Innehållsförteckning för August 26, 2022 från The Week Magazine

Veteran journalist Mark Leibovich asked Sen. Lindsey Graham a few years ago why he went from calling candidate Donald Trump “a complete idiot” and a “race-baiting xenophobic bigot” to fawning over the newly elected president on frequent dates on the golf course. “If you know anything about me, it’d be odd not to do this,” Graham responded without a trace of shame. It was his nature, the senator explained, “to try to be relevant.” This affliction—the need to be relevant, important, on the inside—explains why so many Republicans have feigned admiration for Trump no matter what he says or does. Going to work in the august chambers of Congress has always been heady stuff; the prestige, status, and deference from others that comes with the gig is so intoxicating that…

Pitcher Kaiden Shelton was devastated when he accidentally struck a batter in the helmet during the Little League’s Southwest Regional Playoff last week. The batter, Isaiah Jarvis, brushed off the bruise and walked on to first base. But when he noticed Kaiden breaking down on the mound, shaken by his mistake, Isaiah gently approached Kaiden and wrapped his arms around him, telling him, “Hey, you’re doing great. Let’s go.” Kaiden’s teammates and coach joined Isaiah to embrace and comfort him, as the crowd erupted in applause. Lifeguard Natalie Lucas’ late July shift at a Colorado YMCA took a jarring turn when a woman suddenly collapsed on the pool deck. The 18-year-old rushed over and discovered that the woman, Tessa Rider, was going into labor. As Rider’s husband helped her push,…

A new contract between Minneapolis’ teachers union and school district states that in the event of layoffs, white teachers will be fired first. Seniority will be a primary factor in layoffs, but under the “educators-of-color protections,” there will be exemptions for any “member of an underrepresented population” to remedy “past discrimination.” Utah has seen a surge in payments of delinquent child support, following passage of a law that denies deadbeat dads hunting and fishing licenses. Since the law took effect, 2,959 licenses were denied to delinquent applicants, who subsequently coughed up $9.9 million in payments. A state official hailed the new strategy, saying that “in the child support world, it’s very hard to move the needle on collections.” In other news Border arrests drop, still set annual record Arrests along…

Jennette McCurdy hated being Nickelodeon’s poster child, said Ashley Spencer in The Washington Post. She co-starred on the hugely popular sitcom iCarly from 2007 to 2012, and later in a spin-off series opposite Ariana Grande. “There was this half of my life that was so cheesy and polished,” says McCurdy, 30, “and then there was this other part of my life that was so painful, and that part was going completely unseen.” She grew up poor in Orange County, Calif., and started acting because of her abusive stage mother, Debra, who dictated every aspect of McCurdy’s life. Debra, who battled breast cancer, gave McCurdy showers until she was 16, which included breast and vaginal exams—to check for cancerous lumps, she claimed. “I thought, ‘Oh, Mommy and me have a…

Amber Heard has hired a new legal team for an appeal of the $10.4 million defamation verdict awarded to ex-husband Johnny Depp, and will base the case on her free speech right to refer to herself as a victim of domestic abuse. Heard’s new team will be headed by Jay Ward Brown and David L. Axelrod (not the former Obama adviser), who recently successfully defended The New York Times against Sarah Palin’s claim of libel. In a statement, Brown and Axelrod said the Heard case has “important First Amendment implications for every American.” Depp sued Heard over a 2018 op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post in which she referred to herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.” Though she did not name Depp, the actor said the…

Bobby Ghosh Bloomberg The revelation that Iran offered $300,000 for the assassination of former national security adviser John Bolton should serve “as a sobering reminder” of “Tehran’s depravity,” said Bobby Ghosh. The Justice Department last week unsealed charges against Shahram Poursafi, a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), for allegedly putting out the reward for a hit on Bolton, and a second reward for killing former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The plan to kill two former top federal officials on U.S. soil was likely meant as retaliation for the 2020 drone strike that took out Qassem Soleimani, a top IRGC commander the U.S. had designated as a terrorist. Tehran has dramatically escalated its “international assassination campaign,” with plots against Israelis and the arrest last month of…

SOUTH KOREA Choi Hyun-joo JoongAng Ilbo Seoul wants to evict its most vulnerable residents from their semi-basement homes, said Choi Hyun-joo. The apartments, made famous by the Oscar-winning movie Parasite, have been inhabited since the 1970s, when a housing shortage led developers to turn banjiha, basement units built as war bunkers, into a “cheap haven for the poor.” But after a woman, her teenage daughter, and her sister with Down syndrome drowned in one in a recent flood, the inadequacy of such apartments sparked a national outcry. Horrified by the deaths, Seoul’s city government now says it will help the 200,000 or so people who live in the units transition to ground-floor public housing. That sounds like a good idea, but in fact it’s completely “unrealistic.” Authorities are offering the…

“Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without belief in a devil.”Eric Hoffer, quoted in The New York Times “One thing I have learned about attention is that certain forms of it are contagious.”Jenny Odell, quoted in The New York Times “We have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy.”John Maynard Keynes, quoted in The Atlantic “Depending on where we go from here, human intelligence may just be the stupidest thing that has ever happened.”Biologist Justin Gregg, quoted in The Wall Street Journal “I would have been a terrible mother because I’m basically a very selfish human being.”Katharine Hepburn, quoted in Forbes “It’s not interesting to be perfect.”Lindsay Lohan, quoted in Interview “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone…

Google’s green-bubble gripe Google badly wants Apple to smooth messages between Android and Apple phones and get rid of the “green bubble,” said Mike Snider in USA Today. Both Google and Apple have traditionally catered to text messages sent between users of the same operating system, iOS or Android, “allowing for features like higher-quality images, read receipts, text effects, enhanced security, reactions, and other benefits.” But messages sent between iPhones and Androids are rendered into clunky “green bubbles,” while images and videos sent with those messages are compressed and of poorer quality. Google set up a webpage on Android​.com last week pointing the finger at Apple for “refusing to adopt modern texting standards.” In the past, Apple has rejected changes, saying that Google’s messaging service doesn’t meet its privacy…

It has long been said that going for a walk after dinner can clear your mind. New research suggests a quick stroll after eating—even just two minutes long—can also improve blood sugar control and reduce the risk of developing heart disease and diabetes. Researchers from the University of Limerick in Ireland examined the results of seven studies on the effects of standing or walking after a meal, reports The Times (U.K.). All found that just a few minutes of strolling significantly improved blood sugar levels compared with sitting at a desk or the couch. Specifically, it prevented glucose levels from rising and falling too sharply, an important factor in both preventing and managing type 2 diabetes. Standing after a meal also helped blood sugar levels, but not to the…

Jamil Jan Kochai is the author of 99 Nights in Logar, a debut novel that was a 2020 PEN/Hemingway Award finalist. His new story collection, The Haunting of Hajji Hotak, focuses on Afghan characters in both Afghanistan and America. Hard Damage by Aria Aber (2019). This is the book I’ve been trying to press into everyone’s hands for two years. It’s a breathtaking poetry collection. The poems—about war, God, love, Afghan history, migration, and Rilke—will leave you goose-bumped and weeping. Inheritors by Asako Serizawa (2020). Beautifully written and philosophically complex, this heart-shattering collection of linked stories explores political violence, nationalism, memory, and loss as it follows multiple generations of a Japanese family scattered across the world. This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jelloun (2001). Perhaps the most…

3 If you’re looking for a cheerful contemporary album, “Reset is hard to beat,” said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. This collaboration between Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear) and Spacemen 3 co-founder Peter Kember (aka Sonic Boom) is “an experiment in uplift” that makes collages from looped samples of 1950s and ’60s pop songs. Lennox’s voice recalls Brian Wilson’s, and he makes the most of that Beach Boys echo across the record’s nine “effortlessly catchy” tunes. Meanwhile, Sonic Boom’s synths “float in and out, bringing a dizzy and disorienting edge to the predominant sweetness.” Beneath the fizzy music, though, lies “an undeniable darkness,” said James Rettig in Stereogum. As they rework some of the cheeriest music ever made, Lennox and Kember sing about a world “teetering…

Back to school… Amber Brown This winning new show for tweens follows a bright, artistic girl who shares video diary entries about the challenges of sixth grade and the effects of her parents’ divorce. Carsyn Rose is an instantly likable star in the making. Apple TV+ Abbott Elementary Let’s hear it for the teachers. Quinta Brunson’s comedy that shadows the staff at an underfunded Philadelphia school may be TV’s best sitcom right now. Binge the first season before a new season arrives next month. Hulu My So-Called Life Except for the abundance of flannel, this mid-1990s series feels as if it could have been made yesterday. Claire Danes, as 15-year-old Angela Chase, is a perfect avatar of teen angst. And no show made since has portrayed the trials of…

Routinery builds healthy routines around whatever daily tasks a user deems important. With its rigid scheduling and frequent reminders, the app fights procrastination by creating a sense of urgency, including about self-care needs such as taking regular breaks. Monday.com organizes your workload to help you easily stay on top of responsibilities. “Incredibly easy to navigate,” the mobile and web app displays clear deadlines and status updates for each assignment. The project-management tool also lets teammates monitor one another’s workflow. Lifesum, “one of the best fitness apps of 2022,” can help when ADHD encourages bad eating choices. It’s good for planning meals and drafting grocery lists, and more comprehensive than most dietary organizers. A boon to people who gravitate toward comfort foods, it tracks intake of fat, protein, and carbs to…

American Airlines agreed this week to buy 20 supersonic jets that can carry passengers at speeds roughly twice as fast as existing commercial aircraft, said Jackie Wattles in CNN.com. The deal with Boom Supersonic comes almost 20 years after the decommissioning of the last supersonic commercial plane, the Concorde. It will still be several years before Boom’s jets enter service; they have “yet to conduct a test flight.” The commitment from American follows one from United Airlines, which announced plans to buy up to 15 Boom jets last year. Workplace: Whole Foods fight over political slogans A labor fight at Whole Foods is becoming a battle over the right to free speech in American workplaces, said Josh Eidelson in Bloomberg Businessweek. The National Labor Relations Board has filed an administrative…

It’s tough to get an EV tax credit Electric cars are still unaffordable for most Americans, and new benefits offered in the Inflation Reduction Act may not really help, said Jack Ewing in The New York Times. “Soaring prices of commodities like lithium, an essential ingredient in batteries, helped raise the average sticker price of an electric vehicle 14 percent last year to $66,000.” To convert more gas-powered car owners, the Inflation Reduction Act includes a $7,500 tax credit for new EV purchases. Unfortunately, most EVs on the market today don’t meet the standard for “how much of the car’s battery must be made in North America with raw materials from trade allies” to qualify. Another tax credit of $4,000 for used EVs only “applies to those sold for…

Max Chafkin Bloomberg Businessweek For all the talk about “an end of an era in Silicon Valley,” some things don’t change, said Max Chafkin. The largest venture-capital check that Andreessen Horowitz has ever written was addressed this week to a home-rental startup called Flow. “It isn’t entirely clear what the company does,” or what Andreessen’s $350 million investment will do for it. But we do know a lot about the founder: Adam Neumann, the co-creator of WeWork, “the epically overvalued office-space startup.” Last we saw Neumann, he was walking barefoot around New York City after being fired as WeWork’s CEO amid allegations of weed smuggling and self-dealing. “For his next act, Neumann has been buying thousands of apartments in Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee, which Flow will manage.” Neumann’s WeWork…

Issey Miyake was a lifelong enemy of frippery. The Japanese fashion designer favored simple forms: Many of his clothes consisted largely of a single piece of draped or folded cloth. But his use of materials was blazingly original. He used a heat press to turn polyester—once considered too gauche for high fashion—into masses of pleats, like an accordion. One 1982 design featured a bodice woven with paper, rattan, and bamboo. “Material for clothing is limitless,” he said in 2001. “Anything can make clothing.” Born in Hiroshima, Miyake was just 7 when “he saw the flash of the atomic bomb” that wiped out the city, said The Guardian (U.K.). His mother soon died of radiation poisoning, and he developed a bone disease that left him with a limp. After studying…

This week’s question: Because of a system Ticketmaster calls “dynamic pricing,” tickets to a recent Bruce Springsteen concert cost as much as $5,500. What would you call a Springsteen song about a working-class hero who’s unable to afford tickets to his favorite band? Last week’s contest: Scientists at MIT have developed a stick-on patch that produces high-resolution images of the wearer’s internal organs—which they think one day can be transmitted to cellphones. What would you call a companion app to this revealing new medical invention? THE WINNER: “Withinstagram” Diane Larson, Beaverton, Ore. SECOND PLACE: “The Inner Selfie” Joanna Carr, Canaan, N.H. THIRD PLACE: “GutsApp” Hunter Burgan, Los Angeles 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…

Australian conservationist Paul de Gelder began working to preserve sharks after nearly being killed by one, said Michael Segalov in The Guardian (U.K.). De Gelder, 44, grew up terrified of sharks. “I was frightened of them in the bathtub,” he says. In 2000, he joined the Australian Navy, and found himself “traversing pitch-black, murky, shark-infested waters. I was petrified.” In 2009, he and his team were training in Sydney Harbor when a 10-foot bull shark came up underneath him. They briefly made eye contact. “Then it grabbed me in its jaw by the back of my right hamstring and my right hand—both in the same bite,” he says. “I said to myself, ‘You’re definitely not making it out of here alive.’” He managed to swim back to his team…

Noah Rothman Commentary magazine When conservative politicians and activists launched the “Boycott Disney” movement in April, it seemed that “a historic cultural moment was upon us,” said Noah Rothman. When the Walt Disney Co. criticized Florida’s law prohibiting classroom discussions of sexual- and gender-identity issues for young kids, the Right decided to punish the “woke” company for taking sides in the culture war. Conservatives were urged to cancel trips to Disney’s parks and cruises and subscriptions to its streaming channel, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis stripped Disney World of its status as a special district with the power to control taxation and services. But four months later, all that sound and fury has meant little. Disney last week reported “a staggering 72 percent increase in revenue from its parks year…

GERMANY Samira El Ouassil Der Spiegel Germany’s 9-euro train ticket experiment was a “huge social success,” said Samira El Ouassil, even if it wasn’t a boon for the environment. The taxpayer-subsidized unlimited train and bus pass—priced at about $9.25 in U.S. currency—was meant to encourage travelers to leave their cars behind as they coped with rising gas prices. The ticket did lead to more train travel: In June and July, the number of trips longer than 19 miles rose about 40 percent from the same time period in 2019, including a whopping 80 percent in rural areas. Yet “hardly anyone switched from the car to the train,” and the roads were just as clogged as ever. Some politicians argued that it wasn’t fair for drivers to subsidize cheap fares, ignoring…

Switching out table salt for low-sodium alternatives reduces risk for stroke and heart conditions, a new study shows. Salt, or sodium chloride, is key to the human diet but can raise blood pressure when consumed in excess. In substitutes, a portion of the sodium chloride in regular salt is replaced by potassium chloride. For the new study, researchers examined data from 21 clinical trials involving nearly 32,000 people around the world, reports The Guardian (U.K.). They found that using salt substitutes reduced blood pressure and heart-disease rates—and the results held regardless of age, sex, or weight. In a narrower analysis of 24,000 people, followed over a period of up to five years, they found that using salt alternatives cut the risk of early death from heart problems by 13…

(Knopf, $28) “It takes a certain élan to kill your actual protagonist on the first page,” said Leah Greenblatt in The New York Times. But that’s just one of many bold choices Tess Gunty makes in her “dense, prismatic, and often mesmerizing” debut novel, which reveals in its first line that one Blandine Watkins has “exited her body.” Blandine is a resident of a run-down apartment complex in a small Indiana city, and just the first of many neighbors we drop in on, including a fragile young mother obsessed with a classic sitcom and a sexagenarian widower trying to date online. Gunty’s writing throughout is “so rich with texture it can sometimes tip over into the too-muchness of a decadent meal,” yet “its excesses also feel generous.” It’s a…

Reward System by Jem Calder (FSG, $27) Judging by the young adults featured in Jem Calder’s interlinked stories, “generational zombification has been a largely smooth and painless process,” said Sam Sacks in The Wall Street Journal. Calder’s characters mindlessly outsource their thinking to various forms of AI, such as dating algorithms and email auto-complete functions. Real-life interactions feel comparatively awkward. In one story, a dating app “emerges as a kind of ghostly third character, guiding and manipulating everyone’s behavior.” The Digital Republic by Jamie Susskind (Pegasus, $29) Democracies need to get serious about curbing Big Tech, said John Naughton in The Guardian. But how? Jamie Susskind’s new book is mostly about specific steps that can be taken, which “may sound like a to-do list for policy wonks.” But Susskind…

3   “Megan Thee Stallion has had eeeenough,” said A.D. Amorosi in Variety. Rap’s reigning queen comes out swinging on the album that she’s presenting as her angry kiss-off to the label that’s trapped in her in a bitter legal battle. The piano- and expletive-heavy opener “NDA” establishes a tone of righteous indignation aimed at all foes, and from there, “you get hit with resentment’s every nuance.” But what makes this the 27-year-old’s “most fully realized recorded work to date” are the “tinges of sadness and disgust” that accompany her barbs. “She has a seemingly limitless supply of fantastic insults,” said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. The album’s “pugilistic” flow only falters when it grabs at radio-friendly pop, as with the “tacked-on” closer, “Sweetest Pie,” featuring Dua Lipa. Despite such…

The average annual cost of owning a new car has hit $10,738, surpassing $10,000 for the first time ever, according to auto club AAA. Tesla leads all car brands with the biggest price hike in 2022 (20.5 percent), according to Kelley Blue Book, ahead of Porsche (18.9 percent) and Honda (18.4 percent). Money.com Total job openings in construction hit 440,000 in April, the most in Bureau of Labor Statistics records going back to 2001. That’s opened a door for women: The number of female construction employees topped 1 million in May of last year, a first since data began to be collected in 1964. Bloomberg In July, 17.5 percent of deals made with builders on a new-construction home fell through, compared with 8 percent in April and 7.5 percent in…

American teenagers are experiencing a mental health crisis. From 2007 to 2019, the number of adolescents reporting a major depressive episode increased by 60 percent, while emergency-room visits for anxiety, mood disorders, and self-harm skyrocketed. The Jed Foundation (jedfoundation.org) is working to change that by prioritizing emotional health and suicide prevention for teenagers and young adults. The charity has three areas of focus: teaching life skills to encourage teens and young adults to seek help; working directly with high schools and universities to develop programs and policies that foster a culture of caring about students’ mental health; and mobilizing communities to reduce the stigma around mental health disorders. More than 4.8 million students around the country currently attend schools with Jed programs. Each charity we feature has earned a…

Good week for: Identifying the enemy, after scientists in Spain began naming heat waves to encourage the public to view them as seriously as they do storms and hurricanes. “Zoe,” the first named heat wave, recently broiled Seville with temperatures of 112 degrees. Accidental empires, after officials made an error that awarded a new homebuyer in Sparks, Nev., the title to 87 additional properties. Officials will ask the buyer to transfer the title back, but the buyer responded with a “no comment” and a smiley-face emoji. Abby, a 13-year-old poodle-hound mix that disappeared two months ago, after she was found alive, emaciated, and very hungry inside a cave in Missouri. “It’s amazing how she’s springing back already,” said her owner, Jeff Bohnert. Bad week for: Alec Baldwin, after an FBI…

Serena Williams isn’t yet at peace with her decision to retire from professional tennis, said Rob Haskell in Vogue. The U.S. Open in New York later this month is likely to be her final tournament, giving the 40-year-old icon one last shot at tying Margaret Court’s all-time women’s record of 24 grand slam titles. “There is no happiness in this topic for me,” Williams says. “I know it’s not the usual thing to say, but I feel a great deal of pain. I hate it.” Williams hasn’t been her overpowering self on the court since having her first child five years ago with her husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. “If I were a guy,” Williams says, “I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the…

Philip Bump The Washington Post The Democrats’ prospects in the November midterms have shifted “from bleak to blurry,” said Philip Bump. Six months ago, it looked as if the midterm elections would be “a robust Republican rout,” but polls show Democrats have pulled even with the GOP on a generic ballot of which party voters prefer for Congress. Statistician Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com site now gives the Democrats a 22 percent chance of holding the House, and a 62 percent chance of holding the Senate. President Biden’s approval ratings remain historically low, but have leveled off. What changed? Gas prices have plunged by $1 a gallon, and the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling overturning Roe may be a factor. In two recent special elections, Democrats “outperformed their 2020 vote share,” and…

“Future generations can’t vote in our elections, or speak across time and urge us to act differently. It’s easy to imagine that in the year 2300, our descendants will look back on us and deplore our failure to take their interests into account. And the stakes of this potential failure are incredibly high. Because of the sheer number of future people, and because their well-being is so utterly neglected, I’ve come to believe that protecting future generations should be a key moral priority of our time. When we consider which groups we’re neglecting, it’s all too easy to forget about most people who will likely ever live.” William MacAskill in The Atlantic…

BELGIUM Pascal Martin Le Soir Could Europe turn into a desert? asked Pascal Martin. The prospect was once thought to be a “disaster scenario,” but it’s happening right now. We’re in the thick of what could be the worst drought in 500 years. The lack of rain is harming tourism and drying up the source of the Moselle River, which is critically important to the farmlands of France and Germany. The drought has even uncovered “hunger stones” in some Czech and German rivers, used to mark the low water levels that preceded famines. One stone recently revealed along the Elbe dates from 1616 and reads: “If you see me, cry.” Experts believe Europe’s fertile lands are gradually being dried up permanently, from south to north, and becoming “poorer from year…

RUSSIA Andrey Kolesnikov The New Times Don’t blame and punish ordinary Russians for not overthrowing Vladimir Putin, said Andrey Kolesnikov. In its effort to penalize Russia for the grinding war against Ukraine, the West is holding all Russians responsible “for the sins of Putin and Putinists.” It is denying Russians visas and sealing off their opportunities for business and education in Europe and the U.S. From the outside, it may look as if most Russians support or at least “tolerate” Putin. But blaming Russian citizens for not “demolishing the Putin regime with their own hands” is like blaming Soviet citizens “for not toppling Stalin.” Soviet peoples, after all, were only able to bring down the USSR once “overthrowing had become a safe move,” after Mikhail Gorbachev had “loosened the political…

“The pandemic is over,” said Zachary Faria in the Washington Examiner, and it’s “time for government officials to catch up.” Last week, the Centers for Disease Control released updated Covid guidelines that essentially concede it is time to “go back to normal.” The CDC dropped recommendations that people stay 6 feet apart and that individuals quarantine if they are just exposed to someone with Covid. But the agency still recommends that people in areas with high community transmission wear a mask indoors. The previous guidelines had been “obsolete for more than a year now,” and as the agency itself noted, Covid is “here to stay.” With vaccines and effective treatments now available, there is “no need for the government to continue to dictate how people, especially children, live their…

This month marks the anniversary of America’s “disastrous” exit from Afghanistan—and a year later President Biden’s decision to end America’s longest war “looks even worse,” said Peter Bergen in CNN.com. After we’d spent 20 years and $2.3 trillion trying to install a democratic government there, Afghanistan “wasn’t Norway,” but it was a “somewhat functional, democratizing” state. Child mortality was dropping, an independent media gave Afghans real news, and women and girls freed from Islamic fundamentalist rule held jobs and attended school. All that progress “evaporated” when the U.S. pulled out and the Taliban seized the reins. The economy has cratered, and the U.N. estimates that half the population faces “acute hunger.” Meanwhile, al Qaida has returned to Afghanistan and is again plotting attacks from its “safe space,” said the…

(BenBella, $27) When Go Ask Alice was published, in 1971, it “struck with all the potent intimacy of a late-night confession,” said William Tipper in The Wall Street Journal. Purportedly the diary of a middle-class California girl who had become a drug addict at 15 and died just as she appeared to have escaped her downward spiral, the book became a publishing phenomenon and has never stopped terrifying parents and titillating teens. But is the diary real, or was it the invention of the middle-aged Mormon writer who eventually claimed responsibility for having ushered it into print? With Unmask Alice, author Rick Emerson aims to resolve the mystery, and though he can’t prove that the diary was wholly fabricated, “he leaves the reader in little doubt.” Go Ask Alice…

Marianne Wiggins might never have finished her sweeping new novel without family aid, said Lorraine Berry in the Los Angeles Times. The author of Evidence of Things Unseen, a 2003 National Book Award finalist, had nearly completed a draft of Properties of Thirst six years ago when, at 68, she suffered a massive stroke. For a time, she lay paralyzed. But as she slowly recovered, her daughter, Lara Porzak, began reading it to her in the hope that hearing the words might help restore her ability to speak. Eventually, Porzak volunteered to help finish the novel—a three-year process that required Wiggins to dictate each line rather than write in longhand. “I’ve worked decades by myself,” she says. “I don’t want somebody around me. I needed somebody around me.” Properties…

3   On this long-anticipated collaboration, Black Thought “reaffirms himself as one of the best rappers alive,” said Andrew Sacher in Brooklyn Vegan. The Roots’ frontman and the super producer Danger Mouse first teased a joint album back in 2006, when Danger Mouse and his partner in Gnarls Barkley scored a huge hit with “Crazy.” Unsurprisingly, Black Thought’s “fiery, hard-hitting” verses pair well with Danger Mouse’s “sample-heavy” beats, constructed from “bits of chopped-up psychedelic soul.” The record’s “impeccable” guest list includes Run the Jewels and the late MF Doom, and “every rapper involved rises to the occasion,” because “you can’t share a track with Black Thought and not bring your A-game.” Too often, the 50-year-old MC’s voice is buried in the “admittedly lush” backing tracks, said Joe Gross in Rolling…

Compelling wines at or under $20 are getting “harder to come by,” said Eric Asimov in The New York Times. Supply chain issues have thinned the options at many reliable wine stores, but there are still “intriguing, distinctive” bottles to be found. Below are three that may inspire you to seek out similar values. 2020 Rioja Orlegi de Luberri ($15). This “light, easygoing” expression of rioja is “fresh, fruity, and well-balanced.” It’s mostly tempranillo, with a touch of the white grape viura. 2021 Chateau le Payral Blanc Sec ($15). From Bergerac, a coastal neighbor to Bordeaux, this biodynamic white blend is “lively, earthy, and tart, with a flavor of honeysuckle.” 2021 Domaine Zafeirakis Limniona Rosé ($17). A “fruity, herbal, and unexpectedly complex” rosé, this wine showcases Greece’s rediscovered limniona…

Jodi Kantor and Arya Sundaram The New York Times Workers used to watch the clock. Now “the clock is watching them,” said Jodi Kantor and Arya Sundaram. Workplace productivity monitoring is “already ubiquitous” at low-paying jobs, like those of warehouse workers, grocery cashiers, and delivery drivers. Counting keystrokes is not even unusual anymore “among white-collar jobs and roles that require graduate degrees.” Employers say the technology can reward industrious workers and punish the derelict ones. But workers are pushing back against oversight they perceive as “demoralizing” and “humiliating.” One employee was asked to explain to a manager why his workplace monitoring software, Monitask, kept showing his scores drop during one 10-minute increment. “Sometimes I have to use the bathroom,” he said. Another complaint is that the software used to…