapist Kaley Chiles filed suit against the state, saying that Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors kept her from working with patients seeking talk therapy to address their gender or sexuality. The state has said that a “mountain of evidence” shows that conversion therapy—therapy undertaken to change sexual orientation or gender identity—is ineffective, and that the ban has not actually affected Chiles’ own practice. The case was brought with the help of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative group that has taken other high-profile cases to the Supreme Court. The court’s…

In the early 1950s, Mel Brooks helped hook America on Borscht Belt humor, said Hadley Freeman in The Times (U.K.). He was part of an almost entirely Jewish writing team for Sid Caesar’s hit 1950s sketch-comedy show, working alongside Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, and, later, a teenage Woody Allen. But the show was almost killed during the Red Scare, with government officials arriving one day to question the writers about their communist affiliations. “We’re attacked because we’re billionaires and we’re attacked because we’re communists,” says the Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein director. “If you need a scapegoat, you can’t do better than the Jews.” The officials, he explains, mainly wanted to talk to Reiner. It was “terrifying! But Carl was smooth as silk. He said, ‘Come in! Have a coffee!’…

Americans are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence for mental health support. Is that sensible? How are people using AI for therapy? A growing number are sharing their anxieties, frustrations, and darkest thoughts with AI chatbots, seeking advice, comfort, and validation from a sympathetic digital helper. There are hundreds of phone apps that pitch themselves as mental health tools. Wysa, which features a cartoon penguin that promises to be a friend “that’s empathetic, helpful, and will never judge,” has 5 million users in more than 30 countries. Youper, which has more than 3 million users, bills itself as “your emotional health assistant.” But many people use generalist chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT as stand-in therapists, or AI companion platforms like Character.AI and Replika, which offer chatbots that appear as humanlike virtual friends…

Anthony L. Fisher MSNBC.com Yes, “you have the right to call President Trump a fascist,” said Anthony L. Fisher. The administration and its allies have seized on the assassination of activist Charlie Kirk to claim that calling Trump a fascist or a dictator is an “incitement” to violence and “insurrection.” This is rich, given that Kirk himself called President Biden “a corrupt tyrant” who should be “given the death penalty” and Trump frequently denounces his Democratic opponents as “fascists,” “vermin,” “radical left thugs,” and “commies.” Of course, “it’s a fool’s errand trying to shame MAGA bigwigs” by noting “their flagrant hypocrisy.” Nonetheless, calling Trump a fascist is constitutionally protected free speech—and there’s plenty of evidence that the term applies. At this president’s orders, we have “masked, unaccountable secret police prowling…

Nuurrianti Jalli The Jakarta Post “Gen Z is reshaping the cultural vocabulary of dissent,” said Nuurrianti Jalli. Across the planet, “young demonstrators calling for change” are hoisting the Jolly Roger of the Straw Hat Pirates. In Nepal last month, the flag—a skull and crossbones topped by a straw hat—was the “defining image as flames spread through the gates” of Parliament and the government was brought down. We’ve also seen it earlier: in Indonesia, Madagascar, the Philippines, even France. The image originated as the emblem of fictional pirates in the Japanese manga series One Piece, created in 1997 “at the birth of Gen Z.” In the series, the Straw Hat Pirates “challenge a corrupt world government while seeking freedom and adventure.” Their “unwavering quest for freedom against impossible odds” resonates with…

Ronald McDonald in a police chase, Jesus joking about “last supper vibes,” and Sam Altman getting arrested for shoplifting. That’s a small taste of what you may find on OpenAI’s new social app, where “everything is fake,” said Gerrit De Vynck and Drew Harwell in The Washington Post. Sora is the AI giant’s effort to challenge TikTok with an addictive platform on which “every second of audio and video is generated by artificial intelligence.” Users can insert themselves into “just about every scenario imaginable,” with frighteningly high realism and AI-generated audio. OpenAI initially said it would “block any copyrighted characters” only if rights holders requested it, then quickly backtracked to give IP owners more control. Still, in the days after Sora’s release, users quickly tested the boundaries of AI video’s…

Learning to play a musical instrument may not just sharpen your mind, reports The Times (U.K.)—it could also dull your sense of pain. That’s the conclusion of a small new study in Denmark, which suggests that years of struggling with tricky pieces may literally rewire the brain. The researchers injected a protein called nerve growth factor, which produces a harmless but long-lasting ache, into the hands of 19 musicians and 20 nonmusicians, scanning their brains before and after. The results were striking. Even before pain was induced, musicians showed more finely tuned maps of the area in the brain that controls the hand. After the injections, musicians’ maps remained unchanged, while nonmusicians’ maps quickly shrank, effectively sending a “don’t move” signal to their hands. Musicians also reported significantly less pain.…

“For many of us, Thomas Pynchon is the best American writer since F. Scott Fitzgerald,” said David Kipen in the Los Angeles Times. Though some fans have lost enthusiasm since he took a turn toward detective fiction more than 15 years ago, he’s never stopped being a genius, and his ninth novel is “late Pynchon at his finest.” Packed with loopy details, it follows reformed strikebreaker turned detective Hicks McTaggart, who’s hired to find a runaway cheese heiress in 1930s Wisconsin and soon winds up in protofascist Budapest. “By the end, this novel has become at once a requiem, a farewell, an old soft-shoe number—and a warning.” For a while, “all this is perfectly enjoyable—Elmore Leonard meets Stan Lee, a kind of Technicolor noir,” said Kathryn Schulz in The New…

Replaceable You by Mary Roach (Norton, $29) Mary Roach’s latest best seller “surprises and delights,” said Brandy Schillace in The Wall Street Journal. Exploring science’s attempts to fashion functioning replacement parts for the human body, the author of Stiff and Fuzz “takes us on an incredible journey of discovery, humor, awe, and inspiration.” Odd facts about the field’s flops and challenges keep the pages turning. But because Roach never loses sight of patients or dogged researchers, “the real power of the book lies in its humanity.” The Shape of Wonder by Alan Lightman & Martin Rees (Pantheon, $28) Many people are suspicious of scientist experts simply because they don’t know any, said Karen Kwon in Science News. In this book, physicists Alan Lightman and Martin Rees “aim to win the…

218 W. 57th St., New York City “Mesdames and messieurs, the Phantom is back,” said Alexis Soloski in The New York Times. Sure, the title character of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera is a sexual predator and murderer. But “few men stay canceled for long,” and this one collected so many admirers during Phantom’s 35-year Broadway run that “phans” seem delighted that he’s just been resurrected for an immersive, Sleep No More–style version of their favorite show. Inside a 19th-century commercial building just south of Central Park, audience members follow the Phantom and the object of his obsession, the chorus girl Christine, from the basement to the roof (weather permitting) as the pair’s twisted love story plays out. “It’s all very sexy, provided you are comfortable excusing the…

Student producers might be wine’s best-kept secret, said Matt Kettmann in Wine Enthusiast. Following the lead of Fresno State, colleges and universities across California now sell wines made in their viticulture programs, and many are great values. We’ve given a 93 rating to a 2021 Allan Hancock College blanc de blanc that you can buy if you order three or more bottles. Below are others worth pursuing: 2021 Fresno State Placida Vineyard Russian River Valley Pinot Noir ($18). This pinot “shows the familiar aromas of black cherry and cola, leading into a riper palate that’s freshened by persistent acidity.” 2023 Afterglow Yolo County Albariño ($30). UC Davis students make this “easy to like” white. It’s “crisp, fresh, and bright to the zesty finish.” 2023 Campus Hill Winery ‘The Hawk’ Red…

The competition to earn the lead role in the potential listing of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is turning into “the strangest IPO ‘bake-off’ ever,” said Corrie Driebusch in The Wall Street Journal. All the major banks are jockeying for a piece of “what could be one of the largest stock offerings in history.” But in doing so, the banks are “wrestling with a host of novel issues.” At least one bank, for instance, “displeased some administration officials” by suggesting the firms might be worth less than $500 billion. While meeting with Trump, Citigroup chief executive Jane Fraser had to wait for him to put “the finishing touches on an order” that scolded banks for allegedly “debanking” conservatives. And when Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon pitched the case for…

Every year, more than 2 million women around the world are diagnosed with breast cancer, one of the leading causes of cancer-related death. Since 1982, the nonprofit Susan G. Komen (komen.org) has led research efforts and centralized resources for breast cancer patients. Its grants fund researchers who lead clinical trials, expand research into different forms of breast cancer, and investigate inequities in cancer treatment. The organization provides educational resources about risk factors, screening, diagnosis, and treatment, as well as ways to support patients in your immediate circle. The unique ShareForCure breast cancer registry lets women provide their medical data to help cancer researchers analyze the full spectrum of breast cancer experience and move faster toward a cure. Each charity we feature has earned a four-star overall rating from Charity Navigator,…

New York Post Editorial If you thought President Biden’s Covid “stimulus” checks were great, you’ll love President Trump’s idea that we should have more free handouts disguised as “tariff rebates,” said the New York Post. Last week, Trump said he’s “considering $2,000 checks for every American family”—a supposed “dividend” from new import taxes that’s really just a way of “bribing the voters with their own money.” Maybe there is some universe in which the U.S. can afford that, but it’s not this one. And once Trump follows Biden’s precedent and we’ve gone “down the road of every new president sending out ‘free money’ checks,” Washington’s obscene spending habit becomes even more difficult to break. Trump apparently didn’t learn from the Biden administration’s experience with subsidies and handouts that sent inflation…

Magnanimity, after President Trump, during a freewheeling address to Navy crewmen, said that while his predecessor Barack Obama “did a lousy job as president,” he was “great” at descending stairs. Obama “would bop down those stairs [in a way] I’ve never seen,” Trump recalled with admiration. “Da-da, da-da, da-da, bop, bop, bop.” Delayed gratification, after the Nobel Prize committee finally reached immunologist Fred Ramsdell to tell him he’d won this year’s Nobel Prize for medicine, after spending 20 hours trying to contact him. Ramsdell had been offline while hiking in the Rocky Mountains on a digital detox. Comebacks, after a 22-year-old Argentine man showed up at his own funeral to inform mourners that “I’m alive.” It later emerged that the young man had disappeared on a drinking binge, and his…

By Hollywood standards, Reese Witherspoon became a mom at an abnormally young age, said Lulu Garcia-Navarro in The New York Times. Married at 21 to fellow actor Ryan Phillippe, she welcomed her first child at 23 and her second at 27; in between, she scored a box office smash with Legally Blonde (2001). Being a young parent meant making some career sacrifices. “There were roles I couldn’t take,” says Witherspoon, who had her third child at 36. “I had to have this balance of being a mom and being an actress.” At the same, industry insiders warned her not to play a mother on screen. “I was always being told, ‘It’ll make you seem old.’ And I was like, ‘But I am a mom.’” She could cope with that; more…

Erwin Chemerinsky The New York Times Universities are facing “extortion, plain and simple,” said Erwin Chemerinsky. President Trump last week proposed that nine select colleges and universities join a “compact” with his administration that would award them “substantial and meaningful federal grants” if they agree to his policy demands: limit the enrollment of foreign students, teach Republican-approved definitions of gender, and police any opinions that “punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.” If the universities reject his conditions, Trump said, they will “forgo federal benefits.” Though fighting Trump’s ideological blackmail will be painful, “it is not hyperbole to say that the future of higher education in America requires that every university reject it.” If any school capitulates, “the pressure will be enormous on all to fold,” including colleges…

“For the past decade, the general assumption among both progressives and conservatives had been that the Left was now firmly in charge of the national culture. So when universities wrote speech codes and professors formulated clever defenses of ‘consequence culture’ and students called upon administrators to censor the ‘offensive’ speech of their classmates, they all shared a tacit assumption: that the people making the ultimate decisions about who gets to speak—and who doesn’t get to speak—will share their basic political sensibilities. It was deeply short-sighted. It wasn’t just foreseeable that the Left’s abandonment of free speech would eventually backfire; it was widely foreseen.” Yascha Mounk in The Dispatch…

Michel Maisonneuve Maclean’s Canada is a sitting duck, said Michel Maisonneuve. The “ice is melting” along our Arctic coastline, and enemies like Russia and China are drooling over the potential of new waterways and access to seabed resources. Yet our “political, economic, and military weight has atrophied, and Canada’s international reputation is getting weaker.” Right now the Canadian Armed Forces are short about 15,000 personnel. “If anyone wanted to come into the North and seize our natural wealth,” all we could muster would be a “strongly worded diplomatic protest.” The recruitment problem stems from a general malaise: Only a third of Canadians trust Parliament. Barely half have confidence in our courts. And the share of Canadians proud of the military has dropped from 79% in 2019 to 52%. That means…

Anetta Kahane Frankfurter Rundschau Far-right German TikTok is an eerie place, filled with “nihilistic fantasies of doom,” said Anetta Kahane. Some video clips start with a kitschy, romantic depiction of what it means to be authentically German. “Blond-haired girls stride through a sun-drenched forest, a castle ruin on the horizon.” Then, under “gently threatening music,” a warning in Gothic script appears about “deaths caused by immigrants.” Other clips are violent, with “true-crime-style scenes of hunts for migrants,” full of shouting and fast camera shots. These videos are unsettlingly popular all over the country. For years after the reunification of West Germany with the former communist East, those of us in the more prosperous Western states told ourselves that the obsession with enemies lurking everywhere was unique to the culture of…

Pete Hegseth may be wildly unqualified as secretary of defense, said Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch, but he has nailed the art of “performative machismo.” In last week’s speech to the 800 or so generals, admirals, and other high-ranking officers he summoned to Quantico, Hegseth—who now insists on being called the secretary of war—stood in front of a giant U.S. flag and performed “Patton for dummies.” Before a collection of “actual tough guys” with “far more military and policy experience than him,” the former National Guard major and Fox News personality strode around the stage like an actor, lecturing them that “soldiers shouldn’t be fat, shouldn’t wear dresses, and shouldn’t worry about climate change.” The U.S.’s lost “warrior ethos,” he claimed, can be regained only by ousting “beardos” and women…

The new AI upgrades to Google and Amazon smart-home products will genuinely change how you interact with the devices, said Nicole Nguyen and Wilson Rothman in The Wall Street Journal. Instead of simple pings, alerts are coming with detailed descriptions. Notifications from Google’s Nest cams now provide natural-language descriptions “such as ‘Dog jumped out of playpen,’ or ‘USPS dropped a package off on your porch.’” You can also inquire about earlier events—when a workman arrived, for instance, or if rabbits ate plants on the porch. Amazon’s Ring has similar features, plus it can recognize familiar faces at the door. Conversing with Alexa or Nest speakers has become much more natural. You can even ask to make your house safer and Google’s devices “will check that the doors are locked, windows…

Jane Birkin had a certain je ne sais quoi—“to her misfortune as much as to her advantage,” said Anahid Nersessian in The New Yorker. As the title of this new biography suggests, the British-born actress and pop singer had “it”: “an undefinable, unmistakable glamour that shifts our collective sense of what’s cool.” But “being famous for your ineffable qualities is perilously close to being famous for no reason,” and Birkin (1946–2023) struggled, unjustly, to achieve a sense of self-worth. As her diaries prove, she was “a wonderful writer.” She also achieved greatness in music and film. To fully understand her, though, you have to have appreciated who Birkin was from about age 40 on, and author Marisa Meltzer is “not quite sure how to handle this phase of Birkin’s life.”…

Samin Nosrat, the celebrated food writer, isn’t so sure she wants to continue a career in food, said Dan Kois in The New Yorker. For now, the author of the paradigm-shifting cooking guide Salt Fat Acid Heat has a new book to promote, and she’s fielding related offers. But the California native fell into depression several years ago and believes that the perfectionism she learned from cooking professionally, beginning at Chez Panisse, was a factor. At 45, she says, she sees in her life “a funny arc, of becoming a cook in this world-class kitchen, and then having to unlearn that in order to survive.” Food, too, is essential to survival, of course. “But it’s also this thing we fetishize,” she says, “so that people will pay thousands of dollars…

(R) An escaped felon’s heart threatens to give him away. “This is a rom-com with a big but,” said Steve Pond in The Wrap. In Roofman, Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst play 40-something single parents who fall in love. But…Tatum’s character is based on a real-life military veteran who robbed 45 McDonald’s restaurants and met Dunst’s salesclerk while he was living inside a Toys R Us after escaping prison. Because he appears doomed to soon end up back behind bars, Roofman comes across as “the saddest romantic comedy ever, or maybe the most lighthearted tragedy,” with the charming Tatum somehow making Jeffrey Manchester, his model, appear merely a little misguided. In a “more textured” movie, Manchester would have been less purely likable, said Benjamin Lee in The Guardian. But Roofman,…

Weapons If you see uncostumed kids running around your neighborhood making airplane arms this Halloween, it’s because Zach Cregger’s seriously eerie summer hit has taken hold. His story of 17 children who mysteriously flee their homes and vanish one night is filled with genuine scares, twists, and humor. $10 on demand 28 Years Later Danny Boyle and Alex Garland returned in June to the zombie-ravaged world they created in 28 Days Later, again pushing the envelope of the genre. Here, a boy who grew up on an island ventures to the ravaged U.K. mainland, where the rage virus has evolved. $6 on demand Together Real-life couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco bring chemistry to this creepy, often funny work of body horror, playing codependent partners who begin to physically fuse…

■ iOS Photos, an app built into iPhones, sorts for duplicates and screenshots. Scroll down and you’ll see all categories, including videos and multiframe bursts, making it easy to quickly erase memory-hungry files. Android Gallery does the same kind of sorting. And you can help any phone sort keepers from throwaways by marking photos as favorites when you take them. ■ Clever Cleaner and Remo Duplicate Photos Remover use AI to scan your entire photo library for junk and set it aside so you can wipe it out with one click. But be careful, because “AI doesn’t always know the difference between a throwaway and a blurry-but-meaningful moment.” ■ Slidebox “gamifies photo organization,” providing a slick swiping interface that will help you delete, keep, or send to an album every…

When Sister Marion Irvine decided to take up running in 1978, at age 48, she didn’t even own a pair of shorts. The nun, a Northern California high school principal addicted to cigarettes, finally found a pair in her school’s lost-and-found and set off around the track, only to find herself gasping and out of breath after less than a mile. But she resolved to improve, and within two years she’d begun winning races. She set a record for women over 50 in 1983, running a marathon in 2 hours and 51 minutes and qualifying for the 1984 Olympic trials. While she didn’t make the Olympic team, she attracted global attention as the oldest athlete to race at the trials. Dubbed “the Flying Nun,” she won five gold medals at…

Trump has long desired to invoke the Insurrection Act, which he sees as the “epitome of presidential power,” said Myah Ward in Politico. But “several key allies” don’t believe he needs to go that route, “at least for now.” Administration officials are highly confident the federal judge who twice blocked Trump from deploying the National Guard in Portland will be overturned by an appellate court, or by the Supreme Court. Will Chamberlain, counsel at a Trump-aligned legal group, said he’s so sure the ruling is “doomed to be reversed” that he’d offer 20-to-1 betting odds. One way or another, Trump is “determined to flex military muscle on the streets of American cities,” said Tom Nichols in The Atlantic. And in contrast to his first term, when officials around him stayed…

New rules could cut disability aid for 750,000 Americans The Trump administration is developing a plan that could curtail Social Security disability payments benefits for hundreds of thousands of recipients, The Washington Post reported this week. The Social Security Administration currently takes age, work experience, and education into consideration when evaluating disability claims. Because older people may find it harder to adapt to a new profession, the agency gives applicants over 50 a greater chance of qualifying for benefits. But officials are now discussing raising the age threshold to 60—or eliminating age entirely from the list of considerations. It’s unclear exactly how many people would lose benefits under the proposed changes, but a former Office of Management and Budget official estimated that reducing disability eligibility by 10% would mean 750,000…

Arnold Schwarzenegger is worried about the state of the American male, said Zach Baron in GQ. The bodybuilder, actor, and former governor of California understands that a lot of young men feel lost at the moment but thinks too many are seeking answers in the wrong place. “The subject of manliness, it seems to me it’s definitely not on a machine, right?” says Schwarzenegger, 78. “Meaning iPhones, social media, and all that stuff. A lot of guys, they spend time on that, but that’s not where you get manliness. That’s not where you nurture it.” The key to male contentment, he says, is having goals and striving toward them—whether that’s lifting weights in the gym, learning an instrument, or helping others. “And that’s why I never felt like, ‘Oh, where…

■ A federal judge last week sentenced hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs to just over four years in prison, saying the punishment would “send a message to abusers and victims alike” that violence against women will be “met with real accountability.” The decision follows a two-month trial in which prosecutors and witnesses painted Combs as a sex trafficker who subjected women to brutal physical abuse and plied them with drugs to perform in “freak-off” sex parties with male prostitutes. A jury acquitted Combs, 55, of racketeering and trafficking, but convicted him on two lesser counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. In a pre-sentencing hearing, Combs apologized for his “disgusting” behavior and asked for “mercy” from Judge Arun Subramanian. The judge denied the defense’s request for an 14-month prison sentence,…

Jonathan Chait The Atlantic Progressive Democrats still have no idea why they lost the 2024 election, said Jonathan Chait. At a recent conference of activists called Persuasion 2025, speakers insisted that progressives should not retreat from their unpopular positions on such issues as gender, identity, racism, immigration, and equity, but rather “re-educate the public.” It’s a “seductive” message if the only goal is ideological purity—not to win elections. The party’s popular decline began when Democratic presidential candidates sought to win primaries by racing leftward on social issues. In 2020, candidates endorsed an “ever-growing list” of progressive policy demands, including “who could treat undocumented immigrants more generously.” Candidate Kamala Harris even promised to “support taxpayer-financed gender-transition surgeries for prisoners and detained migrants.” In 2024, Trump’s campaign featured that sound bite in…

■ A German man who stashed a lottery ticket in a coat pocket was oblivious for six months to the fact that he’d won $18 million. The unidentified man was aware of a poster campaign seeking the winner but never considered he might be the target. “I heard about it on the radio and thought, ‘How stupid can you be not to collect it?’” When the fall chill hit, he donned a coat he hadn’t worn since March—and found the winning ticket. “Luckily I was sitting down,” he said, “otherwise my knees would have given way.” ■ A British man traveled 28 miles across the Celtic Sea in a bathtub powered by an outboard engine. Lashing the tub to a structure set atop two pontoons, Max Fosh traveled from Cornwall…

Lisa Nimmervoll Der Standard Teachers aren’t miracle workers, said Lisa Nimmervoll. They can’t fulfill their mission to educate Austria’s children if parents don’t pitch in as “reliable partners.” Parents used to defer to school principals, but these days many shirk such obligations. They skip parent-teacher meetings called to discuss their belligerent child’s suspension, or they refuse to send their failing child to compulsory summer school. Teachers say the lack of compliance is “frustrating and exhausting.” That’s why Education Minister Christoph Wiederkehr has proposed fines of up to 1,000 euros—nearly $1,200—for mothers and fathers who fail to cooperate with their kids’ schools. He’s absolutely on the right track. The first step, of course, should be “incentives rather than sanctions,” rewarding parents who do back up teachers. And many parents may want…

John Roberts has now spent two decades “dismantling American democracy,” said David Faris in Newsweek. Sworn in as the Supreme Court’s chief justice in fall 2005, the George W. Bush appointee pledged to be a neutral umpire who “calls balls and strikes.” Instead, the conservative-dominated Roberts court has systematically “aggrandized its own power and that of the Republican Party.” It dismantled campaign finance laws with 2010’s Citizens United, opening a path for billionaires to buy power; gutted the Voting Rights Act with 2013’s Shelby County; and rolled back women’s rights by overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022. “But perhaps the gravest blow to American democracy was delivered in 2024” when the court ruled—in an opinion written by Roberts himself—that presidents enjoy “presumptive immunity” for almost all their official acts. The…

“The salvation of this human world is nowhere to be found except in the human heart.” Vaclav Havel, quoted in Gazeta Express (Albania) “If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.” Benjamin Franklin, quoted in The Atlantic “World order is never given; it must always be constructed.” Henry Kissinger, quoted in Modern Diplomacy “Thinking is to humans as swimming is to cats; they can do it but they’d prefer not to.” Daniel Kahneman, quoted in The Independent (U.K.) “One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world.” Malala Yousafzai, quoted in NPR “The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.” James Baldwin, quoted in City AM (U.K.) “He who fights for something greater than himself cannot be defeated.”…

■ Electric bills soar near data centers As the artificial intelligence boom intensifies, the proliferation of energy-hungry data centers is sending electricity bills “to record highs in much of the U.S., pulling everyday households into paying for the digital economy,” said Josh Saul in Bloomberg. A recent analysis of power prices in communities across the country found that Americans living close to AI data centers were paying “as much as 267% more than they did five years ago” for a single month’s electric bill. People living in Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland near a region known as “Data Center Alley” have seen some of the sharpest price hikes. In Virginia, data centers now account for 39% of the state’s electricity usage; in Oregon, the figure is 33%. By 2035, data…

Children are twice as likely to develop long Covid after a second coronavirus infection as after a first, a major new study has found. Researchers analyzed health records from nearly 465,000 children and teenagers treated at 40 children’s hospitals across the U.S. between January 2022 and October 2023, during the Omicron wave. They determined that 1,884 per million received a diagnosis of long Covid after two infections, compared with 904 per million after one. And many more youngsters without a formal diagnosis of long Covid were treated for symptoms such as respiratory problems and abdominal pain, suggesting the official tally is likely an undercount. “Reinfection really increases the risk,” senior author Yong Chen, from the University of Pennsylvania, tells The New York Times. “Your body has a memory system and…

Nathan Harris’ best-selling debut, The Sweetness of Water, was long-listed for the 2021 Booker Prize. In his new novel, Amity, a brother and sister recently emancipated from slavery in New Orleans travel separately through Mexico seeking true freedom. The Good Lord Bird by James McBride (2013). This is McBride at his best, blending historical fiction of the highest order with his signature sense of humor. It’s something of a buddy travelogue, one that never runs out of steam, even as you know where it ultimately ends up. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (1989). I can still hear Butler Stevens’ voice in my ear—so poised, so professional, and yet brimming with loneliness, loss, and guilt. I had never encountered a narrator quite like this one, and the elegance…

At a pivotal moment in her life and career, Taylor Swift’s singular capacity to connect with her fans is “beginning to falter,” said Amanda Petrusich in The New Yorker. Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, predictably broke some sales records, selling 2.7 million copies on its first day and kicking off a weekend during which a tie-in movie-theater event topped the U.S. box office chart with $33 million in ticket sales. But during her economy-shaking 2023–24 Eras Tour, Swift celebrated artistic reinvention, and a lot of this 12th album, “from the production to the performance to the lyrical themes,” suggests that, at 35, she’s finally gotten herself stuck. She currently sits at the top of the music world. After many failed relationships, she’s about to marry football star…

(R) A prisoner escapes into daydreams of J.Lo. “It is rare for a famous singer who also acts to avoid doing a movie musical for as long as Jennifer Lopez has,” said Richard Lawson in Vanity Fair. In this new film, based on the stage musical adaption of Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel, Lopez fills the role of a long-gone movie queen, “and she attacks it with starry gusto.” Unfortunately, the source material is “an odd mélange,” and director Bill Condon “has trouble with the story’s crucial juxtaposition”: the grim reality of two prisoners’ daily life in junta-ruled Argentina and the glamorous movie world that one of the men recalls with relish as a means of brief escape. That prisoner, played by the actor Tonatiuh, moves like a woman, while his…

The Trump administration delayed plans to bail out struggling farmers this week because of the government shutdown, said Grace Yarrow in Politico. The Office of Management and Budget “has readied between $12 billion and $13 billion to be allocated from an internal USDA account, some of which could be used to fund the bailouts for farmers hurt by President Trump’s tariffs.” The plight of farmers came into sharp relief this week after it was revealed that China was effectively boycotting U.S. soybeans. “Trump tapped USDA’s internal fund” for $28 billion in farm aid “during his first-term trade war with China.” Liftoff: Turmoil drives gold above $4,000 an ounce The price of gold topped $4,000 an ounce for the first time this week, said Anmol Choubey and Anushree Ashish Mukherjee in…

■ Finally, homebuyers get a break Housing has seen a three-year-long “buyers’ strike,” said Conor Sen in Bloomberg—and it worked. What seemed like a permanent U.S. housing shortage is over. Since August, the National Association of Realtors’ gauge for the supply of existing homes on the market has been at “near the highest” mark it’s seen in nine years. “There are now more completed new homes on the market than at any time in the past 16 years.” And there are more vacant rental units available than before the pandemic. Even the Northeast and Midwest, which have lagged the South and West in homebuilding, have seen “modest inventory growth.” Economics 101 dictates that we’re getting back to 2019 levels of affordability, and frustrated would-be buyers can probably continue to “wait…

Natasha Khan The Wall Street Journal A made-in-America Sharpie is showing the way to remake domestic manufacturing, said Natasha Khan. For years, most of Sharpie’s colorful array of permanent markers were made in China. But during President Trump’s first term, Chris Peterson, then the chief financial officer of Sharpie maker Newell Brands, sought ways to bring the company’s Maryville, Tenn., factory up to par with overseas producers. When the marketing department proposed that Sharpie make a new gel pen, “Peterson pressed the team to ditch plans to outsource abroad.” Keeping production in the U.S. would require an overhaul of the manufacturing process and more “robots to do an increasing share of the packing.” Peterson, however, kept Newell’s head count intact by converting employees to new roles like automation engineering, and…