Innehållsförteckning för June 3, 2022 från The Week Magazine

Schools. Churches. Synagogues. Supermarkets. The victims of the last massacre, in Buffalo, were still being buried this week when another disaffected young man armed with an assault weapon slaughtered 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas. So far this year, this broken nation is averaging 10 mass shootings of four or more people every week. The same country recently passed 1 million Covid deaths—far more than any other nation. Tens of millions of people believe the 2020 election was stolen, and democracy itself stands on crumbling ground. Sharply conflicting abortion laws will inflame the rancor between blue and red states. Even the supposedly nonpartisan Supreme Court has split along the seams, with justices openly expressing scorn and suspicion of the enemy faction. These are all symptoms of an underlying…

What happened Georgia Republican voters gave a strong show of support this week to GOP incumbents who rebuffed former President Trump’s claims that the state was stolen from him in the 2020 election. In the gubernatorial primary, Brian Kemp trounced Trump’s hand-picked challenger, former Sen. David Perdue, by more than 50 points, days after Perdue said, “I guaran-damn-tee you we’re not down 30 points,” as polls indicated. In a last-ditch effort, Perdue launched a racist attack against Stacey Abrams, who will face Kemp this fall, saying the Black Democrat was “demeaning her own race” and should “go back where she came from.” Rep. Jody Hice failed to force a runoff against Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a longtime Trump target who spoke out emphatically against Trump after the then-president…

Students at University of California, Davis, have voted to change their college mascot from an elitist horse to a more inclusive cow. The old mascot, Gunrock the Mustang, was named for a 1930s racehorse, which student activist Mick Hashimoto says makes him a symbol of the “old elite.” UC Davis students are “hardworking people,” Hashimoto says, and will better “resonate” with “Aggie the Cow.” Police in Dover, Del., home to the nation’s largest military airport, have asked locals to stop calling 911 to complain about jet noise. Encouraging residents to “enjoy the sound of freedom” during the multiday Thunder Over Dover air show, the Dover PD called noise complaints a “complete waste of our resources,” adding that “our Chevrolet Tahoes aren’t catching those guys.” In other news Vaccine shows promise…

Tom Felton can’t escape Draco Malfoy, said Michael Segalov in The Guardian (U.K.). Felton, now 34, grew up playing the evil schoolboy wizard in the Harry Potter films, and unlike some former child actors, is happy to be associated with the role. He was already a seasoned British stage actor when he was cast at age 12. “I reckon I got the part because I was nonchalant,” Felton says. “I think Chris Columbus, the director, recognized this slight disinterest and arrogance in me, which he thought could work for Malfoy.” The series’ eight blockbuster films made huge stars of other actors, but Felton said playing the platinum-blond Malfoy didn’t make him very popular. “I played an evil wizard,” he says. “It wasn’t cool. It did me no favors with…

Former Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway says her marriage is on the rocks because her husband, George Conway, relentlessly criticized her boss. “I had two men in my life,” Kellyanne Conway writes in a new memoir, Here’s the Deal. “One of those men was defending me. And it wasn’t George.” Conway, who fiercely defended Trump as his adviser and spokesman, says the former president “elevated and empowered me,” and was stunned when her conservative husband became an outspoken Never Trumper on Twitter and in opinion columns. Describing George as “almost sinister,” she says she realized that “the man who had always had my back might one day stab me in it.” When she confronted George about his public attacks on Trump, she says, he replied, “You work for a…

Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright The Washington Post “This generation of teens is the most sleep-deprived population in human history,” said Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright. American adolescents are in crisis, with 1 in 3 admitting to persistent feelings of hopelessness, and 1 in 5 saying they’ve seriously considered suicide. A lack of sleep may be a major factor. High-schoolers need about nine hours of sleep a night; instead, they’re getting six and a half. That means today’s “adolescents are living in a state of severe and chronic sleep debt.” Research has shown that chronic sleep deprivation can lead to “poor mental health,” including anxiety, depression, and “almost every psychiatric diagnosis.” Several factors are conspiring to deprive teens of sleep: high schools starting the day at 7:30 or 8 a.m.;…

The “Wagatha Christie” case “has the nation hooked”—and the stakes couldn’t be lower, said Poppy Wood in iNews. The High Court will soon rule on whether Coleen Rooney, the wife of former England soccer star Wayne Rooney, defamed Rebekah Vardy by publicly accusing her of leaking personal information from a private Instagram account to the tabloid The Sun. Rooney revealed in 2019 that she’d ferreted out the leaker by limiting her followers and then planting fake stories until just one person had viewed them. “It’s…Rebekah Vardy’s account,” she tweeted dramatically. Her sleuthing earned her the moniker “Wagatha Christie,” a twist on the acronym WAGs for “wives and girlfriends” of soccer players. Vardy, the wife of Leicester striker Jamie Vardy, sued for defamation, claiming the leaks came from her former…

PAKISTAN Rafia Zakaria Dawn The catastrophic heat wave pounding India and Pakistan has laid bare an important truth, said Rafia Zakaria. Our climate crisis doesn’t stop at national borders, so we can suffer for the sins of wealthy people half a world away. The subcontinent is in an “environmental cataclysm,” sweltering in temperatures over 110 degrees while rationing water and power. Pakistan emits far less carbon dioxide per capita than most countries, yet it hasn’t received sufficient resources to “confront the climate challenges” forced upon it. And it’s not just the rich and distant causing us trouble. When poor farmers in Indian Punjab “burn straw stubble on their fields,” the smog pollutes Pakistan’s second-largest city, Lahore, making it hard to see even a few feet ahead. This problem of neighbors…

About 95 percent of the U.S. will see above normal temperatures this summer, according to a forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Below average rainfall is also expected in the West, already trapped in a historic mega-drought. CNN.com Donald Trump has endorsed a woman running for the Michigan state legislature who wants to ban contraception and impose the “Christian moral order.” Jacky Eubanks said abortion and gay marriage “lead to chaos and destruction,” and that contraception “gives people the false sense of security that they can have consequence free sex.” Rolling Stone Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder of the software firm Oracle, participated in a conference call shortly after the 2020 election in which participants strategized about trying to overturn Donald Trump’s loss. Others on the Nov. 14…

“The curse of totalitarian governments is that they kill people for telling the truth; do that enough times, and you end up with a nation of liars.” Journalist David Von Drehle, quoted in The Washington Post “It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.” George Carlin, quoted in The New York Times “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture past them into the impossible.” Arthur C. Clarke, quoted in The Economist “There is a loneliness in being uber-connected.” Novelist Jennifer Egan, quoted in Los Angeles Review of Books “We are more often frightened than hurt, and we suffer more in imagination than in reality.” Seneca, quoted in Forbes “Everywhere we’ve lived takes on a certain shape in…

Microsoft’s China problem Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, has been censoring searches of names of people who are politically sensitive for China, said Aaron Tilley in The Wall Street Journal. “Bing’s autofill system, which offers guesses on what users are searching for after a few keystrokes, often fell silent” when users looked for even high-profile Chinese names, including President Xi Jinping. The findings, reported by the Citizen Lab cybersecurity group, affected searches not just within China but in North America too. Microsoft has maintained “a long presence in China,” and since Google was blocked there, Bing occupies a bigger share of the search market—although it still lags well behind China’s Baidu. Microsoft blamed the autofill glitch on a “misconfiguration,” but this is not the first such mistake; last year, Bing…

Australian researchers have discovered a potential biomarker for sudden infant death syndrome, reports CNN.com. Around 3,400 babies die in the U.S. each year from SIDS, usually in their sleep, and scientists haven’t pinpointed what causes it. The new study compared blood samples from 655 healthy babies with samples from 26 infants who died from SIDS. Almost 90 percent of the SIDS babies had significantly lower levels of BCheE, an enzyme linked to the brain’s arousal system. That lends weight to previous speculation that SIDS is a problem with arousal—the baby’s brain might not be able to send the signal to wake up or turn its head to breathe. Experts caution that the study was not conclusive, and even if the link proves correct, there is not yet a treatment…

Emily Giffin is the author of Something Borrowed, Where We Belong, and nine other best-sellers. Her new novel, Meant to Be, chronicles the love story between the famed scion of a Kennedy-like family and a model with a troubled past. The Cave Dwellers by Christina McDowell (2021). I love any story that pulls back the curtains on hidden societies, especially when commingled with politics. This wildly entertaining story delivers on both counts, exploring the social elite inhabiting our nation’s capital, along with deeper issues of classism and racism. I’ll Be You by Janelle Brown (2022). As a mother of identical twins, I was intrigued by the premise of I’ll Be You—a story of twin sisters whose identities were virtually singular when growing up, but who have become estranged in…

3 Kevin Morby hasn’t recorded a bad song yet, but “that honeypot of talent and wisdom didn’t truly run over until now,” said Ellen Johnson in Paste. The 34-year-old singer-songwriter journeyed to a Covid-quieted Memphis to write most of this album, and perhaps because he had the fragility of life on his mind, “his lyrical musings about family, love, and country have never sounded clearer.” While the title track is a spirited, spoken-sung rocker inspired by family snapshots, most of the other tunes are gentler, including “Stop Before I Cry,” a moving love song addressed to Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield that’s “so personal, it almost feels like spying.” You can hear a touch of Memphis in the music too, said Brian Howe in Pitchfork. “By infusing his artful folk-rock with the…

Too many wine lovers have Bordeaux all wrong, said Eric Asimov in The New York Times. Not every producer in the storied wine region is an aristocrat “more interested in silk cravats than vineyard dirt.” Though prestigious châteaus get much attention, most Bordeaux producers are small farmers, and many of them make wines, like the three below, that are “soulful and joyous.” 2020 Château le Bergey Bordeaux ($14). This biodynamically farmed cabernet sauvignon–merlot blend is a classic inexpensive Bordeaux: “light, dry, and thoroughly refreshing.” 2019 Château Peybonhomme-Côtes de Bordeaux ($18). “An earthy, juicy pleasure with just enough tannic grip,” this blend leads with 70 percent merlot. 2019 Château la Grolet Côtes de Bourg Origines ($19). “This is Right Bank Bordeaux of the old school: soft, beautifully balanced, and approachable.”…

“There’s a special sort of calm that emerges from the swamplands of Louisiana,” said Kayla Stewart in Afar. I had always been fascinated by swamps, and how their appearance alongside the highway during our family road trips from Houston to Baton Rouge signaled a change in culture and promised exceptional food waiting at our next stop. But every visitor should make time to get out on the water itself, as I did recently on a guided tour of the Manchac Swamp outside New Orleans. Eco-friendly Wild Louisiana Tours uses kayaks instead of motorboats to help preserve the vital eco-system, and the guides are attuned both to the threats to the bayous and wetlands and to the multitudinous life that the swamp supports. Though the glistening waters emit a soft…

Apple may be loosening its production ties to China, said Yang Jie in The Wall Street Journal. The iPhone maker has recently started telling “some of its contract manufacturers” that it is giving India and Vietnam “a closer look as alternatives to China,” where more than 90 percent of Apple products are made. People with knowledge of Apple’s plans “said the company sees India as the closest thing to the next China, owing to its large population and low costs.” Beijing’s strict zero-Covid lockdowns have cost Apple billions this quarter. Mergers: Broadcom aims to buy Dell spin-off VMware Chipmaker Broadcom this week appeared close to acquiring the cloud-computing company VMware, said Liana Baker and Ed Hammond in Bloomberg. VMWare was spun off late last year from Dell Technologies, and PC…

Tech giants drag down the S&P 500 The handful of companies that powered the S&P 500 to new heights are now dragging the entire index down, said Karen Langley in The Wall Street Journal. “Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Tesla, Google, and Facebook swelled to be so big in recent years that they accounted for 25 percent” of the benchmark U.S. stock index, which is weighted by market value. But since the market has turned, those six firms plus Netflix and Nvidia “are responsible for 46 percent of the benchmark’s total 2022 losses.” Slower-growing “value” stocks in the S&P 500 that are better positioned to handle rising inflation and higher interest rates have done better. Those include Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Merck, and AbbVie. Late-life health-care costs The average 65-year-old couple should…

Lucca De Paoli and Jeremy Hill Bloomberg Businessweek Almost 14 years after Lehman Brothers’ collapse, the bank lives on in spectral form, said Lucca De Paoli and Jeremy Hill. There are “scant corporeal remnants—a few office spaces, some legal addresses—scattered around the globe,” and a few employees still soldiering on. Mostly there are lawyers—“so many lawyers”—still attempting to sort through the largest bankruptcy case in U.S. history. “When a global bank fails,” legal teams are left with “countless knotty questions.” Banks owe money to a long list of creditors. But they also hold assets—mortgages, commercial loans, and many other IOUs—that take years to unravel. What made Lehman’s case especially gnarly was that while its high-risk model ultimately led to its downfall, not “all its assets were worthless.” Some have even…

Vangelis didn’t want to be thought of as just a writer of soundtracks. The Greek composer and synthesizer virtuoso was a restless creative force who made New Age–style solo records, played in progressive rock bands, wrote for theater, and recorded a choral symphony. His film scores, though, proved his most celebrated work. He composed for more than a dozen movies, including the Palme d’Or–winning Missing (1982), Roman Polanski’s Bitter Moon (1992), and Ridley Scott’s dystopian classic Blade Runner (1982). But it was his score for 1981’s Chariots of Fire—especially the soaring theme that accompanied the movie’s slow-motion opening sequence of aspiring British Olympians running on a beach—that brought Vangelis global fame. The score won an Oscar, and the soundtrack hit No. 1. The shaggy-haired composer was nonplussed by the…

Robert Vlasic transformed a pantry staple into a multimillion-dollar business, and a source of hokey humor. His pickle company’s Vlasic stork, a cartoon mascot that debuted in 1974, played on the notion that pregnant women craved pickles. “The baby boom has bottomed out,” the bird declared in a Groucho Marx voice in one ad, “but Vlasic pickle sales are topping everything.” By the end of the decade, the company was churning out a quarter of the nation’s pickles, peppers, and relish. “Pickles,” he said, “are a fun food.” Vlasic was the grandson of a Croatian immigrant, said The New York Times, who had moved to Detroit in 1912 and opened a creamery “with the money he had saved from working at an auto body plant.” His father expanded Vlasic…

This week’s question: The Italian government is trying to figure out what to do with the Sardinian island villas and mega-yachts it has seized from sanctioned Russian oligarchs. If Italy decided to sell off these trappings of obscene wealth at an auction, what should the event be called? Last week’s contest: Balenciaga is selling “full destroyed” high-top sneakers—complete with scuffs, graffiti, and artfully placed tears—for $1,850 a pair. If the Paris fashion house were to launch a full line of dirty tattered clothing, what should it be called? THE WINNER: “A Haute Mess” Todd Trainer, Shillington, Pa. SECOND PLACE: “Ralph Low-rent” Kenneth Burgan, Grass Valley, Calif. THIRD PLACE: “Jimmy Chewed” Yasmine Robinson, Boston For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go to theweek.com/contest. How to enter: Submissions should be…

San Francisco House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed back this week on an archbishop’s decision to deny her Communion over her vocal support for abortion rights, accusing Catholic leaders of imposing a double standard. “I wonder about the death penalty, which I’m opposed to,” Pelosi said. “So is the church, but they take no actions against people who may not share their view.” Days earlier, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, one of the most conservative bishops in the U.S., issued the order for one of the country’s highest-ranking practicing Catholic politicians. He said he had sought “to help her understand the grave evil she is perpetrating,” adding that Pelosi won’t be allowed Communion until she repudiates “her cooperation in this evil.” In November, U.S. bishops backed away from a threat to deny…

Emily Meggett is widely considered to be the most important living cook of Gullah Geechee food, said Kim Severson in The New York Times. At 89, Meggett is working to preserve the culinary traditions of the Gullah Geechee corridor—a string of coastal communities from North Carolina to Florida where centuries of slaves created their own Creole language (Gullah) and culture (Gullah Geechee). Meggett, who lives on Edisto Island, S.C., recently published a cookbook, despite never using one during her 78 years in kitchens. Her 123 recipes include chicken perloo, okra soup, and a wildcat sauce, made with crisped salt pork, flour, and sautéed scallions darkened with coffee. Some recipes are intricate, like stuffing shad with parsley rice and serving it with roe—a two-day process. “This dish is a tough…

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern Slate The “road map” to overturn the 2024 presidential election has already been made public—by the “tag team” of Clarence and Ginni Thomas, said Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern. It’s called the independent state legislature doctrine, an extremist theory that no court has upheld for more than two centuries. After the 2020 election, Donald Trump’s team of insurrectionist lawyers and kooks insisted that the Constitution gives state lawmakers sole authority to decide what electors to send to the Electoral College—regardless of which candidate won the state’s vote. It was revealed last week that Ginni Thomas wrote Arizona state lawmakers to urge them to use “the awesome authority granted to you by our constitution” to choose Trump electors, even though Trump lost the state.…

SWEDEN Andreas Gustavsson Dagens ETC Let’s hope joining NATO doesn’t require Sweden to “crawl under a suffocating blanket” with an autocrat, said Andreas Gustavsson. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last week his country would reject NATO’s plans to fast-track Sweden’s and Finland’s acceptance because the two countries acted “like guesthouses for terror organizations.” He says we harbor members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a separatist group fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey. The Turkish government is not alone in considering the PKK terrorists; so do the United States and the European Union. But it’s only Erdogan who has demanded that Sweden and Finland earn their membership by shipping many of their Kurdish residents back to Turkey. Capitulating to the Turkish leader’s demands is a nonstarter: It would endanger…

It’s a lurid, disturbing trial that’s triggered “our culture’s worst impulses,” said Aja Romano in Vox. Johnny Depp’s weekslong libel suit against former wife Amber Heard has turned into “a referendum on the MeToo movement,” with Depp’s obsessive female fans joining the far-right online “manosphere” in trashing Heard as “a manipulative villain” whose tears are fake. It was Depp, 58, who sued Heard, 36, for $50 million in defamation damages after she described herself as a survivor of domestic abuse in a Washington Post op-ed that did not name Depp. On the stand, the two actors have dished out sensationalist tales of drunken fights, sexual assault, drug abuse, thrown bottles, slaps, and punches; Depp v. Heard is generating far more online clicks and viral videos than stories about the…

Treating back pain with ibuprofen and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs may end up prolonging the agony, a new study suggests. Researchers analyzing the health records of 500,000 British adults found that those who used NSAIDs for a sore back had a 70 percent higher risk of developing long-term pain than those who took alternatives. Further evidence comes from experiments on mice, in which NSAIDs led to a reduction in neutrophils—the white blood cells involved in inflammation. When the researchers deliberately blocked neutrophils in the mice, it prolonged their pain by up to 10 times. An examination of 98 human patients yielded similar results: genes linked to inflammation, in particular to neutrophils, were more active in those whose pain recovered faster. Senior author Jeffrey Mogil, of McGill University in Canada,…

(Riverhead, $28) “Emma Straub has come through with another delightful summer read,” said Heller McAlpin in NPR.org. Her fifth novel, “an entertaining charmer,” uses a time-travel device to explore time’s passage and the consequences of small decisions. Facing the imminent death of her beloved father, 40-year-old Alice Stern wakes up in her childhood bedroom, suddenly 16 again. Recognizing that she has a chance to apply her adult wisdom to her teenage years, Alice resolves to change the courses of her life and her father’s, and what she learns proves “comfortably hopeful.” Straub doesn’t worry much about the mechanics of time travel, said Barbara VanDenburgh in USA Today. Instead, she’s “concerned with love—its different forms, how it evolves, and how we can be better at giving and accepting it.” As…

Homesickness by Colin Barrett (Grove, $27) Among Ireland’s current crop of young writers, Colin Barrett “owns the domain of the short story,” said Bethanne Patrick in the Los Angeles Times. Moving beyond the youthful, working-class Irish he portrayed in his award-winning Young Skins, Barrett here brings his “unique genius” to new characters and places while once again wasting not a word. With Barrett, “every line counts; if you skim his work, you may understand it, but you’ll rob yourself of both pleasure and surprise.” Nobody Gets Out Alive by Leigh Newman (Scribner, $27) Leigh Newman has a special feel for her native Alaska, said Ian MacAllen in the Chicago Review of Books. “Unhappiness runs through this collection,” as if it’s a byproduct of the state’s remoteness or these inhabitants’…

3 Harry Styles’ third album “gently nudges the expectations of what pop should sound like in 2022,” said Maura Johnston in Entertainment Weekly. Ever since he launched his solo career five years ago, the young British singer who found global fame as a member of One Direction “has defied the idea of what post–boy-band life should look like.” He has exuded playfulness as well as a sincere enthusiasm for pop sounds of the past, and on Harry’s House, the feathery-voiced 28-year-old “lets his guard down even further, digging into his musical curiosities while offering glimpses at his mind’s workings and worries.” Styles’ latest excursions into ’80s synth-pop “do have a distinct flavor,” said Spencer Kornhaber in The Atlantic. Where other musicians traffic in bold emotions, Styles “conjures pastel feelings, soft…

Directed by Joseph Kosinski (PG-13) 4 A veteran Navy pilot takes on one last mission. “One could argue that our world didn’t need a Top Gun sequel,” said Peter Debruge in Variety. But 36 years after a young Tom Cruise lit up the screen in “a thrilling if narrow-minded fantasy of American exceptionalism,” the star himself is back in a follow-up that “more than merits its existence” because it “takes to the skies as no blockbuster has before.” Cruise plays Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, still a cocky Navy pilot despite a career that stalled out long ago, and the 59-year-old actor and his co-stars trained until they could perform most of the highspeed aerial stunts themselves. The results will “blow your mind.” You can even have disliked Cruise since the Cold…

Binge-worthy Nordic series… Borgen Tired of America’s ugly politics? Escape into this Danish series, which has drawn comparisons to The West Wing and traces the journey of a fictional first female prime minister of Norway. The fourth season arrives June 2. Netflix The Investigation The 2017 murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall created a media sensation. But this six-part drama plays down the tabloid elements to present a gripping “howdunit” about investigators’ uphill attempt to build an unassailable case against a celebrated entrepreneur. HBO Max The Bridge This dark, twisty series has been remade in several languages, and for good reason. Like its wonderful British-French knockoff, The Tunnel, the 2011 original follows detectives from neighboring nations working on a murder that occurred at a boundary crossing. Topic.com Trapped A…

“Of all the fascinating places I’ve been—London, Paris, Russia, Romania—it is Ireland that I return to again and again,” said Laurie Hertzel in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. There’s a lot to love about the Emerald Island and its pubs, playhouses, gardens, and museums. “But the hikes are what stand out for me.” During the last spring before Covid arrived, my husband, Doug, and I walked most of the Dingle Way, the 101-mile trail that encircles the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, and the memory of the journey is calling me back again. “Hiking in Ireland satisfies something deep-seated in me. The rhythm of walking lets my brain unkink. My feet may get sore, but the rest of me feels wonderfully alive.” Beginning and ending in Tralee, the Dingle Way…

Three-quarters of Fortune 500 CEOs said they expected a recession to begin by the end of 2023, though only 32 percent believed it would start in this calendar year. Nearly a quarter (24 percent) listed the labor shortage as the biggest threat to their business, ahead of inflation (21 percent), recession (21 percent), and cybersecurity (13 percent). Fortune The average price for a gallon of unleaded gas has hit $4 or above in all 50 states for the first time, according to AAA data. The average family is now spending $5,000 a year on gasoline, up from $2,800 a year ago. Meanwhile, analysts at JPMorgan predict the national average price will hit $6.20 a gallon in August. CNBC.com Registrations for new electric vehicles skyrocketed 60 percent in the first three…

From 2001 to 2021, tree cover in the United States decreased by 16 percent, harming forests and depriving neighborhoods of trees, which help to increase air quality and keep streets cool. Founded nearly 150 years ago, American Forests (americanforests.org) works to manage and conserve forests throughout the U.S. Its Tree Equity program plants trees in low-income communities and communities of color, where they are often sparse, while the Resilient Forests program rehabilitates forest health through reforestation across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. American Forests has supported more than 1,000 forest restoration projects in all 50 states, helped expand tree canopy in dozens of major cities, and planted 65 million trees in the past three decades. Each charity we feature has earned a four-star overall rating from Charity Navigator, which…

Henry Grabar Slate It’s the end of an era for cheap rides, said Henry Grabar. For much of the past decade, Uber and Lyft blew through staggering sums of money ($30 billion for Uber alone) to keep prices low and customers satisfied as they raced to corner the ride-sharing market. Those days are over. Both are public companies now, answerable to shareholders who have made it clear that profitability is what’s going to keep them invested. “Average Uber prices have risen 92 percent” from 2018 to 2021—and that was before the recent gas surcharge. The “cynical assumption” was always that prices would have to go up after Uber and Lyft killed off their rivals. That has turned out to be true. But the “Decade of Cheap Rides had more profound…

Roger Angell was widely considered the greatest baseball writer of his time—even though that wasn’t his day job. In 1962, The New Yorker sent its erudite fiction editor to Florida to cover spring training and New York’s new club, the Mets. Angell would report from the bleachers for the next six decades, publishing first-person essays filled with evocative, often hilarious imagery. Catcher Carlton Fisk came out of his crouch like “an aluminum extension ladder stretching for the house eaves,” he wrote. Pitcher Dick Hall threw with a sidearm “that suggests a man feeling under his bed for a lost collar stud.” Although Angell resisted sentimentality (he loathed Field of Dreams), his baseball writing was packed with subtext. Fans cheered for the hapless Mets, he wrote, thanks to “a wry,…

Good week for: Guilt, with the return of a dozen religious idols that had been stolen from a Hindu temple in Uttar Pradesh, India. The thieves explained in a note to temple staff that “we have not been able to sleep, eat, and live peacefully,” and “are returning your valuables.” Technology, after a group of students at Johns Hopkins’ Whiting School of Engineering announced the invention of edible adhesive tape to hold messy tacos, burritos, and wraps together. Democracy, after British ornithologists found that a flock of jackdaws will take a “voice vote” before deciding democratically where and when to fly, enabling hundreds of birds to “perform cohesive, collective departures from the roost.” Whether such a system could work in human communities remains to be seen. Bad week for: Coveting, after…

Minnie Driver almost didn’t get her breakout role because of Harvey Weinstein, said Louise Carpenter in The Times (U.K.). Weinstein was the producer of the 1997 film Good Will Hunting, and when the casting director chose Driver to play Matt Damon’s love interest, Weinstein objected. “Nobody would want to f---her,” Weinstein complained. Damon and others eventually convinced him to let her have the role. “I remember feeling so devastated,” says Driver, 52, “until I realized, ‘Hold on, just consider the source for a minute. That is an unutterable pig—why on earth are you worried about this f---saying you are not sexy?’” Driver eventually came to view herself as “one of the lucky ones” for escaping Weinstein’s predatory advances. Her career blossomed after the film, and she and Damon became…

Mark Follman Los Angeles Times “America’s epidemic of mass shootings” can’t be blamed on mental illness, said Mark Follman. Politicians and pundits who want to downplay the role of guns and white supremacist ideology are again trying to explain away the Buffalo supermarket massacre by depicting 18-year-old Payton Gendron as a “crazed monster.” Gendron allegedly murdered 10 people after he stockpiled weapons, “detailed his ideological hatred of Black people and others, and surveilled intended targets.” It was no spur-of-the-moment attack by a person suffering from delusions. For the past 10 years, “I’ve studied scores of mass shootings,” and in most cases, “mass shooters don’t just suddenly break—they decide.” Their violent ideas arise from “entrenched grievances, rage, and despair,” and their subsequent attacks are often the result of a “highly organized…

“A time traveler from the 1930s would have no difficulty identifying the Putin regime as fascist. It has a myth of a past golden age of imperial greatness, to be restored by a war of healing violence. It has a cult around a single leader, Vladimir Putin. The symbol Z, the rallies, the propaganda, the war as a cleansing act of violence, and the death pits around Ukrainian towns make it all very plain. Other people are there to be colonized. The existence of Ukraine is an international conspiracy. Calling others fascists while being a fascist is the essential Putinist practice.” Timothy Snyder in The New York Times…

UNITED KINGDOM Owen Jones The Guardian “Homophobia cast a long shadow over Callum’s childhood,” said Owen Jones. As a boy who hung out with arty girls and preferred theater to sports, he was beaten up in school locker rooms and called slurs like “faggot.” But Callum “isn’t actually gay at all: He’s a straight man.” When I asked on social media for such tales, Callum was initially reluctant to share his story, fearing he’d be somehow seen as appropriating gay trauma. But his story is essential to “understanding what homophobia actually is”—a means of “policing the boundaries of masculinity.” Plenty of straight British men told me they were tormented by both girls and boys for sins like having long hair, choosing an “unmanly” occupation such as teaching, or showing a…

BRAZIL Bernardo Mello Franco O Globo Brazil’s election is months away, but Jair Bolsonaro’s “coup has already begun,” said Bernardo Mello Franco. The far-right president is planting seeds for a power grab should he lose to leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who leads in the polls. Bolsonaro, who took Donald Trump as his political role model, won in 2018 by threatening the judiciary and press and even talking of “shooting political opponents.” He staged a “dress rehearsal of the coup” last fall by attacking the legitimacy of elections and the Supreme Court while his supporters rallied outside government buildings. In the past month, he actually called for an armed uprising should Brazilians vote him out. “I want every good citizen to have his firearm to resist, if…

The Disinformation Governance Board is dead on arrival, said Marcela García in The Boston Globe, and the cause of death “was the same plague it was meant to deal with.” The new advisory board was created by the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security just three weeks ago, ostensibly to counter lies such as the “disinformation coming from Russia ahead of the midterm elections” and the claims of human smugglers trying to entice Latin Americans into traveling to the U.S. border. The massive flood of propaganda and false narratives pouring from the internet is a serious problem worth addressing, yet conservatives immediately attacked the board as an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth” that would censor free speech. In its “embarrassing” rollout, the DHS failed to explain the board’s limited purpose…

A federal appeals court just handed down an “astonishing decision” that could “dismantle much of the system the federal government uses to enforce long-standing laws,” said Ian Millhiser in Vox. The ruling came last week from a panel of the notoriously conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which sided with a hedge fund manager who was fined nearly $1 million by the Securities Exchange Commission for defrauding clients. The manager, George Jarkesy, argued that the SEC’s action unconstitutionally deprived him of his right to a jury trial—and two of the three judges on the panel agreed. Both are Republican-appointed judges “known for interpreting the law in creative and unexpected ways” to achieve desired conservative ends. This ruling could nullify the power of 2,000 administrative law judges who work…

For the first time, biologists have grown plants in soil collected from the moon. The researchers, from the University of Florida, planted thale cress in 12 grams of moon dust taken during Apollo missions 11, 12, and 17. To their astonishment, the seeds sprouted after only two days and looked similar to a control group of plants grown in artificial lunar soil. It was only on day six that the moon-soil plants started to show stress, developing more slowly and ending up stunted. Further experimentation is hampered by a lack of moon dirt on hand: The scientists were allowed just 1 gram of soil per plant. Still, the experiment provides hope that future lunar missions could grow their own supplies. “Bringing lunar soil into a lunar greenhouse is the…

“It takes a village to cover up a murder—or it does when the victim is the wealthiest woman in San Francisco,” said L.A. Taggart in the San Francisco Chronicle. For more than a century, Stanford University maintained that its sole benefactor during most of its uncertain first 15 years had died of natural causes, just as the school’s president announced at the time. But scholars have chipped away at the official story over the past 20 years, and Richard White’s “thrilling” new book “puts the lie to bed for good.” Jane Stanford, who co-founded the university with her railroad tycoon husband, died of strychnine poisoning in 1905, and White believes he not only knows who did it but also what others did to cover up the crime. “Turns out,…

Ada Limón hasn’t always made a living off her poetry, said Elizabeth Harris in The New York Times. The winner of a 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award once worked for a decade in magazine marketing, putting her skill with words to use by writing pithy copy for ads that appeared atop New York City’s taxicabs. “If you tell people you’re a poet, people think you’re off your rocker,” the 46-year-old Northern California native says now. At times in her life, in fact, “it felt like telling someone I was a witch or something.” But Limón did have an MFA. And she’d had a poem published in The New Yorker. So when her stepmother died of cancer at 51 and Limón asked herself how she’d want to spend the…

3 Florence Welch’s return to touring “should be nothing short of epic,” said Bobby Olivier in Spin. The theatrical British singer-songwriter who fronts Florence and the Machine is “known to perform like a woman possessed,” and she and her band have emerged from the pandemic slowdown with a new album that adds to their catalog another handful of “explosive” poprock anthems driven by titanic drum samples and Welch’s booming vocals. Dance Fever also delivers moments of anxious self-reflection, though, and its dual mission is “sustained by Welch’s fearlessness both in vocal technique and lyrical vulnerability.” After years of invoking witchcraft and the occult for effect, the 35-year-old isn’t play-acting anymore, said Liam Inscoe-Jones in The Line of Best Fit. “Welch has been many things in her music, but funny wasn’t…