Innehållsförteckning för May 13, 2022 från The Week Magazine

The strange thing about high-profile leaks is that the most dramatic ones tend to tell us what everyone already suspects. The Pentagon Papers told us that we were losing the Vietnam War, Donald Trump’s tax returns that he hardly ever paid taxes. And now Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked draft opinion tells us—yes, as we already knew—that most of the Supreme Court is ready to dump Roe v. Wade. That’s as expected as can be, and yet there is a shock to seeing it on paper, and a shock to the form of disclosure. Having its deliberations bared, the Supreme Court is brought down to the level of everything else, a muddy arena of political polarization. It’s not really surprising that judges who believe that Roe was wrongly decided would reverse…

What happened As Russian artillery hammered Ukraine’s south and east this week, Western officials warned that Vladimir Putin might use May 9, a major national holiday, to declare all-out war against Ukraine—and potentially the U.S. and its NATO allies. Facing losses of some 25,000 troops, Putin could use Victory Day, which commemorates the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany, to declare a fundamental shift in the conflict. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace predicted a mass mobilization of Russia’s 2 million–man reserve pool and a declaration of war against what the Kremlin would describe as “the world’s Nazis”—potentially including NATO. Within Ukraine, Russian forces killed 21 civilians in a single day this week in Donetsk and continued to bombard several cities, renewing attacks on Lviv in western Ukraine and on…

Sheriff Bob Johnson of Santa Rosa County, Fla., has encouraged homeowners to shoot intruders to “save taxpayers money.’’ If a suspect is shot rather than arrested, Johnson said at a press conference, “the chances of them reoffending after that are zero,’’ so “we’d prefer that you do that actually.” Defense lawyers called his advice “wildly irresponsible.’’ A white teacher in Rochester, N.Y., was put on leave after allegedly requiring Black students in his seventh grade social studies class to pick seeds out of cotton for a lesson on slavery. Parents said the teacher also brought handcuffs and shackles for the Black students to wear, while letting white students opt out of the cotton-picking. “It made me feel bad to be a Black person,” student Jahmiere O’Neal said. In other news…

Henry Winkler has seen the highest highs and lowest lows of acting, said Matthew Klam in The New York Times Magazine. He was a pop-culture sensation as the Fonz on Happy Days, then spent 35 years straining to break out of the typecasting from that role, and being rewarded with mostly bad reviews. His struggle finally paid off on Barry, the hit HBO series for which Winkler, 76, won an Emmy. Through all that he’s been hampered by severe dyslexia, which still makes him anxious and embarrassed, he says. He struggles to read his own handwriting and can only remember right versus left by thinking of which elbow hangs out the window when he’s driving. As a Yale School of Drama student, he had yet to be diagnosed as…

Joel Achenbach The Washington Post The coronavirus is mutating far more rapidly than anyone expected, said Joel Achenbach, and its ongoing evolution may “confound efforts to bring it fully under control.” Even as the BA.2 variant quietly spreads across the U.S. in a silent wave, “the Omicron gang” of variants is expanding. “We’re seeing subvariants of subvariants,” said infectious-disease expert Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota. A subvariant of BA.2, called BA.2.12.1, has emerged that is 25 percent more transmissible than the highly infectious BA.2. In South Africa, scientists have identified BA.4 and BA.5, which have evolved to elude antibodies from prior infection with Omicron—and thus could cause yet another new wave. Through natural selection, the virus has become such “a distant cousin” of the original Wuhan strain…

CANADA Barry Scott Zellen The Globe and Mail Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused “strategic dissension at the top of the world,” said Barry Scott Zellen. Early in March, seven of the eight members of the Arctic Council, which collaborates on scientific research and confronting climate change, announced a “pause” of their participation, to protest Russian aggression. It was a rare show of “unanimity” for a body that prides itself on representing “a diverse mosaic” of both Arctic states and Indigenous peoples, but the stunt was ill-advised at best. The council’s structure is historically open to cooperation with the world at large, including repressive countries like China, “regardless of their domestic governing structures or ideologies or oppressive track records.” It may be hard to stomach sitting with Russian officials to…

“Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.”Isaiah Berlin, quoted in The New York Times “Evil people usually know better than anybody else just what they are doing. And go on doing it.”Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, quoted in The New York Review of Books “Hope, in reality, is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.”Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted in the Las Vegas Sun “Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly.”Toni Morrison, quoted in Gawker “Dance is the hidden language of the soul.”Martha Graham, quoted in The London Free Press “A poem begins with a lump in the throat.”Robert Frost, quoted in the Lansing, Mich., City Pulse “If you…

Keeping your personal details private Upon request, Google will stop showing search results from websites that reveal home addresses, phone numbers, passwords, and other personal information, said Mitchell Clark in The Verge. The search giant broadened its editorial standard of why it might agree to remove certain links, “giving people new options” to control their personal information. Previously, Google only “let people remove personal information that had been shared maliciously, an act commonly known as doxxing.” The company’s moderators will now review removal requests based on “whether the information is ‘newsworthy.’” Google still maintains “a relatively high bar” for what it considers “personally identifying information” in the U.S. The EU, by contrast, compels Google to remove links if they are seen as “unflattering or irrelevant.” No end to the…

Advocates of “time-restricted eating” have claimed you can lose weight by eating only during a window of six to eight hours a day. But a new study has concluded that this form of dieting is no better than other ways of cutting calories, reports The New York Times. Researchers in China split 139 obese people into two groups: The first were allowed to eat only between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.; the second consumed the same number of calories, but whenever they pleased. Both groups lost weight, but there was no major difference between the two. It was the same with regard to reduced waist circumference, body fat, and lean body mass, as well as various ailments associated with obesity. “There is no benefit to eating in a narrow…

Sy Montgomery is the author of The Soul of an Octopus and dozens of other books about the natural world. Her latest, The Hawk’s Way, uses a personal encounter with a hawk to explore what birds can teach us about nature, life, and love. The Outermost House by Henry Beston (1928). Beston’s poetic declaration helped define what I attempt in my own writing about the natural world: “We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals… for the animal shall not be measured by man. They are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.” King Solomon’s Ring by Konrad Lorenz (1949). A classic account of animal behavior by the man…

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, through Sept. 11 Philip Guston has not been canceled after all, said Peter Plagens in The Wall Street Journal. Two years ago, a planned fourcity tour of a survey of the late artist’s work was postponed because of concerns that his paintings, which include sardonic depictions of Ku Klux Klansmen, were too incendiary to be shown amid an ongoing national reckoning with our culture’s history of racial violence. Artists protested, arguing that the challenging work of Guston—a son of Russian Jewish refugees who’d intended to underscore white America’s shared culpability for racial injustice—was exactly what the moment called for. Now the Boston MFA version of the exhibit is finally here, complete with a handout created by a trauma specialist. “Does it work? Let’s just…

3 “Serenity, personal growth, and felicity may not be seductive topics for a contemporary R&B record,” said Isabelia Herrera in The New York Times. But the Grammy nominee Kehlani “has always been confessional,” and isn’t about to change modes after several life-altering events, including settling into motherhood and coming out as a lesbian. That said, nearly every song here includes “hushed acoustic guitar textures” or “swelling string crescendos,” creating an ideal backdrop for the singer’s “bleeding-heart lyricism.” Whereas the artist’s 2017 breakthrough, SweetSexySavage, was “bold and loud,” said Yolanda Machado in Entertainment Weekly, Blue Water Road “unfolds like a breezy coastal drive,” with cresting waves and birdcalls echoing throughout. Kehlani’s lyrics have never been stronger, said Rhian Daly in NME. On the single “Altar,” the 27-year-old narrates an intimate elegy…

Happening This award-winning French abortion drama is set in 1963, but feels timeless, said Shirley Li in The Atlantic. Anamaria Vartolomei plays an ambitious university student who assumes she can choose to end a pregnancy, until the help she expects vanishes. As the weeks pass, you can see tension gathering in her piercing gaze. “It’s as if her eyes might set the screen aflame with her frustration, fury, and—eventually—panic.” (In theaters only) R Memory For a few minutes, the latest Liam Neeson action thriller is fun, brutal, and fully committed to presenting its star as “a homicidal grandpa who’s killed more people than he could ever hope to remember,” said David Ehrlich in IndieWire. But even with Guy Pearce and Monica Bellucci in supporting roles, this story about a…

“I am emotionally attached to Corsican wines,” said Eric Asimov in The New York Times. Tasting them brings back memories of visiting the rugged French island just off Italy’s coast. These three, “each different yet all very much of a piece,” are enthralling to me not only for their deliciousness but because they taste distinctively Corsican. 2019 Domaine Maestracci Corse Calvi Clos Reginu ($22). This beautiful five-grape-strong blend has “the savory thrust of syrah” but is also “fresh and lively with lingering flavors of sweet, tart fruit.” 2020 Domaine Pinelli Vin de France ($27). Marie-Charlotte Pinelli is a new producer, and her smooth blend, though a pale ruby red, is earthy, spicy, and forceful. 2020 Domaine Comte Abbatucci Vin de France Cuvée Faustine ($45). “Juicier, richer, and more intense”…

Stay on top of the task. If your range hood has a charcoal filter, you don’t have to clean the filter—but be sure to replace it every three to six months. With metal filters, you can avoid a messy cleanup if you run them through a dishwasher cycle once a month. Soak before scrubbing. A heavy buildup of grease requires more commitment. If your filters fit in the kitchen sink, fill the sink with hot water, swirl in a grease-cutting dish soap plus ¼ cup baking soda, then let the filters soak for 15 to 30 minutes. Scrub them with a sponge or non-abrasive scrub brush, rinse with warm water, then let them dry before reinstalling. Use the down time. Tackle the rest of the hood while the filters are…

Before she became a country star, Naomi Judd lived an album’s worth of country songs. She’d endured poverty, sexual abuse, divorce, single motherhood, and mental illness by the time she and her daughter Wynonna formed a duo built around their Appalachian-tinged harmonies in the late 1970s. The Judds became one of the biggest country acts of the 1980s, with a sound combining traditional back-porch country and a pop sheen. The pair sold more than 20 million albums, winning five Grammys and racking up 14 No. 1 hits, including “Girls Night Out,” “Why Not Me,” and “Love Can Build a Bridge.” Judd spoke openly about her battles with severe depression, which at times required hospitalization—and which led to her death, reportedly by suicide. “I’m still desperately trying to help myself,”…

Clubgoers called Régine “Queen of the Night” for an excellent reason: She could credibly claim to have founded the world’s first discotheque in a Paris basement in 1957, and by the 1970s, she was running 23 venues frequented by the international jet set. Her New York outpost once barred Mick Jagger for arriving in sneakers. Régine wore a boa constrictor—a gift from Federico Fellini—as an accessory and counted Gene Kelly among her lovers. She had achieved her dream, she said in 2015, of being “loved the world over.” Rachelle Zylberberg, born to Polish-Jewish refugees in Etterbeek, Belgium, and raised in Paris, had “an unhappy, unstable childhood,” said The New York Times. Her mother abandoned her, and her father, an alcoholic gambler, was sent to a prison camp after the…

This week’s question: A type of male spider that is often eaten by the female after mating has found a way to catapult itself away to safety moments after the act. Come up with a PG-rated term for this lifesaving maneuver. Last week’s contest: Keepers at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo say teenage gorilla Amare has become so fascinated with images on visitors’ smartphones that he no longer pays attention to other gorillas. What would you call an app that caters to apes? THE WINNER: “FaceTime for Bonzo” Dave DiGregorio, West Hollywood, Calif. SECOND PLACE: “WhatsApe” Andrea Girolamo, Hudson, N.Y. THIRD PLACE: “Chimpstagram” Matt Wood, Valatie, N.Y. For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go to theweek.com/contest. How to enter: Submissions should be emailed to contest@theweek.com. Please include your name,…

“Putting electric cars on the road, sending rockets to space”—Elon Musk has achieved some incredible things, said Rachel Lerman in The Washington Post. But he sometimes doesn’t follow through on his “grand plans,” and there are many reasons his accepted offer to buy Twitter for $44 billion “could fall apart.” Vowing to open the site to more “free speech,” Musk has bet a huge chunk of his personal fortune on the deal—including a third of his stock holdings in his car company, Tesla, whose share price dropped 12 percent after the announcement. Moreover, Tesla builds half its vehicles in and gets a quarter of its revenues from China, whose authoritarian rulers may use that leverage to demand Twitter’s new owner take down posts about Hong Kong protests or Taiwan’s…

Zion Williams’ skateboarding feats seem impossible, said Megan Cassidy in the San Francisco Chronicle. The 19-year-old nails tricks at Bay Area skate parks, like one literally called an “impossible”—a jump in which the front of the board flips up and wraps around his back foot mid-air. It’s made more spectacular by the fact that the tall, lanky teenager is blind, the result of a street shooting last fall. He was back on his board about four months ago. Initially, Williams worried the tragic attack would drive him into a depression, fearing that he would turn to substances to numb the pain. “But it was pretty much the opposite,” he says. “It honestly kind of fueled up my career, if anything.” An aspiring pro skateboarder since he was 12, Williams…

J. Michael Luttig CNN.com Republicans who still insist the 2020 election was stolen aren’t really trying to undo those results, said J. Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge and lifelong Republican. Their real objective “is to execute successfully in 2024 the very same plan they failed in executing in 2020” if Donald Trump or “his anointed successor loses again.” Their radical plan’s “cornerstone” is the little-known “independent state legislature” theory, which argues that under the Constitution, state legislatures possess sole power to decide which slate of electors to send to the Electoral College; even if legislatures choose the losing candidate’s electors on some bogus premise, state courts and state election officials cannot intervene. That idea was floated after Trump lost in 2020, but state officials and Vice President Mike…

SWEDEN Hind Al Eryani Aftonbladet “No one really talks to Muslims in Sweden,” said Hind Al Eryani. That became all too evident last month, when supporters of anti-immigration provocateur Rasmus Paludan clashed with protesters over his plans to burn copies of the Quran. Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson condemned the far-right extremists, but when I posted a Facebook comment agreeing with her, I was attacked “as if I were the one who had thrown stones and burned cars.” As a Yemeni immigrant, I have noticed that politicians here aim their rhetoric squarely “at the Swedish majority population.” Even when they preach tolerance, their message “does not reach those who are exposed” to hate. Andersson would have done better to follow the example of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. After a…

Scientists in Europe have restarted the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) after a three-year break for upgrades—the start of an effort to establish whether there is a fifth fundamental force of nature. Buried beneath the Swiss-French border, the 20-mile-long particle accelerator was where the Higgs boson—a fundamental particle that gives mass to other particles—was first observed back in 2012. That and the LHC’s other big discoveries have fallen under the so-called standard model of particle physics. But last year scientists who’d been examining old data said they’d spotted particles behaving in a way that could not be explained by the standard model—suggesting the presence of a new force of nature in addition to gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force. But LHC physicists need their more powerful accelerator…

(Catapult, $18) Michelle de Kretser’s new book is two “slyly intelligent” novels in one, said Anthony Cummins in The Guardian. Open one cover, and you’ll read the story of Lili, a 22-year-old Australian of Asian descent who, in 1981, is working for a year in Montpellier, France. Flip the book over, and you’ll instead read about Lyle, an Asian immigrant who works for an authoritarian government in a near-future Melbourne ravaged by climate change. While the narratives aren’t directly linked, they both sound alarms about anti-immigrant sentiment. At the same time, de Kretser conveys an “inescapable” feeling that she’s also having fun. She leaves it to us to decide how the two stories are connected, said Alex Preston in The New York Times. But at one point Lyle notes…

Where the Children Take Us by Zain E. Asher (Amistad, $28) With her new memoir, Zain Asher “has written a handbook for hope when none seems possible,” said Douglass Daniel in the Associated Press. Asher was 5 when her father died in a car accident, leaving Asher’s Nigerian-born mother to raise four children in London. Asher is now a CNN International news anchor, and her brother, Chiwetel Ejiofor, an acclaimed screen actor, but they’re not the stars here. Their mother, Obiajulu Ejiofor, “would not allow her children to let themselves down.” Tasha: A Son’s Memoir by Brian Morton (Avid Reader, $28) Brian Morton’s portrait of his mother during her final years is “both a cri de coeur and vibrant testament,” said Joan Frank in The Washington Post. When Tasha…

3 Miranda Lambert is an artist of impressive range, said Will Hermes in Pitchfork. Her latest release, a loose concept album about setting out for open country, mixes playful Southern rock with sincere country balladry, and it’s “bright with giddy pleasures, welled tears, and some of her best-ever songwriting.” At times, it stirs the heart with “deeply felt storytelling”; at others it “hums with the joy of master musicians screwing around, reveling in process and each other’s company.” On the opener, “Actin’ Up,” the Texas native re-establishes her particular brand of “sass and swagger,” said Brittney McKenna in NPR. “Where so many country artists are still stuck on backroads, Lambert is speeding down the interstate,” kicking up dust in a shiny El Camino. Though Palomino includes full-band versions of three…

Family histories… 306 Hollywood Filmmaker siblings Elan and Jonathan Bogarin playfully pay a moving tribute to their deceased grandmother by subjecting her modest New Jersey home to a deep archaeological examination. Kanopy Our Father Popular at-home DNA tests have uncovered many surprising family stories. This jaw-dropping documentary recounts how dozens of Indiana residents discovered that they shared the same biological father: a fertility doctor who had secretly used his own semen to impregnate at least 50 patients. Netflix The Wolfpack For 14 years, six home-schooled brothers rarely stepped outside their cramped Lower East Side apartment. But they survived their father’s strict lockdown policy, as this award-winning documentary reveals, with the help of the movies they watched on TV. HBO Max Birth of a Family Four siblings removed from their…

Sleep Cycle can help you wake up every day feeling rested. The sleep app’s indispensable function is an alarm clock that senses when you’re stirring to wake you up then—not 10 or 15 minutes later when you’re in a deep sleep. Waze Live Traffic can be “a godsend” even if you prefer not to load the Waze app itself. At Waze.com, you can store your home and office as destinations, then consult the live traffic map to choose the best route each day and to leave your desk each night as soon as you see the estimated travel time start to creep up. A Soft Murmur is an app and website that you’ll turn to again and again to block out office noise using earbuds or headphones. It offers 10…

There is no sign of cooling in the “greatest job-seekers’ market of all time,” said Bryan Mena in The Wall Street Journal. The Labor Department reported this week there were 11.5 million jobs open last month, an increase from 11.3 million in February. “The number of times workers quit rose to 4.5 million in the same month, higher than the previous record in November.” With nearly two openings last month for every person out of work, the overwhelming supply of jobs has pushed up wages by 5.6 percent, though that is still below inflation. Hedge funds: Archegos investigation leads to arrest “In one of the highest-profile Wall Street prosecutions in years,” fund manager Bill Hwang was arrested last week on charges of racketeering conspiracy, securities fraud, and wire fraud, said…

Then they came for the bankers… Big banks’ annual shareholders meetings have become battlegrounds in the culture wars, said Jennifer Surane in Bloomberg. The country’s biggest banks “have come to expect activists” at their gatherings, but usually they are “decrying the lenders as capitalist powerhouses behind fossil fuels, gunmakers, and societal inequities.” This year, conservative speakers have been more vocal with “questions, proposals, and ultimatums,” and pummeled the banks for “woke, Marxist agendas and pledges to diversify their ranks.” At Wells Fargo’s meeting, conservative activists warned the bank “not to follow Disney,” which is now embroiled in a battle with Republican politicians in Florida. One group “submitted shareholder proposals at Citigroup and Bank of America to audit whether diversity efforts are themselves discriminatory.” Saying no to dead-end work A…

Russell Gold Texas Monthly Another boom is coming for the Texas oil patch, said Russell Gold. “In the two months since Russia invaded Ukraine and oil prices shot up to more than $100 a barrel, the perplexing question for the Texas energy industry has been: Why isn’t anyone drilling?” The answer at first was that investors weren’t interested in another roller-coaster ride, after demand plummeted last decade and left companies with an oversupply of unused drilling rigs. “But evidence is emerging that the fossil fuel boom may stick around for a while.” The CEO of Schlumberger, the world’s largest oil-field service company, thinks we’re entering a cycle of “exceptional” oil prices and investment. Exxon Mobil’s $5.5 billion in profits last quarter reinforce that message. For now, “things are still…

Good week for: Earplugs, after country star Garth Brooks and 102,000 fans at Louisiana State University’s Tiger Stadium hit 95 decibels while belting out “Callin’ Baton Rouge”—loud enough to register on a seismograph and to risk causing temporary hearing loss. Persistence, after Brazilian man Walter Orthmann set a Guinness World Record for working at the same textile company for 84 years. “You need to get busy with the present, not the past or future,” said Orthmann, 100. Meeting face-to-face, after a study found that workers think more creatively in person than in videoconferences. Researchers found that when people are free to look around a room, rather than stare at faces on a screen, they have more and better ideas. Bad week for: Typos, after a stock trader at Citi made…

Toronto A 31-year-old Toronto woman with disabilities neared final approval for her assisted-suicide request last week, after she was unable to find an affordable apartment compatible with her chronic illnesses. “Relieved and elated,” she told Canada’s CTV News. “I was scared they weren’t going to say yes.” The woman, who has chosen to remain anonymous, had to abandon her job as a makeup artist after being diagnosed with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, which triggers debilitating symptoms upon exposure to scents like cigarette smoke and air fresheners. But she failed to find suitable housing she could afford on her $910 monthly disability payout, so she applied for assisted death, which Canada liberalized in 2021. A 51-year-old Ontario woman with chemical sensitivities made the same choice in February, receiving a medically assisted death…

Julia Roberts can still light up a film with her famous smile, but she flashes it more selectively these days, said David Marchese in The New York Times Magazine. She recently returned to the screen after a four-year hiatus, and took a two-decade break from romantic comedies, once her staple. “People sometimes misconstrue the amount of time that’s gone by that I haven’t done a romantic comedy as my not wanting to do one,” says Roberts, 54. “It wasn’t by design, so much as not finding something I was interested in. If I had read something that I thought was that Notting Hill level of writing or My Best Friend’s Wedding level of madcap fun, I would do it.” She has also been busy raising three children over the…

Michele DeMarco Politico The vast majority of Americans support abortion in cases of rape, incest, and complications that threaten “the life of the mother,” said Michele DeMarco. But many recently passed state abortion laws erase the rape and incest exceptions—and, through “subtle shifts in language,” could condemn some women with dangerous pregnancies to death. States such as Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi have abortion laws that include “ridiculously vague” and “medically meaningless” definitions of what constitutes a life-endangering condition for a pregnant woman. As I can attest, some conditions do not pose “immediate” threats to the woman’s life. I suffer from a coronary condition that caused two heart attacks in my 30s, and doctors told me when I became pregnant that continuing it “would be tantamount to suicide.” When 26…

“Every year, hundreds of thousands of people—sometimes millions—leave poor, violent, and poorly governed countries in search of a better life. Their destination of choice is never China, Russia, or Venezuela. Rather, they seek out well-governed liberal societies where their children will have greater freedom and opportunity. It is they much more than the complacent inhabitants of liberal societies who realize that there is, indeed, an arc of history, with justice as its terminus.” Francis Fukuyama in The Wall Street Journal…

GERMANY Volker Probst NTV.de Xavier Naidoo is one of Germany’s biggest pop stars—or at least he was, said Volker Probst. Born in Mannheim to South African immigrant parents, the singer shot to fame as a “luminary of cuddly soul” in the 2000s and was the voice of the “summer fairy tale” of 2006, when we hosted the World Cup. But in the years since, his ever more offensive views have made him “persona non grata.” He has peddled conspiracy theories about 9/11, denied the existence of Covid, and promoted QAnon lies about “a child-blood-drinking elite.” Oddly, this German of color also became an extreme right-winger: a nationalist and an anti-Semite. And then, it seems, he saw the light. In a video recently posted on Instagram, Naidoo apologized, admitted to taking…

PHILIPPINES Ana Santos Rappler Our toxic presidential campaign has descended into rank “misogyny and sexism,” said Ana Santos. As Vice President Leni Robredo chased front-runner Ferdinand Marcos Jr.—the late dictator’s son—in the polls, internet trolls spread a fake sex video purporting to feature her 34-year-old daughter, Aika. Such gutter politics are sadly commonplace in the Philippines, where allies of Rodrigo Duterte routinely attack women in high office and the president himself brags about his virility and sexual exploits. Plenty of Robredo supporters sprang to her defense, insisting Aika was “a nice girl” who would never appear in a sex video. But that attitude is part of the problem, as it “diminishes the agency of women in expressing their sexuality and demonizes the women that do.” Her mother, meanwhile, has continued…

“One of the biggest Supreme Court decisions in generations” has inspired “one of the biggest Supreme Court scandals ever,” said Jim Geraghty in National Review. The leak to Politico this week of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade will cause “an earthquake” inside the court, “destroying trust” and collegiality among justices, clerks, and court employees. The secrecy of justices’ deliberations is critical, and although stories of vote switching and other intrigues have spilled out on rare occasions, the publication of an entire draft opinion is unprecedented. Whoever leaked it—probably a clerk for a liberal justice—“had an ulterior motive,” perhaps to cause a massive public backlash that might give some of the conservative justices cold feet about overturning Roe. “Whatever the leaker’s motive,” said Noah Feldman in…

Harvard has delivered the nation an important lesson on healing the “deep wounds” left by slavery, said Peniel Joseph in CNN.com. School officials last week issued a report that “casts new light on how slavery helped forge one of America’s most prestigious universities.” The report revealed that Harvard faculty and administrators held more than 70 slaves before Massachusetts banned slavery in 1783, some of whom served generations of students. It documented how money derived from slave labor did much to build the university’s wealth during its first two centuries, and how faculty taught “race science” asserting whites’ innate superiority. The school pledged $100 million to fund reparation efforts, including identifying the campus slaves’ modern descendants, creating a memorial, and building exchange programs with historically Black universities. Harvard’s reckoning is…

Male spiders of the Philoponella prominens species have developed an acrobatic trick to avoid being eaten by their mate after sex, reports The Daily Telegraph (U.K.)—they catapult away from the female at speeds averaging 655 feet per second. This jumping ploy has long baffled scientists, but in a new study, special high-resolution video has shown that the canny arachnids have a springy joint in their front legs that allows them to vault off the female to safety. When performing the maneuver, the male Philoponella can spin up to 469 times per second, further helping them evade their mate’s clutches. Those that don’t manage the jump are captured, killed, and eaten by the female—suggesting that the leap is an evolutionary trait designed to secure survival. The researchers think the females…

(Tin House, $23) By at least one measure, Ben Shattuck is no Henry David Thoreau, said Morgan Graham in the Chicago Review of Books. When Thoreau walked the eastern shore of Cape Cod in 1849—a distance of 30 miles—he wore a three-piece suit. When Shattuck started the same hike one cold May day, he foolishly dressed in swim trunks and running shoes patched with duct tape. But Shattuck, a painter and fiction writer, had chosen to walk in Thoreau’s footsteps while reeling from a bad breakup, and the book he’s written about the experience is a moving account of one man’s journey to peace. Whereas he’d once considered Thoreau a bore, he “came to know the transcendentalist writer better as he walked,” and also developed “a deeper understanding of…

Janelle Monáe is getting a lot of mileage out of one nightmare, said Stuart Miller in the Los Angeles Times. Several years ago, the celebrated recording artist and screen actress dreamed she was kidnapped from a movie theater by mysterious creatures that wiped her memory clean. From that vision came her 2018 concept album Dirty Computer and a 45-minute companion film, and now, her first book—a collection of five science-fiction stories, each co-written with a different collaborator. All of those projects are set in a dystopian future in which queer people and people of color are under attack by an authoritarian regime that insists on conformity. And Monáe’s production company is in talks about adapting the stories from the book, The Memory Librarian, for film or television. “My goal,”…

3 The latest Toro y Moi album “will make a satisfying soundtrack for the warmer months to come,” said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. In the dozen or so years since the South Carolina singer-producer spearheaded the dreamy, lo-fi genre known as chillwave, he has shown himself to be a restless creative force, “jumping from psychedelic rock to funk to clubby dance music.” With this record, his seventh, we finally get it all—“a highly enjoyable sampler” of his talents and interests. Mahal “feels a lot like the aural equivalent of lazing around on a Sunday afternoon,” said Thomas Bedenbaugh in Slant. “At times, the album’s songs are so breezy that they’re barely distinguishable,” but as he brings a jazzier touch to his usual combination of boyish vocals and…

Riedel Superleggero Champagne Glass Why not serve celebratory champagne in a glass to be treasured for years? Many people favor flutes, but wine experts recommend a glass like this, which showcases complex aromas and flavor notes. $90 each, riedel.com Source: Wall Street Journal VSSL Compact Adventure Kit This 9-inch aluminum canister packs in more than 70 outdoor essentials, including a sewing kit, matches, and fishing hooks. The canister itself is a flashlight with a built-in compass. “Pretty cool, huh?” $175, vsslgear.com Source: Men’s Health SunWallArt Customized City Map A 16-by-20 SunWallArt map can feature your grad’s old college town or new city. Either way, it will be printed on premium paper and “help make their new place feel like home.” (Frame not included.) $48, etsy.com Source: Today.com Cuyana Classic…

British oil giant BP said this week the divestment in its 19.75 percent stake in Russia’s state-controlled oil company has cost it $25 billion. Rosneft accounted for nearly half of BP’s oil and gas reserves and one-third of its production. Reuters Ukraine’s digital minister said about 150,000 people in the country are using SpaceX’s Starlink satellite service to connect to the internet, using more than 10,000 Starlink terminals. CNBC.com The number of tweens—children ages 8 to 12—with their own smartphones increased from 24 percent in 2015 to 43 percent in 2021. Among tweens with a phone, 64 percent list “watching online videos” as their favorite activity. The Hustle GM said it expects future car buyers to pay an average of $135 a month—in addition to their monthly car payment—for bonus…

Tripp Mickle The New York Times The balance of power at Apple changed forever when Jony Ive left in 2019, said Tripp Mickle. Steve Jobs once called Ive his “spiritual partner,” and his value to the company was so great, executives once estimated “Ive’s departure would erase $50 billion from Apple’s market value.” But it didn’t take long after Jobs’ death in 2011 for Ive to feel “unsupported” as the company became more technocratic under Tim Cook’s leadership. Cook ushered in new “scrutiny over every dollar spent,” straining against Ive’s relentless ingenuity—and the creative license he gave his team to dream big. The breaking point arrived around the unveiling of Apple’s first smartwatch in 2014. Ive naturally envisioned the product as a “fashionable accessory,” and he traveled to Paris…

Kathy Boudin had just finished showering in 1970 when a shrapnel-filled bomb built by her colleagues in the militant left-wing Weather Underground accidentally detonated. The bomb, meant for an upcoming Army dance nearby, left three Weathermen dead and their Greenwich Village townhouse in ruins. Naked but uninjured, Boudin stumbled away and went into hiding. She emerged in 1981, teaming with Black nationalist radicals to rob a Brink’s truck outside New York City. Boudin was waiting in a getaway car during the $1.6 million heist when her comrades opened fire, killing a security guard and two police officers. After two decades in prison, Boudin became a professor and writer, remorseful for the murderous robbery and clear-eyed about her life as a fugitive activist. “I was making a difference in no…