Innehållsförteckning för December 24, 2021 från The Week Magazine

Do you have a right to privacy? The question would prompt an indignant “I sure do” from most Americans. But nowhere in the Constitution did the Framers use the word “privacy” or expressly state any support for “my body, my choice.” Privacy is an invention of the Supreme Court. Until the Griswold decision in 1965, states could prohibit anyone—including married couples—from using contraception. Until 1967’s Loving decision, states could imprison people for marrying someone of another race. Until 2003’s Lawrence ruling, states could arrest gay men—or straight couples—for engaging in “sodomy” in their own bedrooms. Griswold was the big turning point. In that ruling, Justice William O. Douglas wrote that “penumbras” and “emanations” of protections actually spelled out in the Bill of Rights created an implicit “zone of privacy” upon…

What happened The House of Representatives voted to hold former President Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, in contempt for refusing testify to the Jan. 6 special committee this week, following revelations that Trump allies had begged Meadows to persuade his boss to call off the U.S. Capitol riot. While violence engulfed the Capitol, Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, Donald Trump Jr., and others texted Meadows, warning the insurrection would destroy Trump’s legacy. “The president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us,” Ingraham wrote. “He’s got to condemn this s---ASAP,” added Trump Jr. After Meadows replied that he would speak to Trump, the riot continued for more than three hours, contradicting Trump’s claim that he did not know…

A Popeye’s restaurant in Philadelphia has taken down its “No Homeless People Allowed” sign after complaints. Manager Dayshon Sields initially defended the sign, saying it spared homeless people the humiliation of having police called when they come in to warm up. But Popeye’s parent company decided to remove the sign while the chain is working “to further understand the situation.” A Louisiana woman is suing Heineken for “false and deceptive representation,” claiming that its “0.0” brand of alcohol-free beer contains alcohol. Heineken’s website states the beverage has less than 0.03 percent alcohol, comparable to the percentage found in bread, fruit juices, and bananas. But Kathleen Wilson insists that even that “minuscule amount of alcohol” isn’t zero, and that she is entitled to damages. In other news Anti-terror unit targeted journalists…

Ben Affleck knows all too well where his struggles with alcohol originate, said Michael Hainey in The Wall Street Journal Magazine. His father, a bartender, drank every day for decades. “Growing up, I would meet him at the bar,” says Affleck, 49. “My dad didn’t go to college, but he was well-read, and his ambition was to be a writer, although he never found professional success. He was hindered by his alcoholism.” Affleck says his dad—“an avowed Communist”—taught him many valuable life lessons, including “not to value things other than a person’s character.” But his father’s alcoholism and frequent absences also shaped Affleck. “As I was moving into adulthood, I remember casting around for an example, and the helplessness and the fear that come with not having something to…

Zack Beauchamp Vox.com America needs “a mass movement to save democracy,” said Zack Beauchamp. President Biden hosted a virtual summit of democratic nations last week, but the U.S. is no longer “a democratic model for the world.” Instead, we’re “sleepwalking toward a disaster” in which the Republican minority rigs the political system in its favor, rendering majority rule effectively obsolete. The year began with an attack on the Capitol “designed to thwart the transition of power.” Since then, Republicans have “doubled down on the lie” that Trump won the election, and are working to make it easier to invalidate votes in urban areas in 2024; they’re even organizing at the precinct level to gain control of vote counting. “Neither Democrats nor the general public are doing much of anything to…

“Each year around this time, I find it more difficult to balance the awful things we see happening the rest of the year with the joy I’m supposed to drum up near the end of it. With age, it’s harder for me to reconcile the goodwill we’re supposed to feel toward each other at the holidays with the horrible way we treat each other the rest of the year. It just feels fake. This forced cheer can exacerbate feelings of despair. For some, the sound of Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ portends a dark time where we feel the need to force something that just isn’t within us.” Brian Broome in The Washington Post…

FINLAND Pasi Anteroinen Helsingin Sanomat A child has no business operating a multi-ton death machine, said Pasi Anteroinen. So why is the Finnish government planning to lower the legal driving age from 18 to 17? Under current law, 17-year-olds need to apply for a special dispensation to get a driver’s license, and it is granted only to young people with demonstrated need—if they have to drive a car for work, for example, or live in an extremely remote area. Last year alone, those younger drivers caused accidents that killed 10 people. “That’s 10 too many.” Some may argue that a year can’t make that much difference, but brain development is intense in late adolescence and the decline in impulsiveness year on year is stark. One recent study found that 17-year-olds…

BRAZIL Laura Mattos Folha de São Paulo Brazilians would rather party than educate their kids, said Laura Mattos. That’s the only conclusion we can draw from city governments’ plans to hold next year’s Carnival celebrations in person, even while they insist that schooling must largely remain remote. São Paulo, the country’s largest city, is expecting 15 million people for the parades ahead of Lent, while Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo da Costa Paes joked that if any social-distancing measures are required at his city’s event, he’ll be “the first to break the rules.” Yet when Carnival begins in February 2022, many of our kids will not have spent a full week in school for nearly two years. “Two years!” Some schools are operating on a rotating schedule, with cohorts of…

Before he got Covid in March 2020, John Buccellato was an emergency medicine doctor at a urgent-care clinic in Manhattan. Today he’s “engulfed in a health-care crisis,” said Christopher Rowland in The Washington Post. Suffering pervasive symptoms such as brain bleeding and brain fog, “he repeats himself and seems easily confused,” and is unable to work. Covid-19 “took my career away,” he said. He’s one of an estimated 750,000 to 1.3 million Covid “longhaulers” in the U.S. suffering “unbearable fatigue and other maladies” that have left them unable to resume their former lives. They’re abandoning careers, falling behind on mortgages, and battling acute depression and anxiety. For long haulers, a bout with Covid has “altered their lives,” said Yale cardiologist Harlan Krumholz. “Nearly two years into the pandemic,” long…

“Democrats have a major problem with Hispanic voters,” said Chris Cillizza in CNN.com. In the 2020 election, Donald Trump greatly improved his 2016 performance with Hispanics, winning 32 percent of their vote—and it’s now clear those results “weren’t an anomaly.” A new Wall Street Journal poll found if Joe Biden were to run against Trump today, Biden would get 44 percent of the Hispanic vote and Trump would get 43 percent. When Hispanic voters were asked whether they would back Republicans or Democrats for Congress, it was a tie at 37 percent. It’s just one poll, but this and other data show “nothing remotely close” to the 40-point advantage Democrats enjoyed among Hispanics in 2018. The explanation is rather obvious, said Matthew Yglesias in SlowBoring.com. Progressives “seem very uninterested in…

Apple’s big China play A secret agreement between China and Apple CEO Tim Cook helped pave the way for the company’s success, said Wayne Ma in TheInformation.com. China is now Apple’s biggest market outside the United States. That’s due in part to an agreement forged by Cook, worth an estimated $275 billion, “during the first of a series of in-person visits he made to the country in 2016 to quash a sudden burst of regulatory actions against Apple’s business.” With Chinese officials threatening to shut down the iTunes Store and hold up approval of the first Apple Watch, Cook pledged to help Chinese manufacturers develop “the most advanced manufacturing technologies” and to support training of Chinese workers. Meta reverses drug decision Instagram agreed to reverse a decision blocking posts about…

The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present by Paul McCartney (Liveright, $100) You won’t find a more exquisite anthology this season than Paul McCartney’s two-volume survey of his own song catalog, said Kenneth Womack in Salon.com. A “drop-dead gorgeous” package, it pairs transcribed conversations about the 150-plus songs with related visual material, and “fans will be bowled over by the sheer profundity of unpublished photographs, previously unseen lyrics sheets, journal entries, and the like”—most of it drawn from McCartney’s own archive. “How are you supposed to actually read a thing like this?” asked David Hepworth in TheGuardian.com. After all, the songs appear alphabetically, denying readers a narrative. Fortunately, “this is as much a picture book as anything,” and “neither lyrics nor commentary will be studied quite as closely as the pictures…

Mel Brooks, at 95, is not about to apologize for any of the jokes he’s told, said Terry Gross in NPR.org. “Not one would I take back,” says the legendary writer-producer. “As a matter of fact, I’m pretty upset about some jokes that I didn’t let go, that I thought, Well, that’s a little, you know, outside the pale.” Brooks, who crossed many lines while creating The Producers, Blazing Saddles, and other classic film comedies—”I didn’t know where the lines were,” he says—doesn’t intend to belittle the views of people who today argue that certain jokes and language in those movies are hurtful. “When things stir up people to great emotion, I stay out of that,” he says. “I don’t ever take sides, because everybody’s right.” But he will…

When Kelly Clarkson sings Christmas classics, it’s “almost unfair to other interpreters,” said Jon Caramanica in The New York Times. “She is that nimble a singer.” But on the second holiday album from the pop stalwart, it’s the originals that stand out, particularly her duets with Ariana Grande and Chris Stapleton, because she belts each one out “with the kind of verve most singers don’t bother putting into their holiday releases.” Too poppy or brassy? Try José James, a jazz singer whose “severely tasteful” new album of standards is “slick and steady” from start to finish. “James has such an authoritatively resonant voice that even his two originals sound decades old.” If you prefer instrumental-only renditions of the classics, said Jon Pareles, also in The New York Times, check…

Bo Burnham: Inside Chances are you weren’t as productive as Bo Burnham during lockdown. In this instantly iconic special, the comedian brilliantly embodied the angst of pandemic solitude by playing himself—except stuck in a room alone and spiraling downward while writing hilarious songs for viewers like you. Netflix Tig Notaro: Drawn In a year that forced comedians to find new ways to connect, Notaro delivered a special that paired audio recordings of her deadpan live performances with delightfully varied animated versions of the same material. HBO Max Vir Das: Ten on Ten Vir Das’ still-in-progress stand-up series, filmed secretly in Goa because some of his jokes could get him arrested, is full of searingly funny observations about religion, freedom of speech, and the maddening politics of both India and the…

“In a remarkable turn of events, skiing and hiking have largely replaced logging in a newly protected swath of Maine,” said David Goodman in The New York Times. Over the past 20 years, the Appalachian Mountain Club has conserved 75,000 acres of forestland, developed 130 miles of trails, and acquired three historic sporting camps north and east of Greenville, in the heart of Maine’s 100-Mile Wilderness. “This shift from forest exploitation to recreation has yielded one of the best lodge-to-lodge ski routes in the U.S.” Not long ago, my wife and I spent five days skiing 32 miles of groomed trails between four lodges, including two built in the 1800s. The trip “brimmed with guilty pleasures.” We traversed a wild landscape where moose outnumber people three to one. We slept…

The last thing military and veterans’ families should have to worry about is the cost of accommodations while staying close to a loved one receiving medical treatment. Fisher House Foundation (fisherhouse.org) operates a network of 92 homes, located near Veterans Affairs medical centers nationwide and in Europe, where those families can stay free of charge. Since its founding in 1990, Fisher House has served 413,000 families and saved them an estimated $500 million in out-of-pocket costs. The foundation also operates the Hero Miles program, which has used donated frequent-flyer miles to provide over 70,000 free airline tickets to service members and their families, as well as a scholarship fund for military children and spouses that has awarded 15,000 students scholarships worth $27 million. Each charity we feature has earned…

Shira Ovide The New York Times Politicians and technologists are pushing to put tens of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money into U.S. computer-chip production, said Shira Ovide—mostly with little idea of what all that spending will achieve. Today, only about 12 percent of all chips are produced domestically; the rest are made in East Asia. Some proponents of subsidies for U.S.-made chips say that they “can protect us from China’s military or technology ambitions”; others want to clear up the manufacturing logjam for cars. The U.S. military has ideas, too: It wants “chips made in America to secure fighter jets and laser weapons.” But not all these arguments are realistic. “Chip plants that take years to start churning out products won’t fix the pandemic-related shortages that made it tough…

Anne Rice knew how Rice to make an entrance. 1941–2021 Having won a large and devoted readership with her Vampire Chronicles series—which began with 1976’s Interview With the Vampire—Rice would delight fans by turning up at bookstore readings in her hometown of New Orleans in a horse-drawn hearse, rising from a glass coffin to sign books with a pen dripping blood-red ink. Interview and its 13 follow-ups sold upward of 80 million copies worldwide and inspired a slew of sexy vampire fiction, including the hit Twilight series. But Rice saw her tales of Lestat de Lioncourt, a roguish bisexual 18th-century nobleman turned vampire, and his angst-ridden companion, Louis de Pointe du Lac, as more than genre works. They were literary explorations of the human condition. “All of us make…

Al Unser wasn’t supposed to be on the starting grid at the 1987 Indianapolis 500. He’d won the elite race three times before, but at age 47 was considered over the hill and had been left off his team’s three-car lineup. Then, 11 days before the race, one of those drivers was injured, and Unser was asked if he could step in. “Heck, yeah,” he replied. On race day, favorite Mario Andretti pulled ahead before developing engine trouble, then Roberto Guerrero’s car stalled during a pit stop. Smart and patient, Unser saw his chance and roared past the finish line 4.49 seconds ahead of Guerrero. He was the race’s oldest winner, and now had one more Indy 500 win than his older brother Bobby, who died this May. He was…

Rita Moreno is one of only six women to have bagged the EGOT—Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards, said Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian (U.K.). But her introduction to show business was brutal. Raped by her agent as a teenager, she was preyed on by studio bosses for years and cast mainly as “little island girls,” on account of her Puerto Rican heritage. After winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for playing Anita in 1961’s West Side Story, Moreno didn’t work for seven years, because, she says, she was offered only roles in “crappy” gang movies. Her personal life wasn’t easy, either. In 1953, at age 21, Moreno fell in love with Marlon Brando. “He had a gorgeous intelligence. He was the funniest person I’ve ever met.” Plus, he…

Home-fitness company Peloton saw its stock price tumble last week after [spoiler alert] a main character on HBO’s Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That, dropped dead following a ride on a Peloton stationary bike. In a shocking first-episode twist, Mr. Big, played by Chris Noth, dies after a 45-minute ride. Within days, Peloton released a response ad featuring Noth playing a revived Mr. Big as narrator Ryan Reynolds rattles off the health benefits of cycling. Peloton said there was no product placement deal with And Just Like That, and while the company knew real-life instructor Jess King would appear on the show, it didn’t know the bike ride would kill Mr. Big. Peloton also released a statement from cardiologist Suzanne Steinbaum saying Mr. Big’s “extravagant lifestyle”…

National Review Editorial Between 2016 and 2019, Will Thomas was “an average swimmer” for the University of Pennsylvania’s men’s swimming team, said the National Review. This season, as a trans woman named Lia, Thomas began competing on the women’s team—and “has been smashing records at every turn,” becoming the fastest female swimmer in the nation. “In a sport that is known for slim margins, Thomas has been crushing the competition.” Her time in a recent 200-yard race was better than last year’s gold-medal time in the NCAA finals, and she won the 500 free-style by 14 seconds and the 1,650 freestyle by an absurd 38 seconds. Although her teammates have been “strongly advised” to stay silent, two of them have said Thomas’ domination feels “wrong,” and is deeply dispiriting to…

A 48-year-old woman stole her daughter’s identity and used it to enroll in a Missouri college—and passed for two years as an undergrad in her early 20s. Laura Oglesby used her estranged daughter’s personal data to apply to Southwest Baptist University and obtain financial aid. “Everybody believed it,” said Jamie Perkins, chief of the police department in Mountain View, Mo. “She even had boyfriends that believed she was that age.” After being discovered, she was charged with fraud, and faces up to five years in prison. A Saudi Arabian beauty pageant for camels was rocked by scandal after 43 participants were disqualified for using Botox and other beautification techniques. Breeders compete for some $66 million in prize money at the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival, where dromedaries are judged on their…

PHILIPPINES Editorial Philippine Daily Inquirer Facebook has finally admitted that its platform has warped our nation’s politics, said the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Whistleblower Frances Haugen recently testified to the U.S. Senate that her former employer was “responsible for the rise in authoritarianism in the Philippines,” and now we know exactly what she meant. Many Filipinos use the Facebook app Free Basics to access the internet, and so the tech giant controls everything they see online—much of which is disinformation. A new report by the U.S.-based ethics consultancy Article One details how in 2016 then–Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte used Facebook to “catapult” himself to the presidency. He blanketed the country with lies and propaganda, and in the month before the vote, “64 percent of all Philippine election posts on Facebook…

“All we know so far is we are so far/From what we know.”Poet Amanda Gorman, quoted in The Washington Post “When one burns one’s bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.”Dylan Thomas, quoted in TheBrowser.com “Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.”G.K. Chesterton, quoted in Forbes “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?”Poet Mary Oliver, quoted in TheMillions.com “You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”Author Michael Cunningham, quoted in Parade “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”Historian Henry Adams, quoted in the Jacksonville, Fla., Times-Union “It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.”Author John Irving, quoted in GoodReads.com…

Prospective employees at MGM Resorts will get to experience their job in virtual reality, said Grace Dean in BusinessInsider.com. Until recently, the casino and hotel operator used “day-in-the-life videos and chats with current employees to give applicants an insight into roles.” But like many companies, MGM has struggled with recruiting and retaining staff, and the company felt that VR would offer a better way to “really experience the job.” Part of that experience includes, unfortunately, a lot of customers who seem to “have gotten ruder during the pandemic.” To make its simulation more realistic, the MGM VR module even includes “difficult guest interactions.” MGM developed the package with VR software maker Strivr, which also works with Walmart, Verizon, Bank of America, and FedEx.…

Astronomers studying a nearby solar system have spotted a tiny planet that appears to be made almost entirely out of iron—a discovery that suggests miniature worlds are much more diverse than previously thought. Known as “GJ 367 b,” the exoplanet is about a third smaller than our planet and circles a red dwarf star some 31 light-years from Earth. It completes an orbit every eight hours, and because its path lies so close to its host star, its surface temperatures reach a sweltering 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit. From the planet’s surface, the star would look 30 times larger than the sun does from Earth. “We can imagine this planet is probably like a molten planet, at a temperature where a lot of metals can start to melt,” Kristine Lam, from the…

Marissa Stapley’s new best-seller, Lucky, features a grifter who buys a winning lottery ticket but can’t cash it in because she’s on the run after her latest heist. Below, Stapley recommends six other books with unforgettable heroines. The Mothers by Brit Bennett (2016). One of my favorite books of all time, this is a coming-of-age story that’s at once an exploration of the complexity of young love and a deep treatise on the meaning of motherhood. Nadia Turner’s story, laced with secrets and hidden heartaches, is incredibly propulsive. And the writing is perfect. Runaway by Alice Munro (2004). Whenever I’m deep into writing a book, I read Munro’s short stories and find inspiration in her incisive insights into human nature. Three stories in this collection center on a character named Juliet…

3 “It’s hard to understand why Norah Jones took 20 years to deliver a holiday album,” said Chuck Campbell in the Knoxville, Tenn., News Sentinel. The singer-songwriter’s sleek, smoky, jazzy sound is a natural fit for Christmas tunes, and has been since Come Away With Me, her Grammy-winning debut. “Soothing, playful, and occasionally melancholy,” this 13-track collection that mixes classics with originals turns out to be “even better than might have been expected.” In her rendition of “Blue Christmas,” Jones “spikes her boozy delivery with charming nuance,” and she offers “an improbably hypnotic take” on the Chipmunks’ “Christmas Don’t Be Late” by slowing the song to a swampy saunter. As for the six originals, “none seem to evoke the smell of pine and nutmeg,” said Jim Trageser in AllAboutJazz.com. “All…

Don’t forget cider when you stock up for December’s parties, said Michael Agnew in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Complex like wine but easy drinking like beer, cider is “a great way to add some new pizzazz to your holiday beverage lineup.” As these examples suggest, “there’s a flavor profile to please everyone.” Aspall Dry English Cyder ($7 for 500 ml). “Light and vinous,” this Champagne-like English cider works nicely as a pre-dinner refresher. Txopinondo Sagarnoa Cidre ($12 for 750 ml). “Acidity is the star” in this Spanish-style cider from France’s Basque region, while background notes of citrus, herbs, cedar, and funk “make this an extraordinarily complex drink.” Etienne Dupont Cidre Bouché Brut de Normandie ($13 for 750 ml). A hint of lemon balances the “baked-apple sweetness” of this complex…

“Lawmakers near-universally expressed a strong desire to regulate” Instagram during its CEO’s first appearance on Capitol Hill, said Cat Zakrzewski in The Washington Post. Adam Mosseri last week proposed various ways to combat the platform’s toxic effects on teens and children, but lawmakers from both sides of the aisle “suggested interventions well beyond Mosseri’s proposals were necessary.” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R.-Tenn.) pressed Mosseri “to speak to parents” of users who had died from suicide or self-harm. Despite the controversy, Instagram reached 2 billion monthly active users this week. Investing: A year of massive growth for ETFs Exchange-traded funds have never been so popular, said Michael Wursthorn in The Wall Street Journal. “This year’s inflows into ETFs worldwide crossed the $1 trillion mark for the first time in November,” already beating…

Keeping up with inflation Companies are budgeting for the biggest increase in wages since 2008, said David Harrison in The Wall Street Journal. A survey by the Conference Board released last week found that “companies are setting aside an average 3.9 percent of total payroll for wage increases next year.” That encompasses raising the ranges of minimum, median, and maximum salaries, potentially “affecting workers across a company’s pay scale.” Roughly 39 percent of the survey’s 229 companies pointed to inflation as a factor in their budgeting decision. But other indications suggest that the tight labor market is also playing a role. According to the Atlanta Fed, “those who switched jobs between August and October saw a median wage increase of 5.1 percent vs. 3.7 percent for those who stayed in…

Tara Lachapelle Bloomberg.com The pandemic has forever changed the economics of Hollywood, said Tara Lachapelle. After nearly two years with Covid, “the world will probably never fully return to movie theaters,” and that has affected “how everyone in the business gets paid.” We already know how streaming is complicating the paydays of top actors. The superstar Scarlett Johansson sued Disney this summer over a breach of contract because Disney released her hit movie, Black Widow, simultaneously in theaters and on its streaming service. Johansson, like many actors, padded her earnings with “back-end revenue streams”—a cut of box-office receipts, DVD sales, and cable showings that is now obsolete in the streaming era. While top stars will see smaller paydays, there are some winners. Obviously, they include the tech giants—Amazon, Apple, and…

Michael Nesmith was a struggling singer-songwriter in 1965 when he responded to an ad seeking “4 insane boys” to play a Beatles-like rock band in a TV series. Cast as the “serious,” wool hat–wearing member of the Monkees—alongside the heartthrob Davy Jones, the jokester Micky Dolenz, and the dim, affable Peter Tork—Nesmith became part of a mega-million-selling band that posted hits such as “Last Train to Clarksville” and “Daydream Believer.” But he chafed at being in a TV outfit whose records were written and played by others, and he successfully battled for control. Nesmith went on to a varied career as a country-rock artist, music-video pioneer, and movie producer. “People think it was amazing that four guys hired for a TV show could actually form a band,” he said…

Good week for: Nodding off, with a new study suggesting that as little as 15 seconds spent in “hypnagogia,” the first stage of falling asleep, can triple a person’s capacity for “creative problem-solving” afterward. Coveting, after Pope Francis told reporters that “sins of the flesh,” such as extramarital sex, “are not the most serious.” Far worse, Francis said, are the sins of pride and hatred. Remote workers, after a federal court in Germany ruled that a man who injured himself at home while walking from his bed to his desk was technically “commuting” and is thus entitled to worker’s compensation. Bad week for: Feeling guilty, after Sharon Whatley, 50, of Eros, La., tried to turn herself in at the Monroe Police Department but could not cite any crime she committed.…

Ottawa Three Canadians with mental health conditions have been granted special dispensation to take psilocybin mushrooms, commonly known as magic mushrooms, as part of their psychiatric treatment. Canada allows use of these mushrooms, which contain hallucinogenic compounds, in rare cases as part of palliative care for the terminally ill, particularly to over-come the fear of dying. The treatment has been approved for nonterminal patients only once before. “This is a very clear indication that exemptions are now available for people who have anxiety, depression, addiction, and chronic pain,” said Spencer Hawkswell of TheraPsil, a nonprofit advocating for the use of mushrooms in psychotherapy. “It opens it up to everyone.” Boom times Ciudad Juárez, Mexico Mexican border cities that lost factories to China in recent years are seeing a surge…

Jeremy Strong tries to lose himself while acting, said Michael Schulman in The New Yorker. Since being cast as Kendall Roy—the bro-y, desperately ambitious son of a media mogul in HBO’s Succession—he has tried to utterly inhabit the role, wearing Kendall’s clothes when he’s not on camera and isolating himself from the actors who play his estranged siblings. “To me, the stakes are life and death,” says Strong, 42. “I take [Kendall] as seriously as I take my own life.” Some crew members on past projects have snickered at his full-immersion methods. Cast as Robert Downey Jr.’s brother in the 2014 movie The Judge, he paced around the set sobbing loudly as Downey shot a funeral scene, even though Strong wasn’t called that day. “I think you have to go…

Christopher Ingraham TheWhyAxis.Substack.com It was portrayed as a “feel-good” story, said Christopher Ingraham, but when teachers have to fight over a pile of $1 bills to pay for school supplies, it’s actually proof of “staggering social failure.” A Sioux Falls, S.D., mortgage lender last week sponsored a charity event called Dash for Cash, in which $5,000 in singles was dumped on an ice hockey rink, and 10 public-school teachers scrambled to stuff the money into their clothing while a crowd hooted. It was “a degrading, humiliating Hunger Games–style debacle” that said volumes about our society’s values. South Dakota’s teacher salaries and per-pupil spending “are among the lowest in the nation”—half the rate of some larger states. Contrary to claims that more funding for schools doesn’t matter, recent research found a…

GERMANY  Aiko Kempen and Katharina Meyer zu Eppendorf Die Zeit The German state of Saxony is letting a neo-Nazi become a state-accredited attorney, said Aiko Kempen and Katharina Meyer zu Eppendorf. Matthias B. is a founding member of the Third Path, an extreme-right outfit that models itself explicitly on Hitler’s original National Socialist party. Third Path’s program includes planks to ensure the “preservation” of the German race and the restoration of German sovereignty over all former territories. Matthias B. has been photographed at ultra-right rallies standing next to extremists such as Susanne G., who was “recently convicted of planning bomb attacks on mosques and refugee centers.” To become a public prosecutor, judge, or lawyer in Germany, law students must pass not only the law exam but also a two-year clerkship,…

People From My Neighborhood by Hiromi Kawakami (Soft Skull, $16) Strange things happen in Hiromi Kawakami’s neighborhood, said Brenda Peynado in The New York Times. In 36 brief stories that are packed into 159 pages, the award-winning author of Strange Weather in Tokyo offers a vision of humanity “that astounds even as it shrugs.” Behind one door: a princess. Behind the next: a man with two shadows. Ghosts and doppelgängers reside in this neighborhood, too, and “horror and hope are intertwined so deftly that they become the same thing.” Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King (Grove, $27) Lily King has serious range, said Heller McAlpin in NPR.org. In this “wonderfully absorbing” first story collection from the author of Euphoria and Writers and Lovers, former college roommates clash violently, a…

3 The new Christmas album from Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe, and Angaleena Presley “delivers what all good Christmas albums should: a personalized spin on the spirit of the season,” said Stephen Thomas Erlewine in AllMusic.com. The three country singers brought plenty of sass to their first three LPs, and the 10 original songs offered here “hold true to their sense of humor and style.” This lively collection includes only three covers, one of them a “simmering” rendition of Merle Haggard’s “If We Make It Through December.” The originals balance sincerity with frivolity (as on the “playful trinket” that is “Snow Globe”). And throughout, the trio’s talented band “gives the music swing and soul.” Whether you prefer your Christmas music secular or spiritual, “Leanin’ on Jesus” beams with “winning sunlight harmonies,”…