Innehållsförteckning för May 19, 2023 från The Week Magazine

When former police officer Stephen Spainhouer rushed to the scene of a mass shooting at an Allen, Texas, outlet mall last week, he came upon a battlefield. Bloody, torn bodies were scattered on the ground next to the dead killer and his assault rifle. A little girl seemed to be hiding next to a bush, but when Spainhouer turned her over, “she had no face.” He tried performing CPR on other victims, but “the injuries were so severe there was nothing I could do.” (See Talking Points, p.16.) Hours later, cellphone images of the disfigured dead began circulating on Twitter. No mainstream publication, including this one, would publish such photos, for many reasons: the need for family consent; preserving the dignity of the dead; the sensibilities of readers. But by…

Texas lawmakers have introduced legislation to train schoolchildren as young as third grade in “battlefield trauma care.” Doctors and some parents expressed skepticism that 8-year-olds can apply tourniquets and chest seals to gun wounds, but Democratic state Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins says that training students in “bleeding control” is worthwhile if it can even “save one life.” North Dakota’s state legislature was so distracted by battles over abortion, transgender care, and book bans that it passed the wrong version of its annual budget, says Democratic state Rep. Corey Mock. Mock says the sheer number of culture-war bills “forced our attention onto other matters.” House Majority Leader Mike Lefor said it was “simply a clerical error” that led members to vote on the wrong bill. In other news Walensky departs as Covid…

Tom Hanks didn’t know how to respond when he found himself targeted by a QAnon conspiracy theory, said Chris Heath in The Atlantic. Hollywood’s nice-guy actor, 66, was flabbergasted to discover that QAnon adherents named him as being one of the celebrities involved in a satanic child sex trafficking ring run by Democratic politicians. Hanks initially was worried—until the absurdity of it sunk in. “I’m going to say for about 45 minutes, I was undone by this,” he said. “And on the 46th minute, I said”—he laughs—“ ‘Oh, f---. I’m going to fight this?’” Last October, when a QAnon believer broke into Nancy Pelosi’s home and bludgeoned her husband Paul with a hammer, the man included Hanks on the list of people he wanted to attack next. Hanks received…

Meghan Markle skipped the coronation of her father-in-law, King Charles III, last week because she wanted to “protect her peace,” according to biographer Omid Scobie. Markle opted to stay home in Montecito, Calif., to celebrate the fourth birthday of her son, Prince Archie, while her husband, Prince Harry, made a brief appearance at the ceremony in London. Harry, who saw many family members for the first time since the publication of his explosive memoir, was seated in the third row at Westminster Abbey, next to his uncles Prince Edward and Prince Andrew. Hours after the service, Harry caught a British Airways flight to California in time for Archie’s birthday. Scobie said Markle knew that if she attended, “the spotlight” would be on her—stirring up more resentment among the royals…

Matt Ford The New Republic It should surprise no one that Clarence Thomas decided not to report millions of dollars’ worth of gifts from conservative activist Harlan Crow, said Matt Ford. Through his tenure on the court, Thomas “has consistently voted to make it easier for wealthy Americans to influence the political system.” Last week, we learned that in addition to treating Thomas to lavish international vacations and buying and fixing up his mother’s home, Thomas’ billionaire buddy Crow paid the $50,000-a-year private boarding school tuition for Thomas’ grandnephew—whom the justice raised as a son—and gave $500,000 to a conservative group that employed Thomas’ wife, Ginni. In ruling after ruling, Thomas has insisted that corporations and people like Crow have a First Amendment right to anonymously give unlimited sums…

A pair of sisters trying to locate a manta ray tour on Hawaii’s Big Island followed their GPS directions and drove straight into the water. “It was so confidently done,” said a witness who saw the tourists drive their Dodge Caravan down a boat ramp and into the harbor. “They were still smiling.” The passenger escaped out a window, while onlookers jumped in to help the driver out of the van and back to shore. GPS-induced mishaps at the harbor had occurred before, said a state spokesperson, adding, “If you see a body of water, don’t drive towards it.” Residents of Old Bridge, N.J., were flummoxed after about 500 pounds of spaghetti, ziti, and elbows were found dumped next to a creek in a residential area. The pasta had been…

INDIA Praveen Verma The Indian Express The revolt by top women wrestlers against the head of the wrestling federation should “shine a light on the toxicity” of guru-disciple culture, said Praveen Verma in the Indian Express. About a dozen athletes have accused Brij Bhushan Singh, head of the Wrestling Federation of India and an influential politician with the ruling Hindu nationalist party, of sexually exploiting women and girls in the sport. At the root of that exploitation is the guru tradition in Indian sports, which is bound up in “patriarchy, misogyny, and casteism.” Aspiring wrestlers typically leave home at a young age to live and train with gurus, and the relationship is very close and very hierarchical. In women’s wrestling, the role of the guru is even more important, because…

“Patience is not simply the ability to wait. It’s how we behave while we’re waiting.” Joyce Meyer, quoted in Parade “Better slip with foot than tongue.” Benjamin Franklin, quoted in The Boston Globe “Time can’t be measured in days the way money is measured in pesos and centavos, because all pesos are equal, while every day, perhaps every hour, is different.” Jorge Luis Borges, quoted in The New York Times “I see the church as a field hospital after battle. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds.” Pope Francis, quoted in Catholic Review “Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.” Mark Twain, quoted in Men’s Journal “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.”…

Apple’s dangerous ‘recovery key’ You can’t recover your Apple account if thieves have stolen your recovery key, said Nicole Nguyen and Joanna Stern in The Wall Street Journal. Thieves have been known to steal iPhones after watching their owners tap in the passcodes. Some criminals have used those codes to enable “a hard-to-find Apple security setting known as the ‘recovery key.’” Apple introduced the 28-digit recovery key in 2020 as another way to allow users to regain control if their phone has been hacked. But thieves who have stolen your phone and know your passcode can also change the recovery key—locking you out of your Apple account, possibly permanently. One Apple user who had his recovery key stolen even offered to fly to Apple’s headquarters to prove his identity,…

As global temperatures rise, big birds are producing fewer chicks, reports Scientific American. An international team of researchers looked at offspring data from more than more than 100 species of birds over the past 50 years, a period when the planet has warmed by almost 1 degree Celsius. They found that 57 percent of the species were having fewer babies than before—particularly larger birds and those that migrate. The researchers think that’s because those species already tend to have fewer chicks, and the chicks take longer to mature, meaning there is more time elapsed between generations, slowing the birds’ ability to adjust to environmental change. Many nonmigratory species, by contrast, were having more babies, which suggests they are adapting more easily to climate change. In species that raise more…

John Wray is the acclaimed author of Lowboy and five other novels. In his latest, Gone to the Wolves, a teenager falls for a fellow death metal fan, turning their coming of age into a unique love story—like the unique love stories Wray recommends below. First Love and Other Stories by Ivan Turgenev (1860). Is there any more literary subject than first love? I’d say not—and Ivan Turgenev, Russian literature’s great romantic, would have agreed. First Love was his favorite of his own works, dearer to him than Fathers and Sons. He claimed to have taken it directly from his own life. It’s achingly beautiful, magnificently sad. The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen (1938). This is first love as tragedy—nowadays one might call it trauma. Portia, a lonely 16-year-old who…

Belasco, New York City 2 “To understand performers, you have to see them in action,” said Jackson McHenry in NYMag.com. Will & Grace’s Sean Hayes, now 52, has just scored a Tony nomination for his turn as troubled mid-century talk-show wag Oscar Levant, and he has earned the honor. Levant once was on a four-hour furlough from a mental ward when he appeared on the Tonight show, and as Doug Wright’s play revisits the attendant drama, it feels purpose-built for Hayes. Besides displaying “old-fashioned comic timing” and piano chops, he gets at “something deep” about tortured artists. A soaring climax nearly redeems the show’s slow start. The ending struck me as merely odd, said Greg Evans in Deadline. Much of what precedes it simply reminds us who Levant was. “Whether…

“For years, the only boxed wines that I’ve felt good about recommending came from two importers,” said Eric Asimov in The New York Times. Boxed wines “make an enormous amount of sense” if you care about the planet, but only France’s Wineberry and From the Tank could be counted on for quality. Fortunately, the options are growing. Ryme Cellars Fox Hill Vineyard Sangiovese-Friulano ($72). That price translates to $18 a bottle—not bad for a “juicy and vivacious” organic California blend. 2020 Neleman Wine Book Red ($29). A great value, this red blend from Valencia, Spain is bright, fresh, and “full of red fruit flavors.” 2021 Schplïnk! Grüner Veltliner ($29). This refreshing Austrian white has that “herbal, grassy” quality you look for in a grüner.…

Participate in ‘No Mow May.’ Holding off on lawnmowing can help bees and other endangered pollinators, because food sources are scarce when the insects emerge from hibernation and need to feed their young. They feed on clover, dandelions, and other small flowering plants that pop up in lawns. Designate no-mow zones. Any patch of flowering plants can help, so if you’re uncomfortable letting your lawn get high, designate a patch, and encourage variety by adding wildflower seeds. Mow high through July. Mowing with your mower deck set at 4 inches or higher might be the best option for many homeowners. Even 3.5 inches is enough to leave clover and many other blooms intact, and your grass will be better able to withstand the hot summer months if it’s allowed to…

This week’s question: Residents of a New Jersey town recently discovered a dumping ground of 500 pounds of rain-softened spaghetti, ziti, and elbow macaroni next to a creek. If this vast ridge of pasta were a geographical feature, what should it be called? Last week’s contest: Belgian officials destroyed a shipment of Miller High Life beer because the slogan “Champagne of Beers” violates EU laws requiring anything labeled “champagne” to come from France’s Champagne region. Please come up with a new slogan Miller can use that doesn’t violate this rule. THE WINNER: “The Beer That Champagne Wishes It Was” Byron Boyd, Savannah SECOND PLACE: “The Beer That Made France Jealous” John Sullivan, West Babylon, N.Y. THIRD PLACE: “Tastes Great, Less French” Jeff Morris, Alexandria, Va. For runners-up and complete…

Oakland A California task force approved recommendations last week to repay Black residents for past injustices at a cost to the state of as much as $800 billion. The plan, announced in Oakland, endorsed direct payments to many of California’s 2.5 million Black residents to compensate for health-care disparities, aggressive policing in the war on drugs, and redlining experienced as far back as 1933. Calculations would be based on harms suffered and the length of time lived in California; the economic damage of redlining, for instance, would be compensated at $3,366 a year. A 71-year-old lifelong Californian could be eligible for as much as $1.2 million. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who created the task force in 2020, declined to endorse its recommendations, saying, “Dealing with legacy is about much more…

John Wenzel is one of the few World War II veterans who are still alive, said Michael Wilson in The New York Times. The 100-year-old Brooklynite was a fighter pilot who earned a Distinguished Flying Cross, an Air Medal, a Silver Star, and two Purple Hearts. But for decades, he stashed them away along with his memories of the war. “There was no place to talk about it,” he says. “I didn’t bring it up.” After enlisting at 19, he was trained to fly a P-47 Thunderbolt fighter-bomber. By April 1945, he was flying several attack missions each week over Austria and Italy. During one over Zocca, Italy, a German shell burst near his cockpit. His neck bleeding, he returned to the base but immediately set off again to…

Josh Kraushaar Axios Moderates are rapidly becoming extinct in American politics, said Josh Kraushaar. The base voters of the two major political parties “are gravitating to the extremes,” and the few officeholders who occupy the center are becoming outcasts. In the U.S. Senate, centrist Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) “are facing long odds returning after 2024,” with Democrats denouncing them as traitors. Both now poll poorly against prospective opponents. Meanwhile, President Trump “is barreling his way to the Republican nomination,” which will only deepen polarization. The 18 relatively moderate House Republicans from districts that President Biden won in 2020 “will face existential danger” in 2024. In North Carolina, the state Supreme Court recently gave a green light to extreme gerrymandering—which may mean that several moderate North…

MOLDOVA Mircea V. Ciobanu Gazeta de Chisinau Why is Moldova still celebrating a Soviet holiday? asked Mircea V. Ciobanu. For decades, we’ve been marking the end of World War II not on May 8, as most of Europe does, but on May 9, the date it was in Moscow in 1945 when hostilities ceased in Europe. We call it “Victory Over Fascism Day” like the Russians do, but “what are we celebrating,” exactly? May 9 is not the day the Red Army drove the Nazis off our territory—that had happened the year before. Instead, it’s effectively the day an imperialist Soviet Union took our lands from Romania and subjugated us along with much of the rest of Eastern Europe, extinguishing the hope of democracy for the next 50 years. So,…

Learning a second language in youth may help stave off dementia. That’s the conclusion of a new German study, which found that older people who had spoken two languages daily when they were 13 or older had higher scores on language, memory, focus, attention, and decision-making abilities compared with their monolingual peers. The study group consisted of 746 people between ages 59 and 76. About 60 percent were patients at memory clinics, while the rest had no reported memory issues. On all the tasks they completed, such as spelling words backward and following three-part commands, the bilingual subjects did better, reports NextShark. Neuroscientists aren’t sure how being multilingual helps the brain, but one theory is that people who switch between two languages frequently develop neural pathways that aid in…

(Grove, $32) Abraham Verghese’s new best-seller is a sprawling epic that recalls Charles Dickens and George Eliot, said Jenny Bhatt in NPR.org. Surprisingly, “the literary feats in The Covenant of Water deserve to be lauded as much as those of such canonical authors.” Verghese, a physician whose first novel was 2008’s Cutting for Stone, “writes with such singular detail and restrained precision” that 700-plus pages fly by, and “it’s a pleasure to be swept along.” In 1900, a child bride marries a widower who owns 500 watery acres in a fictional coastal village in South India. She’ll become the matriarch of a family we’ll follow until 1977 while Verghese also works in the recent history of Indian medicine. “This is populist writing, ambitious in plot but not in character,…

The Peking Express by James M. Zimmerman (PublicAffairs, $30) “So extraordinary are the events recounted in The Peking Express that it reads like fantasy,” said James Kynge in the Financial Times. In 1923, a train carrying dozens of American and European luxury passengers was derailed by bandits in northeast China. After a shoot-out, 28 foreigners were taken hostage, creating an international crisis that the hijackers hoped would trigger the fall of the Chinese government. Zimmerman has remarkable characters to work with, and “after a slightly ponderous opening, his narrative really takes off.” Carmageddon by Daniel Knowles (Abrams, $28) Daniel Knowles isn’t the first author to lay out all the ways that cars make our lives worse, said Allison Arieff in the San Francisco Chronicle. But the well-traveled Economist reporter…

3 Ed Sheeran has been through a lot lately, said Chris Willman in Variety. Last year, one of his best friends died at 31 of a heart attack. Soon afterward, Sheeran’s pregnant wife had a brush with cancer. The “very pretty” new album he created while coping with his grief and anxiety represents “as sharp a left turn into themes of death and depression as any pop superstar has ever made.” His lyrics, admirably, put no sugarcoating on his somber thoughts, yet the heartache “goes down easy” when he’s singing “melodies so lilting, you’d swear you’ve heard them before.” This is “easily his best album,” said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. Who knows, though, if fans will agree. “Sheeran’s crowd-pleasing excesses are nowhere to be seen,” and the record’s second…

AI: Friend or foe? After Yang Most stories about artificial intelligence present the technology as a menace. This powerful 2022 film flips the script. Justin H. Min plays Yang, an adult android purchased to be a companion to a couple’s adopted Chinese daughter. When Yang breaks down, the family grieves, but surprise discoveries in Yang’s memory bank help the trio move on. YouTube Ex Machina In Alex Garland’s brilliant 2014 sci-fi drama, a young programmer is invited to his boss’ isolated home and develops romantic feelings for a humanoid named Ava. That sets up a horrifying twist. HBO Max A.I.: Artificial Intelligence Steven Spielberg’s underrated 2001 drama gives the tale of Pinocchio a futuristic update: A childlike android, played by Haley Joel Osment, seeks to become a real boy…

Troupe makes it easy to plan a vacation with friends or family. “You create your trip, invite your crew, and you’re up and running.” The message board on the free iOS app allows participants to share ideas, submit feedback, and manage dates, destinations, and lodging. A poll function democratizes the process. Pluto, another iOS app, uses Pinterest-style pinboards to compile points of interest and provide inspiration. “From the opening screen, there’s a feeling of calm and control.” Wanderlog “can manage every aspect of a trip.” Users can create a trip itinerary, track expenses, organize flight and hotel reservations, and plot routes on a map. Invite others to collaborate, or simply share your plans. TravelSpend focuses on tracking and dividing shared expenses. “You can set up a budget, split bills, settle up payments, and…

Inflation showed continued signs of moderating in April, said Augusta Saraiva in Bloomberg. “The consumer price index rose 4.9 percent from a year earlier, the first sub–5 percent reading in two years,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this week. It’s the 10th consecutive month the CPI has declined, although overall prices remain elevated compared with pre-pandemic levels. But “several key elements of inflation showed moderation,” including grocery and shelter costs, suggesting “a year’s worth of interest-rate increases” is working to slow the economy. The report could give the Federal Reserve room to pause rate hikes. Apple: iPhone sales beat expectations Strong iPhone sales drove another better-than-expected quarter for Apple, said Kif Leswing in CNBC.com. Apple’s overall revenue dropped 3 percent in the quarter ended April 1, hurt by a…

Colleges create financial aid confusion The toughest test for college-bound students may be just understanding their financial aid letters, said Paulina Cachero and Francesca Maglione in Bloomberg. According to a report from the Government Accountability Office, “more than 90 percent of schools either understate the net price of attendance or don’t include it in financial aid letters.” When they do, the language can be difficult to decipher. Nearly two-thirds of schools don’t label whether the financial aid they’re offering is federal, state, institutional, or private, even though all contain differences in “what money needs to be repaid, what doesn’t, and what requirements must be met to ensure the aid keeps flowing.” It’s common for schools to withhold information about costs like housing and books. And comparing offers poses another…

Dave Lee Bloomberg Uber will regret if it finishes off its rival Lyft once and for all, said Dave Lee. “The latest round of company earnings showed Uber thriving—gross bookings were up 19 percent year-on-year, customer growth up 13 percent—while Lyft is merely surviving.” Lyft’s market share fell to roughly 24 percent in March, the same month its co-founders Logan Green and John Zimmer stepped down from their executive positions. “Now might be the time for Uber to strike” and use its position as the “800-pound gorilla” in the market to squash its rival. But Lyft’s demise “would do Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi few favors,” and he knows it. Uber’s and Lyft’s claim—thus far upheld by voters and the courts—that drivers are “independent contractors” and not employees loses credibility “if…

Good week for: Giraffes, which exhibit a surprising range of “complex statistical skills” in finding food, according to University of Barcelona scientists. These skills, researchers said, may enable giraffes to better “identify from a distance which trees have the best proportions of leaves and flowers.” Multiplying, after actor Robert DeNiro, 79, revealed he had become a father for the seventh time, this time with girlfriend Tiffany Chen. The pregnancy, DeNiro noted, was “planned.” Drinking alone, after an Australian woman, Lillian Ip, survived five days lost in the Australian outback by eating candy and drinking a bottle of wine that she’d intended as a gift for her mother. “I thought I was going to die there,” said Ip, 48, who ordinarily doesn’t drink. Bad week for: Leon Botstein, president of New…

Geneva After three years of a pandemic that claimed the lives of an estimated 20 million people, the World Health Organization has officially declared the end of the Covid-19 emergency. WHO officials said, though, that lifting the emergency declaration does not mean the pandemic is over—or that its larger effects will stop being felt. “Covid-19 has been so much more than a health crisis,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “It has eroded trust between people, governments, and institutions, fueled by a torrent of myths and misinformation. It has laid bare the searing inequalities of our world.” The official worldwide count of Covid deaths is about 7 million, but the WHO said the true number should be measured in the 20 million excess deaths since the pandemic began in…

Lucinda Williams grew up amid chaos, said Jim Farber in The Independent (U.K.). The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter’s mother drank heavily and was mentally ill, and underwent electroshock therapy. When Williams was 3, her mother locked her in a closet in their Louisiana home because she couldn’t handle caring for her. Williams grew accustomed to seeing her mother behaving bizarrely, especially on her “bad days.” Williams’ father, poet Miller Williams, gently tried to help her understand what was happening. “If my mother was having a particularly hard time, he would say, ‘It’s not her fault. She’s not well,’” said Williams, now 70. She learned not to expect maternal care. “After a certain point, I didn’t depend on her for anything.” Her father had his own issues: When Williams was a teenager,…

Chris Stirewalt The Dispatch Former President Trump’s opponents are making a “perilous assumption” that he’s “unelectable,” said Chris Stirewalt. Democrats and some never-Trump Republicans have convinced themselves that after a fluke Electoral College victory in 2016, Trump proved in 2020 and 2022 that he’s national-election poison. Their theory is that while Trump’s grip on the GOP base remains strong, nominating him in 2024 virtually guarantees that President Biden will be re-elected. But a new Washington Post/ABC News poll suggests Trump might not be so “easy to beat.” It shows Trump leading Biden by 7 points in a hypothetical rematch. Granted, “it’s just one poll,” but consider that 63 percent of respondents, including 21 percent of Democrats, think Biden lacks the “mental sharpness” to serve effectively, while 69 percent of…

“If the coronation [of King Charles] proved anything, it’s that a great number of people in Britain are incredibly talented, albeit at skills that were last useful in the 18th century. Did you know, for example, that there are such things as ‘drum horses,’ which the riders steer with reins attached to their feet? We’ve also got heraldic trumpeters, master embroiderers, and someone who can fix the suspension on a gold coach. If you need a ‘unicorn pursuivant’ at short notice, Britain has you covered. Who knew so much brocade existed? The overall vibe was ‘Disney on acid.’” Helen Lewis in The Atlantic…

IRELAND David Graham The Irish Times Ireland is dramatically less Catholic than it used to be, with just a third of us professing to be regular churchgoers. So why are our kids still being indoctrinated sat school? asked David Graham. A decade after the government announced it would end “private religious control of publicly funded education,” the Catholic Church still runs nearly 90 percent of public schools. And those schools are still giving the kids a Catholic education, even though many Irish children nowadays come from secular families or have immigrant parents who practice different religions. The schools claim that parents can opt their children out of religious instruction, but parents say that right is “illusory.” The opt-out children remain in the classroom during those lessons, absorbing the information anyway,…

MEXICO Juan Ignacio Zavala Yo Influyo Mexico ended one-party rule back in 2000, said Juan Ignacio Zavala in Yo Influyo, but now we fear the return of “a dictator” in President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the populist known as AMLO. Two weeks ago, in a “grotesque” display of raw power, AMLO rammed 18 bills through the Senate with almost no debate, even as opposition members protested by occupying the chamber. The new laws expand the military’s powers in myriad ways, including by funneling grant money to military projects and by allowing the military to operate a commercial airline. This all comes after he recently passed a law gutting the agency that administers Mexico’s elections—the very body that helped us transition to multiparty democracy. Perhaps this should not have come as…

“Americans are more lonely and socially disconnected than ever”—and their isolation poses “a serious threat to their physical and mental health.” That was the urgent warning last week in a new report from U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, said Dylan Scott in Vox. Murthy’s report found that half of U.S. adults report experiencing loneliness, while only 39 percent feel “very connected” to others. Americans spend a growing amount of time alone and have fewer social connections—half say they have three or fewer close friends, and just 16 percent say they feel very attached to their local community. Among 15- to 24-year-olds, the time spent with friends dropped nearly 70 percent from 2003 to 2020. The effects of this social isolation are profound. It’s correlated not just with depression and…

“Making people uncomfortable can now get you killed,” said Roxane Gay in The New York Times. We’ve seen proof of that all over America in recent weeks, and last week, there was another fear killing—this time, on a New York City subway. Jordan Neely, 30, mentally ill and homeless, boarded a crowded train and began screaming that he was hungry, thirsty, “fed up,” and “ready to die,” shouting, “I don’t mind getting life in prison.” A white Marine veteran, Daniel Penny, jumped up and wrestled the Black man to the ground and held him in a chokehold for more than 10 minutes. A bystander video shows Neely struggling before going limp, but Penny maintained his grip despite being warned Neely might be dying. Penny, 24, is under investigation but…

(Penguin Press, $30) When journalism became a mad chase for online traffic early this century, “few of us really knew the rules,” said Dan Kois in Slate. Back around 2008, Gawker and BuzzFeed were at the vanguard of a revolution in which the winners were going to be the sites brash enough to grab the most eyeballs and the old guard was already playing catch-up. Ben Smith, who became the founding editor of BuzzFeed News in 2011, has now written a book that attempts to capture the rise and fall of that entire era through the experiences of Gawker honcho Nick Denton and BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti, and, honestly, “quite a bit of that story ends up in the book.” I was chasing traffic elsewhere when Denton and Peretti…

Author Stephen Marche is getting a head start on the AI revolution, said Elizabeth A. Harris in The New York Times. His latest book, the novella Death of an Author, was mostly written by ChatGPT and two other AI programs, which explains why the work is credited to Aidan Marchine, a pen name. Marche insists the programs didn’t write the novella alone. “I am the creator of this work, 100 percent,” he says. “But, on the other hand, I didn’t create the words.” Marche, a journalist and novelist, has been writing with and about AI since 2017, and has learned how to coax good results from it. He agreed to create a murder mystery using his methods when he was asked to by former Slate editor Jacob Weisberg, whose…

This versatile salad, inspired by chaat, the savory South Asian street snack, begins with seasoned chickpeas fried in oil, said Laura Russell in Milk Street magazine. “Feel free to swap tomatoes or mango for the cucumber, or use some of each for the most variety of color, texture and flavor.” Optional garnishes include plain yogurt and sliced jalapeños. 1 English cucumber, quartered lengthwise and cut crosswise into ¼-inch pieces • kosher salt and ground black pepper • 15½-oz can chickpeas, rinsed, drained, and patted dry • 2 tbsp cornstarch • ¼ cup neutral oil • 2 tsp curry powder • 1 tsp grated lemon zest, plus 2 tbsp lemon juice • 1 cup roughly chopped fresh mint or cilantro, or a combination In a colander set over a medium…

Parlux Eco-Friendly 3800 Durable, easy to handle, and “powerful but quiet,” this Italian hair dryer is designed for efficiency and built with recycled materials. The narrow nozzle helps with focused styling and the multiple settings include a cool-shot option. $245, parluxus.com Source: NYMag.com CHI Tech Travel Hair Dryer “Small but mighty,” this foldable dryer keeps hair looking great by employing a ceramic heater for even heat distribution and producing negative ions to seal cuticles. The concentrator attachment produces “ultra-sleek blowouts.” $43, amazon.com Source: InStyle GHD Helios Our testers’ all-round favorite is also “the fastest hair dryer we’ve tested,” beating even a Dyson. Its advanced drying performance requires a slight sacrifice in hair volume and body, but it’ll have you out the door in 60 seconds. $279, asos.com Source: TechRadar…

Founded in 1977 by a small group of musicians to nurture the discovery and appreciation of music from small ensembles, Chamber Music America (chambermusicamerica.org) now also supports and promotes new work in a range of musical styles. Originally devoted to the classical canon, the organization has commissioned new pieces for almost 40 years, and in 1999 expanded to include jazz. Chamber Music America distributed $1.4 million in funding in 2022, covering grants for dozens of music creators and performers around the country. Last year’s grants went to projects ranging from the Catalyst Quartet’s recordings of important Black composers to Israeli-born trombonist Reut Regev’s progressive jazz-soul to the percussion and piano work of the Pathos Trio. Each charity we feature has earned a four-star overall rating from Charity Navigator, which…

Michael Grabell ProPublica The intercontinental journey of a humble tire helps illustrate why inflation is still so sticky, said Michael Grabell. The average price of tires has risen 21.4 percent over the past two years. There have been a lot of bumps in the road between customers in the U.S. and the “latex dripping out of a rubber tree in Southeast Asia.” Natural rubber supplies were severely crippled by the Covid-19 pandemic, which shut down borders and closed factories. Modern tires are also made with synthetic ingredients like carbon black, a powder that gives tires their strength and color. Russia was the world’s second-largest exporter of it, and after the invasion of Ukraine, “factories scrambled to secure a supply,” causing its price to double. Pandemic-related shipping backlogs sent U.S. shops…

Harold Kushner taught millions how to make sense of loss. In 1966, the rabbi’s 3-year-old son was diagnosed with progeria, a rare and fatal genetic condition. The boy died 11 years later. Drowning in grief, Kushner questioned how there could be a God when the world held so much suffering. But he wrote through his pain, and the resulting When Bad Things Happen to Good People, published in 1981, became a best-seller. “What I felt was a deep, aching sense of unfairness. I had always tried to do what was right,” Kushner said. “If God existed, if He was minimally fair, let alone loving and forgiving, how could He do this to me?” Born in Brooklyn, Kushner “was a passionate Brooklyn Dodgers fan,” said The New York Times. He…