Innehållsförteckning för March 17, 2023 från The Week Magazine

Back in 1735, newspaper printer Peter Zenger was charged with “seditious libel’’ for articles that accused the colonial governor of New York of corruption, stupidity, and incompetence. Zenger was acquitted in a jury trial that laid down a crucial foundation for free speech later incorporated into the Constitution. Nearly 300 years later, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies want to go back over the same ground and erode this country’s long tradition of press freedom. The Florida legislature is now getting ready to pass two bills that would make filing libel suits easier, especially for public officials—an echo of the seditious-libel laws that made the American colonists indignant. It’s a continuation of the “opening up the libel laws” idea that Donald Trump often mooted but never acted on. The…

Good week for: Suing Elon Musk, after the Twitter CEO mocked fired employee Haraldur Thorleifsson, saying he used his muscular dystrophy as an “excuse” for why he “did no actual work.” After Thorleifsson explained how the worsening disability has affected his ability to type, Musk apologized and offered him his job back. DIY titles, after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle unilaterally awarded their 2-year-old daughter a royal title at her christening, calling her Princess Lilibet Diana. The royal family had no comment. A glimpse of the truth, after a newly revealed text in the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News showed Tucker Carlson saying in 2021 he hoped to soon “ignore” Donald Trump, adding, “I hate him passionately.” Bad week for: Useful idiots, after Fox News’ Sean Hannity aired an interview…

London Britain’s King Charles III has evicted Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, from their old house near Windsor Castle, royal sources told The Times (U.K.) this week. The couple were given use of Frogmore Cottage as a wedding gift and paid nearly $3 million to renovate it. After they stepped down as working royals in 2020 and moved to California, they continued to use the house when visiting London. The king, though, reportedly rescinded the gift after Harry released his tell-all memoir, Spare, this year. Now, Charles wants his brother Prince Andrew, who was stripped of royal duties three years ago over his association with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, to move from his home at the palatial Royal Lodge to the humbler Frogmore. Andrew…

Paris Hilton says her ditzy reality-TV persona was just an act, said Emily Maddick in Glamour. “I’m not a dumb blonde,” says Hilton, 42, “I’m just very good at pretending to be one.” The great-granddaughter of hotel magnate Conrad Hilton, the heiress became a teenage socialite and eventually the star of the reality series The Simple Life, which debuted in 2003, the year her sex tape leaked. Soon Hilton’s ex-boyfriend sold a longer version of the tape, which made her a global star. “Because of one night, I am going to be judged for the rest of my life,” she says. When she meets new people, she says, she worries they already assume she’s “a slut.” Hilton says the sex tape was particularly painful in light of abuse she…

Noah Rothman National Review Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot will leave the scene with one “historic achievement,” said Noah Rothman. She became “the first incumbent mayor in 40 years to lose re-election” in Chicago, which is dominated by the Democratic machine. When Lightfoot took office four years ago, she was celebrated as the city’s first Black woman and first gay mayor. But in last week’s Democratic primary she finished third with 17 percent, failing “even to secure enough votes to advance to a runoff election.” Why? Homicides and crime surged in 2020 and 2021, yet arrest rates “fell off a cliff,” as police feuded with Lightfoot and pulled back on enforcement. With street shootings, robberies, and burglaries soaring, many corporations fled Chicago, including Boeing, Tyson Foods, and Citadel. Rampant, organized…

“What if Mike Pence had said yes? What if he had done exactly what Trump demanded: block the certification of the 2020 election or even overturn the result entirely and purport to award the presidency to Trump? In that moment, American peace and unity depended on the force of will of one person, a man who stood up to a president, to the lawmakers in his own party who challenged the election, and to the howling mob that was crying out for his head. And where are we now? Has the fever passed? Not by a long shot. America is in the grips of a simply staggering amount of partisan animosity.” David French in The New York Times…

ITALY Carlo Bonini La Repubblica Dozens of people are dead because Italian authorities chose to treat a desperate boatful of migrants as a security threat rather than a rescue operation, said Carlo Bonini. The migrant boat that capsized last month just off the Calabrian coast carried nearly 200 men, women, and children, and only about 80 of them survived. These families, many of them Afghans fleeing the brutality of the Taliban regime, “were sentenced to death by a security bureaucracy that is turning the Mediterranean Sea into a cemetery.” Italian authorities working for Frontex, the European Union’s border security agency, “bureaucratically baptized” the vessel as unrecognized and then decided it was safely above the waterline. When they did deploy rescue craft, their boats could not handle the stormy conditions and…

TURKEY Justin Marozzi The National (UAE) The earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria last month not only destroyed thousands of lives, said Justin Marozzi, but also devastated the region’s rich architectural heritage. The monuments and mosques damaged include precious examples of Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman history, and while the loss of life is always felt most deeply, “the loss of cultural patrimony also leaves deep wounds.” The 2,000-year-old castle from Roman times that once loomed magnificently over the Turkish city of Gaziantep now lies in ruins, and so does the 17th-century Sirvani Mosque nearby. At least half of Antakya, the ancient city once known as Antioch, was destroyed, while in Diyarbakir, another UNESCO World Heritage site, many buildings collapsed. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a shock: Modern Turkey can’t build earthquake-resistant…

Republicans have already decided that the Covid-19 pandemic was caused by a virus that escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, said Hayes Brown in MSNBC.com. So it was with great jubilation that they seized on a new Department of Energy analysis that supports the lab-leak theory. You can expect Republicans to claim the DOE assessment is a game-changer when they launch House subcommittee hearings this week into the origins of Covid. But the DOE’s assessment isn’t “the smoking gun” Republicans wish it to be. Based on new intelligence, the DOE made its judgment with “low confidence,” joining the FBI in concluding that the virus most likely leaked from a Chinese lab. Most scientists and four other U.S. intelligence agencies who’ve studied the outbreak support an alternative theory—that SARS-CoV-2…

Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams argues that Black people are the real racists, said Lucian K. Truscott IV in Salon, and an alarming number of white people seem to agree. In a recent YouTube “rant” calling for resegregating society, Adams, 65, claimed he had proof of “so-called reverse racism”: just 53 percent of Black respondents to a recent poll agreed with a statement popularized by far-right extremists on a 4chan internet group: “It’s ok to be white.” The reluctance of Black people to endorse this statement makes them a “hate group,” Adams said, urging his fellow whites to “just get the hell away.” Hundreds of newspapers responded by dropping Adams’ once popular workplace satire. But Adams is hardly alone in claiming that white people “are the victims of racism, not…

A new stand-alone gadget connects any smartphone to a satellite network for out-of-range texts, said Umar Shakir in The Verge. Satellite connectivity for phones is all the rage after Apple debuted its Emergency SOS feature with the iPhone 14 last fall. Now British rugged electronics maker Bullitt “is stuffing trendy emergency-response satellite tech into a Motorola-branded Bluetooth keychain accessory.” The new $99 Motorola Defy Satellite Link connects to geostationary satellites; unlike Apple’s SOS feature, it allows text messaging in addition to the emergency SOS beacon. In case your phone is dead, the keychain has a physical “check-in button” that can send a simple SOS and location information. Service is not cheap: a $149 annual bundle gets you 30 messages each month.…

What do polar bears in the Arctic have in common with plankton in the Pacific, cardinals in Atlanta, and crocodiles in South Africa? The answer, says The New York Times, is that they have all been contaminated with the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS. That’s the conclusion of a new study into the spread of the chemicals, which are used in thousands of everyday products such as nonstick cookware and waterproof clothing, and which have been linked to cancers, developmental problems, and other health issues. To assess the prevalence in wildlife, researchers looked at more than 100 studies from around the world. They found that PFAS had been discovered in hundreds of species, including scorpions, pandas, turtles, horses, wild boar, otters, and oysters. “We were like, ‘Holy smokes, this…

(Broadside, $35) “Who actually is Ron DeSantis?” asked Andrew Egger in The Dispatch. The Florida governor remains “somewhat elusive” as a personality even as he has emerged as the most formidable potential challenger to Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. So it’s disappointing that DeSantis’ best-selling new memoir, “even by the standards of campaign autobiographies,” turns out to be “highly parsimonious” with details about the author’s early life and political formation. It does mention he was raised in a blue-collar Florida home and played baseball at Yale. But it devotes most of its energy to attacking elites. On that score, the book “manages to stand out for pure venom.” The book makes DeSantis’ political character easy to read, said Chris Lehmann in The Nation. “At virtually every…

BookTok has a new poster child, and he’s a retired 74-year-old Vermont lawyer, said Kyle Melnick in The Washington Post. Lloyd Devereux Richards hadn’t even heard of TikTok when his daughter, Marguerite, asked last month if she could post a video of him to boost sales of the crime thriller he had finished writing more than a decade earlier. Stone Maidens had sold only a few dozen copies when it was published in 2012 by an Amazon subsidiary. But his daughter’s 16-second video went viral, gathering 1 million views overnight and rocketing Stone Maidens to the No. 1 slot on Amazon’s best-seller list. Apparently, viewers were moved by Marguerite’s framing: She showed a scruffy-haired Lloyd in his writing attic, used a version of John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy” as a…

4 De La Soul’s music is finally streaming, said Ben Sisario in The New York Times. The influential rap trio from Long Island, N.Y., “all but created the subgenre of alternative hip-hop.” In 1989, as gangster rap was beginning to dominate the genre, De La Soul took “an unapologetically nerdy approach to rapping” and broke ground with “an eclectic, freewheeling sampling style.” Sadly, the scores of samples on each album led to copyright conflicts that rendered the group’s landmark work inaccessible on streaming services. “All this has finally been rectified,” said Oliver Wang in NPR.org. The core trio—Posdnuos, Maseo, and the late Trugoy the Dove, who died in February—spent a year and a half sifting through their first six albums and re-recording certain snippets. Start with their “consistently irreverent” 1989…

The Economist Fears that robots are coming for our jobs are not new, said The Economist. So far, they have never materialized. In fact, quite the contrary. Today, “labor markets across the rich world are historically tight —and getting structurally tighter as societies age.” There are two jobs open for every unemployed American, the highest rate on record. The immediate problem isn’t too much automation, but too little. Occupational robot usage has been on the rise, but adoption is still low, especially in the West. South Korean firms “employ 10 manufacturing workers for every industrial robot.” The figure in America is 25–40 to 1. Overall, in 2020, the global industrial robot business was just $25 billion. “People spent more on sex toys.” Office automation hasn’t been any different. In theory,…

Wayne Shorter’s playing was instantly recognizable. With a low-gloss tone on tenor saxophone and a brightness on soprano, the jazz musician and composer won 12 Grammy Awards in a career that spanned more than 50 years. He was a major force in several of the greatest jazz groups of the 20th century: In the 1950s he played in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, in the 1960s he joined the freewheeling second Miles Davis Quintet, and in 1970 he co-founded the jazz fusion band Weather Report. He also played on 10 Joni Mitchell albums and collaborated with Steely Dan. Through all these projects, he never let tradition box him in. “The word ‘jazz,’ to me,” he said, “only means ‘I dare you.’” Born in Newark, N.J., young Shorter “was captivated by…

What happened Congress blocked Washington, D.C.’s controversial Revised Criminal Code Act this week, as Democrats sought to balance support for D.C. home rule with fears of being seen as soft on crime. The bill had become a flashpoint in debates over crime, and an increasing number of Senate Democrats voiced opposition. President Biden said that he would not veto efforts to reverse it, breaking with the party’s history of supporting D.C.’s self-determination. With homicides up 40 percent and carjackings increasing, opponents argued this is not the time for revamping a 122-year-old code by reducing sentences for violent crimes. Even D.C.’s Democratic mayor, Muriel Bowser, vetoed the bill. The D.C. Council overrode her veto, but last month, 31 House Democrats joined Republicans in voting to overturn the bill, and the…

New York City police are now asking people to remove their face masks before entering stores. Some city residents still wear masks indoors, but amid a surge in robberies and shoplifting by masked criminals, NYPD Chief Jeffrey Maddrey said shoppers should at least briefly bare their faces for security cameras as a “sign of safety to store workers.” A lawmaker in Montana wants to ban Covid-vaccinated people from donating blood. State Rep. Greg Kmetz’s bill would make it a crime to donate blood containing “novel mRNA or DNA pharmaceutical biotechnologies.” About two-thirds of Montanans have been vaccinated, and critics say the bill would devastate Montana’s blood supply. But Kmetz said anti-vaxxers “are the people that put me in this office.” In other news White House mulls family detentions The Biden…

Judy Blume has helped young readers come of age for more than 50 years, said Amy Weiss-Meyer in The Atlantic. Many of her 29 books, which have sold more than 90 million copies, describe puberty-age kids grappling with kissing, sex, breast size, or getting their first period. This has made Blume a favorite target of would-be censors. Last year, the right-wing group Moms for Liberty tried to ban Blume’s novel Forever… from public-school libraries because it tells of high school seniors who fall in love, have sex, but don’t stay together. A Christian group in Texas targeted another Blume novel for mentioning masturbation. Blume has often said that growing up shouldn’t be “a dirty subject.” Over the decades, she’s answered thousands of letters from young readers seeking guidance. The…

Former Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway and her never-Trump husband, George, are “in the final stages of an amicable divorce” after 22 years of marriage, they announced last week. Kellyanne, 56, served as Trump’s campaign manager in 2016 and held a senior role in the White House, while George, 59, an attorney and Republican fundraiser, became one of Trump’s most prominent and relentless conservative critics, calling the 45th president “racist” and mentally ill. Trump labeled George a “husband from hell.” In a 2022 memoir, Kellyanne said she considered George’s attacks on her boss a betrayal of their marriage, accusing him of “cheating by tweeting.” In August 2020, one of their four children posted about her parents’ turmoil on social media, and shortly afterward, Kellyanne left the White House and…

Max Boot The Washington Post The U.S.’s two political parties may agree on only one major issue, said Max Boot. It’s that China is the enemy—and that the U.S. should confront Beijing “with the hardest of hard lines.” At a hearing last week by the new House Select Committee on China, both chairman Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and ranking minority member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) and all four witnesses described China as such a growing threat that we must wean ourselves off trade, “decouple” our economies, and brace for war over Taiwan. Now, it’s absolutely true that Beijing is building up its military with an eye toward invading Taiwan. But the CIA cautions that an invasion is not “inevitable.” Continued dialogue and diplomacy may head off a confrontation that could badly…

The National Park Service issued some unusual advice for visitors fleeing a bear attack: “Never push a slower friend down,” the service tweeted, “even if you feel the friendship has run its course.” The tweet prompted hundreds of comments, including one from a user asking what someone should do if you are the slower friend. “Check in on the friendship before you head to the woods,” the NPS advised. A Chinese company is selling a remote kissing device with silicone lips that allows long-distance lovers to share virtual smooches. The $38 device, which connects to a smartphone, uses sensors to mimic the pressure and movement of the kisser’s lips. Inventor Jiang Zhongli said he was inspired by a long-distance relationship with a girlfriend. He’s selling about 100 of the devices…

MEXICO Stephanie Henaro El Economista The revelation that Mexico’s top law enforcement official was working for the Sinaloa drug cartel has poisoned the U.S.-Mexico relationship, said Stephanie Henaro. Genaro García Luna was convicted last month in a New York court of taking millions of dollars in bribes. As head of Mexico’s equivalent of the FBI, García Luna worked hand in hand with the DEA and other U.S. officials for years, ostensibly cracking down on the cartels yet actually helping Sinaloa annihilate its rivals. His conviction has torpedoed cooperation between the two countries’ governments, and now Mexico “is shaping up to be the piñata” for all sides to whack at in the next U.S. presidential election. Two Republicans in Congress have proposed a shocking bill that would allow the U.S. Army…

“The story of the human race is war. Except for brief and precarious interludes, there has never been peace in the world, and before history began, murderous strife was universal and unending.” Winston Churchill, quoted in Commentary “Nothing is as permanent as a temporary government program.” Milton Friedman, quoted in Slate “If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” Steve Jobs, quoted in Dataquest (India) “Always behave the way you want your children to behave.” Emily Post, quoted in Inc. “Virtue is the attempt to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is.” Iris Murdoch, quoted in The New York Times “Live not for battles won. Live not for the-end-of-the-song. Live in the along.” Gwendolyn Brooks, quoted in the Los…

Advertisers flee from Twitter Data from Twitter insiders confirms a dramatic decline in Twitter advertising since Elon Musk completed his takeover of the social network, said Alexander Saeddy in The Wall Street Journal. Twitter’s revenue for December was 40 percent lower than the numbers for December 2021. The large drop in sales and adjusted earnings stemmed from the fallout “after many advertisers ditched the social-media platform” following Musk’s contentious arrival. Twitter took in $1.57 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021, and “advertising represented 90 percent” of its business. According to the research firm Sensor Tower, “more than 70 of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers from before Musk’s takeover weren’t spending on the platform” at the end of February. Nintendo looks for a next act Has Nintendo finally hit “peak…

Mpox, the virus formerly known as monkeypox, is rarely fatal in healthy people. But new research shows that in people with advanced HIV, the mpox virus is often deadly. Researchers tracked 382 adults across 28 countries who harbored both infections. They found that those with low CD4 cell counts—a marker of how much HIV has affected the immune system—were more likely to suffer from severe mpox illness, with a death rate of about 15 percent. In those with the lowest counts, it was almost 30 percent. The nature of the disease was also different, with large lesions appearing all over the body rather than just smaller ones at the site of exposure. But HIV-positive people with healthy CD4 levels, whose viral load was less or was being kept in…

In Liam Callanan’s new novel, When in Rome, an American weighs taking up with an old flame versus joining an Italian convent. Below, the author of the best-seller Paris by the Book recommends six other books set in Italy’s Eternal City. Rome and a Villa by Eleanor Clark (1950). Eleanor Clark went to Rome to write a novel and came back with this ethereal book instead. It’s part travelogue, part history, part memoir, and altogether wonderful. When you’re in Rome, she writes, “you walk close to your dreams”—a line I found so resonant to my own experience, I used it for the epigraph of my new novel. Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World by Anthony Doerr (2007). Doerr,…

2 Morgan Wallen has returned with a 36-song album, “and unfortunately, it’s damn good,” said Nicholas Hautman in the New York Post. The pop-country star didn’t try very hard to make amends when a camera caught him drunkenly uttering the N-word in 2021, the same year his album Dangerous began a nearly uninterrupted two-year run in Billboard’s top 10. But Wallen shows “an admirable sense of self-awareness here.” The 29-year-old “wastes no time acknowledging his flaws,” including his weakness for drink, and “man, does his story make for one hell of an album.” Three dozen songs is too many, though, and Wallen “seems to have lost a great deal of energy as a singer,” said Sam Sodomsky in Pitchfork. A few pared-down tunes “accentuate his gift for delivering tugging, bittersweet…

The Coldest Case in Laramie (Serial/New York Times) Though the latest Serial podcast doesn’t solve a murder, “it does demonstrate how an insistent desire for answers can lead us so very far away from the truth,” said Laura Miller in Slate. In 1985, college student Shelli Wiley was fatally stabbed in her Laramie, Wyo., apartment, which was set on fire. Many close to Wiley believed the culprit was a neighbor, ex-cop Fred Lamb, who in 2016 was charged before the case against him was dropped. Seeking answers, reporter and former Laramie resident Kim Barker returned to the city and secured a “stunning” level of access. Yet what she uncovers only makes the case murkier. “Barker is excellent: dogged but fair,” said Miranda Sawyer in The Guardian. “The podcast becomes…

Chile’s Casablanca and Leyda valleys are starting to be recognized for producing world-class sauvignon blanc, said Jesica Vargas in Wine Enthusiast. Both regions have granite-rich soil and are cooled by the Pacific Ocean’s Humboldt current, resulting in wines of vibrant acidity and minerality that rival New Zealand’s best. 2021 Morandé Estate Reserve ($14). A great value, this Casablanca wine balances creamy exotic fruit flavors with “refreshing acidity” and “subtle chamomile notes.” 2020 Viña Marty Goutte d’Argent ($18). “Delicate aromas of honey, peach, and quince” lead the way in this “subtly citrusy” Leyda Valley wine whose stone-fruit flavors get a crisp finish. 2021 Garces Silva Amayna ($26). Leyda’s “electric acidity” enlivens this wine, which offers aromas of lime and green peas, notes of peach and citrus, and a saline finish.…

“LBJ would be proud,” said Clayton Maxwell in Texas Monthly. The small Hill Country hometown of our 36th president still has only 1,700 residents, but it “quietly hums,” providing a crossroads stop worth planning for. Named for Lyndon B. Johnson’s grandfather and founded in 1879, the county seat is home to ranch families that date back generations, but also to a growing number of artists, winemakers, and scrappy business owners. Rusted 1880s silos in the middle of town now house “a small but excellent” science museum, and bikers from across Texas swoon over the “two-wheeled beauties” at the Texas Vintage Motorcycle Museum. Good tacos are “never out of reach,” thanks to a few excellent food trucks, including Cast Iron Punk and others that share a pavilion at West Main Streatery.…

Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell warned this week that the fight against inflation isn’t over, said Jeff Cox in CNBC.com. In a Capitol Hill appearance, Powell cited data which indicated that “inflation has reversed the deceleration it showed in late 2022” and suggested that rates “are likely to head higher than policymakers had expected.” After ramping up its benchmark fund rate eight times last year, the Fed eased up slightly last month, issuing only a quarter-percentage-point increase. Following Powell’s warning, traders increased bets that the Fed would deliver a higher half-point increase in March. Airlines: U.S. seeks to block JetBlue-Spirit merger The Justice Department filed a lawsuit this week to block the merger between JetBlue and Spirit Airlines, said Niraj Chokshi in The New York Times. The carriers agreed to…

Tax status: Happily separate A growing number of married couples are finding savings through separate tax return filings, said Laura Saunders in The Wall Street Journal. One factor likely boosting the trend is the income-driven loan repayment program for student loans. Borrowers in this program pay a percentage of their monthly income, and the remaining debt may be forgiven after a term of years. This incentivizes couples to “file separately to lower their income.” Not all states require filers to use the same status for the state return as the federal one. One couple “reaped substantial savings by having one spouse file separately for Illinois” while the other, who is retired, claimed residence in Florida. “They filed jointly on the federal return.” One downside: “Married couples filing separately can’t…

Tyler Cowen Bloomberg “Why should a major corporation invest in more office space if a lot of that space will be used only part-time?” asked Tyler Cowen. The question seems relevant after Amazon’s decision last week to pause construction on its second headquarters in northern Virginia, four years after the company had held a nationwide bidding war for the right to accommodate its $2.5 billion office complex. Since the pandemic, workers have stated they don’t intend to resume their office-bound lifestyles. “It is worth thinking about how this trend will affect” not just big businesses but regional evolution as well. Numerous U.S. cities—like Austin, Miami, Nashville, and Boise, Idaho—have pointedly made themselves more “business-friendly” in recent years, offering tax breaks and other incentives to lure companies to relocate. However, “even…

When a B-52 crashed in North Carolina, the military turned to Jack ReVelle to recover its payload, said Jeremy Markovich in his NC Rabbit Hole substack. His heroism stayed classified for decades. On a cold, wet day in January 1961, Lt. Jack ReVelle climbed out of a muddy hole in the ground, holding a rough, gray sphere the size of a volleyball against his chest. For the better part of a week, he and his crew had been digging in the swampy ground outside of Goldsboro, N.C. It had been raining and snowing, and the hole had grown to be larger than a football field. Jack was just 25 years old, but he was in charge. When he and his men finally found what they were looking for, Jack was the…

In 1897, 20 Black infantrymen cycled through 1,900 miles of snowy mountains and blistering plains to test whether the Army could form a bicycle corps. The grueling journey, which stretched from Montana to St. Louis, was nearly lost to history until cyclist Eric Cedeño decided to follow in the soldiers’ path for the expedition’s 125th anniversary. The 49-year-old completed his feat last July—with some luxuries such as air-conditioned breaks. “They rode in uniforms and carried heavy rifles on their backs,” he said. “These guys were almost superheroes.” As a teenager, Tony Gemignani captivated crowds at his brother’s Castro Valley, Calif., pizzeria by performing intricate tricks with dough, including throwing it 15 feet into the air. More than three decades later, Gemignani has become a renowned “pizza acrobat”—yes, that’s a competitive…

Rebecca Gomperts has gone to extraordinary lengths to help women terminate pregnancies, said Poppy Noor in The Guardian (U.K.). A Dutch physician, Gomperts has even parked a boat in international waters outside of countries such as Poland to perform abortions. Her work has become hyper-relevant to Americans since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June. “People became much more fearful,” Gomperts says. “That is really damaging. It means that when people need to look for care, they are delayed, because they’re afraid. And that is a situation that we see everywhere in the world where abortion is really strictly forbidden.” In recent years, Gomperts’ organization, Aid Access, has shipped the two pills commonly used to end pregnancies—mifepristone and misoprostol—to people in countries where abortion is outlawed. A…

Amanda Marcotte Salon When is a man dressed in drag not a criminal? asked Amanda Marcotte. When he’s an elected Republican official. Last week, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee “signed a broad law meant to ban drag in public, claiming it’s a threat to children.” He did so after photos surfaced of Lee cavorting as a high school student in a female cheerleader’s short skirt, pearls, and a wig, “in full view of underage people, no less.” His drag performance, Lee insisted, was meant to be “lighthearted.” Photos emerged of another supporter of criminalizing drag, Republican Texas state Rep. Nate Schatzline, performing in a dress, which he called “a joke for a theater project.” Apparently, “their drag doesn’t count because they’re straight.” The breathtaking Republican hypocrisy on moral matters is…

FRANCE Simon Kuper Financial Times (U.K.) France may be the biggest beneficiary of Brexit, said Simon Kuper. When the U.K. was still in the European Union, London was the natural site for international companies looking for a European headquarters, because it was a global financial center with an English-speaking elite. But now that Britain is no longer an EU member, Paris is the first choice, and France is getting the foreign direct investment that the U.K. once did. The changes are palpable. The city that just two decades ago still felt like “the capital of the 19th century” is now “eating into London’s big lead in banking and tech.” Paris has far more high-speed train routes than London and is building nearly 200,000 new suburban homes. And at long last,…

The popular sweetener erythritol appears to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. Erythritol is a low-calorie sugar alcohol that occurs naturally in some fruits and vegetables and is often used to sweeten keto foods, sometimes paired with stevia (such as under the brand Truvia) or monkfruit. In a new study, researchers looked at data from more than 4,000 people in the U.S. and Europe and found that the 25 percent with the highest levels of erythritol in their blood were twice as likely to suffer heart attack and stroke as the lowest quartile. The team cautions that more research is needed, not least because the study participants had a relatively high prevalence of cardiovascular disease. But they say these initial findings raise concerns, particularly given the increasing…

(Flatiron, $28) Like its setting, Melinda Moustakis’ debut novel is “luminous and fierce,” said Anne Valente in The Chicago Review of Books. The year is 1956, and Korean War veteran Lawrence has just claimed 150 untamed acres in the Alaskan wilderness, intending to clear the land, build a home, and raise crops. He meets and swiftly proposes to 18-year-old Marie, who shares his desire to stake a claim in the world but is less withdrawn. As the couple’s story unfolds over three difficult years, “Moustakis’ language is spare and exquisite, tough and lovely,” said Claire Luchette in The New York Times. “The sentences build on themselves, becoming expansive and staggering in their sweep.” Tested by cold, want, wolves, pregnancy, and competing desires, Marie and Lawrence slowly build something lasting…

The Laughter by Sonora Jha (HarperVia, $28) “To say The Laughter is just a campus novel is to vastly undersell it,” said Rafael Frumkin in The New York Times. Narrated by a white professor who lusts after a younger Pakistani peer, the book “captures the clueless voice of a privileged man to intense comic effect.” But as our narrator feigns solidarity with protesting students who want the curriculum decolonized, Jha creates “hair-raising suspense” in scene after scene, each one “infused with the anxieties of a democracy on the brink of collapse.” Couplets by Maggie Millner (FSG, $25) Maggie Millner’s debut work tells an unconventional love story in unconventional style, said Kristen Millares Young in The Washington Post. It unfolds as a series of poems in which the narrator recounts…

3 Time to dim the lights and spark some candles, said Jem Aswad in Variety. Kali Uchis’ “lush” third album is focused on romance, and while the Colombian-American singer’s music continues to swirl together elements of R&B, neo-soul, Latin pop, and hip-hop, Red Moon in Venus specializes in sultry mood pieces. “It’s a lavish, luscious hot tub of an album, conjuring visions of plush feather beds, fluffy pillows, and bubble baths.” Uchis’ take on romance “isn’t all sunshine and roses,” said Maura Johnston in Rolling Stone. The 28-year-old issues cutting kiss-offs in “Hasta Cuando” and “Moral Conscience.” Her “full-spectrum approach to songcraft” also results in “a wholly satisfying examination of emotionalism in its many forms—romantic, carnal, self-preserving.” Though this record doesn’t have the swagger or stylistic variety of 2018’s Isolation,…

More lives of the artists… All the Beauty and the Bloodshed Photographer Nan Goldin, always a risk-taker, put her career on the line when she decided to shame museums into exposing the role played by a family of major art patrons in fueling America’s opioid crisis. Laura Poitras’ Oscar-nominated documentary, available March 19, offers a stirring portrait of the artist. HBO Max Ursula von Rydingsvard: Into Her Own Von Rydingsvard builds huge wooden sculptures that appear at once organic and otherworldly. To watch her at work in her Brooklyn studio is a reward in itself. Better is also hearing her describe how the work emerges from a life that began in World War II refugee camps. Tubi Pat Steir: Artist Steir was an abstract artist at a time when…

The 25 highest-earning hedge-fund managers made $21.5 billion in 2022, the third-highest figure after 2020 and 2021. This works out to an average of about $860 million each. The seven highest earners all made more than $1 billion, led by Citadel’s Ken Griffin at $4.1 billion. Institutional Investor Forty-nine percent of U.S. large-cap active equity funds outperformed the S&P 500 last year, up from 15 percent in 2021. Over a 20-year period, however, 95 percent of the actively managed funds lagged the market. Bloomberg U.S. daters are collectively spending $117.4 billion annually looking for love, or $1,560 per person per year, up 40 percent in the past decade, according to Match Group. The Hustle Some 74 percent of consumers said they had experienced a product or service problem in the…

For two decades, the Wikimedia Foundation (wikimediafoundation.org) has ensured free access to more than 45 million articles in approximately 300 languages through Wikipedia, the internet’s encyclopedia. Established in 2003, the nonprofit has more than 300,000 volunteer editors and hosts more than 10 virtual projects, including Wikimedia Commons, a public domain photo repository, and Wiktionary, a collaborative lexicon. Besides providing the technical infrastructure for the distribution of online content, the foundation also supports individuals through several grants, including the Wikimedia Community Fund, for projects that promote knowledge equity. Next May, the nonprofit will host its 10th annual Wiki Workshop, a virtual forum that brings together researchers from around the world to exchange ideas. Each charity we feature has earned a four-star overall rating from Charity Navigator, which rates not-for-profit organizations…

This week’s question: The National Park Service recently tweeted advising park visitors not to “push a slower friend down” if a bear is chasing them. What real or invented term could be used to describe this extreme form of self-preservation? Last week’s contest: A Miami art show attendee accidentally knocked over a $42,000 Jeff Koons balloon-dog sculpture, shattering it to bits. If the art world’s king of kitsch were to present the remnants of the dog as a new work, what should he name it? THE WINNER: “Man’s Burst Friend” Dave Grossman, Petaluma, Calif. SECOND PLACE: “Cur Plunk” Sandra Law, Elkhorn, Wis. THIRD PLACE: “Pick of the Litter” Kharin Mishan, South Pasadena, Calif. For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go to theweek.com/contest. How to enter: Submissions should be…