78 Articles

‘Do not obey in advance.” In his classic book On Tyranny, that is historian Timothy Snyder’s first rule for resisting a slide from democracy into authoritarian rule. Most of the power that autocrats accumulate, he warns, “is freely given” out of fear and resignation. We are now seeing that phenomenon come to life as Donald Trump and Elon Musk attempt to seek total, unfettered, and blatantly unconstitutional control of the federal government. “Real power,” Trump once said, “is fear.” His second coup attempt has deeply frightened much of Washington, the nation, and our allies. Even as their constitutional authority is stolen, congressional Republicans have turned into a herd of cowed lickspittles. Owners of major media organizations such as ABC, CBS, and Facebook are settling nuisance “bias” lawsuits by making multimillion-dollar…

4 min.

Musk launches offensive on government agencies

What happened Elon Musk seized control of crucial federal agencies and functions with startling speed this week, commandeering the Treasury Department’s payment system, dismantling the world’s largest humanitarian aid agency, and sidelining officials who attempted to stand in his way. Democrats, watchdog groups, and civil service unions were stunned at the unprecedented power flex by the unelected billionaire and his team—an initiative called the Department of Government Efficiency—which challenged Congress’ authority and potentially violated numerous laws. “Elon Musk is seizing the power that belongs to the American people,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Almost the entire 10,000-person workforce of USAID, which delivered $1.9 billion in food aid in 2023, was put on leave after DOGE shuttered the agency’s headquarters and seized its computer system. Musk called the agency “a viper’s nest…

1 min.

What next?

Musk is now targeting the agency that manages thousands of federal worksites across the U.S., said Meg Kinnard and Joshua Goodman in the Associated Press. Regional managers for the General Services Administration last week received an order from GSA headquarters—where a Musk associate “has been embedded”—to begin terminating leases on “all of the roughly 7,500 federal offices nationwide.” That order seems to contradict Trump’s return-to-office mandate, but suggests the administration thinks there will soon be far fewer federal employees. Musk’s blitz has “set off a legal counteroffensive,” said Mattathias Schwartz and Charlie Savage in The New York Times. FBI agents, labor unions, and other groups have filed a “raft of lawsuits” challenging his efforts to purge agencies and push workers from their jobs. “Together, they amount to the opening shots…

3 min.

Investigators search for cause of D.C. air disaster

What happened Recovery workers this week retrieved the last of 67 bodies from the frigid Potomac River as investigators searched for the cause of America’s deadliest plane crash in decades—an accident President Trump blamed on federal diversity programs. American Airlines Flight 5342 with 60 passengers and four crew was preparing to land at Washington, D.C.’s Reagan National Airport last week when it collided midair with a military helicopter carrying three soldiers; there were no survivors. The Black Hawk helicopter was on a routine recertification flight for experienced pilot Capt. Rebecca Lobach, 28, who was likely at the helm. It was flying 100 feet above its maximum allowed altitude over the river when it hit the plane, which had just been ordered to switch runways. Many victims were returning from the U.S.…

2 min.

It wasn’t all bad

The frozen pond across from David Fisher’s Indiana house had started melting in December when Fisher’s son ran in to tell him that a teen boy and his dog had fallen through the ice. Fisher, a jump-rope expert who once performed for President Bill Clinton, grabbed his pair of 16-foot-long ropes. As the dog escaped on its own, Fisher slowly crept across the cracking ice, and once within distance tossed the boy one end of the rope, pulling him to safety. Fisher called it his “greatest achievement with a jump rope.” Josiah Jackson stopped to play a piano in the terminal during a layover at Chicago’s O’Hare airport in 2022. But he quickly realized the Kimball baby grand piano, next to a bar, was out of tune and gummed up…

3 min.

Tariffs: Does Trump know what he’s doing?

And so ends, for now, “the dumbest trade war in history,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Just 48 hours after announcing a plan to slap 25 percent tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, “those notorious American adversaries,” President Trump this week declared the levies had been paused for 30 days. Why the change of heart? A cynic might point to the panicked sell-off of U.S. stocks in the hours before the tariffs were due to take effect. But Trump “claimed victory, as he always does,” and insisted his threats had persuaded Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to deploy 10,000 troops to the U.S. border to combat drug trafficking, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to appoint a “fentanyl czar” and strengthen border security. This was not a…

1 min.

Only in America

Oklahoma lawmakers are again considering proposals to soften the state’s penalty for cockfighting. Since a 2002 ballot initiative made the blood sport a felony, there have been periodic efforts to decriminalize it, with defenders insisting cockfighting is part of Oklahoma’s rural heritage. Taking a fresh approach, a new bill from GOP state Rep. Justin Humphrey would lower the penalty to a mis-demeanor, and allow “cockfighting between a live fowl and a robot.” A New York judge has resigned after claiming that all defendants are guilty in a bid to get out of serving on a jury. After reporting for jury duty, Petersburgh Town Justice Richard T. Snyder said he couldn’t be impartial because he knows that “everybody” who appears in his court is guilty or else “they would not be…

1 min.

Good week/bad week

Second acts, after former President Joe Biden, 82, signed with Creative Artists Agency—the top Hollywood talent-management firm, which counts Brad Pitt among its clients—to represent him in future endeavors. “We are profoundly honored,” said CAA co-chair Richard Lovett. Mother issues, after Polish billionaire Roman Karkosik unveiled plans to build a towering statue of the Virgin Mary in his hometown of Kikola. At 131 feet tall, the statue will dwarf the 98-foot statue of Mary’s son, Christ the Redeemer, that looms above Rio de Janeiro. Nicotine fiends, who may soon have representation at the highest levels of government. Sharp-eyed C-SPAN viewers noticed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, discreetly slip what appeared to be a Zyn nicotine pouch into his mouth during his Senate confirmation hearing. Bad…

1 min.

In other news

Appeals court rules against ban on handgun sales to teenagers A conservative appeals court ruled last week that 18- to 20-year-olds have the right to buy handguns, striking down a federal ban in place since 1968. The three-judge panel on the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans said the ban violates the Second Amendment, because the Constitution “includes 18- to 20-year-old individuals among ‘the people’ whose right to keep and bear arms is protected.” It cited a 1792 law that required able-bodied white men ages 18 to 45 to join state militias. A 2022 Supreme Court decision stated that gun regulations can’t be justified by their potential to prevent shootings alone—only by whether they’re consistent with historical regulations. The 5th Circuit did not bar the enforcement of the…

4 min.

The U.S. at a Glance

Lake Kaweah, Calif. Water wars: The Trump administration opened two dams in California’s Central Valley last week—the latest move in the president’s battle with state Democrats over water policies in the wake of last month’s historic Los Angeles wildfires. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dramatically increased water flowing from Terminus Dam at Lake Kaweah and Schafer Dam at Lake Success, unleashing about 2.2 billion gallons of water from the reservoirs and catching local water managers by surprise. None of the water was expected to reach Southern California, which is separated from the Central Valley by mountain ranges, but President Trump insisted that opening the dams earlier could have prevented the fires. “I only wish they listened to me six years ago—There would have been no fire!” he wrote on social…

8 min.

The World at a Glance

Brussels Former separatist in charge: Right-wing Flemish nationalist Bart De Wever was sworn in as Belgium’s prime minister this week after nearly eight months of talks to form a coalition government, marking the first time a former separatist has led the country. Belgium is made up of the Dutch-speaking Flanders, the French-speaking Wallonia, and multilingual Brussels, and De Wever was once a proponent of Flemish independence, though he has since softened his stance. While his N-VA party is very right-wing, it is not as extremist as the ultranationalist Vlaams Belang party, which still seeks to break up Belgium. After swearing allegiance to the monarchy he once disdained, De Wever took office promising “the strictest migration policy ever.” Guantánamo Bay, Cuba Preparing for migrants: The Pentagon this week sent 300 troops to the U.S.…

1 min.

Lauper’s fierce independence

Cyndi Lauper has never been afraid to speak her mind, said Hadley Freeman in The Sunday Times (U.K.). At age 9, the singer was thrown out of her Queens elementary school over what she describes as “a political difference” with a teacher. “He told me my mother was going to hell because she was divorced,” recalls Lauper, 71. “I said, ‘My mother’s not going to hell, you don’t even know my mother!’” Next, she was sent to a convent school. “I lasted six months because I asked the nuns if they menstruated.” At 17, Lauper ran away from home to escape her abusive stepfather. She headed to Manhattan to live with her sister, Ellen, who was out as a lesbian. “This was the 1970s and it was a frightening time…

1 min.

A prisoner and a firefighter

Some 900 prisoners were deployed to help fight last month’s devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, said Natalia Mesa in High Country News. Eddie Herrera Jr. was once in their shoes. For the last two years of his 18-year prison sentence, Herrera served as an incarcerated municipal firefighter outside Sacramento. “I took medical calls, responded to traffic collisions, residential structure fires, conducted rescues and CPR calls,” says Herrera, 47. Incarcerated firefighters in California are paid a maximum of $10.24 a day to do dangerous, and sometimes deadly, work. But Herrera says that work utterly changed his life—a transformation that began during his first CPR call in 2019. The patient, a veteran police officer, didn’t make it. “But that experience was very impactful for me. I remember the brothers of the officer…

1 min.

Growing up Culkin

Kieran Culkin had a childhood of extremes, said Charlotte Edwardes in The Guardian. At home in New York City, he had to share a bedroom with his six siblings, including his older brother, Home Alone star Macaulay. But the Culkin kids—all of whom were pushed into acting by their father, Broadway actor Kit Culkin—would then go to work on Hollywood movies and take helicopter rides to Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch. Kit, whom Macaulay has described as a drunk and a bully, walked out on the family when Kieran was 12. His mother, Patricia Brentrup, was left to raise the children alone “on coupons,” says Kieran, 42. “She would get cheap liver at Key Food, two giant gallons of milk, all that.” Looking back, Kieran is in awe of how she…

2 min.

In the news

Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón vowed this week to stay in the Oscars race for best actress, despite facing a firestorm of criticism over a string of bigoted social media posts. In the recently resurfaced posts from 2020 and 2021, Gascón—the first transgender performer to be nominated for an Academy Award—called George Floyd a “drug addict and a hustler”; described Islam as a “hotbed of infection for humanity”; said Hitler “simply had his opinion about the Jews”; and likened the “ugly, ugly” 2021 Academy Awards to “an Afro-Korean festival.” In a tearful CNN interview, Gascón, 52, offered her “sincere apologies” to anyone offended by the posts, but insisted her comments had been misinterpreted and that she was being “crucified and stoned without a trial.” Kanye West’s wife, Bianca Censori,…

5 min.

The battle over TikTok

Congress voted to ban the popular app. Why does President Trump want to save it? Why is TikTok so controversial? The highly successful short-form video app is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company based in Beijing. That gives China’s Communist government the ability to access the personal data of TikTok’s 170 million U.S. users—about half the population. Researchers have documented that the TikTok algorithm promotes pro-China propaganda and suppresses posts about topics forbidden in China, such as the government’s abuse of the Uighur minority and Taiwan independence. Calling TikTok a national security threat, the House voted 360-58 and the Senate 79-18 last year to require ByteDance to sell the app to an American company or have it removed from app stores. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law last month, ruling that…

1 min.

Attention’s central role in politics

Ezra Klein The New York Times “Attention, not money, is now the fuel of politics,” said Ezra Klein. That’s why President Trump, who railed against Facebook and Twitter in his first term, has aligned himself with the heads of those platforms—“the titans of attention”—in his second term. To win Trump over, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk not only gave him millions for his inauguration and his campaign, they also transformed their media platforms to be friendlier to the new president and his supporters. In return, Trump—a showman who has always intuitively understood the power of attention—granted them “catbird seats” at the inauguration, and in Musk’s case, “influence and centrality” in his administration. “We have not seen as clear a trade for power in the modern era”—and we aren’t prepared for…

1 min.

Money didn’t fix kids’ learning loss

Stephanie Lundquist-Arora National Review “Our public education system is in dire straits”—and no amount of funding seems to help, said Stephanie Lundquist-Arora. Five years after school lockdowns began, American students haven’t recovered from pandemic learning loss—in fact, many are faring “even more poorly” than before. The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress last week reported testing results for the nation’s fourth- and eighth-graders, and they were grim. “The vast majority of children who took the NAEP math and reading assessments are performing below proficiency level,” and reading scores actually declined to about 30 percent proficiency—even lower than in 2022. The Biden administration allocated $189 billion to combat learning loss, but much of it was wasted on ancillary goodies like athletic fields, a nature center, and hotel stays, as well as on “equity…

1 min.

Will Trump abandon Taiwan?

Zack Cooper The Dispatch President Trump is toying with Taiwan, said Zack Cooper. Previously “one of the more supportive American presidents of Taiwan,” he’s “been far more critical this time around,” raising questions about whether he’d support the island nation against a Chinese invasion. Trump has accused Taiwan of taking American semiconductor manufacturing business and has demanded that it quadruple its defense spending to 10 percent of GDP. Top adviser Elon Musk has “deep business ties” to China, and he has echoed Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is “an integral part of China.” Trump seems to be courting Chinese President Xi Jinping to make deals, even inviting him to the inauguration. Taiwan’s government has indicated it will try to win Trump over by offering to make a big weapons purchase from the U.S.…

1 min.

Viewpoint

“Anyone concerned about democracy in America should also at long last recognize that Big Tech is the enemy and act accordingly. The social media companies have poisoned our politics with their addictive hate algorithms, done unforgivable harm to our kids’ mental health, and fueled a war against our democratic institutions—in which Elon Musk, the Cronus of the tech titans, is an active belligerent. Most Americans across party lines disapprove of the social media giants already—especially parents of kids. Any Democrat who can’t run a populist campaign against our Bond-villain tech overlords should have his politician’s license revoked.” Tom Malinowski in The Bulwark…

1 min.

It must be true…

A Malaysian man is selling his services as a “villain for hire” who will harass women to enable his clients—their boyfriends or husbands—to appear manly by challenging him. Bearded, shaggy-haired Shazali Sulaiman, 28, said he’s been told he looks like a gang member, and saw an opportunity to profit off his tough appearance. “Are you tired of your partner thinking you are weak?” he wrote on social media. “I can help you prove them wrong.” He charges $22 on weekdays, $33 on weekends. “No one gets hurt,” he said. “It is all just an act, like WWE.” A homeowner in China who refused to sell his house to make way for a road-construction project is now living in the middle of a nearly completed motorway. Huang Ping, who lives in…

1 min.

Life in limbo at the U.S. border

Fabiola Mancilla Castillo La Jornada Tens of thousands of people are suddenly trapped in Mexico near the U.S. border, “begging for mercy to be allowed to cross,” said Fabiola Mancilla Castillo. These asylum seekers were not seeking to break U.S. law: They followed the rules, using the U.S. Customs and Border Protection app to schedule appointments for the hearings that will allow them to plead their cases. But that “American dream” was dashed within hours of President Trump’s inauguration. On his first day in office, he shut down the CBP One mobile app that the Biden administration had set up to discourage illegal border crossings. In an instant, the appointments that families had waited 12 months or more to get simply vanished. Now these people are “crowding shelters” or living on the…

1 min.

Thrilled with our MAGA poster boy

Yara Sarkis L’Orient-Le Jour Lebanon has a new favorite son, said Yara Sarkis. Soon after he was elected last fall, Donald Trump announced he was appointing Lebanese-American Massad Boulos—his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law—to the powerful position of adviser for Arab and Middle Eastern affairs. Since then, Boulos has become a major celebrity. Banners and billboards showing the smiling faces of both Trump and Boulos now festoon streets all over, including the main highway from Beirut to Tripoli. Residents of his home village Kfar Akka “threw rice in the streets” to wish Boulos “prosperity and happiness,” and proclaimed his wife, Sarah, to be Lebanon’s “first lady.” Party poopers have called all this hoopla “visual pollution” and even “a peculiarly Lebanese form of submission.” It’s typical of us to fawn over members of the diaspora.…

2 min.

Canada: Proudly resisting Trump’s bullying

“You’re damned right Canadians are booing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at hockey and basketball games,” said Bruce Arthur in the Toronto Star. We’re also boycotting American booze and canceling trips to Florida. Canadians are furious that the United States—our oldest friend, closest ally, and biggest trade partner—is threatening economic warfare in the form of 25 percent tariffs. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won a 30-day reprieve from the tariffs by promising to do more to combat drug smuggling at the border, including listing drug cartels as terrorists and creating a “fentanyl czar.” But this is just a pause. “Living next to Donald Trump is a crisis” for the next four years, and we must negotiate a longer trade truce before “the madman and his fanatics” bring the hammer down. It’s encouraging that…

2 min.

Germany: Postwar consensus to shun far right shatters

The fire wall that kept the far right out of power has been breached, said Tobias Peter in the Stuttgarter Zeitung. For the first time since the fall of the Nazis, a German party has relied on support from the extreme right to pass a motion in parliament. It happened last week, when the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) used votes from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to push through a nonbinding resolution to drastically tighten immigration policy. CDU leader Friedrich Merz, strongly favored to win next month’s elections, “has broken a taboo,” and German politics will never be the same. Merz has made clear that he won’t invite the AfD into government if and when he triumphs, but that’s not the point. “Anyone who opens the door to…

1 min.

At the mercy of radical Islamists

Adam Cwejman Göteborgs-Posten Swedes are free to criticize any religion they want, as long as it isn’t Islam, said Adam Cwejman. We repealed the old blasphemy law in 1970, and since then, Swedes have been free to carp about or poke fun at faiths such as Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, and Hinduism. “If you insult Islam,” though, you have violated an unwritten rule punishable by death. After Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks in 2007 drew the Prophet Mohammed’s head on a dog’s body, he had to have round-the-clock protection, and police thwarted multiple attempts on his life. And now Salwan Momika has been killed, shot in his home near Stockholm. Momika was an Iraqi Christian refugee who in 2023 tried to call attention to the mistreatment of Christians in Arab lands by burning a…

1 min.

Pathetic attempts at relevance

Pauline Thèveniaud Le Parisien Does Emmanuel Macron really think the Mona Lisa can rescue him? asked Pauline Thèveniaud. His presidency has been “sliding toward irrelevancy” since last year, when he dissolved parliament in an effort to fend off the far right and wound up losing his majority. “Enfeebled by the debacle,” he retreated for months to lick his wounds and returned to the national stage only last week to “pose as the savior” of the Louvre. Standing “under the most famous painting in the world,” Macron seemed to be trying to take credit for the Louvre’s new plan to ease crowding by giving Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece La Gioconda, aka the Mona Lisa, its own room. He even called the renovation a “new Renaissance” for the museum. But while Mona Lisa’s smile…

1 min.

Noted

President Trump spent 7 hours and 44 minutes talking on camera in his first week back in office, and spoke 81,235 words—more words than in Macbeth, Hamlet, and Richard III combined, and nearly three times as many as President Joe Biden spoke in his first week. White House staff have discussed hiring more stenographers to keep up with Trump’s verbiage. Associated Press Among American women born in 1930, about 80 percent of those with and those without a college education were married by age 45. Among women born in 1980, 71 percent with a college education were married by 45, compared with 52 percent of those without. Axios The Defense Department has ordered NBC, NPR, Politico, and The New York Times to vacate their dedicated offices in the Pentagon. They will be…

2 min.

Democrats: A party in denial?

Democrats have apparently “learned nothing” from their electoral thrashing, said Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic. When the Democratic National Committee met last week to choose a new leader, there was a tribal “land acknowledgment”; protesters interrupting speakers with shrieks of “Climate emergency!” and “Fossil fuel money!”; a lengthy explanation of how nonbinary candidates are counted in gender-balanced elections; and a general affirmation that the DNC’s 2024 election strategy was sound—“except perhaps insufficiently committed to legalistic race and gender essentialism.” It was a perfect encapsulation of why so many ordinary Americans have soured on a party they regard as captive to leftist activists and obsessed with patronizing identity politics. Only 31 percent of voters now view Democrats favorably, but party apparatchiks are unwilling to reckon with what’s gone wrong. Neither outgoing…

2 min.

Impoundment: Trump’s spending power grab

President Trump is “laying the groundwork for a landmark confrontation” over who controls federal spending, said Tony Romm and Jeff Stein in The Washington Post. In his first hours in office, Trump moved to wrest away the power of the purse from Congress, with executive orders halting investments in green energy, foreign aid, and racial-equity programs—all of which had been approved by lawmakers. Then last week, he took the “extraordinary” step of freezing grants for thousands of federal programs, drawing lawsuits and a stay by a federal judge. The administration backed off the next day, but this retreat is only temporary. Trump and his pick to head the White House budget office, Russell Vought, are set on claiming the right to “impound,” or refuse to spend, money that Congress has…

2 min.

Patel: A vindictive ‘crackpot’ running the FBI?

If Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing last week proved anything, said former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade in Time, it’s that he “cannot be trusted” to run the FBI. When pressed by Democrats in a confrontational confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patel, a former federal prosecutor and a fierce loyalist of President Trump’s, refused to say Trump lost the 2020 election. He also refused to say he would resign as FBI director if Trump directed him to engage in illegal conduct. Patel did state that under his leadership, there would be “no retributions” against Trump’s adversaries. But Patel’s “track record” is that of a MAGA fanatic who produced a song celebrating the Jan. 6 rioters, who wrote a book with an enemies list of more than 60 “Deep State” officials,…

2 min.

Trans kids: Trump seeks to halt all treatments

In New York state, trans teens and their parents are panicking, said Joseph Goldstein in The New York Times. After President Trump’s executive order last week cut off federal funds for institutions that engage in the “chemical and surgical mutilation” of those under 19, hospitals and doctors that had been providing “gender-affirming care” for trans minors began canceling appointments and consulting with their lawyers. “I don’t think we have a lot of options,” said the frantic mom of a nonbinary 12-year-old who’d been receiving puberty blockers. Trump’s order—which states the U.S. will seek to halt “the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another” in every state—also led facilities in Virginia, Colorado, and Washington, D.C., to stop offering transition treatments to children. “Getting such care is already difficult…

1 min.

Wit & Wisdom

“No matter what ideology you turn to, no matter how utopian it is, it does not solve the problem of hypocrites, frauds, and charlatans.” Writer Tony Tulathimutte, quoted in The Guardian “The robber barons probably looked in the mirror and thought they were God, too.” Doris Kearns Goodwin, quoted in the Financial Times “Just when you get sick of saying something is just when other folks are beginning to hear it.” Cecile Richards, quoted in The New York Times “A good rule to remember for life is that when it comes to plastic surgery and sushi, never be attracted by a bargain.” Graham Norton, quoted in The Knowledge “The separation of powers was adopted by the Convention of 1787 not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power.” Justice Louis Brandeis,…

2 min.

Send in the clones: A new Hollywood fight over AI

A battle over The Brutalist, a leading contender for Best Picture at the Oscars, shows how brutally Hollywood has turned against any whiff of AI in filmmaking, said Nate Jones in New York magazine. When director Peter Jackson used artificial intelligence to fix audio tracks in the 2021 Beatles documentary Get Back, the experiment was “greeted with enthusiasm from tech geeks” and not much notice from anyone else. Fast-forward to 2025, and suddenly The Brutalist is facing calls for disqualification after word got out that director Brady Corbet “had used AI behind the scenes.” Much as Jackson used AI “to clean up previously unusable audio” from a Beatles recording session, The Brutalist’s film editor used a voice-cloning tool, Respeecher, “to tweak Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones’ Hungarian dialogue.” An architectural…

1 min.

Innovation of the week

A startup’s supersonic jet broke the sound barrier for the first time, said Kate Duffy in Bloomberg. Boom Technology is aiming to “resurrect high-speed passenger flights two decades after Concorde’s demise.” It achieved its first milestone last week when its XB-1 aircraft “surpassed Mach 1 (768 mph) while flying at an altitude of 34,000 feet across the Mojave Desert in California.” The XB-1 is a smaller prototype of Boom’s planned supersonic commercial jet, Overture, “which has drawn 130 orders from customers such as United and American Airlines,” and could eventually carry passengers from New York to London in a mere 3 hours 30 minutes. Boom has had to turn to the development of its own engine, however, since Rolls-Royce pulled out of a partnership in 2022.…

2 min.

Bytes: What’s new in tech

Virtual reality finds a niche in space Astronauts aboard the International Space Station get a picture of home through virtual reality, said Erin Carson in ZDNet. A Vive Focus 3 headset loaded with clips “of a sunset, beach, mountain path, and summer day” is among the tools being tested to combat the stress and mundanity of long trips in space. “I could almost feel the warmth of the sun,” said Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen, who has taken to using the device while he exercises on the ISS’s stationary bike. “Getting VR to work in space requires extra considerations,” because of how the devices use accelerometers and gyroscopes to gauge a wearer’s movement. A Danish engineering firm, Nord-Space Aps, and tech company HTC figured out how to compensate for microgravity to prevent…

1 min.

Life’s building blocks in outer space

NASA’s first asteroid-sampling mission has delivered a bombshell: The 4.5 billion–year-old asteroid Bennu harbors many of the basic building blocks for life, including amino acids and the five main nucleobases that make up RNA and DNA. Samples from the asteroid—scraped off in space by a robotic probe and shot back to Earth in a sealed capsule to avoid being contaminated by terrestrial compounds—have now been analyzed in two new studies. They show that the Bennu samples contain not only organic molecules but also compounds that result from briny salt water. That doesn’t mean Bennu itself ever harbored life: The researchers said they found no evidence of any microscopic fossils. But it does suggest that chemistry friendly to life, including liquid water, is more common in space than astronomers thought, and…

1 min.

The bird flu has mutated again

A rare strain of avian flu, H5N9, has been detected for the first time in sick birds in the United States, sparking concerns about the virus’ ability to evolve. The variant was identified in ducks at a commercial farm in California where the more common H5N1 strain was also present. After some 120,000 birds were culled, genetic analysis confirmed that H5N9 emerged through “reassortment,” a process involving the mixing of different flu strains within an infected host. The announcement of a new strain comes three weeks after the first bird flu–related human death in the country, in Louisiana, and a week after President Trump announced he was pulling the U.S. out of the World Health Organization, which coordinates the global response to pandemics. Officials say H5N9 is not a major…

1 min.

Is ADHD a killer?

Adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder may not live as long as their neurotypical peers, reports Discovermagazine.com. Researchers from University College London analyzed the health records of just over 30,000 adults in the U.K. who had been diagnosed with ADHD, mostly by early adulthood, comparing them with a control group of around 300,000 non-diagnosed people. They found that men with the condition had a lifespan reduced by between 4.5 and 9 years, while for women it was between 6.5 and 11 years. The authors say the lower life span is unlikely to be due to the condition itself—which is rooted in brain chemistry—but rather may stem from self-medicating behaviors such as smoking and drinking, or from depression, which can often accompany the condition. “People with ADHD have many strengths and…

1 min.

Why men are getting bigger

People in general have grown taller and heavier over the past century, as countries get richer and offer better health care and nutrition. Men, though, have grown at more than twice the rate of women. Researchers compared data from dozens of countries to see how height and weight changed with living conditions as measured by the human development index (HDI)—a score based on life expectancy, education, and income that ranges from 0 to 1. The researchers found that for every 0.2-point rise in HDI, men got an average of 1.6 inches taller and 14 pounds heavier, compared with just 0.66 inches taller and 6 pounds heavier for women. Why the disparity? Are the men getting all the best food? Lead author Lewis Halsey, from the University of Roehampton in London,…

1 min.

A coral takes a walk

Corals are generally seen as immobile animals, with most of the 6,000 known species living in colonies on fixed reefs. But not mushroom corals. A new study has found that these inch-long organisms have the drive and ability to creep along the ocean floor—very, very slowly. The researchers set up time-lapse cameras in an aquarium, with a sliver of white light at one end to mimic shallow coastal habitats, and a small blue beam at the other end to represent deeper waters. The mushroom corals showed a strong preference for the blue light, inching toward it in each of the three trials. They propelled themselves forward by slowly inflating the tissues on the outside of their body and then quickly releasing them, much like jellyfish. It’s slow progress: They only…

2 min.

Source Code: My Beginnings

(Knopf, $30) “Bill Gates is the John McEnroe of the tech world,” said Steven Poole in The Guardian. “Once a snotty brat whom everyone loved to hate,” the co-founder of Microsoft and former richest man in the world has since grown up enough that he’s become “a beloved elder statesman.” In his first memoir, you won’t hear about the aggressive business tactics that made Gates controversial or the global-minded philanthropic efforts he has devoted a third of his life to. It covers only his first 23 years, from his birth in 1955 into a happy family through the creation of Microsoft and the startup’s agreement to supply a version of its Basic programming language to Apple Computer. Young Bill was on his way. “This volume, still, is more than just a…

1 min.

Homeseeking

(Putnam, $30) “It is rare that a 500-page book delivers on its weight,” said Qian Julie Wang in The Washington Post. But Karissa Chen’s debut novel, a love story that spans seven decades, proves unforgettable. Its protagonists, Suchi and Haiwen, are teenage sweethearts in 1947 Shanghai when their paths part. Sixty years later, the two reunite by chance in Los Angeles, and Chen ties those two moments together by tracing Suchi’s life chronologically while relating Haiwen’s in reverse. As the Chinese Civil War, the Cultural Revolution, and mass migrations shape the journeys of Chen’s separated soulmates, “it is impossible not to marvel at the many strands she has woven into this beating heart of a novel.” Yes, Homeseeking “gets a little chronologically confusing at times with all the jumping around,” said…

2 min.

Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman’s March and the Story of America’s Largest Emancipation

When Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman led his Union Army through Georgia in late 1864, “the march did not always look like a Jubilee,” said Allen C. Guelzo in Washington Monthly. But as the troops advanced the roughly 285 miles from Atlanta to Savannah, some 20,000 refugees fleeing slavery fell in behind, turning the military maneuver into a mobile liberation event. Their story has, in large part, “not been told until now.” So we’re lucky that historian Bennett Parten has “the storyteller’s eye for vivid detail.” He sees the event and aftermath as symbolic of both the initial hopes and eventual failures of the war to end American slavery, and no other writer has brought greater depth to relating the tale. “Sherman was a surprising instrument of emancipation,” said Fergus M. Bordewich…

2 min.

Best books…chosen by Pagan Kennedy

Pagan Kennedy’s new book, The Secret History of the Rape Kit, recounts how a forgotten woman provided countless others a chance to hold their assailants accountable. Below, Kennedy recommends six books that offer hope and companionship in dark times. Color Me Flo by Flo Kennedy (1976). Kennedy (no relation) masterminded some of the most outrageous political acts of the 1970s—like a “pee-in” held in Harvard Yard to protest the school’s lack of women’s bathrooms. In this delightfully shaggy book, Kennedy recounts scenes from her adventures as a civil rights lawyer, prankster, and feminist gadfly. It was Kennedy who taught us: “Don’t agonize, organize.” Tunnel 29 by Helena Merriman (2021). In 1961, a wall went up around East Berlin in the middle of the night, preventing almost everyone from fleeing. That step into…

2 min.

Also of interest…in group dynamics

Bright Circle by Randall Fuller (Oxford, $28) The birth of Transcendentalism “looks rather different” in this new group portrait, said Francesca Wade in The New York Times. Randall Fuller focuses on five women, including Margaret Fuller and Sophia Peabody, who regularly gathered at a Boston bookshop in the 1840s to discuss ideas that became associated with the men in their midst. With lively studies like this now multiplying, “these strident, provocative women can no longer justly be left out of any narrative of this movement.” The Woman Who Knew Everyone by Meryl Gordon (Grand Central, $34) Though it’s been decades since Perle Mesta was D.C.’s supreme soiree hostess, said Julia M. Klein in The Washington Post, readers of this new biography are “likely to find Mesta as endearing as her many party guests did.” Mesta…

1 min.

Scott Turow

Scott Turow will never forget a conversation he once had with woman whose son had been charged with murder, said Sarah Lyall in The New York Times. Turow, who at 75 still performs occasional pro bono legal work, had previously defended the woman’s son in a less serious case. But this time the evidence was overwhelming and the suspect’s mother was “just torn apart,” he says. “I’ve always been struck by how terrible it is for a parent. They think, ‘Is my love for this child so huge that I can’t recognize that he or she is a monster?’” In Turow’s latest novel, Presumed Guilty, a young murder suspect who benefits from parental blind devotion is represented by none other than Rusty Sabich, the protagonist of Presumed Innocent, Turow’s classic…

2 min.

The 2025 Grammys: Beyoncé finally takes the top prize

“Finally. Finally. If you really care about this stuff—and maybe you shouldn’t—it feels like waking up from a bad dream that lasted 15 years,” said Chris Richard in The Washington Post. At last weekend’s Grammys, Beyoncé won her long-overdue first Album of the Year award, ending a string of baffling snubs, while Kendrick Lamar scored a similar breakthrough by taking home the two top prizes for an individual song. If the world was fair, “Beyoncé and Lamar should have been celebrating nights like this years ago,” not forced to find consolation in the wins they’d already scored in genre categories. But in at last fully honoring both artists, the Recording Academy “signaled a massive and necessary shift toward honoring real-world resonance in real time,” and that can only be good…

2 min.

Sundance today: Does the festival still matter?

Though plenty of entries in this year’s Sundance Film Festival had buzz, “no movie generated half the conversation that Sundance did about itself,” said Owen Gleiberman in Variety. The organizers’ decision to move the festival out of Park City, Utah, by 2027, has raised an existential debate. Can Sundance, which in the 1990s “altered the very landscape of cinema,” stay relevant? The 2025 edition drew crowds, but not the crowds of 20 years ago. And in the streaming age, why bother flying somewhere for a festival? Because the festival briefly makes many of the films available online, “you can actually experience Sundance without attending.” Which feels appropriate, since most viewers will never see these films in theaters. Besides, “most fit all too snugly into the small screen.” The organizers claim that…

1 min.

I’m Still Here

(PG-13) A Brazilian family is tested by a regime’s brutality. With his dark-horse contender for the Best Picture Oscar, Brazilian director Walter Salles “has artfully chronicled in miniature the history of an entire country,” said Manuel Betancourt in The A.V. Club. Fernanda Torres is herself contending for Oscar gold for her performance as Eunice Paiva, a mother of five who must hold her family together when, in 1971, her beloved husband, Rubens, is taken away, never to be returned, by agents of Brazil’s military dictatorship. In real life, Eunice subsequently fought for decades for information about Rubens’ fate, yet I’m Still Here refuses to let the regime dominate its drama. Instead, “the film witnesses what a patriarch’s disappearance does to a household,” and lets the effects play out on Torres’ face. “Acting…

1 min.

Love Me

(R) In a post-human world, two machines crave connection. This high-concept film about a romance that spans billions of years “begins quite promisingly,” said Bilge Ebiri in NYMag.com. In a future in which humanity has been erased from Earth, a lonely AI-powered sea buoy makes contact with a satellite programmed to search for life-forms, and “there’s beauty in the inanimate objects’ inarticulate longing.” But as the two machines, voiced by Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun, advance their relationship by adopting avatars drawn from the internet content left behind by humans, the characters’ search for life’s meaning “can start to get wearying.” The avatars, also played by Stewart and Yeun, are based on long-dead influencers who playacted being a couple. And when the robots repeatedly imitate the act for decades and even centuries,…

1 min.

Dog Man

(PG) An unlikely hero battles feline treachery. If there’s no youngster in your life who’s already a fan of Dav Pilkey, “this probably isn’t the movie for you,” said Elizabeth Weitzman in The Wrap. In his Captain Underpants and Dog Man book series, Pilkey’s humor “zig-zags between groaningly broad, hilariously stupid, and surprisingly sentimental.” Yet his work is “witty enough for any adults who happen to be paying attention,” and this hit new adaptation “does full, chaotic justice to its source material.” The speechless title character, for those who don’t know, is a dog-human hybrid who was created on an operating table when a cop and his dog were wounded in an explosion. His greatest foe remains the criminally evil Petey the Cat. “But something is missing,” said Mark Kennedy in the…

1 min.

Streaming tips

The Philadelphia Story Put Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and Jimmy Stewart in a romantic comedy, and it’s hard to go wrong. Hepburn plays a socialite torn between two men when she entertains her debonaire ex and a handsome reporter on the eve of her second wedding. $4 on demand Roman Holiday What is it about handsome reporters? Gregory Peck plays a scribe who lands the scoop and romantic score of a lifetime when he stumbles upon Audrey Hepburn’s AWOL princess asleep on a park bench. The pair’s escapades in Rome define romantic dreams. $4 on demand His Girl Friday Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell may have set the record for banter (240 words per minute, by one count), but it’s their winning chemistry that makes this 1940 screwball comedy a classic. Grant plays (you guessed…

2 min.

The Week’s guide to what’s worth watching

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy Renée Zellweger has returned again as Bridget Jones, and Bridget’s dating life is as complicated as ever. In this fourth movie in the 24-year-old rom-com franchise, the anxious Londoner is now a successful TV writer and widowed middle-aged mother of two young children. Told she has mourned the death of Mark, her husband, long enough, she finds her heart torn again between two men, a young park employee played by Leo Woodall, and her son’s science teacher, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor. Thursday, Feb. 13, Peacock Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) “Everybody is a star,” Sly Stone once sang—but few have shined as bright and hot as he did. The legendary funkster shot to fame in the late 1960s with an uplifting message and his…

1 min.

The White Lotus

Another exotic vacation with a side of murder awaits. Mike White’s award-winning, privilege-skewering satire heads to Thailand for Season 3, set at the Ko Samui outpost of the fictional White Lotus resort chain. Motives for murder abound among the guests. Michelle Monaghan, Carrie Coon, and Leslie Bibb play old friends whose girls’ getaway turns testy, Walton Goggins portrays the timeworn older man in a May-December relationship, and Parker Posey and Jason Isaacs are a couple whose adult children are running amok as the family’s fortunes take a dive. Sunday, Feb. 16, HBO and Max…

2 min.

Winter salads: Giving the cozy season its due

The jewel-toned, hot-and-cold salad shown here makes “a terrific starter” for a winter meal, says Vanessa Seder in Warm Your Bones: Cozy Recipes for Chilly Days and Winter Nights (Union Square & Co.). It boasts “a lovely balance of sweet, tangy, crunchy, salty, hot, and cool,” and guests will feel virtuous to be eating so healthfully. The second salad is less colorful. It’s more “a celebration of winter’s stark whiteness,” and it, too, “pays homage to some fabulous in-season, cold-weather produce.” Roasted winter vegetables in a warm walnut vinaigrette ½ (3-lb) butternut squash, peeled, seeded, andsliced crosswise into ½-inch-thick wedges2 medium yellow or red beets, peeled, halved, and cut into ½-inch-thick wedges2 medium turnips, peeled, halved, and cut into ½-inch-thick wedges10 tbsp extra virgin olive oilSea salt and freshly ground black pepper5 oz…

1 min.

Dining out: Boston’s best clam chowders

In Boston, a bowl of classic New England clam chowder is the cure for a cold winter day, said Adam H. Callaghan in Food & Wine. Forget tomato-laden Manhattan chowder or the clear stuff served in Rhode Island. In Massachusetts, the only chowders worth arguing over are thickened with milk or cream and loaded with clams and potatoes. Saltie Girl “Some New Englanders say clam chowder should be so thick you can stand a spoon up in it,” and this posh Back Bay seafood bar backs that notion. Kathy Sidell reduces heavy cream and clam stock “until it’s practically a solid,” adds chopped clams, shallot, and potato, then finishes the dish with a floating fried clam and crispy lardon. 279 Dartmouth St. Dive Bar If you visit downtown’s High Street Place Food…

1 min.

Wine: California bargains

As has always been true, good wine is a true pleasure, and “it’s even more satisfying the less you spend,” said Eric Asimov in The New York Times. Although prices have been climbing, I still consider $15 to $20 the sweet spot for value wines, and these three reds show that some in that affordable range even hail from California. 2022 Broadside Merlot ($18). Though it once made sense to avoid California merlot, this Paso Robles offering, with “its plummy, minty flavor and pleasantly bitter aftertaste,” proves that there are now some good ones out there. 2021 Skull Wines Red ($18). A blend of six grapes, this breezy organic red wine might remind you of Beaujolais. “It’s lively, fresh, and delicious, and it goes down easily.” 2022 Sidekick Cabernet Sauvignon ($20). “Juicy, lightly…

2 min.

This week’s dream: Thai luxury at the real ‘White Lotus’

Picture the opening scene: A rumpled travel writer is greeted by crisply uniformed staff who “whisk away his luggage and offer an elaborate cocktail,” said Christopher Muther in The Boston Globe. Am I starring in an episode of HBO’s The White Lotus? Almost. This is the treatment you get at the Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui, on an island off the east coast of Thailand, where the HBO dramedy’s latest season, which debuts Feb. 16, was shot. Four Seasons properties have been the stand-ins for the fictional White Lotus throughout the show’s run, with Season 1 set at Four Seasons Resort Maui and Season 2 at Four Seasons San Domenico Palace in Sicily. Alas, I’m not one of the “high-end gays” that Jennifer Coolidge’s character talked about in previous episodes.…

1 min.

andBeyond Mnemba Island

Mnemba, Tanzania The 11 thatched banda–style villas at andBeyond’s Mnemba Island resort are “the ultimate in laid-back, barefoot luxury,” said Lisa Grainger in Condé Nast Traveler. “Surrounded by powder-soft, blindingly white beaches and shaded by casuarina trees, the shell-shaped rooms blend into the environment: all creams, woods, rattans and sisal, with pale accents of coral.” Located on a tiny dollop of sand off Unguja, the biggest island in the Zanzibar archipelago, this recently renovated escape is ringed by a protected coral reef that keeps other boaters at least 400 meters off shore. That makes it “a rare private space on this increasingly touristy Zanzibar coastline.” andbeyond.com; bandas from $2,150 per person…

2 min.

Getting the flavor of…

Truckee’s burgeoning winter scene When the moon rises over the 19th-century storefronts of Truckee, Calif., it’s possible to imagine “the rough-and-tumble cowboy outpost it was,” said Anna Dimond in The Wall Street Journal. Lying about 12 miles north of Lake Tahoe, Truckee was first a gold-rush stopover, then a booming logging town, and by the 1990s a bit run-down, appreciated mostly by “bohemian ski bums.” Today’s Truckee is “no longer just for chapped-lip diehards” from the nearby Palisades Tahoe and Sugar Bowl resorts. It buzzes with restaurants, bookshops, and boutiques serving a growing population of year-rounders and digital nomads. There’s a raw bar at Buoy & Trap, freshly made pasta at Great Gold, and hearty steaks and weekend brunch at Cottonwood, a converted 1928 ski lodge. While “the hardcore set grumble…

1 min.

See more on a ‘stopover vacation’

Many of the world’s top airlines are now offering the opportunity to extend a trip by adding a stopover package, said Larry Olmsted in Forbes. If you’re flying somewhere on Cathay Pacific with a stop in Hong Kong, for example, you can schedule the second leg of your flight as long as three months after the first. Similar, though shorter, benefits are available in some cities through TAP Air Portugal, Icelandair, and Iberia. For those changing planes in Istanbul, Turkish Airlines offers free, same-day, guided trips into town for shopping or sightseeing; Qatar Airways provides tours of Doha at a discount. And Emirates offers Dubai packages at prices “almost too good to believe.” One three-day offer includes a dinner cruise, a tour, sea kayaking, and a visit to the observation…

2 min.

This week: Homes in Miami

South Miami This 1950 boho nature retreat, 10 miles from downtown, is tucked into a wooded property crossed by the Snapper Creek Canal. The three-bedroom villa features terrazzo floors, exposed-wood walls and ceilings, a skylight, a wood-burning fireplace, and a kitchen-dining-living room facing an organically shaped pool and landscaped entertaining patio. The 0.74-acre lot has paths through native flora to ponds, an art studio, and a picnic area with boating access. $2,799,000. Val Byrne, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices EWM Realty, (305) 323-6231 Spring Garden Seven Oaks, a 1920 Arts & Crafts home, once belonged to a local hero: concert pianist and teacher Ruth Greenfield, who founded one of the South’s first integrated conservatories. The five-bedroom house has hardwood floors, a living room with central fireplace, an office with built-ins, and a kitchen-dining…

1 min.

The bottom line

Outstanding federal student debt stood at roughly $1.64 trillion toward the end of 2024. That’s above where it stood at the start of 2021 ($1.59 trillion), despite President Biden’s forgiveness of student debt for 5.3 million borrowers during his term. CNBC.com The number of job openings in the U.S. decreased to 7.6 million from a revised 8.2 million reading in November, according to the Bureau of Labor. The number of vacancies per unemployed worker stayed at 1.1. At its peak in 2022, the ratio was 2 to 1. Bloomberg Music streamer Spotify posted its first full year of profitability after 18 years in business, earning $1.18 billion. The company said that it paid a record $10 billion in royalties to the music industry in 2024. The Wall Street Journal State Farm, California’s largest…

1 min.

National savings: Trump seeks U.S. wealth fund

President Trump wants the United States to be in the investment business, said Jenny Leonard and Katherine Burton in Bloomberg. Trump signed an executive order this week directing officials to create a national wealth fund. Trump floated the idea of a sovereign wealth fund—in essence an investment fund owned by the government—during the campaign, proposing that “money from tariffs” could be used to “invest in manufacturing hubs, defense, and medical research.” Other national wealth funds generally exist in countries with excess money, either from “large foreign exchange reserves, like China, or revenue from the sale of oil.” How the U.S. would invest is unclear, though Trump floated the suggestion that “the fund could facilitate the sale of TikTok.” Let’s hope this doesn’t go anywhere, said Dominic Pino in National Review. A…

2 min.

Economy: Strong growth for 2024 beats predictions

The U.S. economy “defied expectations” again, growing by a 2.3 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, said Ben Casselman in The New York Times. Growth slowed from 3.1 percent in the third quarter, “but nonetheless represented an encouraging end” to the year, the Commerce Department reported this week, led by “robust consumer spending.” For the year as a whole, measured from the end of 2023 to the end of 2024, gross domestic product increased 2.5 percent, which was slower than the 3.2 percent in 2023 but still well ahead of forecasters’ projections. Headed south: Meta may change incorporation to Texas Meta is in talks to relocate its incorporation from Delaware to Texas, said Emily Glazer in The Wall Street Journal. Meta would follow Elon Musk’s Tesla, which reincorporated in Texas “after…

1 min.

Help wanted, larceny experience required

Retailers are hiring shoplifters to combat shoplifting, said Clara Hernanz Lizarraga in Bloomberg. Martin Gill, a former criminology professor, is the founder of a U.K.-based consultancy Perpetuity Research “that helps retailers improve their security strategy.” Gill has three ex-cons on staff who conduct “penetration tests”—essentially going undercover to test how stores respond to retail theft. And business is booming: In the United States, a recent survey revealed “that nearly two-thirds of retailers had increased their budgets to train employees on theft.” Gill characterizes his mystery shoplifters as “career criminals who have been heavily involved in theft and fraud.” They are hired to help companies understand their vulnerabilities. In one case, “a Perpetuity shoplifter was tasked with entering a supermarket to pilfer alcohol” and made out with five bottles that never…

2 min.

Retirement: Great Wealth Transfer? Not so fast

A new study casts doubt on how great the “Great Wealth Transfer” will actually be, said Adam Hardy in Money. The Baby Boomer generation—those born between 1946 and 1964—has enjoyed an impressive run and now holds “roughly 50 percent of all household wealth in the United States,” or about $85 trillion. “For years, economists and analysts have been projecting” that a large proportion of that “will soon flow to younger generations,” carrying enormous economic implications. Not so fast. “A growing body of research suggests that older Americans might end up depleting their wealth before it gets passed on.” The latest, a survey of high–net worth individuals from Charles Schwab released in January, found a disproportionate share (45 percent) of Boomers saying, “I want to enjoy my money for myself while…

2 min.

What the experts say

Loan rates stay high despite Fed cuts The Federal Reserve’s rate cuts last year still haven’t done much to lower most borrowing costs, said Sarah Hansen in Morningstar. Unfortunately, monetary policy isn’t quite like waving a magic wand. Credit card rates “are closely tied to the federal funds rate,” however, it can take months for changes to get fully priced in. The average rate on a credit card has barely budged in recent months, dropping “to 21.47 percent in November after peaking at 21.76 percent in August.” Mortgage rates have gone up since September, since they are “linked to yields on longer-term Treasury bonds,” which reflect concerns about lingering inflation. Other loans, like auto and personal loans, are even “less sensitive to the Fed’s moves,” and rates for those have “ticked…

1 min.

Charity of the week

In 1989, the prolific inventor Dean Kamen—who developed the two-wheeled Segway and the first insulin pump for diabetics—founded a nonprofit organization that would bring engineering and inventing opportunities to kids of all ages: FIRST (firstinspires.org). Through FIRST, children and teens ages 4 to 18 get to participate in robotics competitions all around the world. Each year, more than 80,000 students work in small groups, guided by a mentor, to develop a robot with parts provided by FIRST. Their robots then face off at regional FIRST competitions in nearly 100 countries. A lucky few progress to an annual championship. FIRST also hosts LEGO leagues, in which nearly half a million kids develop coding, engineering, and design skills by building LEGO models to solve annual challenges based on real-world problems. Each charity we…

2 min.

Shopping: The end of China’s cheap ride

The closing of a once obscure trade loophole could give American consumers the first taste “of what the trade war actually means for them,” said John Herrman in New York magazine. Both the Biden and Trump administrations recognized Chinese retailers had “a major advantage over American firms.” A 95-year-old trade exemption known as “de minimis” allowed packages valued at under $800 to ship to the U.S. tariff-free. Chinese retailers like Temu and Shein took advantage of that by shipping supercheap clothes and household items directly from Chinese factories. President Trump this week closed the loophole, long criticized by both parties, as part of new trade levies against China (see Controversy, p.6). The move caused chaos in customs as the U.S. Postal Service briefly stopped accepting packages from China. Even if…

1 min.

The big pot payoff that never came

Jonathan Caulkins and Keith Humphreys The Atlantic Legal weed’s economic promises have gone up in smoke, said Jonathan Caulkins and Keith Humphreys. The legalization of commercial marijuana was supposed to bring a slew of benefits to states, from “reduced addiction to opioids” to “surging tax revenue” and “a socially responsible industry that prioritized people over profits.” So far, that’s all been “overstated or simply wrong.” Today, more people smoke weed on a daily or near-daily basis than drink alcohol. The industry is controlled by massive growers like Copperstate Farms, an Arizona business with a 2,000,000-square-foot greenhouse. “Commercial production has driven down prices, and so the cannabis tax windfall touted by many supporters has also been underwhelming.” In California, weed taxes accounted for just 0.2 percent of the state’s total tax collections. Falling…

1 min.

Israeli tech is our best ally on AI

Scott Cohen The Wall Street Journal President Biden kicked Israel’s technology sector in the teeth on his way out the Oval Office door, said Scott Cohen. A week before Biden left office, the Commerce Department “announced export controls on advanced computer chips” to a wide range of foreign countries, mostly in the Middle East and Asia, that do business with China. “The rule classified Israel as a Tier 2 country subject to advanced-chip export caps, instead of including it in the Tier 1 list of countries with no restrictions.” This essentially cuts off Israel from the high-stakes battle for artificial intelligence technology. It’s quite a change from 2022, when Biden entered into an AI partnership with Israel. Israel “has proved itself a global leader in AI”; major U.S. tech companies, including Nvidia,…

2 min.

The swinging ’60s singer who beat addiction

Marianne Faithfull transformed hard living into hard-won redemption. The Londoner found fame at 17, after Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham met her at a party and chose her to record the Mick Jagger–Keith Richards song “As Tears Go By.” As Jagger’s eventual girlfriend—and a muse who inspired songs such as “Wild Horses”—she became an icon of Swinging ’60s London. She co-wrote the Stones’ druggy “Sister Morphine” and acted in films, including the eroticized 1968 drama The Girl on a Motorcycle. But her partying years gave way to a breakdown, a suicide attempt, heroin addiction, and homelessness. She re-emerged with the acclaimed 1979 album Broken English, which paved the way for a third act, as a husky-voiced chanteuse singing of loss and resilience. “I don’t know how else to be…

2 min.

The skating icon who became a sportscaster

Figure skater Dick Button made other athletes earn his praise. A two-time Olympic champion and five-time world champion, he expanded the sport not just by being the first to land a triple jump but also through his acerbic commentary. For four decades, Button was the primary TV commentator for nearly every major skating championship, teaching Americans how to tell a salchow jump (forward) from a lutz (backward) and turning figure skating into a marquee Olympic event. He showered skaters with compliments when deserved, but skewered those who fell short, pointing out technical violations not obvious to casual fans. When Christopher Bowman won the U.S. national championship in 1992, for example, Button deemed his routine “ordinary, boring, slow, conservative, and sedate,” and he refused to apologize for his opinions. “I don’t…

1 min.

The MLB commissioner who presided over trouble after trouble

Fay Vincent’s stint as Major League Baseball commissioner was a tumultuous three years. Just a month after he took the reins in 1989, a massive earthquake hit San Francisco and damaged Candlestick Park—in the middle of a World Series the Giants were in. Vincent was praised for managing to resume the series a week later, but it was just the start of his stressful tenure. He presided over the 1990 owner lockout that delayed Opening Day and the emergence of the steroid-use scandal, and at one point, he actually suspended Yankees owner George Steinbrenner for paying a gambler. “I was not a successful commissioner,” Vincent said in 2014. “Nobody likes to fail.” Born in Connecticut, Francis Vincent grew into a lumbering, 6-foot-3, 240-pound teen recruited to play college football. But a…

10 min.

The making of a saint

The Vatican will soon declare its first Millennial saint, said Linda Kinstler in The Guardian. How did the Catholic Church decide an Italian teenager was worthy of canonization? AS A CHILD growing up in Milan, Carlo Acutis collected stories of miracles. He wrote about the time when, in 1411, wine turned to blood in a castle chapel in Ludbreg, Croatia; of how, in 1630, a pastor in Canosio, Italy, saved his town from a flood by blessing the raging waters; of how, in 1906, a priest on the island of Tumaco, Colombia, held up a reliquary on the beach to stop an approaching tsunami. Acutis, 11 years old and a devout Catholic, began typing up these stories and posting them on his website, which he styled as a “virtual museum” of…

1 min.

The Week Contest

This week’s question: Houston’s mayor says that “drug-addicted rats” are scarfing piles of seized marijuana and magic mushrooms stored at the city’s police headquarters. If a TV network were to make a reality show about Houston PD’s battle with these drug-chomping rodents, what would it be titled? Last week’s contest: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and three other überwealthy individuals are poised to become trillionaires in the next decade, according to a new study from Oxfam. What would you title a memoir by one of them about why he deserves to be the world’s first trillionaire? THE WINNER: “Greed Is Good, and My Greed Is Best” James Pearson, Anaheim, Calif. SECOND PLACE: “Trill Seeker” Jeff Jerome, Northampton, Mass. THIRD PLACE: “The Secret of My Excess” Ken Kellam III, Dallas For runners-up and complete contest rules, please…

Mostly good. Occasionally they are not careful about accuracy, as for instance in an article last year about nuclear power (they were 100% in favor, with no thought about serious downsides, including cost such that alternative energy sources would get sidelined, and the fact that it takes about 10 years to plan and build a nuclear plant). Sometimes the inaccuracy is not that important, as in a recent article about health, which was clearly not thought out. But I appreciate getting the long look on the big events, so that after the first appearance of an event, I find out more about the follow-up.

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The Week February 14, 2025 (Digital)

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