Innehållsförteckning för July 29, 2022 från The Week Magazine

The damn thing finally got me. After two and a half years of dodging the coronavirus, my wife and I gambled on an overseas trip and came back with Covid. We were probably infected at one of the airports, where we were trapped for hours in closely packed throngs of mostly unmasked people, who were sneezing, coughing, and braying with no concern about spreading infection. As we wave the white flag of de facto surrender, the BA.5 variant is surging, with known new infections up 20 percent in two weeks, 40,000 hospitalized, and deaths creeping back up to 3,000 a week. When immersed in aerosolized clouds of this hyper-infectious variant for prolonged periods, even masked people are at high risk. Despite my two boosters and excellent overall health, Covid made…

Opened just last year, Detroit’s 27th Letter Books was happy to take a series of orders for $35,000 worth of expensive medical and engineering textbooks. But in May, the four co-owners learned the buyer had used a stolen credit card. Their insurer suggested they close shop. Instead, 27th Letter turned to its neighbors for help—hoping its weekly open mic nights, book clubs, and story-time sessions had made an impression. Indeed they had, and the shop earned more money in a fundraiser than it had lost in the scam. Nicholas Bostic was driving in Lafayette, Ind., last week when he spotted a house engulfed in flames. The 25-year-old realized he didn’t have his phone with him to call 911, so he ran inside himself and discovered four children upstairs. Bostic escorted…

Montana’s State Library Commission has rejected a proposed new logo for fear it resembles an LGBTQ symbol. The proposed logo, which cost $130,000 to create, uses colored triangles to depict a prism breaking light into its component colors. Commissioner Tammy Hall says the design is uncomfortably close to the LGBTQ rainbow flag, which is a “very political, explosive weapon.” A West Virginia state judge is under investigation for allegedly pulling out a handgun and leaving it pointed at lawyers who suggested he had a conflict of interest. Judge David Hummel Jr. denies pulling out a gun, but three lawyers and witnesses say he waved it around and then left it on his bench, aimed at the lawyers. “It was pretty traumatic for multiple people,” said lawyer Lauren Varnado. In other…

John McEnroe still hates to lose, said Tim Lewis in The Guardian. The former tennis bad boy’s last court appearance was a pre-pandemic exhibition match against fellow retired player Michael Chang, and two and a half years later his loss still burns. “I called my agent: ‘Don’t you ever put me in another match the rest of my life!’” he said. “Getting old sucks is the bottom line.” Now 63, McEnroe has put a lot of effort into taming the anger that fueled his legendary court outbursts—a project, he says, that’s put him in front of some “37 psychiatrists and psychologists.” He’s identified one chronic issue: He feels the pain of losing far more than the joy of winning. “You’re never satisfied,” he said. “You just have to minimize…

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez tied the knot last week in a seemingly impromptu ceremony at A Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. Lopez, 52, said she wore “a dress from an old movie”—perhaps 2004’s Jersey Girl, which also featured Ben as her husband. Affleck, 49, wore a jacket from his closet. “We flew to Vegas, stood in line for a license with four other couples, all making the same journey to the wedding capital of the world,” Lopez said. Engaged in April, the couple known to tabloids as Bennifer had broken off a prior engagement in 2004, citing overbearing press attention. Some but not all of their children reportedly attended the ceremony as witnesses. Lopez has 14-year-old twins with ex-husband Marc Anthony, and Affleck has three kids,…

A.B. Stoddard RealClearPolitics.com Joe Biden doesn’t realize it yet, but he “cannot run for a second term in 2024.” He strongly believes he’s the Democrat with the best chance of beating Donald Trump if the former president runs again, but polls show Biden’s own party wants him to make good on his 2020 pledge to be “a bridge” to a new generation of Democratic leaders. Only 26 percent of Democrats in a new New York Times/Siena survey said they want Biden to be the party’s nominee in 2024. Low approval ratings and “concerns about his age”—he’d be 86 at the end of a second term—would haunt a second campaign, and if Republicans take the House this fall, he will face a “brutal” investigation into his son Hunter’s shady foreign…

And then there were two, said Andrew Grice in The Independent. The once crowded field to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister was winnowed this week to former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, giving the Conservative Party a “choice of two very different futures” for Britain after Brexit. Sunak finished first in a vote among Conservative members of Parliament this week, while Truss jumped ahead of Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt to reach the runoff. Truss, who polls show is ahead of Sunak among the party members who will pick the winner in a mail vote, wants post-Brexit Britain to become “Singapore-on-Thames,” transforming itself into a “low-tax, low-regulations country which diverges from EU rules.” Sunak, meanwhile, insists that Britain focus on “balancing its books…

BRAZIL Rodrigo Craveiro Correio Braziliense We really don’t want to compete with the U.S. for greatest number of guns in civilian hands, said Rodrigo Craveiro. Yet Jair Bolsonaro is aggressively pushing the country in that direction. Ever since he won the presidency in 2018, the far-right demagogue has made no fewer than 32 changes to relax Brazil’s gun laws on the pretext of family safety. “Everyone has to buy a rifle,” he declared last year. “Armed people will never be enslaved.” Sure, guns are expensive, he went on to admit—but only “idiots” would prioritize food over weapons. The results of his deranged mission are now there for all to see. Gun ownership rates have soared 300 percent in three years, and there are now more than 4 million guns in…

A controversial herbicide linked to cancer has been found in more than 80 percent of urine samples taken from U.S. adults and children, reports CBSNews.com. Researchers from the CDC examined data from a survey in 2013 and 2014 involving 2,310 people representative of the American population. They found detectable traces of glyphosate, the weed killer sold as Roundup, in 1,885 samples. “Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the country,” says toxicologist Alexis Temkin, “yet until now we had very little data on exposure.” The chemical has been classified as “probably carcinogenic” by a unit of the World Health Organization. Bayer, which owns Roundup producer Monsanto, has been hit with thousands of lawsuits filed by people who say the herbicide gave them cancer. Despite claiming that glyphosate isn’t…

(Knopf, $30) Bull Durham, before it became recognized as one of the all-time great sports movies, was “an unusual movie in every respect,” said Elizabeth Nelson in The Wall Street Journal. It was a film about baseball that featured no climactic game. It was a story about a love triangle in which the female romantic lead was past 40. And its screenplay, created by a journeyman writer who wanted to direct for the first time, didn’t even include a traditional third act. But 34 years later, that writer, Ron Shelton, has produced “a droll, sometimes dolorous account” of how he overcame the odds to create a 1988 comedy-drama that’s now a recognized classic. As we know without his saying so, the film’s essential premise was brilliant and its stars’…

For Erika L. Sánchez, success was no cure for depression, said Anna Sale in NPR.org. Five years ago, at 33, the Chicago author published an acclaimed poetry collection and a best-selling young adult novel in the same year. But even as she was being celebrated as a Mexican-American role model, she couldn’t shake her dark thoughts. “One instance in particular, I go to an event in New York even though, that same morning, I decided I was going to end my life,” she says. “Then I talked to these young women who really looked up to me, you know? And I wondered, like, what would it mean to them if I didn’t make it?” Feeling accountable helped. And Sánchez did make it through—checking into a hospital and eventually securing…

3 It makes sense that Burna Boy calls his music Afro-fusion, said Jon Pareles in The New York Times. For the past decade, the innovative Nigerian artist has been connecting the polyrhythms of West African pop to diasporic kin such as reggae, dancehall, hip-hop, and R&B. “His voice, a velvety baritone, has a suave composure that can hint at easy assurance or a melancholy reticence,” and his sixth studio album “both parades his accomplishments and admits to the doubts and regrets of an obsessive achiever.” Considering how brash Burna Boy sounded on 2020’s Grammy-winning Twice as Tall, “it’s refreshing to see him put his guard down on his most personal project to date,” said Jessica Kariisa in Pitchfork. Unfortunately, after the album’s energetic first half, the songs “lose steam…

Jordan Peele’s new summer thriller, Nope, nominates him as the first movie star, yet no one knows his name, said Ben Travis in Empire. He’s a Black jockey, and in a sequence of 1887 photographs by Eadweard Muybridge that is recognized as one of the first motion pictures, the mysterious figure is riding a galloping horse. The names of the horse, the horse’s owner, and the photographer are well documented, but not the rider, and Peele has created a fictional history around the telling oversight, casting Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer as brother-and-sister descendants of the jockey who today train horses for Hollywood on their California ranch. Nope is also a UFO movie, but few of its other secrets had been revealed just days before its July 22 wide…

“Not long ago, the most famous place to eat in Mystic, Conn., was a 1970s pizza spot, the co-star of the 1988 Julia Roberts flick Mystic Pizza,” said Kat Odell in Bloomberg. But in recent years, the pretty seaside town has seen an influx of top cooking talent, drawn by well-preserved 19th-century buildings and cheaper rents than in nearby coastal destinations such as the Hamptons. Mystic now ranks “among the most exciting culinary destinations on the East Coast, with some of the country’s best seafood, heirloom produce, and yes, pizza.” The Shipwright’s Daughter Chef David Standridge cooked for legendary chef Joël Robuchon before moving a few years ago to Mystic, where he runs this convivial two-year-old restaurant in the boutique Whaler’s Inn. The menu is all about fresh-caught New…

Hill House Home the Ellie Nap Dress Smocked dresses have been trending since this best-selling “nap dress” went viral last year. Available in either cotton or linen, the dainty midi is “comfy enough for a nightgown, but cute enough to wear out of the house.” $150, hillhousehome.com Source: Town & Country Anthropologie Somerset Maxi Previously available only in vibrant cotton prints, Anthropologie’s “internet-revered” maxi dress now comes in pastel-colored linen. With the addition of pockets, the flowy pullover with an elastic waist is now “even more easygoing.” $170, anthropologie.com Source: Refinery 29 Zara Linen-Blend Dress “Behold another best-in-class linen dress to add to your summer dress collection.” Zara’s airy, half-viscose V-neck can be dressed up or down. The long sleeves have elasticized cuffs, and the smocking is, well, “2022’s…

More workers now hold two full-time jobs, defined as more than 35 hours a week per job, than at any time since the U.S. began collecting this data in 1994: 426,000 Americans held two full-time jobs in June compared with 308,000 in February 2020. The Washington Post The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour is worth less today than at any point since February 1956. Then, the minimum stood at 75 cents per hour, or $7.19 in today’s dollars. Fortune The pace of California home sales plunged 21 percent in June from a year earlier. Excluding the spring 2020 lockdown, the state’s home sales were at the lowest level since April 2008. Median sales prices fell 4 percent from the all-time high of $900,170 reached in May. Bloomberg…

A good time to look for dividends “Dividends can bolster your investing strategy in a down market,” said Shawn Tully in Fortune. The focus in the market has returned to fundamentals, and that means “dividend stocks are the place to be.” The dominance of fast-growing tech stocks that yielded paltry quarterly payments over the past decade has made many investors “forget that, over history, it’s the dividend payers that performed best.” From 1973 to 2021, companies that paid quarterly dividends “furnished annual returns of 9.6 percent a year, crushing nonpayers’ record of 4.8 percent, and beating the overall market average of 8.2 percent.” These companies tend to be “mature, stable businesses” that “don’t have a big need for capital to invest.” If you are hunting for value in this…

Hal Scott and John Gulliver The Wall Street Journal Gary Gensler’s job as the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission is to protect and promote the U.S. capital markets. He’s doing the opposite, said Hal Scott and John Gulliver. “In the 14 months since Gensler took office, the SEC has issued 23 proposed rules,” covering “every corner of the capital markets: public companies, mutual funds, private funds, and broker-dealers.” He began by targeting special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, an “innovative market” that has been responsible for “the rising number of initial public offerings in recent years.” Another proposal, aimed at restricting “payment for order flow” revenue that has enabled fee-free trading platforms like Robinhood, “would likely result in the return of brokerage commissions.” But Gensler’s biggest assault comes…

Claes Oldenburg turned mundane objects into monuments. Over a seven-decade career the Swedish-born pop artist earned renown for public art installations featuring whimsical, outsize sculptures of everyday objects from hamburgers to household appliances. Cities around the U.S. got the Oldenburg treatment: He spaced a series of 19-foot badminton shuttlecocks across a sculpture garden in Kansas City; erected a 45-foot, 10-ton steel clothespin outside Philadelphia’s City Hall for the 1976 bicentennial; and in 1985 put up Spoonbridge and Cherry, an arched, 5,800-pound teaspoon with a bright red cherry perched at its tip, at Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center. In Chicago, he did a 20-ton steel baseball bat; in Las Vegas, a 38-foot-tall flashlight. “I am for an art that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum,” he…

This week’s question: An unknown bomber has partially destroyed the Georgia Guidestones, an anonymously built monument engraved with Ten Commandments–style advice to humanity. In seven or fewer words, please provide your own inscription-worthy counsel to the world for these turbulent times. Last week’s contest: An American competitive archer says she is “objectum sexual”—sexually and romantically attracted to inanimate objects. She claimed to marry the Eiffel Tower in 2007; now she says she is in love with a geometrically “perfect” wooden fence. If she were to write a memoir, what should she call it? THE WINNER: “Material Girl” Larry Rifkin, Glastonbury, Conn. SECOND PLACE: “The Thing and I” Joan Katine, Delray Beach, Fla. THIRD PLACE: “Love Is a Many-Splintered Thing” Bill Levine, Belmont, Mass. For runners-up and complete contest rules,…

John Grisham has a complicated relationship with Hollywood, said David Marchese in The New York Times Magazine. For a heady stretch in the 1990s, as the Mississippi lawyer turned novelist was turning out blockbusters including Pelican Brief, The Client, and The Rainmaker, studios clamored for the film rights. “For about five years in a row, my agent would take my latest manuscript to Hollywood, get the studios in a room, and have an auction. And when they paid, they paid millions. I can’t get a fraction of that today.” While he was happy to cash the checks, taking part in Hollywood’s creative process was another matter. “I’m not a screenwriter,” he says. “It’s not something I enjoy doing. One of the most frustrating parts is the teamwork. You get…

Katherine Wu The Atlantic As new variants arise and we head toward a possible major Covid surge this fall and winter, said Katherine Wu, “the U.S. does not have a strong, coordinated vaccination plan.” The virus’ rapid evolution is hampering Pfizer’s and Moderna’s plans to retool their vaccines to new variants, which are coming faster than the process of creating and testing the tweaked shots. Vaccines tailored to the current dominant variant, BA.5, might not be ready until October at the earliest—“by which time BA.5 may be long gone,” replaced by an even more infectious, immunity-dodging variant. Meanwhile, “Americans are eager to put the pandemic behind them” and have “waning enthusiasm for shots.” They aren’t rolling up their sleeves for boosters, despite lots of Covid cases and strong evidence…

SPAIN César-Javier Palacios 20Minutos As a new heat wave sweeps through Europe, there are “simple solutions” to adapting to the “undeniable reality” of climate change, said César-Javier Palacios. Much of the Iberian Peninsula was placed under an extreme weather alert last week as temperatures soared to 113 degrees, nearing record levels. More than 20 wildfires blazed across Spain and Portugal, while the nearby Italian island of Sardinia saw its worst locust infestation in decades. Experts warn that “we will have to get used to it”—and while there is no single catchall solution, Spain can make the adaptation process much easier by simply “turning back the clock.” Spain was once on Greenwich Mean Time along with longitudinal neighbors like Portugal, the United Kingdom, and Morocco. But in 1940, the dictator Francisco…

As speculation grows that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will challenge Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination, a key question comes to the fore, said Max Boot in The Washington Post: “Which man is a bigger threat to the republic?” As governor, DeSantis has “engaged in one of the most alarming assaults on free speech and academic freedom since the dark days of McCarthyism.” He ran “roughshod over private property rights” by banning businesses from establishing their own mask and vaccine mandates, signed the “Don’t say gay” law stifling public school discussion of gender and sexuality—then punished Disney for criticizing that law by taking away its special taxing district. His Nixon-like actions reveal “a troubling pattern of authoritarianism and vindictiveness that would be extremely dangerous in the Oval Office.”…

Superbug infections—one of the gravest challenges in modern medicine—surged in U.S. hospitals as health-care workers struggled to deal with Covid cases, reports The Washington Post. Infections and deaths from antibiotic-resistant pathogens in 2020 increased by 15 percent from the previous year, according to an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Some bacteria saw a particularly large rise in cases: Acinetobacter, which can cause pneumonia and wound and urinary tract infections, was up 78 percent; the deadly superbug Candida auris increased 60 percent; enterobacteriaceae, known as “nightmare bacteria” for their untreatable effects, rose 35 percent. The increases partially reverse significant progress made in tackling superbugs: Between 2012 and 2017, drug-resistant infections in U.S. hospitals fell by nearly 30 percent. But as Covid patients flooded hospitals and…

In a new memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, Colombian-American novelist Ingrid Rojas Contreras explores a peculiar heritage: a family belief in some members’ supernatural gifts. Below, she recommends other memoirs rooted in the uncanny. The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston (1976). This book knocked me off my feet. I reread it immediately, letting it breathe into my imagination all that memoir could be. Kingston writes about the ghost stories that have shaped her, beginning with tales told about her late aunt, who died by suicide and whom her family refused to mention by name. Kingston reframes the story to call for remembering all women who’ve been erased. The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang (2019). Wang’s sharp, masterful personal essays seek to map what happens to…

3 “The Deslondes seem more in sync than ever,” said Maeri Ferguson in No Depression. All five members of the Louisiana roots-rock band share in the songwriting, and the group’s first record in five years “feels like the output of some supergroup” because of the way it shifts seamlessly between three distinct voices. “From one song to the next, the album keeps you on your toes. Maybe you’ll get the woozy slow burner ‘South Dakota Wild One,’ or perhaps it’ll be the stoner-pop ode to self-improvement ‘Five Year Plan.’” Flute, saxophone, electric keyboards, and a full drum kit have expanded the Deslondes’ hazy signature sound, but their music remains rooted in twangy Americana and piano-driven early New Orleans R&B, said Jonah Covell in Holler. Riley Downing’s songs are particularly…

A “West Texas classic” is starting to look like this summer’s cocktail sensation, said Lisa Futterman in The Alcohol Professor. A ranch water is easy to make: Pour 2 oz. of blanco tequila over ice, add fizzy water (preferably Topo Chico), and squeeze in half a lime. But you can also buy pre-canned versions. Beware the ones that are actually malt beverages, and try these instead: Ranch2O Spirits Ranch Water Texan Amelia Lettieri chose a tequila with a fresh green-pepper note when she launched Ranch2O in late 2020. The authentic result delivers “true tequila bite.” Cantina Especial Ranch Water Produced by another recent Texas startup, this one also “really tastes like tequila.” It also has a touch of sea salt. June Shine Tequila Ranch Water Made in San Diego,…

Good week for: Gingers, after Britain’s Showcase Cinemas waived admission costs for people with red hair amid a 100-degree heat wave to help “ensure they stay protected from the sun.” Payback, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan kept a fidgeting Russian President Vladimir Putin waiting alone for 50 uncomfortable seconds as cameras whirred during a meeting in Iran. Putin had done the same to Erdogan in 2020. Playing catch-up, after Delta Air Lines adopted a “creative” solution to massive baggage problems at London’s Heathrow Airport by packing the cabin of an empty passenger jet with 1,000 pieces of lost luggage and flying them from London to the U.S., so they could be distributed to frustrated customers. Bad week for: Persisting, after Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Donald Trump called…

Patricia Arquette had an unorthodox upbringing, said Michael Schulman in The New Yorker. Part of a show-business family that included vaudevillian great-grandparents, a musician father, and actor siblings David and Rosanna, she spent four years with her family on a hippie commune in Virginia. At the outset “there were seven of us living in this one-room cabin,” she said. “It didn’t have insulation, and it was freezing in the winter. There was no bathroom, so you had to walk to the outhouse or down the road to the gym.” Spirituality played a big role in their lives, though it was “a very open kind”: Her mother was Jewish, her father was “a lay Christian who converted to Islam,” and her brother for a time was a Buddhist. Arquette attended…

Jonathan Last The Bulwark A negotiated peace in Ukraine “will not be possible,” said Jonathan Last. As the war drags on, and food and energy shortages grow, the West may want to cave in to Vladimir Putin’s blackmail and cede a big chunk of Ukraine to Russia. But “Ukraine will not accede to it”—nor should it, after the war crimes and mass deportations Putin’s forces have inflicted. Russia, the U.S. State Department reported last week, has forced up to 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens into “filtration” camps and carried out systematic torture and executions. Among those kidnapped are 260,000 children—many stolen and separated from their families. This “industrial-scale kidnapping and ethnic cleansing” is taking place as Russia fires missiles into towns and cities far from the front, obliterating apartment houses and…

“Democrats are right now experiencing a collision of theory with reality. Americans like big spending in theory, but they hate the reality of inflation and rising interest rates. Americans like the idea of economic protection until they can’t buy baby formula or ground chuck for less than the price of a bucket of diamonds. Everybody is an environmentalist when gas is $2 a gallon. Everybody is a good civil libertarian when crime is low. Everybody is a peacenik when Moscow is playing nice. Progressives who believe that Joe Biden is the Democrats’ problem are fooling themselves.” Kevin Williamson in National Review…

POLAND Michal Szuldrzynski Rzeczpospolita The leader of Poland’s largest opposition party may have found the “elixir of youth”—he wants the country to work less, said Michal Szuldrzynski. When Donald Tusk, the former European Council president who now leads Poland’s centrist Civic Platform party, announced a set of economic proposals, one stood out: a pilot project to introduce “a four-day workweek.” The ruling Law and Justice party, along with much of the Polish media, attacked the idea as a left-wing fantasy that would wreck the economy. Tusk must be grateful for the criticism, which has helped the veteran politician connect with the younger generation. The global Millennial workforce, along with their younger Gen Z counterparts, believe that “work is supposed to provide financial independence, not become the content of their entire…

KENYA Macharia Gaitho Daily Nation His candidacy started as a joke, but a marijuana-loving outsider presidential candidate has thrown a wrench into the “same old slugfest between feuding upper-crust toffs,” said Macharia Gaitho. George Wajackoyah, a gray-bearded former gravedigger, is running on “an outrageous platform that would ordinarily be run out of town.” The Roots Party candidate wants to make Kenya a major exporter of marijuana, snake venom, and hyena’s testicles and use the profits to replace our longest railway. In a rebuke to the establishment he calls corrupt, he campaigns in a tracksuit and headscarf and dances to thumping reggae as crowds go wild. Wajackoyah has no chance of winning, but he has “captured the imagination of angry, disaffected youth in both urban and rural Kenya.” He’s polling at…

There were 4,460 known pregnancies among U.S. girls under 15 in 2017, the last year for which data are available, according to the Guttmacher Institute. About 44 percent of those ended in abortion. In Texas, more than 200 children 15 or younger received abortions in 2021; 31 of those were 13 or younger.The New York Times Since children under 5 became eligible to receive Covid vaccines in June, only about 2 percent of them have received at least one dose, according to the CDC. Since 2020, there have been more than 2 million known Covid cases in kids ages 6 months to 4 years, as well as 20,000 hospitalizations and more than 200 deaths.Politico The U.S. Armed Forces are raising sign-up bonuses as high as $50,000 to combat an enlistment…

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”H.G. Wells, quoted in The Economist “Curiosity is stronger than fear.”Volcanologist Katia Krafft, quoted in Variety “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”Soren Kierkegaard, quoted in The New York Times “Certain things can never be realized and so all the more reason to attempt them.”Jamaica Kincaid, quoted in TheMillions.com “Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”Oscar Wilde, quoted in the Los Angeles Times “A diplomat who says ‘yes’ means ‘maybe,’ a diplomat who says ‘maybe’ means ‘no,’ and a diplomat who says ‘no’ is no diplomat.”Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, quoted in The Wall Street Journal “I don’t lie. I improve on life.”osephine Baker, quoted in Lithub…

DOJ preps for Google antitrust suit The Justice Department is likely to reject concessions offered by Google parent Alphabet to stave off an antitrust trial, said Leah Nylen in Bloomberg, and “the agency is poised to file a lawsuit” over Google’s practices in the advertising technology market, according to people familiar with the matter. Last week, Google “proposed splitting part of its business that auctions and places ads on websites and apps into a separate company” to address regulators’ concerns. However, that separate company, which on its own “could possibly be valued at tens of billions of dollars,” would still “remain under the Alphabet umbrella.” That’s hardly a compromise, analysts say, as it “wouldn’t eliminate any of its monopoly advantages” as both a leading auction house and bidder for…

People who always sprinkle salt on their meals can expect to live a shorter life, a new study suggests. Researchers looked at data from the UK Biobank study, which followed 500,000 Britons for an average of nine years. They found that always adding the seasoning to cooked food was linked to a reduction in life expectancy of more than two years for men and 18 months for women. Overall, compared with those who never or rarely added salt, those who always used it had a 28 percent increased risk of premature death. The study did not definitively rule out other factors—salt consumption being a proxy for a less healthy overall diet, for example. But lead researcher Lu Qi, from Tulane University in New Orleans, tells The Guardian (U.K.) that…

(Scribner/Marysue Rucci, $29) “It is hard to write about this novel without gushing,” said Heller McAlpin in The Christian Science Monitor. Its driving force, Agnes Lee, is an 80-year-old writer who’s battling for the future of a Maine peninsula that she has cherished all her life. But as two additional women emerge as narrators and as Agnes connects with an ambitious publishing assistant and tests a lifelong friendship, the story’s various plotlines “dovetail with amazing grace.” This “magnificent” novel, a product of 20 years’ work, achieves “the complexity of an absorbing 19th-century epic.” The book’s “most astonishing” feature may be the way it manages “to totally inhabit a series of disparate characters,” said Joan Frank in The Boston Globe. Agnes, her friend Polly, and the young outsider Maud all…

Soundings by Doreen Cunningham (Scribner, $28) This transportive memoir “portrays a world that is disappearing—melting away or transforming into something less hospitable,” said L.A. Taggart in the San Francisco Chronicle. Doreen Cunningham, an environmental journalist, relates two remarkable voyages she made following whales in Alaska and along North America’s western coast. She’s escaping a turbulent breakup when she mounts the second trip with her young son. On the ocean, she “finds an easier groove, and readers are richer for it.” The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey (Knopf, $26) “Vivid imagery, discussion-worthy themes, and a melding of history and magic” make this prize-winning novel a lively read, said Donna Edwards in the Associated Press. Named the 2020 Costa Book of the Year but only now widely available, it…

  3 “In her great tradition of being extra, Lizzo has come out with an album that provides all the poppy endorphins a populace could really require for a single summer,” said Chris Willman in Variety. The Grammy-winning chart-topper is in full effect on her decidedly fun follow-up to 2019’s Cuz I Love You. From the start, the relentlessly upbeat 34-year-old singer-rapper “tosses off funny aphorisms,” and with the funky neo-disco single “About Damn Time” arriving early, the entire record provides an instant mood lift. Despite the 19-song set’s lack of emotional range, “it’s hard to imagine this isn’t locked in as one of the leading Album of the Year candidates.” Special “doesn’t necessarily break new ground for Lizzo, but it’s OK not to mess with a great thing,” said…

Exploring art and design… Abstract: The Art of Design This series features a different leading designer in each episode and specializes in inspiration. Highlights include Olafur Eliasson’s experimentations with light, sneaker designer Tinker Hatfield on his iconic designs for Nike, and graphic designer Paula Scher on the art of painting with words. Netflix Art21 Baffled by contemporary art? You won’t be after a tour of this series, which profiles the 21st century’s greatest artists in their studios. Watching all 65 hours isn’t necessary, but once you start, you may not want to stop. art21.org Black Art: In the Absence of Light Art21 doesn’t bypass the most prominent Black artists, but think of this documentary as a necessary companion, expanding the conversation by illuminating the work of Faith Ringgold, Theaster…

TimeAndDate.com distills information that novice stargazers should find useful. Select Night Sky under the Sun & Moon tab and you’ll see the rise and set times for all the planets. “It’s a lot less daunting than stargazing apps.” ThePlanetsToday.com charts the orbits of the planets using NASA data. A quick glance at the online orrery will tell you, for example, where to point your telescope to see Saturn. Eclipse2024.org offers schedules, maps, and simulations of the total solar eclipse that will track from Texas to Maine on April 8, 2024. Click anywhere in the shadow’s path across the map to see (via a YouTube link) what totality will look like there. HTwins.net helps put photos of deep space into perspective. The website features a simulation, “Scale of the Universe,” which…

Amazon has been “drastically reducing the number of items it sells under its own brands” and is weighing whether to exit its private-label business to alleviate regulatory pressure, said Dana Mattioli in The Wall Street Journal. As of 2020, the e-commerce giant offered roughly “243,000 products across 45 different house brands” such as Amazon Basics and Goodthreads, but their sales figures have been disappointing. The company is facing scrutiny from lawmakers over charges that “it gives advantages to its own brands at the expense of others.” Sanctions: Russian oil sales to Asia fall Russia’s oil deliveries to China and India may have peaked, said Julian Lee in Bloomberg. Asian countries have been taking “more than half of all crude shipped from Russia” for dirt-cheap prices after Western sanctions cut off…

Nearly 9 percent of the world’s population is living in poverty, surviving on just $1.90 a day while struggling with food insecurity. Founded more than 70 years ago, World Neighbors (wn.org) aims to empower and train marginalized people to find long-term solutions to poverty, hunger, and disease. The charity works in 14 countries across Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia, offering programs in sustainable agriculture and rural livelihoods, community-based natural resource management, community and reproductive health, and gender equity. In Nepal, World Neighbors recently assisted rural women in organizing a cooperative that helps members save money and offer micro loans to one another. About 660,000 people in nearly 1,000 communities around the globe are currently participating in World Neighbors programs. Each charity we feature has earned a four-star…

Ezra Klein The New York Times Inflation may be at a 40-year high, but for ordinary Americans, the price of necessities has been rising dramatically for even longer, said Ezra Klein. “The median home price in 1950 was 2.2 times the average annual income; by 2020, it was six times the average annual income. Child-care costs grew by about 2,000 percent—yes, you read that right—between 1972 and 2007.” For much of that time, the nominal inflation rate was low. That’s because we’ve “papered over the affordability crisis with low prices for consumer goods.” Many Americans have been able to stay afloat by taking on ever greater levels of debt to pay for housing, medical care, and education. As “the material trappings of middle-class success became affordable to most,” the…

Ivana Trump helped build the Trump empire—and gave it its signature glitz. At Trump’s first hotel, the Grand Hyatt, she approved “every pillow, every table and chair, and every brass column.” At Trump Tower, it was Ivana who outfitted the building in pink marble and polished brass. The Trumps defined the ostentatious excess of the 1980s, and their divorce battle became a tabloid sensation. Ivana, who New York City’s chief medical examiner concluded died of an accidental fall down the stairs of her Upper East Side townhouse, would be married twice more, but she kept the Trump name. In a 2017 interview, she said she had a direct telephone line to Donald Trump in the Oval Office. “I don’t want to cause any kind of jealousy,” she said of…

In September 1981, Andy Warhol, Calvin Klein, Bianca Jagger, and 5,000 other VIPs received a 25-watt lightbulb in a box, sent from Mark Fleischman to announce “the relighting of Studio 54.” The reopening party forced the fire department to close the entire block. Fleischman had bought Manhattan’s hedonistic hot spot for $5 million from owners jailed for tax evasion, and soon A-listers and hangers-on were back at Studio 54—along with mountains of cocaine and quaaludes. It was, Fleischman later said, the “post-pill, pre-AIDS era of free love, consequence-free sex, and seemingly endless partying.” Fleischman was born in New York City, where his father “ran modestly priced hotels,” said The Times (U.K.). At age 10, Fleischman got to tag along with his party-loving parents to Manhattan’s Copacabana, where he was…