Indholdsfortegnelse for December 12, 2025 i The Week Magazine

The West has been losing its religion for as long as I can remember. In 1990, about 5% of Americans said they were atheists, agnostics, or believed in “nothing in particular.” Today, a record 30% of us are “nones,” and many experts have predicted this share will keep rising, with the Pew Research Center projecting in 2022 that Christians would likely be a minority in the U.S. by 2070. A similar story of secularization has played out across Europe and beyond, with churches shuttering because of shortages of priests, congregants, or both. But during the pandemic, something unexpected happened: People got religion again, and they seem to have kept it. In the U.S., Canada, and U.K., the share of people who told pollsters they were irreligious stabilized. At the same…

■ An Oklahoma 7-Eleven worker says she was fired for shooting an attacker who tried to strangle her. Stephanie Dilyard, 25, said she was working the night shift alone when she was attacked by Kenneth Thompson, 59. Reaching for her handgun, Dilyard shot Thompson in the stomach. He survived, but Dilyard was later fired by managers for a “violation of policy.” Dilyard has no regrets, saying she “did what I had to do to go home to my kids.” ■ IRS agents will have to watch OnlyFans porn to enforce President Trump’s “no tax on tips” policy. As codified in law, the tax break excludes tips for “pornographic activity,” which agents must distinguish from titillating content when processing returns—a tricky task, said OnlyFans creator Macy Hilt, 24. While much of…

St. Paul, Minn. Pandemic theft: The Trump administration this week launched an immigration crackdown targeting Minnesota’s Somali diaspora, escalating pressure on a community already facing scrutiny over a sweeping fraud scandal. Federal prosecutors have charged 86 people, largely of Somali ancestry, with stealing more than $1 billion from the state’s social services system—including from programs to feed children during the pandemic. Fifty-nine people have been convicted so far. President Trump said Minnesota was a haven for scammers and that Somali “garbage” should be sent “back to where they came from.” Citing claims from City Journal, the administration is also investigating whether stolen funds went to al-Shabab, a terrorist group in Somalia. Minnesota has the nation’s largest Somali American population, about 80,000 people. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz has created an anti-fraud…

Over his 60-year career as a journalist and historian, Robert Caro has examined hundreds of thousands of documents, said Baxter Holmes in ESPN.com. The Pulitzer-winning author of The Power Broker and an ongoing multivolume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson developed his dogged research style while working as a reporter at Newsday in 1959. “One weekend, because everyone else was on vacation, I got to do an investigative story,” says Caro, 90. He told his managing editor, Alan Hathaway, that he knew nothing about investigative reporting. Hathaway “looked up [and said]: Never assume anything, turn every goddamn page.” Caro still follows that advice. “You’re down at the Lyndon Johnson Library and you call for the files on something and they bring you out 8 million pieces of paper. And you say,…

Mona Charen The Bulwark Many prominent people were embarrassed by the recent release of a trove of emails to and from sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, said Mona Charen. But while Harvard economist Larry Summers has admitted fault and shame, one of Epstein’s frequent correspondents has escaped accountability: MAGA strategist and Trump consigliere Steve Bannon. “He exchanged hundreds of emails with the convicted felon,” advised Epstein how to handle negative news stories, “and conspired to whitewash his public image.” When Bannon missed a flight in London, he emailed Epstein—who put him on his private plane and told him, “Massages. Not Included.” The emails “suggest that Bannon and Epstein often met in person,” with Bannon asking Epstein for access to his Manhattan mansion “that’s not the front door.” Bannon even filmed 15…

Justin Ling Toronto Star It’s infuriating to hear Donald Trump and other Republicans accuse Canada of freeloading, said Justin Ling, but they’ve “got a point.” For decades, “American largesse has kept Russian fighter jets out of our skies,” freeing “us to invest in social programs instead of defense.” Now that Uncle Sam has “lost his mind” under Trump, “we’ve got to plan for a world without him.” We’re on our way. “In a remarkably short time, Canada has set about modernizing its military” after letting it rust for decades. On track to hit the old NATO military spending target of 2% of GDP, we are “racing toward even loftier goals,” pledging an extra $58 billion over five years for defense. Rearming will be complex and tricky, and Ottawa’s “sudden divorce…

Obstructive sleep apnea may raise the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, reports The Wall Street Journal. The chronic disorder—which causes the airway to collapse during sleep, disrupting oxygen flow and leaving some sufferers gasping for air—affects millions of Americans. Researchers looked at the medical records of more than 11 million veterans and found that those with untreated sleep apnea were nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with Parkinson’s within six years than those without the condition. Crucially, there were significantly fewer cases of the neurodegenerative disease among sleep apnea sufferers who used a CPAP machine to keep their airway open. The results don’t prove that sleep apnea causes Parkinson’s, but experts say the pattern is striking. One possible explanation is that the repeated oxygen deprivation of untreated apnea disrupts…

Sarah Hall’s latest novel proves to be “as fascinating as it is challenging,” said Ron Charles in The Washington Post. Helm is the name of a strong wind that blows in North West England, and Hall, a two-time Booker Prize nominee, has made the weather phenomenon her central character. The wind appears soon after Earth’s creation in a “rowdy” first chapter, and Hall gives it an “impish consciousness,” making it enamored of its own power. But Hall is mostly interested in how humans interact with Helm, seeking to understand it and sometimes resist it. Starting with a girl who’s a brave member of a Neolithic tribe, the novel “blows us from one situation to the next,” the irritation of being yanked out of each story “tempered by the allure of…

The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie (Random House, $29) Salman Rushdie’s 2022 brush with death “renders his latest stories all the more potent and poignant,” said Malcolm Forbes in the Los Angeles Times. Though “never doom-laden,” all five tales in this “inventive and engrossing” collection are death-tinged, and two feature characters who hover in a liminal state between life and death. Rushdie also keeps his stories more streamlined than his recent novels have been, limiting his fanciful touches to “subtle strokes of color.” A Different Kind of Tension by Jonathan Lethem (Ecco, $30) Jonathan Lethem’s new book is “both an introduction and a summation,” said Justin St. Clair in the Los Angeles Review of Books. It collects 30 of the Motherless Brooklyn novelist’s best stories, stretching from 1990 to 2024,…

Cognac sales are way down in the U.S. since a pandemic peak, but the French-made brandy remains a gift-worthy splurge, said Aaron Goldfarb in Vinepair. For the best values, forget the big brands. “Though you’ve maybe never heard of them,” the cognacs below deliver “extraordinary flavor”—the payoff for the care that small grower-distillers put into them. Normandin-Mercier Organic V.S.O.P. ($75). This cognac from fifth-generation producers is “a real beauty,” with “floral hints” and notes of spice and anise. ABK6 X.O. Family Cellar ($120). “It’s hard to find many better cognacs at this price point.” A single-estate cognac, ABK6 suggests nuts, licorice, dried fruit, and baking spices before a leathery finish. Ragnaud Sabourin Fontvieille No. 35 ($190). Well worth its price, this is “an extraordinary sipping spirit,” offering “hints of apricot”…

The “slop bowl” era is ending, said Redd Brown and Dina Katgara in Bloomberg. Diners are growing tired of the $16 mishmash of “pick-your-own ingredients piled atop rice and greens”—and it is being reflected in sagging traffic at office-centric chains like Sweetgreen and Cava. Steve Ells, the founder of Chipotle, the fast-casual restaurant whose burrito bowl “rocketed the chain to lunchtime fame,” has even moved on. He recently launched a sandwich place, Counter Service, whose website proclaims it serves “anything, as long as it can go on bread.” Some of the shift, customers say, is due to cost. Nikhil Kalamdani, a sales rep for a New Jersey tech consulting firm, said he lost his appetite for bowls when the average price climbed above $12. “The psychology of something surpassing $10…

Since 1994, the nonprofit Immunize.org has offered a directory of clinical resources and evidence-based vaccination guidance from trustworthy medical sources, including the Centers for Disease Control and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Its website gathers easy-to-understand, comprehensive explainers for frontline health-care professionals administering vaccines, which has been crucial during disease outbreaks and waves of contradictory federal advice. Patients and researchers can also use the website to book appointments with vaccine providers, and to view educational videos, reference images related to vaccine-preventable diseases, and guides to addressing misinformation and questions about vaccine efficacy. In addition, the nonprofit advocates for expanded health-care access and higher vaccination rates alongside local and state immunization groups across the country. Each charity we feature has earned a four-star overall rating from Charity Navigator, which rates not-for-profit…

Danielle Zanzalari The Wall Street Journal “A growing share of business costs today has little to do with materials, labor, or technology,” said Danielle Zanzalari, “and everything to do with legal strategy.” It’s not uncommon for businesses to use patent litigation to try to wall off competitors. But a chip company has “escalated this corporate warfare” by allegedly “financing third-party lawsuits” to heap costs on a smaller rival. In a 2023 complaint, the semiconductor company Realtek accused competitor MediaTek “of paying the company Future Link Systems a $1 million bounty” to acquire a bunch of broad patents and file patent lawsuits “it then abandoned after it had generated substantial legal costs for Realtek across a year and a half.” The intention here sounds pretty clear. MediaTek owns 70% of the…

Florida, after the 2025 hurricane season officially ended without any hurricane making landfall on the U.S. mainland. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem credited President Trump’s strong leadership, telling him, “You kept the hurricanes away. We appreciate that.” Adaptation, after scientists exploring the ruined Chernobyl nuclear power plant found several new strains of mold that seem to “feed” on gamma radiation much like plants thrive on sunlight. NASA is studying whether the mold could be used to protect astronauts from cosmic rays. Recharging, after President Trump, 79, appeared to doze off for several minutes during a televised Cabinet meeting. Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel later noted that Thomas Edison, inventor of the incandescent light bulb, also “believed in the 10-minute nap,” and that had he not, “we wouldn’t…

Ottawa Oil to Asia: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith agreed last week to work together to build a pipeline from oil-rich Alberta province to the Pacific Coast for export to Asia. Smith said such a pipeline could move more than 1 million barrels per day to the Asian market, ensuring that “our province and our country are no longer dependent on just one customer to buy our most valuable resource.” At least one cabinet minister resigned over the plan, which would violate Canada’s clean energy regulations. But Carney said the pipeline was necessary if the country is to meet his government’s goal of doubling non-U.S. exports in the next decade. “Over 95% of all our energy exports went to the States,” Carney said. “This tight…

During her eight years in the White House, Michelle Obama had a glam squad to help with her wardrobe, hair, and makeup, says Pandora Sykes in The Sunday Times (U.K.). But figuring out what to wear could still be difficult. She had to look the part, of course, which meant no outfits that might distract from whatever cause she was promoting. “I would tease Meredith [Koop, her stylist] if she brought something with a huge bow,” says Obama, 61. “Or if it was too much like, ‘Hey, I’m a belt, see me roar!’” She was also conscious that, as America’s first Black first lady, her fashion choices were subject to greater scrutiny than those of her predecessors. When she wore a sleeveless dress in 2009, she was condemned by some…

Franklin Foer The Atlantic “No U.S. president had ever yielded to royal temptations from abroad,” said Franklin Foer—until Donald Trump. One of the Founders’ greatest fears was that European monarchies would control the U.S. by bribing our leaders, which is why the Constitution bans any federal official, including the president, from accepting payments or gifts from abroad without express congressional consent. The Founders’ nightmare is “now unfolding in plain sight,” as Gulf monarchies and businesses shower Trump with goodies worth billions of dollars, including multiple real estate licensing deals for the Trump brand, crypto investments, and a $400 million airplane. The president has rewarded them “with sweeping geopolitical favors,” including excusing Saudi Arabian Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. During MBS’s recent visit, a fawning Trump designated…

“Calling a woman journalist ‘piggy’ [or ‘ugly’ or ‘stupid’] is the oldest trick in the autocrat’s handbook: Humiliate the critic so you don’t have to answer the criticism. No president in my lifetime—not Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes, Clinton, Obama, Biden—ever behaved like this publicly toward a member of the press. They understood that the dignity of the office was not theirs to soil. When the president of the United States talks like this, it gives the country permission to talk like this. It corrodes our civic life. A president who speaks this way diminishes himself—and the nation—with every insult he throws.” Ray Watford in The Columbus Dispatch…

Abdul Khalik The Jakarta Post The Indonesian government’s naming of the late dictator Suharto as “a national hero” is “simply an insult,” said Abdul Khalik. In power from 1967 to 1998, Suharto presided over mass killings and normalized “collusion, corruption, and nepotism.” But his “greatest crime was dehumanizing the Indonesian people, just as the colonial powers in this part of the world did before him.” His brutality “halted the intellectual and moral growth of Indonesia by destroying its creative mind and critical thinking.” Sure, his “New Order” policies attracted Western investment, and the economy grew 7% a year. But we were left with a “society that can’t compete” and a citizenry that would willingly elect our current president, Prabowo Subianto—an illiberal ex-general who was once married to a Suharto daughter.…

Gaby Hinsliff The Guardian Small talk isn’t what it used to be, said Gaby Hinsliff. The other day, I was chatting with a supermarket cashier about how she was working overtime to save up for Christmas when the customer behind me “chipped in” that finance minister Rachel Reeves should be “taken out” before she “takes all our money.” He said it calmly, as if proposing “political assassination” were as normal as discussing the weather. Then it clicked: “This was a Facebook conversation come to life.” At the bus stop or the school gates, it’s now common to hear the sort of conspiratorial nonsense that’s prevalent on social media—about vaccines, minorities, or government surveillance—but that people were once too embarrassed to say in public. And its “not grumpy pensioners or teenage…

“Even college students can’t do math anymore,” said Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic. A new report from the University of California San Diego revealed that more than 12% of freshmen couldn’t do high-school and, in many cases, middle-school math, up from 0.5% in 2020. A quarter of students taking a 2023 math assessment couldn’t come up with the answer “3” to this question: 7+2 = [x]+6. Throughout the country, “students are getting much worse at math.” Even Harvard added a remedial class last year, after realizing freshmen lacked the basics of high-school math. The pandemic’s school closures accelerated this decline, but the backsliding began around 2015, when the federal government scrapped the rigorous testing standards of President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind program. Why? Both parents and teachers…

It’s hard to imagine a dog further removed from its wild ancestor than the chihuahua, reports CBSNews.com, but the cutesy handbag pooch still contains genetic traces of wolf. That’s according to a new study of dog origins, which found that most modern breeds have detectable wolf DNA—not from domestication 20,000 years ago, but from interbreeding over the past few millennia. The researchers analyzed thousands of dog and wolf genomes. They found wolf ancestry in about two-thirds of breeds, and in 100% of free-roaming “village dogs” that live alongside humans without owners. The wolfish influence shows up in size, smell sensitivity, and even temperament: Breeds with higher levels of wolf DNA, such as Arctic sled dogs and hunting dogs, were more often described as independent or territorial, while low-wolf dogs like…

In William Shakespeare’s time, “literature wasn’t just the result of inspired genius,” said Ed Simon in The New York Times. “It also required carpenters, weavers, and bricklayers,” and Daniel Swift’s “brilliant” new book illuminates why that’s so. Swift brings us back to 1576 London, when an actor and craftsman named James Burbage took a chance and erected, just outside London, England’s first purpose-built playhouse since Roman rule. It was called simply the Theatre, and Shakespeare would apprentice there. It also premiered some of the Bard’s greatest plays, and Swift gets to that. But The Dream Factory is foremost “an indispensable account of a chaotic and creative period in which feudalism was transitioning into capitalism, with the entertainment industry one of the salient harbingers of that shift.” It all makes for…

Mindy Seu might be changing the way public intellectuals get published, said Mariella Rudi in the Los Angeles Times. Her new book, A Sexual History of the Internet, is a pocket-size 700-page volume that’ll probably be as much of a hipster cult object as her previous tome, 2023’s Cyberfeminism Index. While both are curated miscellanies that gather images and data from the internet and elsewhere, the new book grows directly out of the innovations Seu has brought to the tradition of the academic lecture. Following up on the success of her 84-event Cyberfeminism world tour, the 34-​year-old UCLA media arts professor is again now drawing sold-out crowds for her latest talk, which focuses on how sex has shaped the internet. The lecture unfolds in darkened rooms and requires that listeners…

Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho (R) A Brazilian man living in a brutal era seeks answers and survival. “This is one of the year’s best films, and one of the most distinctive,” said Matt Zoller Seitz in RogerEbert.com. An award winner at Cannes, the sixth feature from Brazilian writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho is “a drama, a satire, an intriguingly laid-back espionage film, and a re-creation of a time and place,” yet that’s not all. Wagner Moura stars as a young widower on the run who returns to his home city to check on his young son in 1977, during Brazil’s brutal dictatorship. “Murder is everywhere,” a constant threat. But Mendonça is less focused on the violence than how people learn to adapt to it, and “if you’re willing to bend…

Eephus A baseball movie as quirky and meandering as the pitch it’s named for, this delightful slow curve of a comedy follows locals playing the final game on a soon-to-be-torn-up field. Laughs and love of the game ensue. Mubi If I Had Legs I’d Kick You Rose Byrne is a mom spiraling into a breakdown as she endures the mounting stresses of her husband’s absence, a sick daughter, and a massive hole in her apartment’s ceiling. Byrne’s performance is one of the best of her career. $20 on demand The Baltimorons Here’s a rare holiday comedy that avoids the clichés that make the genre ho-hum. When a flailing comedian chips his tooth on a door frame, he finds one dentist who’s working on Dec. 24, commencing a meeting of two…

A U.S. military operation in Venezuela looks increasingly likely, said Joshua Keating in Vox, but don’t expect “an Iraq-style invasion and occupation.” Much more likely, according to analysts, is an air campaign that targets drug labs, airstrips used by traffickers, or camps near the Colombian border belonging to armed groups backed by the Maduro regime. The U.S. could also launch strikes against Venezuela’s military or conduct drone strikes or “covert actions targeting senior officials, including Maduro himself.” A bipartisan group of senators filed a resolution this week to halt what they described as unauthorized U.S. hostilities in Venezuela, said Patricia Zengerle in Reuters. The measure—backed by Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Rand Paul (R-Ky.)—would order Trump to withdraw U.S. forces unless Congress explicitly authorizes…

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has earned the unique distinction of being “a war criminal—without a war,” said George F. Will in The Washington Post. On Sept. 2, as the U.S. military surveilled an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean, the Pentagon boss and former Fox News host gave a spoken order to “kill everybody,” two sources told the Post last week. Soon after, a missile smashed into the vessel. But as the smoke cleared, a drone feed showed two of the boat’s 11 crew members “clinging to the wreckage.” To comply with Hegseth’s order, operation commander Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley ordered a second strike; both survivors were killed. To be clear: That attack and the more than 20 subsequent strikes on alleged drug boats were likely already illegal, resting as…

FDA to radically tighten rules for vaccine approvals The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine regulator said last week that the agency would restrict vaccine approvals after linking the deaths of at least 10 children to Covid shots. In a leaked internal email, Dr. Vinay Prasad said the children “died after and because of receiving” vaccination between 2021 and 2024, but he presented no evidence. Prasad, an ally of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said the agency will also review the framework for annual flu shots and whether Americans should get multiple shots at once—long a standard practice. The FDA will impose stricter rules for authorizing new shots for pregnant women and require more data from manufacturers to prove vaccine safety. The changes would force drugmakers to perform larger…

Pierce Brosnan was born with leading-man looks, says Cam Wolf in GQ. The Irish actor’s square jaw, pouty lips, and thick pelt of hair were seemingly made for camera, and made him a natural to play James Bond in the 1990s. But his handsome visage wasn’t always an asset. Early in his Hollywood career in the ’80s, Brosnan went to meet John Huston, director of The Maltese Falcon, who was casting a film based on “The Dead,” a short story by James Joyce. “I was like, ‘F---, man, this is it,’” says Brosnan, 72. “I’m going to see the grandmaster John Huston, I’m an Irishman, James Joyce, ‘The Dead.’ I was vibrating at a high level of being an actor, and this was the moment.” The actor says he “waited…

■ Ellen DeGeneres’ Trump-induced move to the U.K. may not be permanent after all, the Daily Mail (U.K.) reported last week. The former talk show host and her wife, Arrested Development actress Portia de Rossi, are planning to return to California for the holidays and could stay “longer by the sound of it,” the source said. DeGeneres, 67, and de Rossi, 52, arrived in England just before the 2024 election and decided to stay after Donald Trump’s victory was announced, with DeGeneres declaring that “everything” in the U.K. “is just better.” The couple bought an ultramodern farmhouse in the quaint Cotswolds region and have posted videos on Instagram of sheep wandering into their dining room and of DeGeneres tending to chickens. But the pair are now eager to quit their…

Matt K. Lewis Los Angeles Times Jeffrey Epstein’s victims have finally “gotten some of the spotlight they have long been denied,” said Matt K. Lewis, but their stories are far from unique. Thousands of Native American women and girls are victimized by sex traffickers, pedophiles, and murderers while “barely registering in public consciousness.” Every year, some 5,700 Indigenous women and girls go missing. Though under 3% of Americans identify as Native, these groups make up a shocking 40% of all sex-trafficking victims. And of the 5,800 who disappeared in 2023, nearly 75% were children. Sexual predation of Native girls and women has a long, ugly history. Poverty and centuries of systemic abuse make them particularly vulnerable—and invisible to society, even when kidnapped, sexually assaulted, or murdered. In addition, crimes committed…

■ A Thai woman who was brought to a temple for cremation after she apparently died shocked everyone by knocking on the lid of her coffin. Temple manager Pairat Soodthoop said the 65-year-old was brought in by her brother, who said she’d stopped breathing two days earlier, after a long illness. When Soodthoop heard faint knocking, he had the coffin opened, and the woman’s eyes were open. “She must have been knocking for quite some time,” he said. She was sent to a hospital and found to have critically low blood sugar. “It’s a miracle she woke up,” said her brother. ■ An Italian man impersonated his dead mother in order to collect her pension, say local authorities. The unemployed nurse, 56, concealed his mother’s body at home after she…

Editorial Le Monde France is finally having a serious conversation about “Europe’s new security reality,” said Le Monde. President Emmanuel Macron last week announced the creation of a paid, 10-month voluntary military service for young adults. France ended conscription in 1997 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the risk that Russia’s war in Ukraine might spill over to NATO members is forcing us to again expand “citizen engagement in defense.” While Macron didn’t mention Russia in his announcement, he noted that “France cannot remain immobile” while its European allies are taking steps against “a threat that weighs on us all.” The president insisted the new service would apply only on “national territory,” an attempt to soothe a panic triggered by army chief Fabien Mandon’s recent warning that France…

A “viral” essay on household income has sparked debate over a polarizing question, said Julie Zauzmer Weil in The Washington Post: Just how many Americans are living in poverty? Michael Green, a Wall Street portfolio manager, argues in a Substack article that the federal poverty line—calculated for decades at three times the cost of a “minimum food diet,” and currently $32,150 for a family of four—is an egregious “lie.” That calculation made sense in the 1960s, writes Green, when “housing was relatively cheap,” health care was employer-provided, and “college tuition could be covered with a summer job.” But such expenses have skyrocketed, and a second income is now essential for many families, which means they must also pay out for child care. A household income of $136,500 is now the…

“Playful doesn’t mean trivial any more than solemn means serious.” Stephen Sondheim, quoted in The Wall Street Journal “The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.” Terry Pratchett, quoted in The Dispatch “Silence is the sleep which nourishes wisdom.” Francis Bacon, quoted in the Martinsville, Va., Bulletin “A diplomat who says ‘yes’ means ‘maybe,’ a diplomat who says ‘maybe’ means ‘no,’ and a diplomat who says ‘no’ is no diplomat.” Talleyrand, quoted in National Review “A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.” British politician and historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, quoted in the Montreal Gazette “Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” Biologist Thomas H. Huxley, quoted in The…

■ Double-check that online cake recipe It’s easy to serve “AI slop” for dinner this holiday season, said Davey Alba and Carmen Arroyo in Bloomberg. Eb Gargano, the chef behind Easy Peasy Foodie, says that Google has been inserting “AI-generated” summaries into search results “that often get the basics wrong.” An AI-written draft of Gargano’s Christmas cake recipe, for instance, directs people to bake for three to four hours at 320 degrees Fahrenheit. “You’d end up with charcoal,” Gargano said. Pinterest and Facebook feeds are also increasingly “stuffed with AI-generated images of food that the attached instructions won’t achieve.” AI summaries are a shortcut past the wordy personal essays found on many food bloggers’ sites, a phenomenon that “also came about because of Google,” which historically prioritized longer content in…

Ingrid Bergman described a kiss as “a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.” But a new study suggests our very distant ancestors were locking lips long before they spoke any words, with the first smooch occurring not between humans but between primates roughly 21.5 million to 16.9 million years ago. The researchers used observational data from living primates and genetic modeling to trace kissing behavior back through the primate family tree. And to avoid assessing kissing purely through a human lens, the team defined it as nonaggressive mouth-to-mouth contact involving movement but no food sharing. They found the activity likely evolved in the ancestor of modern great apes—a group that includes known kissers such as humans, chimpanzees, and orangutans—and may have been practiced by…

Critic and Hollywood historian Scott Eyman is the author or co-author of 18 books, including recent biographies of Cary Grant and Charlie Chaplin. His latest, Joan Crawford: A Woman’s Face, is the first complete account of the screen legend’s life and career. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925). Lost love was Fitzgerald’s only real subject, but his writing illuminated it in lambent light. No American writer wrote better sentences, and his most celebrated novel envelops you with an incremental sense of overwhelming loss. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (1951). A friend of mine who had a glancing friendship with Greene once told me that whenever Greene traveled to Haiti, he first would go to his favorite Catholic church, then his favorite house of prostitution. Greene…

Directed by Jared Bush and Byron Howard (PG) Judy and Nick fight again for animal justice. “Sometimes more of the same isn’t a bad thing,” said Amelia Emberwing in The Wrap. The original Zootopia, after all, was a 2016 megahit that won the Oscar for an animated feature while delivering a powerful message about the dangers of discrimination. And while the long-awaited sequel doesn’t break new ground, “there’s a lot to love in Zootopia 2.” The movie returns us to a colorful city populated by anthropomorphized animals. Its animation is “bright and pop-y.” And it didn’t have to back off its core message to haul in $560 million in its first five days, the largest-ever launch for an animated film. Unfortunately, “the sweetness of the original is absent in the…

Tech billionaire Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, announced this week that they will donate $6.25 billion to help finance “Trump accounts” for 25 million children, said Nicholas Kulish in The New York Times. The Dells’ unprecedented gift will go toward $250 deposits into individual investor accounts for children up to 10 years old “who live in a ZIP code where the median household income is below $150,000.” It will be in addition to the “Trump accounts” set up by the federal government that “will give $1,000 to babies born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028.” Netflix: Antitrust scrutiny over Warner Bros. bid Senior White House officials have been discussing antitrust concerns surrounding Netflix’s interest in acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery, said Charles Gasparino in the New York Post.…

■ ‘No interest’ financing is misleading Deferred interest is not the same as a 0% APR, said Daniel de Visé in USA Today. Around the holidays, many big-box retail stores dangle tempting promotions promising “to charge no interest if the buyer pays off the balance within a set time frame,” usually 24 months. The offer, called “deferred interest,” sounds similar to the 0% introductory annual percentage rate (APR) for many credit cards, and it is even marketed as having “no interest” or “same as cash.” But “those pitches are misleading.” With deferred interest, if the buyer fails to repay the entire sum before the promotional clock runs out, they owe interest on the entire period. A new $1,800 refrigerator bought with a 25.99% “deferred interest” rate, for instance, would cost…

Michael Schuman The Atlantic Americans feeling the pinch of high prices should not look at China’s falling costs and think Beijing is doing something right, said Michael Schuman. “Plummeting prices are a problem, too.” Where I live in central Beijing, companies are “in a mad scramble for customers.” My friend joined a new gym where a special promotion slashed the price of exercise classes to 40 cents per session. That “might seem enviable” to Americans right now. But those cuts stem from severe economic mismanagement. “China’s government has spent decades promoting investments in housing, factories, and infrastructure” that have left markets saturated “with apartments and assembly lines that well exceed demand.” Economic growth has stagnated as consumers save instead of shop. After all, “why buy a car or dishwasher when…

Jimmy Cliff sold the world on reggae. In his breakout 1972 film The Harder They Come, a cult classic about a down-on-his-luck singer, he introduced the Jamaican sound to a global audience. The film’s soundtrack included hits such as “The Harder They Come,” “You Can Get It If You Really Want,” and the gospel-infused “Many Rivers to Cross,” and Rolling Stone named it one of the 500 greatest albums. Bob Dylan considered Cliff’s track “Vietnam” to be one of the all-time best protest songs. Over a seven-decade career, Cliff released more than 30 albums and explored ska, rocksteady, soul, pop, and other genres. “I didn’t really want to be known just as the king of reggae,” he said in 2004. “I actually wanted to be known as the king of…