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The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Editor’s letterAround 300 B.C., King Ptolemy I—the new ruler of Egypt and a former general of Alexander the Great—tasked an adviser with a modest mission: “to collect, if possible, all the books in the world.” Over the next two centuries, the great library in the Ptolemaic capital of Alexandria would be filled with hundreds of thousands of papyrus scrolls: the full corpus of ancient Greek and Egyptian literature along with Buddhist, Jewish, and Zoroastrian texts. Ships would be searched for books when they docked at Alexandria, and royal agents would pay hefty sums for almost any written work. A booming market in fakes and forgeries soon emerged. Entrepreneurial scribes dashed off scrolls of supposed secret wisdom from famous thinkers—one was titled Everything Thucydides Left Unsaid—while others created books that mixed the…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Defense spars with Cohen as Trump trial nears endWhat happenedDonald Trump waived his last chance to testify in his hush money case this week, with both sides preparing closing arguments on the 34 felony charges that may hinge on the testimony of a few key witnesses. Onetime Trump fixer Michael Cohen admitted under defense attorney Todd Blanche’s cross-examination that he stole money from the Trump Organization, inflating by $30,000 the amount he needed to be reimbursed for paying a tech company that he claims rigged a 2014 online poll in Trump’s favor. Blanche also accused Cohen of lying about an Oct. 24, 2016, conversation about the hush money paid to p*rn star Stormy Daniels, introducing texts that suggested he’d actually used the call to speak with Trump’s bodyguard about a teenage prank caller. “I believe I also spoke…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Only in AmericaNorth Carolina’s state senate has voted to ban the use of face masks in public, even by cancer patients. GOP state Sen. Buck Newton said his bill is needed to combat the “craziness” of mask-wearing pro-Palestinian campus protesters. Newton acknowledges the legislation would also criminalize the wearing of masks by immunocompromised patients, and people with infectious diseases like tuberculosis, but says he trusts police to enforce it using “good common sense.” A private school in Atlanta has apologized for asking eighth-graders to rate Adolf Hitler’s leadership skills. In a letter to parents, Mount Vernon School said the assignment—which asked students to grade the Nazi leader as a “solution seeker” and an “ethical decision maker”—was intended to “boost student knowledge of factual events.” The school, it added, does not “condone positive…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024The U.S. at a glanceColorado, Nevada, and South DakotaAbortion amendments: Abortion rights advocates in Nevada aiming to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution submitted more than 200,000 signatures this week—nearly double the 102,000 needed to get the amendment on the ballot in November. Abortion is currently legal in Nevada up to 24 weeks; a constitutional amendment, however, must be approved by voters on two separate ballots, and would require a second vote in 2026. Advocates in Colorado and South Dakota had similar success last week, collecting enough support to put pro-abortion constitutional amendments on their own November ballots; abortion is legal in Colorado, while South Dakota has a strict ban. Abortion-rights referendums have succeeded in the seven states where they have been on the ballot, and Democrats believe they are a…4 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Growing up in a hit factoryOne night in the mid 1970s, a then-5-year-old Tiffany Murray looked out her window and saw a strange man howling in the graveyard next door, said Michael Odell in The Times (U.K.). It was Ozzy Osbourne. Murray’s mother, Joan, had recently started renting out the old vicarage where they lived in the British countryside as a rehearsal space for rock bands. Black Sabbath were the first paying guests. “Ozzy truly scared the living s--- out of me,” says Murray. She’d have many more rock-star encounters when Joan, a cordon bleu chef, became the in-house cook at nearby Rockfield—a Welsh farm turned record studio. But Murray says she was too young to be dazzled by any of the musicians. When Queen recorded “Bohemian Rhapsody” at Rockfield in 1975, Freddie Mercury and…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Fear of flyingA string of accidents and problems involving Boeing planes has left many passengers wondering if air travel is still safe.Is flying getting more dangerous?A succession of midair mishaps has made it seem that way. In January, a door plug blew out on an Alaska Airlines flight minutes after takeoff from Portland, Ore. The vacuum created by the hole in the fuselage bent the metal of nearby seats and sucked out iPhones, headsets, and the shirt off the back of a teenage passenger. Remarkably, Flight 1282 was able to land safely, with no serious injuries or loss of life. Then in March, a LATAM Boeing 787 to New Zealand nosedived so sharply that 50 passengers were left needing medical attention; aviation investigators believe a flight attendant accidentally hit a switch that…5 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Time to end beauty pageantsJill FilipovicCNN“Why in the world are we still doing beauty pageants?” asked Jill Filipovic. Miss USA and Miss Teen USA resigned within days of each other this month, in “a manicured-brow-raising” sequence of events. Noelia Voigt, 24, cited mental health concerns, while 17-year-old UmaSofia Srivastava said the Miss USA Organization didn’t “fully align” with her values. Both signed nondisclosure agreements, but Voigt’s resignation letter described “bullying and harassment,” and the first letter of the first 11 sentences in her public statement spelled “I AM SILENCED.” The demeaning mistreatment of these young women “simply isn’t all that surprising given the ethos of pageants themselves.” Yes, today’s pageants claim to celebrate “beauty, intelligence, and empowerment.” But “it just so happens” the contestants all continue to “fit into a very narrow definition of…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Iran: President’s death leaves a vacuum at the topThe death of Iran’s president in a helicopter crash has set up “a veritable Game of Thrones battle for succession,” said The Times (U.K.) in an editorial. Ebrahim Raisi, 63, was returning from a visit to the Iran-Azerbaijan border this week when his “patched-up,” 1970s-era chopper went down in a foggy, mountainous era, killing everyone on board. His death robs the regime of the man tipped to succeed the 85-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as supreme leader of Iran’s theocracy. But while he was a Shiite cleric, Raisi “was no holy man.” As a top justice official in the late 1980s, he ordered the execution of thousands of dissidents, earning himself the moniker “Butcher of Tehran.” What endeared Raisi to the ayatollah was his slavish loyalty—and the fact that the only…3 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Why Dublin mooned New YorkEmma NolanIrish IndependentThe Irish love to have a laugh, said Emma Nolan. So how can anyone be shocked that Dubliners greeted the unveiling of the Portal, an interactive outdoor art installation connecting Dublin and New York by livestream, with a bit of mischief? Faced with the large circular screen in the center of town showing New Yorkers watching them, Dubliners brandished p*rnography, threw eggs, and even flashed the camera. One person, exhibiting exceedingly poor taste, held up a photo of the World Trade Center burning on 9/11. Less than a week after the Portal opened, Dublin officials cut off the feed for five days until a security guard could be posted. Many Irish “wasted no time in wagging their Catholic guilt-laden fingers,” saying Dubliners had disgraced the country. Yet most…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024NotedRobert F. Kennedy Jr. lists as his voting address a house in New York’s Westchester County that he does not own and that is in foreclosure for nonpayment. The campaign said he pays rent to the owner, the wife of a longtime friend, but neighbors say they’ve never seen him at the home. “He doesn’t live here,” said a local police officer.New York Post The U.S. Capitol Police investigated more than 8,000 threats to members of Congress last year, up over 50 percent since 2018. The agency has added three full-time prosecutors to handle the extra cases. More than 450 federal judges were also targeted with threats in 2023, a roughly 150 percent rise in five years.The New York Times Louisiana is set to become the first state to require…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Supreme Court: Alito’s upside-down ethicsNo one should be surprised that an upside-down American flag flew outside Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s home, said Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post. Once a naval distress sign, it became a symbol for election deniers after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol. Shortly after that insurrection, an inverted flag flew outside Alito’s home for multiple days, The New York Times reported last week. Alito, “the Fox News–iest of justices” has “been doing the moral equivalent” of flying this flag for years, and parroting right-wing talking points during oral arguments, in opinions, and in highly partisan speeches. Alito’s excuse is that his wife put the flag up in response to a neighbor’s profane anti-Trump sign, but “whatever the provocation, justices and their wives…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Power play: The energy costs of the AI revolutionIt takes a lot of juice to make AI wizardry happen, said The Economist. The graphics-processing chips (GPUs) on which models like ChatGPT are trained and run are “energy addicts.” According to Equinix, which rents out data centers, a typical server rack requires 10 to 15 kilowatts (KW) of power. An AI one that’s built around GPUs “requires 40 to 60 KW.” A ChatGPT search “may consume 10 times the electricity” of a Google search. And keeping the oceans of racks cool “requires just as much oomph,” which is why the popularity of these amazing AI tools is raising concern about the extra strain on the grid. Complicating matters is the fact that the White House is urging the uptake of electrical goods—from EVs to heat pumps—to move the economy…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024The beauty and threat from solar stormsPowerful geomagnetic solar storms like those that recently hit Earth can deliver stunning displays of auroral lights, says Scientific American, but they also can—and one day inevitably will—do serious harm. In such a storm, known as a coronal mass ejection, the sun belches out billions of tons of charged particles in the form of plasma. This can wreak havoc on Earth’s magnetic field and cripple electrical power grids, satellites, and telecom equipment. The recent storms, the most severe to reach Earth since 2003, knocked out GPS-guided farm equipment in the Midwest and caused blackouts of high-frequency radio communications in Australia, Japan, and China. They even forced some airplane flights to reroute to avoid the poles, where radiation spikes might have endangered passengers. Still, it could have been worse. “I was…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Hottest in 2,000 yearsWe knew last year was the warmest since modern recordkeeping began. Now, data from tree rings shows that last summer was the hottest in the past 2,000 years. Each year, trees form light-colored rings during spring and early summer and darker rings in late summer and fall. Variations in these patterns show changing environmental conditions. After analyzing some 10,000 trees in nine regions of the Northern Hemisphere, scientists determined that the global temperature from June to August 2023 was 2.07 degrees Celsius warmer than the average temperature from the years A.D. 1 through 1890. “This period is really not well covered with instruments,” lead author Jan Esper, of Germany’s Johannes Gutenberg University, tells The New York Times, but “the tree rings can do really, really well.” Last summer’s record-setting heat…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024The Ministry of TimeKaliane Bradley’s “edgy, playful” debut is “likely to be the most thought-provoking romance novel of the summer,” said Lauren LeBlanc in the Los Angeles Times. It’s also much more than that. The narrator, a British woman of Cambodian descent, takes a civil service post that requires she share a home with a high-value refugee: Graham Gore, a 19th-century arctic explorer transported into the present via a top-secret time-travel program. “Will this be an odd sort of meet-cute?” It will be, while “witty banter, cutting observations, and interspersed passages from Gore’s doomed expedition also keep the novel taut.” Despite its sci-fi rom-com trappings, “Bradley’s book is also serious—or, at least, covers serious subjects,” said Ella Risbridger in The Guardian. Imperialism, the refugee crisis, Auschwitz, and 9/11 are all deftly woven into…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Billie EilishBillie Eilish and her brother, Finneas, are “as good a combo platter of songwriter/record-makers as anyone doing it today,” said Chris Willman in Variety. Eilish’s first album since 2021 isn’t a grand statement—“unless there’s such a thing as a subtle blockbuster.” But its 10 songs, “marked by their beauty and sonic exploration,” are so strong that they beg to be played on repeat. Though Hit Me Hard and Soft “mostly upholds Eilish’s signature electro-goth sound,” said Mikael Wood in the Los Angeles Times, the record finds the siblings expanding their reach, and at times, the 22-year-old Eilish “belts in a way we’ve never heard from her before.” Because the nine-time Grammy winner has mostly sung in a whisper, it’s “a total thrill” to hear her “climb up, up, up” in…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Furiosa: A Mad Max SagaA female warrior finds her strength.How do you follow up the most spectacular action movie of the 21st century? asked David Ehrlich in IndieWire. Director George Miller, whose previous Mad Max film was the stunning Fury Road, has answered that question with a prequel “so immense and self-possessed that it refuses to be seen as the mere extension of another movie.” Furiosa, the heroine played by Charlize Theron in Fury Road, matures here from a kidnapped child to a desert warrior, played this time by Anya Taylor-Joy. But while the unfinished journey of the character can’t build to her ultimate test in the dystopian world she inhabits, “Miller still has what it takes to make it epic.” Taylor-Joy’s Furiosa “may look too physically slight to handle the Armageddon,” said Manohla…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Streaming tipsPlanet of the ApesThe franchise in which apes evolved into humans’ superiors has spawned a new box office hit, but the original 1968 movie is tough to beat. Wayward future astronauts stumble upon a planet where intelligent apes lord it over primitive humans, setting up one of the all-time great twist endings. StarzDawn of the Planet of the ApesThough the Apes trilogy that began with 2011’s ‘Rise’ should be watched in order, it’s the second movie that’s the standout. After a simian flu annihilates most humans, ape leader Caesar works toward a peace with the surviving humans while an embittered bonobo named Koba chooses war. MaxEscape From the Planet of the ApesThe most lighthearted movie in the Apes franchise, from 1971, finds scientist apes Cornelius and Zira traveling back in…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Critics’ choice: Tiny spaces, big flavorsMaria Kennesaw, Ga.Dining at Maria “feels like you’re going to Grandma’s,” said Henna Bakshi in Atlanta magazine. And that’s just what 21-year-old chef Trevor Shankman was aiming for when he decided to create a supper club at the suburban Atlanta home of his beloved grandmother, Maria, who died last June. Shankman’s grandfather assists in the tribute by lending the house out for the Friday and Saturday seatings of eight to 12 at the home’s dining room table. Each night sells out long in advance. Shankman will pause to answer the doorbell and graciously welcome each visitor, but when he’s cooking, his focus is intent as he dots plates with sauces, cuts clean edges on sous-vide meats, and then begins presenting “one gorgeous plate after the next.” Each course is accompanied…3 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024The 2025 Toyota Camry: What the critics sayConsumer Reports“If you’re looking for a midsize sedan, you still can’t do much better than the Camry.” Toyota continues to find ways to improve the best-selling sedan in the U.S., and the latest upgrades to the four-door stalwart include sharper handling and new standard safety equipment. By far the biggest change, though, is that every Camry will now have a hybrid power train, a fifth-generation system “so smooth and unobtrusive that we doubt most owners will notice—unless they track how much they spend on gas.”Edmunds“This is the best new Camry in a long, long time.” The base LE trim—which is $455 cheaper than 2024’s—achieves 53 mpg in city driving and 50 on the highway. Power has risen to 225 hp in front-wheel-drive Camrys, and to 232 hp in all-wheel-drive models.…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024For free garden planningSeedtime serves many gardening needs, and is especially useful for succession planting, helping to keep track of when to seed and when to harvest if you want your garden to be producing all season long. Paid tiers of the service add even more features. Planter also tries to do everything, and is best for helping you “get real about spacing.” You can’t fill a bed with just any plant, “as they all grow to different sizes and some grow vertically while others grow horizontally.” Seed to Spoon is useful for determining which plants thrive when planted together, “and more importantly, which crops can’t be interplanted.” Gardenate.com is a website that lists what you can be planting on any given day based on your climate zone. Plantnet, a free plant-identification app,…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Global: China aims at a property bailoutChina is finally getting serious about fixing its spiraling property market, said John Liu in Bloomberg. Beijing last week announced “its most forceful attempt yet” at a real-estate rescue, with $42 billion in funding to “help government-backed firms buy excess inventory from developers,” which would be converted into affordable housing. It’s a sign of how worried authorities are that housing continues to plummet following a default by the country’s biggest developer, Evergrande, two and a half years ago. Since then, “images of tracts of empty buildings and uncompleted public works” have become “symbols of disgruntlement” with President Xi Jinping’s leadership.This is “a step in the right direction,” but this crisis runs deep, said Jacky Wong in The Wall Street Journal. How deep? “There are enough unsold homes in China to…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Home insurance: A coastal crisis spreads nationwideIt’s getting harder to insure your home no matter where you live, said Christopher Flavelle in The New York Times. A homeowners’ insurance crisis has long been building in Florida, California, and Louisiana. But last year, “insurers lost money on homeowners’ coverage” in more than a third of the country. Changing weather patterns have made severe storms increasingly costly across the Midwest; in Iowa, “at least four companies have announced they would stop writing homeowners insurance.” The threat of wildfires, increased by climate change, “is causing insurers to back away from” large sections of Arizona, Washington state, and Utah. In Colorado, officials have begun “setting up a high-risk pool in case private insurers start dropping large numbers of customers.” To make up for their losses elsewhere, many insurers are raising…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Search shock: Google shows its AI ambitionsGoogle is about to break much of the internet, said Kevin Roose in The New York Times. For two decades, the online media ecosystem has revolved around “people going to Google, searching for something, and clicking on articles about it.” Publishers and businesses sold ads and subscriptions on this model, which earned Google its reputation as the gateway to the web. “But change is coming.” Above its rolling list of links, Google last week began showing artificial intelligence–generated summaries—so-called AI Overviews—in response to search queries, to give users “concise summaries of whatever they’re looking for.” Publishers are rightly spooked. “If the AI answer engine does its job well enough, users won’t need to click on any links at all.” One analyst firm, Gartner, predicts that web traffic from search engines…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Anger in U.S. as war crimes court targets NetanyahuWhat happenedA prosecutor at the world’s top war-crimes court announced this week that he was seeking an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel’s conduct in Gaza, a move President Biden called “outrageous” and that Republican lawmakers said would result in the tribunal being hit with sanctions. Karim Khan, a prosecutor at the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court, said he had “reasonable grounds to believe” Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including starving civilians as a war tactic and “intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.” Khan also sought warrants for three Hamas leaders for a “systematic attack against the civilian population of Israel by Hamas” on Oct. 7. Netanyahu called Khan a “rogue prosecutor who’s out to…3 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Ukraine seeks to take the fight into RussiaWhat happenedAs Ukraine battled a renewed Russian offensive in northern Kharkiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky this week pleaded with allies for more jets and missiles—and permission to fire them at targets inside Russia. In the past few weeks, Russian forces easily captured more than 50 square miles, including a dozen villages, from a Ukrainian army short on soldiers and ammunition. By advancing on Kharkiv’s capital city of 1 million, Russia appears to be trying to draw Ukrainian troops away from Donetsk in the east so that it can occupy the rest of that region. But Ukraine is hamstrung in its defense of Kharkiv, which is near the Russian border, because it is not allowed to use U.S.- or German-supplied weapons to hit Russian territory. Zelensky said those constraints give Moscow a…3 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Good week/bad weekHaute cuisine, after Michelin-caliber chef Rasmus Munk announced plans to offer fine dining at the edge of space. Six diners will each pay $495,000 for a ticket, which includes transportation in a “space balloon” that will take off from Florida and ascend 100,000 feet.Real Housemembers of D.C., after a House committee hearing became a verbal brawl, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) blasting Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s “fake eyelashes” and Crockett (D-Texas) dissing MTG’s “bleach-blond, bad-built butch body.”Hoarding, after newly unsealed court documents revealed that Donald Trump’s attorneys found four classified documents in his bedroom at Mar-a-Lago in late 2022, four months after the FBI raided the property to retrieve other sensitive papers.Bad week for:Taking responsibility, after President Biden, speaking in Michigan, reminisced that “when I was vice president, things were…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024The world at a glanceLondonSunak calls snap election: With rain pouring down on him as he stood outside 10 Downing St., Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this week set July 4 as the date of the next election, a vote widely expected to boot him out of office. Sunak could have waited as late as next January to schedule the vote, and some speculated he’s doing it now to capitalize on a recent drop in inflation. Sunak said he hoped the good economic news would give voters “confidence that if we stick to the plan there are brighter days ahead.” But his Conservative Party, in power for 14 years, is widely blamed for the complications of Brexit, high energy prices, and a crippling housing shortage. The opposition Labour Party has been leading by some 20…7 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Powell’s fantasy love lifeGlen Powell has made peace with the fact that he’s now public property, said Britt Hennemuth in Vanity Fair. Raised in Austin, the actor spent more than a decade working in relative obscurity before landing a breakout role in Top Gun: Maverick (2022). Suddenly, everybody wanted a piece of him. An Uber driver started stalking him. Old friends pestered him to read their screenplays. “I literally felt like a commodity for the first time,” says Powell, 35. Then things went into overdrive. While he was filming the rom-com Anyone but You (2023) in Australia, paparazzi shots of him and co-star Sydney Sweeney sparked rumors of an affair—even though Sweeney’s fiancé was a producer of the film, and on set the whole time. Powell now accepts that being an A-lister means…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Why liberals are losing to autocratsDavid BrooksThe New York Times“The central struggle in the world right now is between liberalism and authoritarianism,” said David Brooks, and “the authoritarians have the momentum.” The populist tide is lifting quasi-autocrats in the U.S., India, Hungary, and Turkey, while “straight-up dictators” Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China expand their power and influence. Why is liberalism in trouble? It has much to recommend it: its strong respect for individual rights and personal choice, its “live-and-let-live tolerance.” But by focusing so heavily on the individual, liberalism fails to address a powerful human need for “primal bonds” with family, ethnic culture, national traditions, and religion. Authoritarians appeal to “faith, family, soil, and flag,” and warn the masses that liberals seek to eradicate all that seems solid—“from your morality to…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Viewpoint“With Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito aged 74 and 76 respectively, the six Federalist Society justices know that a second Trump term would enable them to pass on their seats to equally MAGA justices, sealing their legacy on SCOTUS for a generation. If even one of the Democratic appointees had a health or other issue leading to an empty seat, Trump could make nominations that add up to a 7-2 Federalist Society majority, with John Roberts the only one over 60 years old. To that, add the additional hundreds of other Trump appointments to federal district and appeals courts, which would enshrine the new ‘the law is what we say it is’ jurisprudence.”Michael Podhorzer in WeekendReading.net…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Want a house? Try a life of crimeMillie MuroiThe Sydney Morning HeraldOnly a drug kingpin can afford to buy a house in Australia these days, said Millie Muroi. That’s why I recently found myself combing Sydney’s Manly Beach hoping to come across a cocaine windfall. “Tightly packed bricks of cocaine have been washing up along the New South Wales coastline after a botched import last year” and are often found by beachgoers. Since a single gram can fetch up to $400 on the street, selling just 1 kilo would get me a third of the way to $1.2 million, the average price of a home here. Over the last three decades, housing prices have tripled while real earnings ticked up only 50 percent, so most of us are stuck forever in the “rental rat race.” Back in…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024The end of Catalan separatism?EditorialEl PaísCatalan separatists won’t be holding Spain hostage any longer, said El País. In Catalonian elections earlier this month, the Socialist Party triumphed, knocking secessionist parties out of power after four decades. All that time, Catalonian leaders have poisoned Spanish politics with their identity politics and reactionary demands, not content with the region’s substantial cultural, linguistic, and political autonomy. While they’ve thankfully never resorted to armed struggle like the Basque separatists, their independence drive has been profoundly destabilizing. The “greatest point of tension” came in 2017, when Catalonia illegally declared independence after an unauthorized referendum. Spanish authorities cracked down, seizing control of the government and sending Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont fleeing to Belgium. The confrontation triggered violent protests in Barcelona over the imprisonment of separatist lawmakers. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez,…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Football: A kicker’s culture warHarrison Butker may be one of the best placekickers in the NFL, said Toriano Porter in The Kansas City Star, but his commencement speech at Benedictine College last week “was wide right.” In a 20-minute address at the Catholic college in Atchison, Kan., the Kansas City Chiefs star railed against everything from abortion to LGBTQ rights to women with career aspirations. He slammed Pride month as a celebration of a “deadly sin” and falsely claimed Congress had passed a bill that would result in jail time for anyone repeating “the biblical teaching of who killed Jesus.” (He means Jews.) Butker, 28, encouraged women graduates to forget the “diabolical lies” told them about professional success and to “embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.” The NFL distanced itself…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Brown v. Board of Ed: A tarnished legacySeventy years ago this month, the Supreme Court mandated the integration of public schools in Brown v. Board of Education, said Nicholas Mitchell in MSNBC.com. Growing up Black in the South, “my life exists in the shadow” of that landmark, 9-0 ruling, which enabled me to attend integrated schools and forge a career as a college professor. But “social and legal resistance to desegregation has never stopped,” and opponents have fought to preserve a racial caste system in every possible way. The backlash has included the “white flight” from cities, the creation of all-white parochial and private schools, and publicly funded private-school vouchers. After decades of resegregation, 1 in 5 schools is once again more than 90 percent nonwhite, according to UCLA’s Civil Rights Project. About 40 percent of Black…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Innovation of the weekThe British military is testing a weapon that can beam radio waves to disrupt enemy drones, said David Szondy in New Atlas. The U.K. has realized that “knocking out a drone that costs a few grand with a missile costing millions of dollars per round is bad economics.” A much more cost-effective alternative is the Radio Frequency Directed Energy Weapon (RFDEW), which fires “a burst of electromagnetic radiation” that can disrupt or disable electronic equipment. Though the weapon itself is expensive, the U.K. says that the cost of each shot comes out to just 10 pence (13 cents). The weapon can “detect, track, and engage multiple threats” (mostly drones) at up to a kilometer away. The RFDEW will get a test in September; the U.K. has also tested a laser…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024What a liberal looks likeThe shape of your face may reveal your political beliefs, reports The Telegraph (U.K.). For a new study, researchers at Stanford University questioned 591 participants about voting history and beliefs. Then they handed each person a black T-shirt and asked them to remove makeup and jewelry, tie their hair back, and adopt a blank expression for a full-face photograph. Even without those extraneous personality markers—and even controlling for factors such as age, gender, and ethnicity—an AI algorithm analyzing the images predicted political orientation with over 70 percent accuracy. The program performed similarly well when fed images of more than 3,400 politicians from the U.S., U.K., and Canada. Human raters, by contrast, did less well at guessing orientation—though still better than chance. The study found that left-leaning subjects had smaller faces,…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Mice that make good dadsScientists think they’ve found the secret to why one species of mouse mates for life, and why the males of that species care for their young. Most mice, like most mammals, are promiscuous, mating with many different partners even in the same breeding season—and the males usually ignore their offspring. But oldfield mice stay together and share in the raising of their young. Researchers at Columbia University say that’s because the oldfield mouse has an anatomical anomaly: a large additional adrenal gland layer with cells that produce the hormone 20alpha-OHP. When the researchers injected the hormone into non-monogamous deer mice, they found that 17 percent of the dads, rather than being negligent as is normal for males of that species, started protecting and grooming their young. “This marks the first…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk“Rebel Girl is a purple bruise of a memoir,” said Allison Stewart in The Washington Post. Kathleen Hanna, as the lead singer of the 1990s underground punk band Bikini Kill, helped launch the riot grrrl movement, a “DIY collision of feminism, political activism, music, and art.” Yet her days as a niche icon of anti-misogyny were often dark. Though we get the details on how she provided the title of Nirvana’s breakthrough song and how Bikini Kill popularized the phrase “girl power” long before the Spice Girls, her story “can sometimes feel like an unceasing parade of indignities and outrages.” Hanna is repeatedly threatened, insulted, and sexually assaulted, including once by a close friend. At the same time, performing with Bikini Kill was teaching her to carry herself, as she…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024LaDarrion WilliamsLaDarrion Williams never could see himself in the books he loved as a child, said Stuart Miller in the Los Angeles Times. Growing up in small-town Alabama, he devoured Harry Potter, Twilight, and similar series, but was frustrated that Black characters never had lead roles. “If somebody that looked like me was there, they were relegated to the side or killed to help propel the main white character’s story forward,” he says. “Eventually, I fell out of love with reading.” Years later, Williams moved to Los Angeles to become a screen and stage writer, occasionally living out of his car. Shortly after the police murder of George Floyd, while toying with an old TV series idea, he asked a bookstore clerk to help him find a YA novel with a…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Coppola’s Megalopolis: A movie legend’s crowning boondoggle?Clearly, Francis Ford Coppola’s new passion project is “a movie you either love or hate,” said Jade Yuan in The Washington Post. “A futuristic, almost Shakespearean epic about the downfall of American society,” Megalopolis premiered last week at the Cannes Film Festival to audience reactions that were “positive, negative, confused—but almost 100 percent passionate.” The mixed response could result in a long wait for the legendary 85-year-old director before he finds a U.S. distributor for the film, which he envisioned 40 years ago and spent $120 million of his own fortune to make. But at least the Apocalypse Now auteur delivered Cannes’ most talked-about film, a sci-fi fable that includes “a level of bacchanalia that would make The Wolf of Wall Street blush.”Production of the film was wild in its…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024The Week’s guide to what’s worth watchingDancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok CultTo all the ostensible dangers of TikTok, you can add the risk of getting sucked into a quasi-religious dance cult. A number of prominent TikTok dancers recount how they were lured in by a charismatic figure named Robert Shinn, who is both the owner of a talent management agency and founder-pastor of a Los Angeles church. The dancers and members of Shinn’s congregation relate shocking allegations of brainwashing and abuse. Wednesday, May 29, NetflixEricIn this limited series set in 1980s New York City, a 9-year-old is abducted on his walk to his school and his puppeteer father devises an unusual rescue scheme. Benedict Cumberbatch stars as a creative dad who turns to his son’s drawings to build Eric, a large furry blue monster…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Recipe of the weekFor “a fuss-free way to make a flavorful pot of rice,” follow the lead of the Japanese dish kinoko gohan, said Hisham Ali Hassan in Milk Street Magazine. Dressed shiitake mushrooms and shredded carrots are cooked on top of the rice, then stirred in along with a mix of butter and miso. Kinoko gohan can be used as a side or served alone as a light meal if topped with fried or soft-cooked eggs.Japanese-style one-pot mushroom rice2 tbsp soy sauce • 1 tbsp mirin • 2 tsp finely grated fresh ginger • kosher salt and ground black pepper • 4 oz fresh shiitake mushrooms, stemmed, caps sliced ¼ inch thick • 2 medium carrots, peeled and shredded on the large holes of a box grater • 2 tbsp salted butter,…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024This week: Homes with a ranch-style layout1 Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y. The Marshad House was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1950. The midcentury-modern three-bedroom has a butterfly roof and cypress ceilings; a living room with a wall of windows, the original bluestone floor, and a local-stone fireplace; a chef’s kitchen; an open family-dining room; an office; and a garage converted to a studio. The wooded lot has mature landscaping, a patio, and an organic vegetable garden; Croton Gorge trailhead is two blocks’ walk and a Manhattan train is 5 minutes’ drive. $1,800,000. Dalia Valdes, Julia B. Fee Sotheby’s International Realty, (914) 772-80022 Malibu, Calif. This Spanish-style ranch home dates to 1959. The five-bedroom house features exposed beams, a tiled entry, living and family rooms with walls of French doors leading to the patio and pool, an eat-in kitchen…3 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Regulation: CFPB survives Supreme Court reviewThe Supreme Court last week averted a crisis for “regulators across the government” as it upheld the funding mechanism for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said Katy O’Donnell and Josh Gerstein in Politico. The agency was created in 2010 and gets “funded through the Federal Reserve instead of Congress” to “shield the agency from political pressure.” An appellate court had ruled in favor of a group of payday lenders who argued that the structure “violates the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine.” By a vote of 7-2, the high court reversed the decision, which could have effectively shut down the agency.FDIC: Chairman mired in toxic workplace scandalMartin Gruenberg, the embattled chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., said this week he will stay until a successor is confirmed, said Stefania Palma…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024What the experts sayA secure investment for the agesA New Hampshire bank is offering a 100-year CD, said Medora Lee in USA Today. Concord, N.H.–based Walden Mutual Bank is paying a fixed 4.75 percent annual interest rate on a certificate of deposit that doesn’t mature until 2124. You can withdraw interest at any time with no penalty, and “in approximately 15 years, more than half of your deposit will be interest.” However, taking out the principal will cost a penalty equal to 10 years’ interest. Walden says that locking up money long in advance makes it easier for the bank to offer farmers long-term mortgages and equipment loans. The CD is FDIC insured, up to $250,000, but some advisers warn that there are “tax headaches of reporting CD interest for a century” that…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024OpenAI drops the noble maskCasey NewtonPlatformer“It’s not unusual for a fast-growing startup to go through some tumult as it scales up,” said Casey Newton. However, OpenAI wasn’t founded to be a fast-growing startup. It was founded as a non-profit research lab for artificial intelligence. Even as it started acting more and more like an arrogant tech giant, CEO Sam Altman insisted that OpenAI’s “deeper ambition was something nobler, and more public-spirited.” Lately, though, the message he’s been sending is that OpenAI is about “winning at any cost.” Take this week’s dustup with actress Scarlett Johansson. Altman negotiated with Johansson “for the better part of a year to lend her voice to ChatGPT” in a re-creation of her vocal performance in the sci-fi movie Her. But Johansson declined to participate. She was stunned, then, to…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024The Emmy winner who was deliciously hateableDabney Coleman delighted in playing cads. Over a varied career spanning nearly six decades and 175 roles, he found his niche portraying comically self-centered male chauvinists who often got a richly deserved comeuppance. In 1980’s 9 to 5, he played what Jane Fonda’s character called “a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” of a boss and ended up getting hogtied and hung from a ceiling by fed-up female employees. Two years later, in Tootsie, his sexist, butt-slapping soap opera director is chewed out by an indignant, cross-dressing Dustin Hoffman. By all accounts, Coleman was nothing like these slimeballs—at least outwardly. “When I meet a person I don’t like, I make a notation about what it is I don’t like about them,” he said in 1983, “and hopefully I can integrate that…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024The WWII ace who became a top test pilotOne of the most decorated of all U.S. fighter pilots, Bud Anderson could fly anything. During World War II alone, he logged 480 hours of combat in a P-51 Mustang propeller aircraft and never aborted a mission. While an ace is a pilot with five kills, Anderson single-handedly shot down 16 enemy planes over Europe, making him a rare World War II “triple ace.” After the war, he helped launch the jet age, becoming one of the country’s best military test pilots. He attributed his success to his uncanny ability to spot enemy aircraft when they were just specks in the sky. “Something you really need in a dogfight is situational awareness,” he said. “What’s going round in the total picture.”Born in Oakland, Clarence Anderson was called Bud from childhood.…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Which disaster are you prepping for?Not all preppers are paranoid bunker builders just waiting for the end times, said Kevin Curtin in The Austin Chronicle. Some are optimists who want to be ready to help their communities.WHEN WE TALK about preparedness, everyone has their own disaster movie that plays in their mind. What’s the scenario in yours?A natural disaster? Catastrophic power-grid failure? A deadly, uncontrollable pandemic? A solar flare that zaps communication systems on a global scale? Food and water scarcity? Chemical warfare on American soil? Nukes? World War III? The Right hunting the Left? The poor uprising against the rich? Alien conquerors?Or maybe it’s just a winter storm. We’ve experienced that—shivering under blankets, pipes bursting in our walls. When Texas’ electric grid failed in 2021, 4 million homes and businesses lost power and 246…10 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024It wasn’t all badFour wild gray fox kits will soon be old enough to be returned to the wild after being left at the Arizona Humane Society in April. They had been found in a small den and placed in a box by a man who believed that they were small kittens or puppies. The foxes, just one or two weeks old, were most likely left by their mother as she hunted for food. Caretakers at a conservation center in Scottsdale, Ariz., have tried to make sure the animals will not become accustomed to human company, draping themselves in camouflage fabric to feed them. The foxes should be ready to be released this summer. Victoria, Michael, Ludovico, Marcus, and Ashley Povolo, a group of quintuplets from New Jersey, graduated from Montclair State University…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Debates: Will a head-to-head clash lift Trump or Biden?It’s official, said Bill Scher in Washington Monthly: “The Biden campaign is worried.” After months of taunting from Donald Trump about his reluctance to commit to televised debates before the November election, President Biden abruptly challenged Trump last week to two of them. “Make my day, pal,” said Biden in a video message. “I hear you’re free on Wednesdays,” he added—a dig at the courtroom schedule of Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan. Trump quickly agreed, and the first presidential debate is scheduled for June 27, three months earlier than usual. Why Biden’s sudden change of heart? Polling. Trump is now the race’s clear front-runner, with a persistent 1 to 2 percentage point lead in “critical Rust Belt swing states” like Pennsylvania and Michigan, and larger leads in Arizona (4 points),…3 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024In other newsBiden invokes executive privilege over Hur recordingsThe House Judiciary and Oversight committees voted last week to ask the full House to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over recordings of President Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur. The White House asserts that audio of the interview, about Biden’s handling of classified documents, is protected by executive privilege. The Justice Department published a transcript of the interview in March, but Republicans maintain that an audio recording will add depth to Hur’s summary of the conversation, in which he depicted Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” White House counsel Ed Siskel said the GOP wanted the tapes “to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Cardi B’s family balancing actCardi B became a mother at a less-than-ideal moment, said Mankaprr Conteh in Rolling Stone. The rapper gave birth to her daughter, Kulture, just months after the release of her smash debut album, Invasion of Privacy (2018), and just as she was planning her first national tour. “I was really, really scared,” says Cardi, 31. “I [felt] like, I’m letting my family down. I’m letting everybody that works for me down.” She backed out of the tour to stay home with Kulture—“Can you imagine a baby in a tour bus?”—and found herself dealing with what she describes as “postpartum everything.” Cardi says she found it easier to stay level after the birth of her son, Wave, in 2021. More difficult has been managing her relationship with her husband, the rapper…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Proving their loyalty to their leaderGreg SargentThe New RepublicThe Republicans who’ve flocked to Donald Trump’s election-interference trial in New York City aren’t just “demonstrating personal support,” said Greg Sargent. “They’re saying that Trump is more important than the rule of law.” GOP elected officials such as House Speaker Mike Johnson, Rep. Elise Stefanik, and Sens. J.D. Vance and Rick Scott did not merely criticize factual aspects of the trial; they painted the prosecution of Trump—for allegedly falsifying business records to hide hush-money payments before the 2016 election—as “a fundamentally illegitimate proceeding.” Johnson called the trial “a sham” and “corrupt.” With Trump prohibited by a gag order from attacking people involved in the case, Republicans gleefully did his dirty work for him. Scott and Vance echoed Trump’s earlier attacks on Judge Juan Merchan because his daughter…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024It must be true…An Australian woman who’s been unable to evict a venomous snake living in her SUV has chosen to don protective gear and continue driving. “I don’t really have any other choice,” said Lisa Kournelis, who needs the car to get to her construction job. Weeks ago she began “finding snake poo everywhere,” and then encountered the red-bellied black snake sitting on the back seat. She enlisted four snake handlers, but they couldn’t find the viper’s hiding place. “If it does bite,” she said, her protective wool pants “will take care of most of the venom.” In its fifth attempt, the city of Kyle, Texas, has once again failed to field enough Kyles to break the world record for the largest gathering of same-named people. Its Gathering of the Kyles drew…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024An abuser finally held to accountZhanabai SharipovDiapazonKazakhstan’s first-ever livestreamed court trial was like an “educational film” on domestic violence, said Zhanabai Sharipov. For weeks, hundreds of thousands of people watched on television as former economy minister Kuandyk Bishimbayev tried to persuade a jury he hadn’t meant to kill his wife. He wasn’t convincing, though. CCTV footage showed him bludgeoning Saltanat Nukenova in a restaurant owned by his family, then dragging her half-naked body by the hair down the hall and leaving her to die. Bishimbayev is a “clever and educated person” who chose “every word” and facial expression carefully. Still, as he testified, you could tell he’d forgotten that Nukenova was a person, “not just a wife, but someone’s daughter, sister.” Kazakhs were riveted, and appalled. For too long, such crimes went unnoticed, with no…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Slovakia: Attack on leader reveals a divided nation“Shock, dismay, and sadness” reign in Slovakia following last week’s assassination attempt against Prime Minister Robert Fico, said Adriana Belej Majercinova in Pravda (Slovakia). Fico, 59, was shot five times while greeting supporters in the town of Handlova. After two surgeries, doctors said this week that his condition was stable but that he’d had a “narrow escape”—one bullet came within a few centimeters of killing him. Police quickly arrested the suspected gunman, Juraj Cintula, 71, an amateur poet. Neighbors called Cintula a grouchy man angry at the world, and one woman in his writing group said she’d pegged him as a killer based on his dark, disturbing poetry. Cintula’s social media shows him careening from one target of his rage to the next. He was disgusted with parties on both…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Texas: Why Abbott pardoned a murdererGreg Abbott just declared “open season on protesters,” said Tim Murphy in Mother Jones. That was the chilling message the Texas governor sent last week, when he pardoned Daniel Perry for the 2020 murder of Garrett Foster at a Black Lives Matter rally. Perry, a white Army sergeant who was driving for Uber that night, ran a red light and “drove into a crowd of demonstrators after honking at them.” Foster—a white Air Force veteran who was pushing his Black, quadruple-amputee girlfriend in a wheelchair—approached Perry’s car while legally open-carrying a rifle. Perry rolled down his window, shot Foster five times with a .357 revolver, and quickly became “a right-wing cause célèbre.” He claimed self-defense at his trial but admitted to police that Foster had not raised his gun; he…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Bytes: What’s new in techFiring 500 people in a fit of angerA spat between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and an executive prompted Musk to fire the entire Supercharger team, said Chris Kirkham in Reuters. The day before the mass layoff, “charging chief Rebecca Tinucci went to meet with Musk about the network’s future.” Tinucci had cut between 15 percent and 20 percent of the unit two weeks earlier, but Musk “was not pleased with Tinucci’s presentation and wanted more layoffs.” When she balked, he fired her and her entire 500-member team. Musk has since promised “to continue expanding” the EV charger network, and Tesla has rehired some of its workers. But Tesla’s solar and battery team has largely taken over the Supercharger division and has been “calling partners to close out ongoing charger-construction projects.”OpenAI…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Implant for the blindA breakthrough in nanotechnology offers hope for an eye implant that might one day cure blindness, reports SciTechDaily. In most visually impaired people, the visual cortex in the brain remains functional, if only it could receive input from the eyes. An implant could send electrical signals to the brain to generate a rough image, one pixel per electrode. “The image created by electrical impulses would be like the matrix board on a highway—a dark space and some spots that would light up depending on the information you are given,” says project leader Maria Asplund of Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology. “The more electrodes that feed into it, the better the image would be.” The challenge is twofold: devising electrodes so tiny that many can fit on the implant and constructing…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing)“Brave New Words is an important read for a changing world,” said Ruby Rosenthal in New City Lit. Salman Khan, the founder and CEO of the nonprofit online tutoring site Khan Academy, has a new product to sell: a chatbot called Khanmigo that he believes can be part of a revolution in education. While he’s “not blind to the problems that come with AI,” he’s confident that its effects on education are coming whether they’re effectively harnessed or not, and he presents a vision in which bots like Khanmigo facilitate learning for students at all income levels by serving as individual tutors. Khan has certainly earned a listen, said Dominic Green in The Wall Street Journal. Through Khan Academy, which today provides free educational videos to more than 150 million…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Best books…chosen by Jasper FfordeJasper Fforde is the author of The Eyre Affair and six other Thursday Next novels. The British writer’s latest novel, Red Side Story, is a sequel to 2009’s Shades of Grey, set in a dystopian U.K. where social standing is determined by the ability to see color.True Grit by Charles Portis (1968). In the winter of 1873, 14-year-old Mattie Ross enlists the help of one-eyed federal marshal Rooster Cogburn to hunt down fugitive Tom Chaney and avenge her father’s murder. Far better than the movies it inspired, Charles Portis’ Western classic delivers on every single level.The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter (1903). Besides a lively narrative and illustrations of striking beauty, Beatrix Potter’s finest work features Simpkin, the literary world’s most realistic cat, plus an idiom that would make…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Jenny Holzer: Light LineGuggenheim Museum, New York City, through Sept. 29When Jenny Holzer last took command of the Guggenheim Museum’s famous interior rotunda, “it felt like she was screaming,” said Michael Auping in The Brooklyn Rail. On a thin LED screen that followed the upward spiral of Frank Lloyd Wright’s central six-story ramp, Holzer presented an idiosyncratic stock ticker–like crawl of words, phrases, and paragraphs that picked viewers’ brains and punctured false moralities. “Abuse of power comes as no surprise,” read one of Holzer’s maxims. “Having two or three people in love with you is like money in the bank,” read another. Longer entries targeted bigotry, AIDS, and homelessness, and for many of us who saw the work firsthand, “it is remembered as one of the most spectacular and insightful site-specific installations of…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Beth GibbonsOn her solo debut album, which she has just released at age 59, Portishead’s Beth Gibbons “comes across as dead serious,” said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. “A summation of everything Gibbons has done so far,” it “touches on jazz, folk, torch songs, and symphonic music,” while also weaving in elements of Portishead’s “darkly shaded mood music.” Every song is highly dramatic, often tackling big questions, and the combination of the themes and the dark, heavy music “can easily wear you out.” Fortunately, “Gibbons has an ear for melody” that makes Lives Outgrown accessible and “ultimately rewarding.” Gibbons’ lyrics “take a long view, pondering lifetimes and generations, connecting personal concerns to planetary ones,” said Jon Pareles in The New York Times. Her vocals often sit atop hand-played instruments—acoustic…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024All of MePershing Square Signature Center, New York CityLaura Winters’ All of Me is a solid rom-com distinguished by a couple of details that “lift it far above the ordinary,” said Elizabeth Zimmer in The Village Voice. In the play’s new off-Broadway iteration, the lead characters, like the performers who play them, use powered wheelchairs and communicate through a text-to-speech program. Yet while “deprived of two major assets of live theater—spoken language and upright physical mobility,” actors Madison Ferris and Danny J. Gomez “communicate genuine heat and passion for each other.”Often hilarious, All of Me deftly sidesteps “the dreaded tonal traps of disability representation,” said Christian Lewis in TheaterMania. Lucy, who was once a singer, is a dry wit. Alfonso, whose humor is hokier, is a white-collar professional, and one of the…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024We Are Lady PartsAs befits a show about a London-based punk band, We Are Lady Parts burst onto the scene in 2021 with a winning combo of shock value and in-your-face energy. The fact that it was also unapologetically, delightfully silly also helped. A second season finds the titular all-girl Muslim band—purveyors of tunes such as “Ain’t No One Gonna Honour Kill My Sister but Me”—endeavoring to record an album after a successful club tour. An impressive rival band allows doubts to creep in, leading Lady Parts’ members to question whether they have what it takes to make it big. Crushing Muslim stereotypes has never rocked so hard. Thursday, May 30, Peaco*ck• All listings are Eastern Time.…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024co*cktail hour: THC spritzersA new breed of THC-infused canned co*cktails has “changed the game” for people who enjoy weed but not alcohol, said Chala June in Bon Appétit. Hemp-derived beverages are legal in all 50 states, and a technological breakthrough has done away with the grassy off tastes of old. The products below deliver “all the sensory pleasures of co*cktails,” and are welcomed at more parties than weed smoke.Cann ($48 for 12). Cann’s sparkling “social tonics” come in multiple flavors and dosage levels, with the mild Lo Boy delivering just 1 mg of THC.Pamos Spritz ($28 for four). Infused with 2 to 10 mg of THC, each Pamos spritz “emulates a classic mixed drink,” from the Bellini to the mai tai.Crescent 9 ($55 for 12). With 50 mg of THC per can, this…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024How to flatten a vinyl recordCombine weight and patience. One of the safest ways to take the wobble out of a warped vinyl record is to place it on a flat surface under a large, heavy book or two and let time and gravity do the work. Though the method often works, “you’ll be waiting weeks or even months to see any results.” Hire a pro. Ask your local record shop if it flattens vinyl. Or use a mail-in service such as Perfect Vinyl Forever. The pros use record-flattening machines, which run from $200 to $3,000—if you can find one. Use your oven. The fastest but riskiest DIY method is to place a warped record in the oven between two sheets of glass that are sized to fully cover the record. Clean the record well,…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024The bottom lineThe median pay package for a CEO at one of the 400 biggest U.S. companies was $15.7 million last year, the highest on record and up from $14.5 million a year earlier. Broadcom’s Hock Tan had the highest compensation, at $162 million, though he must hit certain targets in 2025 to earn the full amount.The Wall Street Journal Workers at two Mercedes-Benz plants in Tuscaloosa, Ala., voted last week against joining the United Autoworkers by a margin of 56 to 44 percent, with a final count of 2,642 against and 2,045 in favor. The vote was closely watched as a test of the UAW’s effort to make inroads in the South.NBCNews.com Trump Media reported a net loss of $327.6 million on just $770,500 in revenue in the first quarter of…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024‘Endless Shrimp’ comes to an endRed Lobster is blaming all-you-can-eat shrimp for killing its business, said Eleanor Pringle in Fortune. The seafood chain filed for bankruptcy this week, and its new chief executive—a restructuring adviser—has a theory why: He’s blaming the decision to offer customers unlimited shrimp for $20. “Endless Shrimp” was initially billed as a limited-time promotion, but then-CEO Paul Kenny made it a “permanent $20 menu item” last May, despite “pushback” from other executives. A seafood supplier, Thai Union, happened to be Red Lobster’s main owner, raising questions about its role in the fiasco. This is not the first time that Red Lobster has misjudged the all-you-can-eat math; it lost millions on an “endless crab” offer in 2003. Still, while the shellfish shellacking may have been the “nail in the coffin for the…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Charity of the weekIn Nigeria, only 44 percent of children have received basic vaccinations. That’s partly why the country has one of the highest child-mortality rates in the world, with more than 1 in 10 children dying before age 5. The nonprofit organization New Incentives (newincentives.org) aims to reduce these child deaths by offering Nigerian parents cash incentives to get their children free vaccinations for preventable diseases, such as polio, hepatitis B, meningitis, and yellow fever. In more than 3,000 government health clinics across the country, New Incentives workers advocate for child vaccinations and verify vaccinations before making payments. An $11 donation covers the cost of a child’s full suite of required vaccines and a 5,000 Nigerian naira payment (about $3), placed directly into the caregiver’s hands. In 2022, 630,000 caregivers, and their…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024Fast-casual takes over the suburbsDeena ShankerBloomberg BusinessweekIt looks like the fast-casual burrito beat the pandemic after all, said Deena Shanker. As the U.S. transitioned to remote work, the future of fast-casual office lunch chains like Sweetgreen and Chipotle “hung in the balance.” But even though office occupancy is still nowhere near where it was in 2019, spots like Sweetgreen, Cava, and Chipotle have followed customers out to the suburbs and found a nice middle ground between a sit-down restaurant and a Wendy’s. Cava’s share price is up 90 percent this year, while Chipotle’s has grown 40 percent. McDonald’s is down 10 percent. The reason, ironically, might be fast-food inflation. “The average check size at fast-food chains has gone up 47 percent since 2019,” to the point now where a Big Mac meal in Manhattan…1 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024The writer who found depth in the ordinaryAlice Munro was too busy to write a novel. Raising three daughters, she could only find time to work in brief bursts. The stories that resulted, published in 14 collections over five decades, earned the Canadian author international renown as a master of the short story—one who could, as the Swedish Academy said when awarding her a Nobel Prize in 2013, evoke the “epic complexity of the novel in just a few short pages.” Set largely in the small towns of her native Ontario, her spare, plainspoken stories plumbed the psychological depths of people’s lives: their buried yearnings, their disappointments, their secrets, satisfactions, and hidden scars. “Our Chekhov,” author Cynthia Ozick called her for her ability to render layered portraits of ordinary people. “The complexity of things, the things within…2 min
The Week Magazine|May 31, 2024The Week ContestThis week’s question: An attempt to break the world record for the largest gathering of people with the same name failed when only 706 Kyles congregated in Kyle, Texas—far short of the 2,325 Ivans who got together in Bosnia in 2017. In seven or fewer words, come up with a caption for a mass selfie of disappointed Kyles.Last week’s contest: Some remote workers have started using Disney World and its many onsite cafés as a co-working space. If Disney were to build a new theme park ride that could be enjoyed by guests who are busy tapping away on their laptops, what would it be called?THE WINNER: WheeWorkRichard Kramer, Annandale, Va.SECOND PLACE: The Seven Dwarfs Data Mining TrainClaire Williams, LouisvilleTHIRD PLACE: Workspace MountainErica Avery, Greenfield, Mass.For runners-up and complete contest…1 min
