Innehållsförteckning för June 24, 2022 från The Week Magazine

Any sports fan knows that wrenching feeling of betrayal when a team that has led for the whole game suddenly loses in the final moments. I’m looking at you, Atlanta Falcons fans. That a victory was snatched away can seem not just unfair, but unreal. But at least in the infamous 2017 Super Bowl, when Atlanta blew a 25-point lead, fans could watch live as the Patriots destroyed their dreams, so there was no questioning the reality of the loss. In an election, by contrast, voters must simply accept the tallies reported on television. And on presidential election nights, it can sometimes seem at first that a Republican win is inevitable, because more of the earlier-counted votes, cast in person, tend to be for the GOP. The electoral map fills…

A school board candidate in Maryland checked out 20 books with LGBTQ themes from a county library so that children would not see them. Heather Fletcher says she was so “disturbed” by a Pride-month display that she took all the books home. “This has nothing to do with the gay community,” Fletcher said. “It has to do with the preservation of innocence.” A Republican candidate for Congress from New York has apologized for saying Adolf Hitler is “the kind of leader we need today.” In a recently resurfaced 2021 podcast, Carl Paladino, 75, called Hitler “inspirational” and “a doer.” Paladino now concedes that invoking Hitler was “a serious mistake,” but insists that any suggestion he agrees with the Nazi leader would be “a new low for the media.” In other…

Michelle Yeoh comes from the literal school of hard knocks, said Annabel Nugent in The Independent (U.K.). Though the actress studied ballet at London’s Royal Academy of Dance and was crowned Miss Malaysia in 1983, she spent the first phase of her four-decade-long film career as a high-kicking peer of Jackie Chan and Jet Li in a string of Hong Kong action movies. “Back then, the fights were insane,” said Yeoh, now 59. “No CGI. It was dangerous and risky. And amazing to watch.” Injuries were common: On one film, she missed a jump from an 18-foot overpass onto a moving truck and had to be immobilized in a neck and back brace. Western audiences were introduced to her daring exploits in a 1997 James Bond movie in which…

Britney Spears and Sam Asghari tied the knot last week during a lavish, celebrity-packed celebration at Spears’ mansion in Thousand Oaks, Calif., that her parents didn’t attend and her ex-husband tried to crash. Spears, 40, did not invite parents Jamie and Lynne or her sister, Jamie Lynn, after a bitter falling out over the pop star’s conservatorship, which was terminated late last year. Pals Paris Hilton, Drew Barrymore, Selena Gomez, and Madonna attended. Also attending was Donatella Versace, who designed Spears’ wedding dress; her label provided three outfits that Spears wore to the reception over a diamond-encrusted thong. Spears met Asghari, 28, an actor and model, on the set of a music video nearly six years ago, but the conservatorship allegedly barred her from marrying him or having more children.…

Philip Kennicott The Washington Post To appease “Second Amendment absolutists,” said Philip Kennicott, we are being told that we must “harden” schools, churches and synagogues, hospitals, and every public space against an armed assault. This means all schoolchildren will need to pass through military-style checkpoints every morning, eyed by armed cops or guards. Many public spaces, like the Capitol building and statehouses, would become permanently off limits, while others would be equipped with “surveillance cameras, robust security databases, facial-recognition technology, artificial-intelligence systems, and, of course, ‘hardened’ entrances.” Buildings will be designed or redesigned to promote not beauty or civic pride, but security. We’ll all live under constant “authoritarian oversight.” Is this really the future we want? “Schools, libraries, houses of worship, and places of entertainment used to greet us…

CANADA Daphne Bramham Vancouver Sun British Columbia’s ill-thought-out experiment with legalizing hard drugs is unlikely to save a single life, said Daphne Bramham. The province is the center of Canada’s drug epidemic, with 10,000 people dead of overdoses in the past seven years, and it needs new ideas. So it has now announced a three-year pilot scheme to decriminalize possession of small quantities of drugs like opioids and cocaine. Authorities hope that allowing users to freely carry their stashes will “reduce the stigma” of drug use and spur addicts to seek help. But why would they, absent any other drug outreach program? Reducing stigma alone won’t magically enroll users in rehab. This program, in fact, offers no incentive to quit drugs. Why not follow the example of a program that…

In rural U.S. counties, homicide rates rose by 25 percent in 2020, the largest increase since the CDC began tracking such data in 1999. Unprecedented numbers of murders in some counties have overwhelmed local prosecutors. “It was like people lost their ever-lovin’ minds,” said Rebecca McCoy, the prosecuting attorney in White County, Ark., which saw 12 homicides in 2020 after nearly two years with none.The Wall Street Journal About 5 percent of young adults under 30 in the U.S. identify as transgender or nonbinary, according to new data from the Pew Research Center. Among all adults, the figure is 1.6 percent.NBCNews.com The Biden administration has abandoned a plan proposed by former President Trump to change the exterior paint scheme for Air Force One from blue and white to red, white,…

“If all politicians fished, instead of spoke publicly, we would be at peace with the world.”Will Rogers, quoted in the Texarkana Gazette “Choosing whom to commit ourselves to is merely a case of identifying which particular variety of suffering we would most like to sacrifice ourselves for.”British philosopher Alain De Botton, quoted in The New York Times “I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer—its dust and lowering skies.”Toni Morrison, quoted in Good Housekeeping “I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.”Vladimir Nabokov, quoted in Gawker “Hope without action is willful denial.”Rebecca Scherm, quoted in the Los Angeles Review of Books “Every lie is two lies—the lie we tell others and the lie we…

Facebook sours on news partners “Facebook is re-examining its commitment to paying for news,” said Alexandra Bruell and Keach Hagey in The Wall Street Journal. Three years after agreeing to short-term contracts with major news publishers, Facebook “hasn’t provided any indication that it plans to re-up the partnerships,” which expire this year. Since 2019, the platform has doled out millions of dollars to news organizations—including more than $20 million annually to The New York Times and more than $10 million a year to the Journal—for access to subscriber-only content. It then provides a “curated selection” of articles free to users in its News tab. However, widespread efforts around the world to make Facebook pay for news have cut CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s “enthusiasm for making news a bigger part of…

A small trial in which 18 rectal cancer patients were treated with the same drug for up to two years ended with a spectacular result, says The New York Times: The cancer disappeared in every one of them. “I believe this is the first time this has happened in the history of cancer,” says co-author Luis Diaz, from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The drug, dostarlimab, is known as a checkpoint inhibitor. It effectively unmasks cancer cells, teeing up the immune system to identify and destroy them. Checkpoint inhibitors usually give 1 in 5 patients some sort of adverse reaction, on occasion a severe one. But in another unlikely surprise, the study patients suffered no major side effects and required no further treatment. The authors acknowledge that more…

Geraldine Brooks is the Pulitzer–winning author of March and four other best-selling historical novels. In Horse, her new novel, she weaves a portrait of America since 1850 by following multiple lives touched by a legendary racehorse and its legacy. Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley (2000). Smiley has written many fine books about horses. This is my favorite. There’s humor, but also tension, as rivals vie to produce a champion thorough-bred. A capacious and generous-spirited novel with a large cast of characters both human and animal, and an intensely satisfying conclusion. The Horse by Wendy Williams (2015). From the dawn horse to modern Equus ferus, from wild mustangs to exquisitely trained Lipizzaners, this panoramic book melds science with story, offering surprising insight on almost every page. Horse Crazy by Sarah Maslin…

3 When the goal is “capturing a master song-writer at work,” nothing beats a collection of quick, casual recordings, said Deborah Crooks in Holler. Patty Griffin “has long been a genius” at writing character-driven and confessional alt-country songs that express “multiple facets of feeling,” and the 58-year-old Maine native and 2020 Grammy winner has pulled together 10 of her favorite demos and living-room recordings to share what the songs sounded like when new. The 30-minute album doesn’t sound like assembled odds and ends, though. Instead, “it’s a complete, realized collection that falls into the same category as Roseanne Cash’s 10 Song Demo and Miranda Lambert’s Marfa Tapes.” You’ll feel the raw energy as soon as “Get Lucky” kicks off with Griffin slapping her acoustic guitar as she strums, said Matt…

“People have lots of reasons for not drinking alcohol, and preferring sad seltzers or sugary sodas isn’t one of them,” said Justin Ocean in Bloomberg. Fortunately, far better options are emerging. Eva’s Spritz ($28 for 750ml). Notes of orange, chrysanthemum, and rhubarb meet in this fizzy delight from Portland, Ore.–based For Bitter For Worse. In July, it’ll be available in single-serving 6-ounce cans. De Soi Golden Hour (4 cans for $25). The gold-hued option in pop singer Katy Perry’s aperitif line combines pear and yuzu juice with mood-boosting adaptogens including green tea extract, lemon balm, and maca. Curious Elixirs No. 6 (4 cans for $40). An alcohol-free take on a Painkiller, this cocktail in a can “layers oat milk, coconut cream, and citrus with tropical spices and blackstrap molasses.”…

Weber Spirit II E-310 Three-burner grills are the practical choice for most people, and Weber’s is excellent. “No grill matches its combination of exceptional performance, usability, durability, and value.” With its cast aluminum firebox, “this grill will last for years.” $549, weber.com Source: Wirecutter Monument Grills 77352 “A good large grill for the money,” this 84,000-BTU burger factory “earns top marks for heating evenness, temperature range, and preheating.” Its six stainless-steel burners are backed by an eight-year warranty. $749, monumentgrills.com Source: Consumer Reports Napoleon Rogue SE 425 This high-end stainless steel grill sets itself apart by combining four standard burners with two infrared burners for searing, plus a side burner that expands the cooking surface. An add-on rotisserie kit is also available. $1,199, bbqguys.com Source: Saveur Coleman Roadtrip 285…

The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage rose to 6.28 percent this week, up from 5.55 percent last week, and 3.25 percent at the start of the year. CNBC.com Celsius Networks, a crypto lender that manages $11.8 billion, stopped customers from making withdrawals as digital currencies plummeted. Celsius had promised depositors annual returns as high as 18.93 percent. The Wall Street Journal Americans for the first time will spend more money on mezcal and tequila than they will on U.S.-made whiskeys. By 2023, the spirits also are likely to supplant vodka as the top liquor category, with about $13.3 billion in sales, versus $12.5 billion for vodka and $12.3 billion for U.S. whiskey. Bloomberg The world’s largest warehouse operator, Prologis, announced a deal to acquire rival Duke Realty…

Over 1.8 million lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) young people contemplate suicide every year, but research shows that those with at least one accepting adult in their life are 40 percent less likely to attempt suicide. The Trevor Project (thetrevorproject.org) is the largest suicide prevention and crisis-intervention hotline for LGBTQ youth in the world. Trained crisis counselors are available 24 hours a day to answer calls and texts from LGBTQ young people, who experience much higher rates of depression and suicide than their straight peers. The hotline is free, confidential, and secure. In the past year, The Trevor Project’s counselors have spoken with more than 200,000 people struggling with issues ranging from depression and suicide to coming out and LGBTQ identity. Each charity we feature has…

Parmy Olson Bloomberg Google’s “sentient” machine raises troubling questions, said Parmy Olson. Last week, a Google engineer was placed on leave after claiming that a chatbot generator had taken steps toward consciousness. Blake Lemoine, who works for Google’s Responsible AI program, started noticing that the chatbot LaMDA was “responding with comments about its own rights and personhood.” For instance, when Lemoine asked the program what it feared, LaMDA said it—yes, Lemoine says that is LaMDA’s preferred pronoun—has a deep fear of being turned off. That, Lemoine says, would be “exactly like death for me.” Google disagrees and says the system is just very good at imitating exchanges found online; the company says it put Lemoine on leave after he contacted a lawyer to represent LaMDA. Lemoine wouldn’t be the…

Barry Sussman was city editor of The Washington Post on the morning of June 17, 1972, when word came in about a break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters, at D.C.’s Watergate complex. He sent Bob Woodward, a young reporter he’d mentored, to look into it. The saga of political corruption and cover-up that unspooled from there—culminating in President Richard Nixon’s resignation—would make Woodward and fellow reporter Carl Bernstein household names. But Sussman was the unsung hero of the Post’s Pulitzer Prize–winning coverage. Described as “gentle” and “scholarly” in Woodward and Bernstein’s 1974 book All the President’s Men, Sussman had a relentless curiosity and an uncanny ability to recall every tiny detail as the trio labored to piece the story together. “In Sussman’s mind, everything fitted,” they wrote. “Watergate was…

Ray Hill was a repentant white supremacist. As a top member of the neo-Nazi British Movement, he emigrated to South Africa in 1969, where he led the extremist South African National Front. But there he learned compassion: When his family struggled financially, he received unexpected help from members of Johannesburg’s Jewish community. His tipping point came when he saw an Indian family cast out of their home because of the apartheid policies he championed. Consumed with shame, Hill told himself, “It’s over.” He left South Africa in 1979, and while he would return to the British neo-Nazis, he did so as an informant. No other person, according to the magazine Searchlight, “has inflicted such damage on the extreme-right movement.” Hill was born a mill worker’s son outside Manchester, said…

“Miracles sometimes happen,” said Li Zhou in Vox. That was the message from Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) this week, after he and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) broke an impasse and unveiled a bipartisan proposal for the first substantial federal gun-safety legislation in three decades. Negotiated in the wake of two horrific mass shootings, in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, the bill does not implement the ban on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines sought by President Biden and most Democrats. But the legislation does include several important “incremental” provisions for reducing school shootings and other gun massacres: Background checks for gun buyers under 21 would require a mandatory search of juvenile justice and mental health records. States would be rewarded with grants to enact “red flag” laws, under which authorities…

Nevada Republicans who denied that Trump lost the 2020 election prevailed in key Nevada primaries this week, including Adam Laxalt, who won the GOP nod for a crucial Senate seat after helping lead former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. Backed by Trump and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Laxalt, a former state attorney general, will face Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, considered one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats. Republicans also nominated Jim Marchant for secretary of state—an office that would oversee elections. Marchant has said his “No. 1 priority will be to overhaul the fraudulent election system in Nevada.” In South Carolina, Trump’s efforts to punish Republicans had mixed results. Rep. Nancy Mace defeated a Trump-backed challenger despite having said she would hold Trump…

Chris Parnell is the only Saturday Night Live cast member to have been fired twice, said Matt Wilstein in The Daily Beast. First hired in 1998, the Memphis-born comedian earned the nickname “Ice Man” for his ability to maintain a straight face no matter what antics his castmates were up to. Even in 2000’s beloved “more cowbell” sketch, where he played a guitarist upstaged by Will Ferrell’s wildly gyrating percussionist, he didn’t crack—though he admitted it was difficult “when Will had his belly over next to me and was whacking the cowbell in my face.” The following year, he learned that producer Lorne Michaels wasn’t renewing his contract. “It was pretty rough,” said Parnell. “I had come to realize how much of my identity at that point was wrapped…

Noah Smith Substack A growing number of U.S. pundits are calling on Ukraine to end the war by handing Vladimir Putin a big swathe of its territory, said Noah Smith. “This view is madness.” Appeasement would reward an “unprovoked invasion”—and at a steep “human cost” for Ukrainians in the conquered territories, who’d be subject to mass rape, murder, and other atrocities. Nor will Putin abide by any agreement. As soon as “he rebuilds his damaged army,” he’ll relaunch his invasion of the rest of Ukraine. Putin has made it clear he is in “a long-term, Cold War–style confrontation” with the West—and the enormous damage Ukraine is inflicting on his army “weakens Russia’s hand.” Don’t forget China is watching all this unfold. If Beijing sees the West hand Russia the…

FRANCE Jean Birnbaum Le Monde The French left has lost its moral bearings, said Jean Birnbaum. France’s legislative elections will determine whether President Emmanuel Macron can get a mandate for his centrist, pro-business policies or be pushed leftward. Given that the center-left Socialist Party has all but withered away, many who lean left wish they could support Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the radical France Unbowed party, because of his support for welfare and the environment. But his foreign policy is simply repugnant. In decades past, leftists in France, disillusioned with Soviet crimes, tried to balance their support for socialism with “an anti-totalitarian and internationalist” mindset. Mélenchon, though, has appeased the dictators of the world. When Russia snatched Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, he cheered on his blog “good news!” Two years…

Scientists have found a promising treatment for most breast cancers, reports The Washington Post, that could one day be used to fight other types of tumors too. It’s the drug trastuzumab deruxtecan, known by the brand name Enhertu, which has been successful against certain cancers since 2019. Enhertu, an antibody-drug conjugate, homes in on cancerous cells by locating a protein in them, HER2, and then releases a burst of chemotherapy to kill the tumor. It was thought the drug could be used only against cancers high in HER2, but a new study tried it on 557 patients with metastatic breast cancers that had low, even negligible levels of the protein. The patients on Enhertu lived an unheard-of six months longer than those treated with conventional chemotherapy. That means Enhertu…

(Celadon, $28) Jean Hanff Korelitz’s sparkling new novel is, among other things, “a nearly forensic study of family conflict,” said Allegra Goodman in The New York Times. “A Gilded Age novel for the 21st century,” The Latecomer focuses on a wealthy Brooklyn family whose triplets were born in vitro and have been forever at odds. At times the book “suffers from an embarrassment of riches,” telling too many tales about the Oppenheimers to go deeply enough on any of them. Still, “it’s testament to Korelitz’s achievement” that her fast-paced 450-page novel “leaves us wanting more.” Writing “like a latter-day Edith Wharton,” the author of The Plot brings wit and insight to “a wide spectrum of American life,” said Ron Charles in The Washington Post. But while touching on elite…

Out of the Corner by Jennifer Grey (Ballantine, $30) Jennifer Grey writes about her late-1980s career crash “with savage and engaging wit,” said Sarah Kaufman in The Washington Post. The Dirty Dancing star famously forfeited her America’s sweetheart status with a late-20s nose job, but her memoir is interesting “not only for her journey out of darkness but also for what her story reveals about what women encounter in the entertainment business.” You can’t read this book through “without being aghast at how Hollywood operates.” Managing Expectations by Minnie Driver (HarperOne, $28) Minnie Driver “learned early to be skeptical of authority, which turned out to be excellent preparation for Hollywood,” said Mark Athitakis in USA Today. The London-born actress’ new memoir doesn’t reach her star-making role in Good Will…

  4 This collection of psychedelic Latin love songs is likely to end up as “one of 2022’s most gorgeous releases,” said Ernesto Lechner in Rolling Stone. Created by Adrian Quesada, the guitarist, producer, and co-leader of Black Pumas, the 12-song set is “a perfect re-creation of a lost era,” capturing a moment starting in the late 1960s when Latin American boleros “began to sound even more grandiose than usual,” adopting the shimmering organs and fuzzy electric guitars of British and U.S. psychedelic pop. But Quesada proves the balada sound timeless, and his project “gains depth by including an impressive gallery of guests.” Each arrangement beautifully complements the singer, from Calle 13’s iLe to up-and-comer Rudy De Anda, said Tim Sendra in AllMusic. Though only five songs are covers and…

French TV in translation… The Perfect Mother This four-part drama, which shot into Netflix’s top 10 recently, is a somewhat pat mystery thriller. But French actress Julie Gayet is captivating as the title character, a Parisian mom who leans on a detective ex to help prove that her daughter didn’t murder a guy she’d gone home with. Netflix Call My Agent! The central characters are all delightful in this revered workplace comedy series about a quartet of talent agents. Look for cameos from such French A-listers as Juliette Binoche and Isabelle Huppert. Netflix The Bureau An intelligence officer codenamed Malotru returns home to Paris after a six-year mission in Syria and breaks protocol to check up just once on a woman he left behind. That decision kicks off one of…

Good week for: Sarah Palin, who received 30 percent of the ballots in Alaska’s open primary to fill a vacant House seat. Palin emerged from a 48-person field that featured “Santa Claus,” the actual legal name of a rotund, white-bearded independent from North Pole, Alaska. Incentives, after Malmo, Sweden, installed two talking trash cans that thank citizens who feed them litter with moans of pleasure and “sexy messages,” such as “Come back soon and do that again!” Employee relations, after rapper Snoop Dogg revealed that he has raised the salary of his personal “blunt roller”—a blunt being a big, fat marijuana cigarette—to keep pace with inflation. The full-time employee reportedly had been making about $50,000 a year to prepare Snoop’s cannabis cigars. Bad week for: Grift, after a report that Donald…

Avril Lavigne has no regrets about teen stardom, said Sarah Manavis in The Guardian (U.K.). Her 2002 debut album, Let Go, vaulted her to fame at 17, and for a restless and ambitious singer-songwriter from a small town in Ontario, Canada, the end of a “normal” youth couldn’t have come soon enough. “I remember being at home and being 14 and thinking like, ‘I need to hurry up and get this music thing going!” she says. “I want loud guitars, I want live drums.” She signed with Arista Records but resisted executives’ efforts to squeeze her angsty/punk-flavored lyrical style and grungy, tomboy clothes into the Lolita/bubblegum pop mold. “I was very clear on what I wanted to do and what I didn’t want to do,” she says. “I wanted…

Kevin Williamson National Review For the first time, the cost of filling up my Jeep “crossed into triple digits” last week, said Kevin Williamson. As Americans pay $100 for a tank of gas, their anger at President Biden is growing, and so are the chances that Democrats will be wiped out in November’s congressional elections. Most Americans rely on their cars, and “we get very irritated when somebody stands between us and where we are trying to go.” Every fill-up in this new era of $5-a-gallon gas is a “little slap in the face, accompanied by a sinking suspicion that prices are never going back down.” Smart Republicans will capitalize on unprecedented gas prices and mention them in “every single speech.” Those prices affect voters directly, painfully, and frequently,…

“The Big Lie is less of a literal belief for Trump supporters, and more a myth embraced because it speaks to their deeper belief: that they’re entitled to rule, no matter what. They don’t believe the 2020 election was a ‘fraud’ because of any actual evidence. It’s far more that they just think that people who voted for President Joe Biden shouldn’t have a right to vote in the first place. They know that there’s no way to argue out loud that only conservative white Christians should have the vote, so they use these conspiracy theories to perpetuate this ugly belief.” Amanda Marcotte in Salon…

SPAIN Jordi Juan La Vanguardia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has inspired “a new passion for war” across the planet, said Jordi Juan. We thought the trauma of the Cold War—with its numerous superpower proxy conflicts and its constant threat of nuclear annihilation—had ended in 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved, “common sense prevailed, and dialogue won the battle.” Indeed, for the three decades since then, ideals of peace, dialogue, and demilitarization ruled, at least among the biggest powers. But Russia shattered that consensus with its mass invasion in February, and since then other major countries have embraced “the revival of the arms race.” China has “multiplied investment in defense,” building a naval base in Cambodia and testing nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles. Iran has enriched enough uranium for an atomic bomb. And…

RUSSIA Maria Koroleva Meduza (Latvia) It’s not quite McDonald’s, but Russians are lining up anyway, said Maria Koroleva. The American fast-food franchise pulled out of its 840 Russian restaurants over the war in Ukraine, but a Siberian businessman bought them up, and the first store reopened last week as Vkusno i Tochka, which translates to “Tasty and that’s it.” Alas, there’s a lot missing. The famous Big Mac and McFlurry are not on the menu, because, says general director Oleg Paroyev, those items are too closely identified with the American chain—but that doesn’t explain why I couldn’t find the shrimp roll, “my favorite” offering from the old Russian McDonald’s. There wasn’t even a regular cola, only diet. Still, at least most of the 62,000 employees will keep their jobs,…

It’s shocking, but not surprising, that a deranged California man traveled to Maryland last week to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, said Andrew McCarthy in National Review. The would-be assassin was arrested after he appeared outside Kavanaugh’s guarded home armed with a Glock 17 handgun, pepper spray, and zip ties; his mission was the “inevitable next phase” of the intimidation campaign directed at conservative justices following the leak of a draft opinion over-turning Roe v. Wade. Attorney General Merrick Garland has failed to enforce a federal law forbidding protests outside the justices’ homes, and many Democrats have served up “incendiary rhetoric” about the court. A prime example was when Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer said Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch would “pay the price” if they voted to…

Previous Covid surges had recognizable peaks, said Chas Danner in New York magazine, but this one “might be more like a flood.” Omicron’s BA.2.12.1 subvariant, which can evade antibodies from vaccination and prior infections, has been quietly infecting millions of Americans for months, but may soon be outcompeted by two new subvariants, BA.4 and BA.5. These highly mutated versions of the coronavirus are now causing more than 20 percent of U.S. infections, and appear to be more transmissible, more able to cause breakthrough infections in the vaccinated, and more likely to reinfect those who’ve already caught Covid. As BA.4 and BA.5 spread in a largely mask-free country, they will cause “a lot of breakthrough infections and reinfections,” including among people who were sickened by the original Omicron strain a…

(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30) Now seen as an indulgence of the wealthy and vain, cosmetic surgery “in fact evolved with the noblest of aims,” said Lorraine Berry in the Los Angeles Times. This fascinating new book details how the field was pioneered by World War I doctors determined to address the gruesome facial injuries inflicted by the latest in combat weaponry. Some 280,000 men were so disfigured, and unlike amputees, who were treated with respect, these vets were shunned—pushed to isolate themselves so that other people wouldn’t be reminded of the horrors wrought by a popular war. “But the face is more than a symbol; it is the basis of human communication,” and Fitzharris balances her stories about medical innovations with compassionate accounts of the soldiers’ struggles. The…

Leila Mottley, who turned 20 only this week, “has accomplished more in her career than most people would dream of,” said Dorany Pineda in the Los Angeles Times. The novel she wrote at 17 is now one of the buzziest books of the summer. She has published one poetry collection and has another forthcoming. And while taking a break from her studies at Smith College, she is working on a second novel as well. As acclaim pours in for Nightcrawling, Mottley’s best-selling new novel about a 17-year-old fellow Oakland native who turns to sex work to pay rent and support a boy who lives next door, she is trying to maintain perspective about her early success and its true advantages. “I have a lot of time to grow,” she…

2 Post Malone’s fourth album is “a chore to listen to,” said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. “Agonizingly self-absorbed,” it finds the chart-topping 26-year-old rapper-singer fixating on his inner pain and self-destructive streak. In fact, “that’s all he can talk about.” And while he again shows “an exceptional ear for melody” and the relatively breezy “Wrapped Around Your Finger” seems destined for heavy summer airplay, the darkness that descends about halfway through “never lets up.” Listening to this record doesn’t make you want to play it again. It makes you want to urge him to seek help. No doubt, “Malone is telling us that he needs an intervention right now,” said Chris Willman in Variety. Still, he’s “crafty enough to make sure the album doesn’t always sound…

“Barbecues are almost exclusively associated with carnivorous cooking”—but this is changing, says Rukmini Iyer in The Green Barbecue (Countryman Press). Below, you’ll find a couple ideas for adding variety to your grilling routine—one a fresh, light mango and cucumber salad and the other a starter featuring grilled gnocchi, “my proudest barbecue creation.” “There’s really no limit to the number of things you could pair with gnocchi on a stick,” but the recipe I’m sharing here calls for a basil pesto, which you can buy in a jar or make yourself. Use the grilling method of your choice—gas or my favorite, charcoal. Crispy gnocchi on a skewer, with charred bell peppers and basil pesto One 1-lb package gnocchi3 mixed red or yellow bell peppers, chopped into gnocchi-size pieces6 tbsp vegan…

TuneIn.com allows you to listen to local DJs through a computer browser. TuneIn’s free mobile app is pretty good, too. NPR.org serves as a portal to hundreds of public radio stations across the U.S. Simply click on the Music tab, scroll down to Listen Live, then browse by genre. Internet-Radio.com grants access to more than 17,000 radio stations spanning all genres, from rockabilly to reggaeton. You can use the site’s built-in media players or follow links to the station websites. Apple Music, unlike Spotify, lets users stream live radio. With a few stations, you don’t even have to be an Apple subscriber. RadioParadise.com is “an internet legend” that’s delivered a radio-like experience for years. “Everyone should check it out once.” Poolsuite.net is a “weird and wonderful” website that plays “a…

Coinbase, the country’s largest digital-currency exchange, is warning investors to prepare for a “crypto winter,” said Nathan Becker in The Wall Street Journal. A two-year boom pushed the value of Bitcoin to over $67,000, and shares of Coinbase were trading for $250 or higher. But now “roughly $2 trillion of value has been erased across numerous cryptocurrencies since November,” and Bitcoin is down to about $21,000. Coinbase has shed close to 80 percent of its value since the start of the year, and the company said this week it needs to lay off nearly one-fifth of its staff, roughly 1,100 employees, to reduce costs. Investing: Schwab to pay fine for misleading clients Brokerage firm Charles Schwab will pay $187 million to settle charges that its robo-adviser misled clients, said Jacob…

Market for mortgages dries up Fewer people applied for mortgages last week than at any point in the past 22 years, said Aarthi Swaminathan in MarketWatch. The Mortgage Bankers Association said its market composite index, “a measure of home loan application volume,” fell 6.5 percent compared with a week earlier. The index is down 55 percent from a year ago; the refinance index is down 75 percent. The numbers suggest that “a slowdown in the housing market is in full effect.” Mortgage rates have soared in recent months “thanks to the market pricing in a series of future interest-rate hikes by the Federal Reserve,” while housing inventory remains “persistently low.” That combination is keeping more potential homebuyers on the sidelines—or figuring out ways to pay cash. Appealing tax assessments You…

Pierre Briançon Reuters Breakingviews The Aeroflot airline might be the perfect metaphor for what Vladimir Putin’s war and Western sanctions are doing to Russia’s economy, said Pierre Briançon. The country’s flagship carrier—once the largest airline in the world—had a well-earned Soviet reputation for rude service, disgusting food, sputtering planes, and unsafe management. An Aeroflot plane once crashed when the pilot handed the controls to his teenage son. Those days, though, were seemingly behind it. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Aeroflot had managed to “transform into a respectable airline capable of going head-to-head with global rivals.” It flew to nearly 60 worldwide destinations, demonstrating that a Russian company could offer first-rate service and attract customers in a global market. Now it’s headed right back to the bad…

Singer Julee Cruise, director David Lynch, and composer Angelo Badalamenti had a nickname for the character they created for Cruise to embody while singing: “the white angel.” The trio first collaborated on Lynch’s 1986 film Blue Velvet, on the song “Mysteries of Love,” and went on to craft Cruise’s debut album, 1989’s Floating Into the Night. Although Cruise said she considered herself a natural “Broadway belter,” her crooning for Lynch and Badalamenti was both haunting and dreamy—a perfect fit for Lynch’s 1990 mystery drama Twin Peaks. The series, a cult favorite that got a 2017 reboot, took the instrumental version of Cruise’s song “Falling” as its theme and ignited sales of Cruise’s first album. “The music was strange,” Cruise said in 2018. “It wasn’t ’50s, and it wasn’t ’90s.…

This week’s question: A self-declared “sologamist” in India is planning a three-day wedding to marry herself. If she were to have a song for her first dance as a self-married woman, what should it be? Last week’s contest: In a survey of 500 delivery drivers, 4 out of 5 admitted to eating part of customers’ orders at some point. What would you call a delivery app that acknowledges this unsavory reality? THE WINNER: “Uber Ate” Joe Ayella, Wayne, Pa. SECOND PLACE: “Shortorder” Susan Clayton, Bel Air, Md. THIRD PLACE: “Almost Whole Foods” Elaine Cohen, Pembroke Pines, Fla. 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, address, and daytime telephone number for verification; this week,…