Members phkrause Posted August 23, 2022 Author Members Share Posted August 23, 2022 August 23, 2022 By David Leonhardt Good morning. A surge in vehicle crashes is disproportionately harming lower-income families and Black Americans. A memorial in Albuquerque, where a 7-year-old was killed.Adria Malcolm for The New York Times Not since the 1940s Vehicle crashes seem as if they might be an equal-opportunity public health problem. Americans in every demographic group drive, after all. If anything, poor families tend to rely more on public transportation and less on car travel. Yet vehicle deaths turn out to be highly unequal. Lower-income people are much more likely to die in crashes, academic research shows. The racial gaps are also huge — even bigger on a percentage basis than the racial gaps on cancer, according to the C.D.C. Data understates all death rates because race is not recorded in all crashes. | Source: National Safety Council The unequal toll from crashes is particularly notable now because the U.S. is experiencing an alarming increase in vehicle deaths. Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, recently called it “a national crisis of fatalities and serious injuries on our roadways.” And the toll is falling most heavily on lower-income Americans and Black Americans. The reasons for the increase remain somewhat mysterious, experts say. But the consequences are clear. More than 115 Americans have been dying on the roads on average every day this year. Today’s newsletter will explore the likely explanations for the increase, as well as its unequal impact and the potential solutions. A decline, reversed Not so long ago, the trend in car crashes was a good-news story. The death rate began to fall in the early 1970s, thanks in large part to the consumer movement started by Ralph Nader. Cars became safer. States passed seatbelt laws. Drunken driving became less common. The declines continued into the early 2010s, as airbags became standard and vehicles began to include technology to prevent crashes. Source: National Safety Council But the situation changed around 2015, with the death rate mostly rising over the next several years. One reason seems to be distracted driving. By 2015, two-thirds of U.S. adults owned a smartphone, up from almost none in 2006. The U.S. has also been less aggressive about cracking down on speeding than Britain and some other parts of Europe, and vehicles here tend to be larger. “The engorgement of the American vehicle,” as Gregory Shill of the University of Iowa has called it, can kill pedestrians and people in smaller vehicles. These patterns help explain why death rates have fallen substantially more in other countries than in the U.S. during recent decades. As alarming as these trends were, the biggest increases have taken place more recently — since the pandemic. In the spring of 2020, as Covid was transforming daily life, vehicle crashes surged. By the start of this year, the death rate had jumped about 20 percent from prepandemic levels. It has been the sharpest increase since the 1940s. Source: National Safety Council How did Covid lead to more crashes? At first, researchers thought that emptier roads might be the main answer. Open roads can encourage speeding, and speeding can be fatal. But even as traffic returned to near-normal levels last year, traffic deaths remained high. That combination weakens the empty-road theory, as Robert Schneider, an urban-planning expert at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said. The most plausible remaining theories tend to involve the mental health problems caused by Covid’s isolation and disruption. Alcohol and drug abuse have increased. Impulsive behavior, like running red lights and failing to wear seatbelts, also seems to have risen (as my colleague Simon Romero has reported). Many Americans have felt frustrated or unhappy, and it seems to have affected their driving. “They’re a little bit less regulated — they might not be considering consequences,” Kira Mauseth, a clinical psychologist at Seattle University, has said. Frank Farley, a psychologist at Temple University, put it this way to The Los Angeles Times: “You’ve been cooped up, locked down and have restrictions you chafe at.” Ken Kolosh, who oversees data analysis at the National Safety Council, a nonprofit group, told me that researchers would need years to tease out all the causes. Confusingly, vehicle deaths did not surge in most other countries during the pandemic, suggesting that stress was a particularly American problem. “The world really felt upside down,” Kolosh said. One encouraging data point that’s consistent with this theory: The most recent data shows that vehicle deaths declined modestly this spring, as Covid restrictions continued to recede. The scene of a collision in Manhattan this month.Dakota Santiago for The New York Times An unequal pandemic … Still, the surge in crashes has become one more way that the pandemic has hurt lower-income Americans and people of color the most — as did the early wave of Covid deaths and the consequences of closed schools. As I mentioned above, vehicle fatalities have long been unequal. Poorer people are more likely to drive older cars, which can lack safety features. Low-income neighborhoods are also much more likely to have high-speed roads running through them. “We have systematically put these arterial roadways in areas where people had less political power to fight back,” Rebecca Sanders, the founder of Safe Streets Research & Consulting, said. The pandemic probably exacerbated the gaps because many professionals have begun working from home, while many blue-collar Americans kept driving, biking or walking to work. Some lower-income workers also drive as part of their jobs. … and some solutions Even if the full explanation of the surge in crashes is murky, many experts believe that the most promising solutions remain clear. “Making streets safer doesn’t require designing new solutions in laboratories,” John Rennie Short, of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, has written. Jeffrey Michael, another expert, told The Washington Post, “This is an issue for which answers are known.” Those answers include: stricter enforcement of speed limits, seatbelt mandates and drunken-driving laws; better designed roads, especially in poorer neighborhoods; more public transit; and further spread of safety features like automated braking. Continuing to leave behind the disruptions of Covid — and the loneliness and stress they have caused — seems likely to help, too. Related: Buttigieg and the Transportation Department plan to use new funding from Congress to reduce vehicle deaths. Among the many projects: an elevated path for pedestrians in the Chicago neighborhood of Englewood; and new sidewalks, bike lanes and lighting near a mass transit station in Prince George’s County, Md. THE LATEST NEWS Politics Donald Trump at a rally in Wisconsin this month.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times The government has recovered more than 300 classified documents from Donald Trump since he left office. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have let some California cities open supervised drug-injection sites. New York and Florida are holding primaries today. Here’s what to watch for. An electronics mogul gave a conservative group $1.6 billion last year, among the largest single contributions to a political nonprofit group ever. The Democrats’ climate law legally defines greenhouse gases as pollution. That’ll make new regulations harder to challenge in court. War in Ukraine A memorial in Moscow for Daria Dugina.Maxim Shemetov/Reuters The Russian authorities accused Ukraine of carrying out the car bombing that killed Daria Dugina, 29, an ultranationalist commentator. Ukraine denied responsibility. Money for programs to help Ukrainians has been robust, but the war has drawn funding away from other crises, the U.N. said. Other Big Stories Dr. Anthony Fauci says he will step down in December after nearly four decades leading the U.S. response to infectious diseases. While some mass shootings are committed by people with diagnosed mental illnesses, a life crisis may be a better predictor of violence, researchers say. Severe drought has immobilized China’s hydropower generation, forcing some factories to close for up to a week. The S&P 500 had its worst day since mid-June, partly because of increasing pessimism about the possibility of a recession. Con Ed, New York City’s largest utility company, has been dumping hot, dirty wastewater into the Hudson River, records show. Opinions Much of the Republican Party has turned itself against electoral democracy, Jamelle Bouie writes. Russian troops are confronting a harsh reality: Many Ukrainians live better than they do, Yegor Firsov writes. Journalism like this is only possible with subscribers. Support the reporting that goes into The Morning. Become a subscriber today. MORNING READS Submarine ownership can now be enjoyed by a successful orthodontist.Mohamed Sadek for The New York Times Pleasure cruiser: Personal submarines are ready for the (well-heeled) masses. Space: Here are new images of Jupiter from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Luxury: A Manhattan hotel is hoping to provide serenity — for $3,200 a night. A Times classic: How “Silent Spring” ignited the environmental movement. Advice from Wirecutter: Rethink the landline. Lives Lived: The nuclear weapons expert David Kay led a fruitless hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He later resigned, and called on President George W. Bush to admit that the case for going to war had been flawed. Kay died at 82. SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC N.F.L. quarterback carousel: Tom Brady returned to practice yesterday (phew) and the Carolina Panthers officially named Baker Mayfield their QB1. By our count, uncertainty at the position remains for the Seattle Seahawks, Pittsburgh Steelers and, to an extent, the Cleveland Browns. A significant E.P.L. upset: Manchester United got its first win of the English Premier League season yesterday after new manager Erik ten Hag pulled Cristiano Ronaldo and club captain Harry Maguire from the starting lineup. On the losing end? Winless Liverpool, which now sits 16th in the E.P.L. table. Oh yeah, that other N.B.A. trade: The New York Knicks remain in talks to acquire the Utah Jazz star Donovan Mitchell. A return offer has yet to resonate. And the Memphis Grizzlies are the latest suitor to emerge in pursuit of Kevin Durant. ARTS AND IDEAS Mirrors lie. They reverse things.Miki Kim Face masks Every so often, a face-symmetry filter takes hold on social media. A popular TikTok version captures half of your face, then superimposes a mirror image of it over the other half, creating a perfectly symmetrical face that looks both familiar and uncanny. Humans have associated symmetry with beauty since antiquity, Rhonda Garelick writes in The Times. But the tools on social media allow us to see idealized versions of ourselves, and those likenesses can have harmful effects on our self-image. “You are viewing yourself incorrectly, and then you are bounced back into reality, where you look not like Gigi Hadid or whoever,” Olivia Alicandri, a 22-year-old in New York, said. PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook Bryan Gardner for The New York Times. These soy-butter basted scallops with wilted greens and sesame oil pair well with rice. What to Watch “Bad Sisters,” on Apple TV+, is a twisty, comic take on the avenging-women thriller. What to Read In “Babysitter,” Joyce Carol Oates uses horror and a privileged white protagonist as vehicles for social critique. Now Time to Play The pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were affirming, farming and framing. Here’s today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Ballot caster (five letters). And here’s today’s Wordle. After, use our bot to get better. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David P.S. Adam Entous is joining The Times from The New Yorker as an investigative reporter. Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about abortion. On “The Ezra Klein Show,” evangelical Christians’ political power. Matthew Cullen, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted August 25, 2022 Author Members Share Posted August 25, 2022 August 24, 2022 Continue reading the main story SUPPORTED BY Trello By David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick Good morning. We break down elected Republicans into three groups, based on their stances toward false claims about the 2020 election. Trump supporters at a rally in Mendon, Ill., in June.Rachel Mummey for The New York Times The DeSantis two-step Dozens of Republican officials continue to tell lies about the 2020 election, claiming that Donald Trump lost only because of fraud. These claims are especially worrisome for the future of American democracy because they suggest that those same officials might be willing to overturn a future election result and hand power to the rightful loser. On the other hand, dozens of other Republicans have never claimed that Trump lost because of fraud. This list includes most Republican senators (like Mitch McConnell, the party’s Senate leader), several governors (like Mike DeWine of Ohio) and other state-level officials. In the latter group of Republicans, however, a split is emerging. Some have decided that lies about the 2020 election are a red line they will not cross, and they have refused to endorse other Republicans making the claims. Others are actively campaigning for election deniers — and, in the process, enabling the spread of the false claims. In today’s newsletter, we will break down the three groups of Republicans: the deniers, the enablers and the accepters. We’ll also give you the latest results from last night’s primary elections in Florida, New York and Oklahoma. The deniers Republicans who falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent now make up more than half of the party’s major elected officials in some states. In the House of Representatives, almost two-thirds of current Republican members objected to the 2020 result in at least one state. So did eight senators and attorneys general in 17 states. This faction of Republicans seems to be growing, too. Overall, Republican voters have nominated more than 100 candidates for Congress or statewide office who echo Trump’s false claims of fraud. The Washington Post has compiled a list, and it includes top officials in several swing states — like Michigan and Pennsylvania — that could determine the 2024 presidential election. Last night’s voting: In Oklahoma, Republicans nominated Markwayne Mullin, a Trump-endorsed congressman who has claimed that the 2020 election was stolen, in a Senate primary runoff. The enablers Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is a telling case study. Many political analysts believe that DeSantis is likely to run for president in 2024. As he prepares for a potential campaign, DeSantis is trying to distinguish himself from Trump while also appealing to Trump’s supporters. Ron DeSantis at a rally in Phoenix this month.Rebecca Noble for The New York Times One way he seems to be doing so is his approach to the false claims about the 2020 election. He has studiously avoided making them himself. (As Politico puts it: “When asked by reporters whether the last presidential election was rigged, DeSantis has instead highlighted changes to election laws he has supported or simply changed the topic.”) At the same time, DeSantis is embracing other Republicans who do echo Trump’s lies. He traveled to Arizona to campaign for Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for governor, and Blake Masters, the Senate nominee. In Pittsburgh last week, DeSantis gave a 40-minute speech at an event for Doug Mastriano, the Pennsylvania governor nominee. DeSantis has also held a rally with J.D. Vance, the Ohio Senate candidate who has claimed that 2020 featured “people voting illegally on a large-scale basis.” Among the other Republican enablers: Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona — despite saying that Lake was “misleading voters” about election fraud — is supporting her in the general election. “It’s important for Arizona Republicans to unite behind our slate of candidates,” he tweeted. Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia is scheduled to campaign this week with Tudor Dixon, the Republican nominee for Michigan governor, who has made false election claims. McConnell has endorsed Herschel Walker, the Trump-backed Georgia Senate candidate who has also repeatedly made false election claims. And a group affiliated with McConnell recently announced it would spend tens of millions of dollars on TV and radio ads to boost Vance. The accepters The number of Republicans who have treated false election claims as a defining issue is much smaller, but it’s not zero: Larry Hogan, Maryland’s Republican governor (who cannot run again, because of term limits), is refusing to endorse and is harshly criticizing his party’s nominee for governor this year, Dan Cox. Cox has called the 2020 election fraudulent and chartered buses for the Trump rally that preceded the Jan. 6 riot. John Bridgeland, a Republican former staffer to Rob Portman and George W. Bush, endorsed Tim Ryan, the Ohio Democrat running for Senate, over Vance. “If Vance is willing to undermine his own integrity and character for public office, imagine what he might do if he were a U.S. senator,” Bridgeland wrote in The Cincinnati Enquirer. In the Colorado Senate race, Joe O’Dea won the Republican nomination over a rival who attended Trump’s Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally. O’Dea criticized his opponent for focusing on the past. Most prominently, Representative Liz Cheney, who lost in a primary last week to Harriet Hageman, called on voters to oust election-denying Republicans. “Let us resolve that we will stand together — Republicans, Democrats and independents — against those who would destroy our republic,” Cheney said in her concession speech. The bottom line: It remains unclear whether the Republicans denying the 2020 election result — or the Republicans enabling those deniers — would ultimately be willing to overturn a future election. But their words and behavior certainly suggest that they might participate in such an effort or at least tolerate it. More results In Florida, Democrats chose Representative Charlie Crist — the former Republican governor — to challenge DeSantis. Democrats outperformed polls in two House special elections in upstate New York, winning one and losing the other by single digits. In New York City, Jerry Nadler defeated Carolyn Maloney in a battle between powerful, long-serving House Democrats after a redrawn map combined their districts. In New York’s suburbs, Sean Patrick Maloney, chair of the Democratic House campaign committee, beat Alessandra Biaggi, a progressive state senator endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Continue reading the main story A MESSAGE FROM Trello Trello. For Enterprise. Tasks, deadlines, projects. Bring it all together with the project management tool that teams love. Learn more THE LATEST NEWS War in Ukraine Captured Russian tanks on display in central Kyiv.Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times Russia invaded Ukraine six months ago today. Though Ukraine has ceded about one-fifth of its territory, the Kremlin has failed to accomplish many goals. See photos from Times photojournalists chronicling the war. Months after Russia took over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, all that prevents disaster are dedicated Ukrainian operators working at gunpoint. Politics The Biden administration will offer updated Covid booster shots to Americans 12 and older this fall. Trump took more than 700 pages of classified documents to his Florida home. Other Big Stories A former Louisville, Ky., detective pleaded guilty to misleading the judge who authorized the raid of Breonna Taylor’s apartment. Two men were convicted of plotting to kidnap Michigan’s governor in 2020. Opinions A new approach to fighting homelessness in Seattle is working, Maia Szalavitz says. In a short documentary, John Hendrickson describes the frustration of having a stutter. Journalism like this is only possible with subscribers. Support the reporting that goes into The Morning. Become a subscriber today. MORNING READS Stigma: The case for renaming monkeypox. Feeling off? How to tell whether you’re depressed or burned out. A Times classic: Get stronger. Advice from Wirecutter: Tips for hanging outdoor lights. Lives Lived: Julian Robertson didn’t invent short-selling, but he made it a central part of his investment strategy, helping to create the modern hedge fund industry. He died at 90. SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC New intel on a famous scandal: M.L.B.’s sign-stealing investigation found that former Astros GM Jeff Luhnow permanently deleted data from his phone before handing it over to investigators. This and more details are revealed in Evan Drellich’s upcoming book about the saga. A remarkably reasonable twist: After all that, Kevin Durant will remain with the Brooklyn Nets for the time being. His consolation prize is a lineup that features multiple All-Stars and has N.B.A. title aspirations. The resolution is best for all involved, Sam Amick writes. Another M.L.B. team up for auction? Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno is exploring a sale after two decades characterized by losing despite cashing out for big stars. Oops. He’ll still fetch a massive return on his investment, however. Continue reading the main story A MESSAGE FROM Trello Trello. For Enterprise. Tasks, deadlines, projects. Bring it all together with the project management tool that teams love. Learn more ARTS AND IDEAS Harry Styles in New York on Saturday.The New York Times 15 nights of Styles Over the weekend, Harry Styles began a 15-show run at Madison Square Garden, part of a trend of concert residencies, Ben Sisario writes. Celine Dion helped pioneer the form in Las Vegas, and Billy Joel brought it to New York in 2014. Now, younger artists like Styles and Adele are doing the same. By asking fans to come to them, artists can lower tour costs. But, experts say, residencies are only financially viable for superstars. “This doesn’t mean nobody’s going to Louisville,” Nathan Hubbard, a former Ticketmaster executive, said. “Most artists are still going to have to go market to market to hustle it.” For more: “The purest release of pent-up demand”: Times critics review Styles’s show. PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini. Serve this tender golden almond cake with peaches and cream. What to Read “The Stolen Year,” by Anya Kamenetz, recounts Covid’s effects on American youth. Fashion Linda Evangelista’s British Vogue cover presents an antiquated vision of fashion, Vanessa Friedman writes. Now Time to Play The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was midtown. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Orange coat? (four letters). And here’s today’s Wordle. After, use our bot to get better. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David P.S. The word “squishathon” — an event inviting New Yorkers to kill invasive lanternflies — appeared for the first time in The Times recently. Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about the rise of workplace surveillance. Kitty Bennett, Matthew Cullen, Natasha Frost, Lauren Hard, Claire Moses, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted January 26, 2023 Author Members Share Posted January 26, 2023 January 20, 2023 Continue reading the main story SUPPORTED BY MGM+ By German Lopez Good morning. A political fight is again putting the economy at risk. The Treasury Department will use “extraordinary measures” to allow the government to pay its bills.Kenny Holston/The New York Times Routine crisis The U.S. government hit the legal limit on how much money it can borrow yesterday, prompting fears that the country soon may not be able to pay its bills. The fight over the debt limit, which is now more than $31 trillion, can sound technical, but it could affect everyone. If the U.S. defaults on its debts, it could shatter financial markets. Your 401(k) and other investments could follow. As the flow of money dries up, businesses could be forced to close or downsize, taking jobs with them. “While no one really knows what would happen if you breach the debt limit, not many people would speculate that good stuff happens after that,” Christopher Campbell, a former Treasury official, told my colleagues Jim Tankersley and Alan Rappeport. “It’s a cascade of how bad it gets.” It’s a grim scenario — one the country has flirted with repeatedly since the 1990s. The good news: The government has time to act. Analysts estimate that the Treasury Department can use so-called extraordinary measures to avoid a default until the summer, giving Congress the next several months to pass a bill increasing the debt limit. The bad news: Democrats and Republicans are divided. House Republicans say they want to use a debt-limit increase — and the threat of default — as leverage to cut government spending. Top Democrats have likened the Republican stance to a hostage-taking situation. The sides can’t agree even on whether to negotiate. Today’s newsletter will explain the debt limit and how it became a constant source of near-crisis in the U.S. Self-imposed limits There is a lot of confusion around the debt limit, largely because it’s so odd. But it’s relatively uncomplicated. Congress regularly passes government spending bills. Since this legislation typically spends more money than it brings in, it adds to the debt. In most countries, that would be the end of the spending process, and the government would simply take on more debt. After all, Congress is effectively saying that it’s willing to add to the debt when it passes spending bills that do just that. If Congress wanted to reduce spending, those bills seem like the most logical avenue to address such concerns. But the U.S. has an extra step in the process: a congressionally set debt limit. This caps how much money the U.S. can borrow, which is, essentially, a ceiling on spending. (“Debt ceiling” is another term often used to refer to the congressionally set limit.) If the U.S. breaches the debt limit, it can no longer borrow money, and has to default on its existing debts. (Denmark is the only other country with a similar debt ceiling, although it raises its cap well in advance of nearing it.) For most of the debt limit’s century-long existence, increases were largely uncontroversial. But that has changed over the past three decades. Republicans, in particular, have used the passage of bills increasing the limit as leverage to try to force spending cuts on Democratic administrations. Democrats, too, have used it as a political tool: In 2006, Joe Biden, then a senator, joined his Democratic colleagues in opposing a debt ceiling increase to protest the cost of tax cuts and the Iraq war. A crucial ingredient in this brinkmanship is divided government. Raising the debt ceiling is less of a problem when the same party holds power in both chambers of Congress and the White House. But when the government is divided, it makes the current scenario possible: A Republican-controlled House threatens to block a debt-limit increase that Democrats who control the Senate and White House would like to pass. “The fastest way to guarantee that we have debt rating problems is to keep spending money we don’t have, and keep piling up debt, and that’s what we’re doing,” Representative Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, told CNN. In short: If lawmakers have a problem with spending, the debt ceiling offers a way to protest. But the willingness of some Republicans to risk going into default poses potentially dire consequences. A central role Why does this matter? Because of the crucial role that U.S. debt plays in the global financial system. When the U.S. borrows money, it issues U.S. Treasuries. (Heard of bonds that help pay for wars? Treasuries are like that.) Because the U.S. always pays its debts, the financial system treats Treasuries as a very safe investment. Governments, companies and people around the world buy American bonds and other securities as a way to ensure that their money is safe. They are so widely purchased, in fact, that they support much of the financial system — giving investors a backstop to take on riskier opportunities. But if the U.S. can no longer pay its debts and defaults, the reliability and trust that make Treasuries such a safe investment vanish. Money once considered secure is now seen as precarious. That realization could spawn the equivalent of a bank run, as people rush to get their money out of the financial system. The system would then buckle, crushing everyone’s investments, big and small. It’s as bad as it sounds. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, has said a U.S. debt default “would be financial Armageddon.” So what can seem like a technical, political squabble can suddenly become very important to everyone. The TV show “The West Wing” captured this reality in 2005: “So this debt ceiling thing is routine, or the end of the world?” “Both.” For more Reaching the debt cap is the result of decades of tax cuts and increased government spending by Republicans and Democrats. Both sides are trying to make sure the other party takes the fall for any dire economic consequences, The Times’s Carl Hulse writes. This timeline explains what happens next. Republicans’ governing style dates to the conservative revolt of the 1990s, the historian Nicole Hemmer says on “The Ezra Klein Show.” Continue reading the main story A MESSAGE FROM MGM+ Watch 'Godfather of Harlem' The new season of "Godfather of Harlem," starring Forest Whitaker, is now streaming on MGM+. WATCH NOW THE LATEST NEWS Politics A protestor in front of the Supreme Court last year.Kenny Holston for The New York Times The Supreme Court says it hasn’t identified who leaked a draft of the ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. While anti-abortion activists want tougher restrictions on the procedure, politicians worry about turning off swing voters. Abortion opponents are holding an annual march in Washington today. Biden’s decision to keep the discovery of classified documents secret for 68 days was driven by a hope that the issue wouldn’t have broader implications. A judge ordered Donald Trump and a lawyer to pay almost $1 million for filing a bogus lawsuit against dozens of Trump’s perceived political enemies. Evangelical leaders who backed Trump are wavering on his 2024 presidential bid. Business and Tech Google’s parent company, Alphabet, says it’s planning to cut 12,000 jobs. Genesis, a cryptocurrency lender, filed for bankruptcy, the latest crypto company to do so after the collapse of FTX. Reed Hastings, a Netflix founder, is stepping down as co-C.E.O. but will remain at the company. Meta’s nudity standards should be clearer, the company’s oversight board ruled, after Instagram removed photos of nonbinary and transgender people with bare chests. Other Big Stories Alec Baldwin will be charged with involuntary manslaughter in the deadly 2021 shooting of a cinematographer on the set of the film “Rust.” William Burns, the C.I.A. director, went to Kyiv last week to meet with Ukraine’s president. Burns has made periodic visits to the country. A 6-year-old accused of shooting his teacher at a Virginia school this month has an “acute disability,” the boy’s family says. The Harvard Kennedy School reversed course, saying it would offer a fellowship to a former head of Human Rights Watch who criticized Israel. Florida has barred high schools from teaching A.P. African American studies, saying the course was “inexplicably contrary” to state law. Opinions Roe’s fall put supporters of abortion rights onto the defensive. State laws protecting telemedicine abortion providers are a way to go back on offense, Michelle Goldberg says. Biden’s classified documents scandal undermines the political brand of honor and decency he needs to win re-election, Jonathan Alter argues. MORNING READS Sharing a wave in Hawaii.Mike Ito Big waves: A mythical surfing competition in Hawaii needs conditions to be exactly right. Last week, the call went out. The universe: If we’re living in a computer simulation, can we hack it? Modern Love: Strangers help a single mother get by. Well: Yes, you can become a morning exercise person. Advice from Wirecutter: Display your puzzles. Lives Lived: David Crosby was an original member of both the Byrds and of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. His influence shaped folk rock for decades, even as his longhaired counterculture persona placed him squarely in the 1960s. He died at 81. SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC Finals rematch: Boston staked its claim as the N.B.A.’s best team with a 121-118 win over Golden State last night in a rematch of last year’s title series. A splash: The five-star recruit Cormani McClain flipped his commitment from Miami to Colorado. It’s a win for Colorado’s head coach, Deion Sanders, who is trying to legitimize a moribund football program. Continue reading the main story A MESSAGE FROM MGM+ Watch 'Godfather of Harlem' The new season of "Godfather of Harlem," starring Forest Whitaker, is now streaming on MGM+. WATCH NOW ARTS AND IDEAS Tommy Oliver, the founder and chief executive of Confluential Films.Alex Welsh for The New York Times Financing a new film era This year’s Sundance Film Festival, which started yesterday, includes documentaries and features telling stories traditionally overlooked by Hollywood. A growing movement of financiers of color have helped make that diversity a reality, The Times’s Nicole Sperling writes. “When I started in the business, in the ’80s, I was so used to being not only the only Asian American but the only minority at the table ever,” said Chris Lee, a former executive at Sony’s TriStar Pictures and one such financier. “There’s so many choices to put people in front of the camera now that people didn’t think of before.” For more: Entertainment Weekly has a list of 20 must-see films. PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook David Malosh for The New York Times You don’t need a recipe to make this kale salad with cranberries, pecans and blue cheese. Travel How to spend 36 hours in Houston. Where to Eat Urban Hawker is unlike any other food court in Midtown Manhattan.Rachel Vanni for The New York Times A Singaporean street-food market in Manhattan drew inspiration from a never-realized plan by Anthony Bourdain. News Quiz How well did you keep up with the headlines this week? Late Night The hosts discussed the debt ceiling. Now Time to Play The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was uncloak. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: 2.54 centimeters (four letters). And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — German P.S.: A.G. Sulzberger, The Times’s publisher, discussed the problem of disinformation at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about crossing the Darién Gap. Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted January 26, 2023 Author Members Share Posted January 26, 2023 January 21, 2023 By Melissa Kirsch Good morning. Rian Johnson’s show “Poker Face” debuts next week. Could the throwback, case-of-the-week format be a cure for streaming woes? María Jesús Contreras Watching the detectives Before appointment viewing and must-see TV, before binge-watching and spoiler alerts, there were, in my early television memories, channels 3, 8 and 30. There were the helicopter propellers of “M*A*S*H” and the “Murder, She Wrote” typewriter, the “CHiPs” engines revving and Laverne and Shirley counting off: after-dinner cues that announced what we’d be watching that night. I was reminiscing recently about those days, when you watched what was on, even if you didn’t particularly like it. When you tried to stay very quiet when Tattoo cried: “The plane! The plane!” hoping your parents would forget you were there — just us adults, watching our adult shows, too immersed in story to trifle with childish concerns like “bedtime.” When I want to revisit the comforts of pre-streaming TV, I turn, inevitably, to streaming channels, where I can call up every season of “The Golden Girls” or “Growing Pains” and fall into the predictable rhythms of the old episodes: conflict introduced before the first commercial break, conflict resolved before the closing credits. John Koblin wrote recently in The Times of the resurgence of the procedural, the overwhelming popularity of shows like “Criminal Minds” and “NCIS,” even as elaborately plotted serials like “The White Lotus” get all the critical attention. (“Criminal Minds” was the most-watched show in streaming in 2021.) “Part of the appeal is that the procedurals have a low barrier to entry,” he wrote. “They are, to a fault, uncomplicated — if viewers zone out or scroll through their phones, they won’t be missing much.” A sad commentary on attention spans, perhaps, but also a testament to the irresistible draw of the familiar. I have several friends who turned to “Columbo” for comfort-watching during lockdown (Elisabeth Vincentelli wrote a lovely homage to the show here). “Columbo” was a “howcatchem,” as opposed to a “whodunit”: We see a perpetrator commit a crime early in the episode, and then we watch as Columbo pieces together clues to figure out how they did it. Rian Johnson’s new howcatchem series, “Poker Face” (Peacock, Thursday), is inspired by his love of “Columbo” and other detective classics. It stars Natasha Lyonne as a human lie-detector who solves a different mystery in each self-contained episode. I’m interested in a show that’s snackable, packaged in tidy episodes that don’t require a full-season commitment. The structure is appealing in the way short stories are appealing, perhaps. I tend to prefer novels because of the reliable grief I experience at having to say goodbye to a short story’s characters so quickly after meeting them, but I’m enchanted enough by Johnson’s storytelling (he made “Knives Out” and “Glass Onion”) that I’m willing to love and lose a few guest stars. As The Times’s television critic James Poniewozik put it, “TV series of the past decade have aimed less at hooking viewers from the first minutes than at getting them to sink in, as into quicksand.” There’s something refreshing about a show that takes you in for an hour and then spits you out, rather than an intricate narrative saga that means to swallow you whole. For more “What can you say about a detective who doesn’t carry a gun, has no first name and has a dog named Dog?” On Peter Falk’s 20th anniversary as Columbo. Serialized drama fatigue was already a malaise in 2006. Speaking of familiar, “Night Court” is back. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE WEEK IN CULTURE The set of “Rust.”Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Charges against Alec Baldwin in a deadly 2021 film set shooting has actors questioning who is responsible for firearm safety during shoots. David Crosby, who died this week at 81, created music that stretched across generations. Listen to 15 essential songs. He was also a prolific tweeter who dispensed sharp quips. Madonna announced her 12th world tour, “Celebration.” Celebrities came out wearing the right amount of weird on the Critics’ Choice Awards red carpet, Jessica Testa writes. (See the winners.) Last year, the Bronx rapper Ice Spice emerged from the drill scene with a pop-friendly sound. This week, she released her first EP. Representative George Santos used fashion to lend credence to his fabricated résumé, Vanessa Friedman writes. “A Strange Loop,” a Pulitzer- and Tony-winning musical, closed after a nine-month Broadway run. Yukihiro Takahashi was an electronic-music pioneer and a leading figure in Japan’s pop scene. He died at 70. The German automobile executive Carl Hahn helped make the VW Beetle a pop culture icon. He died at 96. Americans in Paris complain that “Emily in Paris” is giving them a bad name. “M3gan,” a horror film about a killer robot doll, has become a sensation with L.G.B.T.Q. audiences. THE LATEST NEWS Danish troops using German-made tanks.Pavel Golovkin/Associated Press NATO countries approved billions of dollars in weapons for Ukraine, but the allies are fractured over war strategy. The Supreme Court confirmed that its marshal interviewed the justices while investigating a leaked draft of the opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. Most abortion bans include exceptions. In practice, few are granted. The recent job cuts in the tech industry were an awakening for younger workers who have yet to experience a cyclical crash. In Haiti, one mother trapped by gang violence made a desperate attempt to save her daughter. Powerful Republicans in New Mexico backed a first-time candidate who is now accused of targeting Democrats in drive-by shootings. Explore all The New York Times has to offer with All Access — News, plus Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic — at a special rate. Subscribe today. CULTURE CALENDAR By Gilbert Cruz 🍿 “Skinamarink” (out now): Two very young kids wake up in the night. Their parent is gone. The doors and windows in their home are gone. It’s dark and there’s a voice. The trailer for this low-budget horror movie is itself one of the scariest things I’ve seen in years. I watched it at home, at work and on my commuter train, and each time, I felt that terror tingle make its way up my spine. And that’s just the trailer! (Warning: This film is more experimental than you might think. Consider reading up a bit before you go to make sure it’s for you.) 📚 “Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory” (out now): It’s a testament to the quality of her work that Janet Malcolm, a longtime writer for The New Yorker, could flame her entire profession with a single, eternal quote (“Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible”) and still remain among its more beloved practitioners. Malcolm, who died in 2021, is in autobiographical mode in her final book, which the reviewer Charles Finch called “superb.” Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT RECIPE OF THE WEEK Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Sue Li. Prop Stylist: Megan Hedgpeth. By Melissa Clark Wontons The Year of the Rabbit begins tomorrow with the Lunar New Year. Noodles, rice dishes and dumplings are traditional to the holiday, so Genevieve Ko has a suggestion: wontons! They are more of an everyday food, and that’s precisely why they’re great for a new year party, she writes. Although making them from scratch may seem intimidating, the recipe is straightforward, as if Genevieve herself were holding your hand all the way through. The filling — a mix of minced shrimp and ground pork seasoned with ginger and scallions — is adaptable, so feel free to tailor it to your own desires, swapping fish or scallops for the pork, adding chopped mushrooms for meatiness or water chestnuts for crunch. Whether you fry them until crunchy or float them in soup, they’ll make a satisfying meal on Lunar New Year and beyond. A selection of New York Times recipes is available to all readers. Please consider a Cooking subscription for full access. REAL ESTATE Whitten Sabbatini Where are you? New developments in American cities are starting to look the same. What you get for $500,000: A 2009 brick house in Madison, Miss.; a two-bedroom condominium in Louisville, Ky.; or a Tudor Revival in Arlington Heights, Ill. “Hood century”: One man is redefining midcentury modern architecture. The hunt: He was bored of the Bay Area and seeking an oasis in Palm Springs for $350,000. Which home did he choose? Play our game. LIVING Hekate, a new sober bar in Manhattan.Desiree Rios/The New York Times Dry for January?: Bars are catering to the “sober curious.” Intuitive eating: Two experts created a method that has become a cornerstone of the anti-diet movement. Nutrition myths: The truth about fat, dairy, soy and more. Pickleball: The sport can be a way to make fast friends while traveling. Inflation laments: Egg prices are rising, and memes are flying. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER Digging out from winter Struggling to dig out a snowbound car tire or clear a frosty windshield with a coat sleeve can show the value of using the right tool for the job. The Hopkins snow brush and the Voile telepro shovel are two of the most crucial car accessories that Wirecutter has found in nearly a decade of testing, which once included a trip to Ford’s subfreezing automotive lab. If you don’t have a car, the True Temper mountain mover shovel is perfect for clearing off your sidewalk, and maybe your neighbor’s, too. — Harry Sawyers GAME OF THE WEEKEND Jeff Dean/Associated Press Cincinnati Bengals vs. Buffalo Bills, N.F.L. playoffs: Just three weeks ago, during a game between these two teams, the Bills safety Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest on the field after a routine tackle. It was a shocking moment, even for a sport so accustomed to violence. This weekend’s rematch will be an emotional reminder of the sport’s dangers. But once it kicks off, the focus will likely return to the spectacle — the throws, the tackles, the Super Bowl within reach. 3 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, CBS. For more: Hamlin has made regular trips to the Bills’ facility, but he has a long recovery ahead. In Buffalo, parents who grew up during the team’s near-miss ’90s era have a lot to teach the new generation. Read previews of all four playoff games this weekend. NOW TIME TO PLAY The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was flagpole. Here is today’s puzzle. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. Here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted January 26, 2023 Author Members Share Posted January 26, 2023 January 22, 2023 First, a breaking news update: At least 10 people were killed in a shooting just east of Los Angeles. Read more details below, and follow The Times’s updates. By Lauren Jackson Good morning. Demonstrations have immobilized Peru after the ouster of the country’s populist president. Protesters using stones to block the main road between Arequipa and Juliaca, Peru.Federico Rios Escobar for The New York Times An immobilized country President Pedro Castillo borrowed from history when he attempted a coup in Peru. Thirty years ago, another president asserted authoritarian control. But this time, there was a critical difference: As president, Castillo had no support for his coup. The military and the judiciary quickly rejected his attempt last month. Castillo’s dramatic fall from power shook Peru, a country of 33 million people that is the fifth-most populous in Latin America. His supporters have protested across the country and at least 55 people have been killed, often in clashes with security forces. I spoke with Julie Turkewitz, The Times’s Andes bureau chief, about what she has seen reporting on the demonstrations and what the unrest reveals about democracy in South America. Lauren: One newsletter described Castillo’s ouster this way: “He had breakfast as a president, lunch as a dictator, dinner as a detainee.” Tell me the story of his failed coup. Julie: Castillo was a leftist from a poor, rural farming background. He was the surprise winner of the 2021 presidential election. A year later he was struggling to govern. In a shocking move, he announced on national television that he was dissolving Congress and that he would create a government that would rule by decree. This was widely seen as an illegal power grab. He was, in a matter of hours, impeached, arrested and taken to a detention center. His vice president was sworn in to replace him. How did Peruvians respond? Many of Castillo’s supporters are poor or middle class Indigenous people, part of the roughly two-thirds of the country’s population living outside of the capital, Lima. As a colleague of mine put it, many feel politically excluded while also feeling tokenized by Peru’s tourism industry. When news reached his supporters in rural areas, they were angry he had been removed from office. Castillo was their hope for change. So tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in an effort to shut down the country, what they felt was their only way to be heard. People started blocking the highways with broken glass, boulders or burning tires. There are now protests or blockades in about 40 percent of Peru’s provinces. While some people living in urban areas dismissed these demonstrators as extremists, at least one trusted poll shows a majority of Peruvians support the protests. What has the government done to address this unrest? The new president, Dina Boluarte, called a national state of emergency, an exceptional measure limiting guarantees to certain civil rights. The protests only got bigger and more violent. The police and military were sent to try to restore order in rural areas, and they responded at times with extraordinary violence. Security forces shot some in the chest, back and head. You went to Juliaca, a southern city where 19 people were killed on Jan. 9. How did you get there if the protesters shut down highways and immobilized the country? My colleagues and I persuaded protesters to let us through roadblocks by carrying printed copies of our previous stories, often talking with demonstrators for hours. It was night when we finally arrived to Juliaca after nine hours of driving. The street was blocked with part of a rusted amusement-park ride, chicken wire and small fires. It really felt like we’d arrived at the end of times. What did you find in the morning? We woke up in the Andes at nearly 13,000 feet above sea level. Juliaca is a city of extremes: The sun feels closer, harsher. The wind is cutting, dusty and cold. One of the first things that we saw when we left the hotel was a spontaneous march happening in the streets. There were young people in skinny jeans and older women in traditional skirts, braids and hats. Together, they blamed the new president for the protesters’ deaths and said, “This democracy is no longer a democracy.” What did you learn from speaking with protesters? Being there helped me understand why people feel the Peruvian democracy is not working for them. People feel the system is rigged against them. And on the ground, I could really see why they believed that. What did you see? We found one example when we went to a public hospital and spoke to many people who had suffered gunshot wounds in the city’s deadly protest. Human rights groups have accused police of shooting directly at demonstrators. The wounded had not been given their medical reports, even though that was their right. Several people said they believed that they were being punished for their association with the demonstrations. At the hospital, patients lacked access to basic services. They pay for their own water and there is no toilet paper or soap in many hospital bathrooms. The hospital director, appointed by the government, said, basically, everything is fine here. He didn’t tell me that the victims needed more help. This idea that people feel forgotten by Peruvian democracy was visible in the hospital. Are there similarities between this unrest and other protests across the continent? That disaffection is a problem we’re seeing across South America, including in Chile, Colombia and Brazil. What is distinct about this unrest compared with Brazil’s riots is that misinformation fueled the storming of Brazil’s capital. The overarching story in Peru is more about decades of frustration over poverty, inequality and dysfunction. You have written that these protests are a referendum on Peru’s democracy. How so? Just 21 percent of people in Peru are satisfied with their democracy, according to a Vanderbilt University survey. The path forward isn’t clear. I spoke with one of the world’s leading democracy experts, Steve Levitsky. He says you need two things for democracy to die: First, you need a widespread belief that the democracy isn’t working for most people. Peru has that. But the other thing you need is a viable alternative. And a viable alternative just doesn’t exist right now. More about Julie: Based in Bogotá, she covers Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. Before moving to South America, she covered the U.S. West. Related: Police raided a university in Lima to crack down on protests and closed Machu Picchu indefinitely, The Guardian reported. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT NEWS California Shooting The investigation scene this morning.Caroline Brehman/EPA, via Shutterstock At least 10 people were killed and 10 injured in a shooting in Monterey Park, east of Los Angeles. The gunman opened fire at a dance studio, the Los Angeles Times reported. Witnesses said he appeared to shoot indiscriminately. A Lunar New Year festival had been held hours earlier nearby in the city, which has a largely Asian American population. Politics Justice Department investigators seized more classified documents in a 13-hour search of President Biden’s home in Delaware. Ron Klain is expected to step down as the White House chief of staff in coming weeks. Seized phones and interrogations: Supreme Court workers described how a fruitless investigation into the abortion ruling draft leak created distrust inside the court. War in Ukraine Germany is reluctant to send battle tanks to Ukraine in part because of its post-Nazi aversion to war. The U.S. will keep thousands of troops stationed in Romania, close to the war, for at least nine more months. A Russian missile shattered lives on an ordinary day in Dnipro, Ukraine. Other Big Stories Educators are asking: Should parents know when students change their gender identities at school? Florida’s education department said it rejected a class in African American studies to avoid “the woke indoctrination” of students. A 76-year-old woman shot to death her terminally ill husband in a Florida hospital after the two had made a pact. The suicide of America’s strongest woman shocked her athletic community. “Saturday Night Live” mocked Representative George Santos repeatedly. FROM OPINION Nancy Pelosi spoke about leaving Democratic leadership (“upward and onward”) and the men who tried to hamper her political rise (“poor babies”) in an interview with Maureen Dowd. This century’s defining challenge isn’t climate change; it’s demographic decline as societies age, Ross Douthat argues. We know how to save hungry children. As famine looms in Somalia, acting early is crucial, Nicholas Kristof writes. The Sunday question: The debt limit threatens the economy. Is there a better way? Replacing the debt ceiling with a “debt brake” would limit spending without political brinkmanship, Steve Hanke and Barry Poulson argue in National Review. Or Congress could simply abolish it, Karen Dolan notes in The Hill. Explore all The New York Times has to offer with All Access — News, plus Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic — at a special rate. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Mark Kolbe/Getty Images Fashion ace: The U.S. tennis star Frances Tiafoe lost at the Australian Open, but his swirly look was a winner. Stargazing: Watch a green-hued comet pass by earth for the first time since the Stone Age. Here’s how to see it. Vows: Four cross-cultural celebrations on three continents. Sunday routine: For one day a week, a cookie entrepreneur doesn’t set an alarm. Advice from Wirecutter: Make your sleeper sofa more comfortable. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT BOOKS Finding community: The journalist John Hendrickson got Biden to open up about his stutter. Now he’s written about his own. A Kremlinologist: A novel exploring Vladimir Putin’s motivations is reshaping the French debate over the war in Ukraine. By the Book: Aleksandar Hemon is not a fan of Philip Roth. Our editors’ picks: “Ghost Music,” an atmospheric novel about mysterious packages, and eight other books. Times best sellers: “Hell Bent,” the second book in Leigh Bardugo’s Alex Stern series, took the top spot on the hardcover fiction list. THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE Photo illustration by Justin Metz On the cover: What can Tesla’s blind spots on its self-driving cars teach us about Elon Musk? Recommendation: Rogaine is for everyone. Ethicist: Is it OK to let relatives think their dead sister is still alive? (To read more Ethicist columns, sign up for the new Ethicist newsletter.) Read the full issue. THE WEEK AHEAD What to Watch For Activists plan to march today in dozens of cities to mark the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The Lunar New Year begins today. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Tuesday on Ticketmaster’s hold over the entertainment industry after the company’s flawed rollout of Taylor Swift concert tickets. Oscar nominations will be announced on Tuesday. The Australian Open women’s final is set for Saturday, and the men’s final for one day later. What to Cook This Week Bobbi Lin for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Eugene Jho. It’s citrus season, and Emily Weinstein’s weeknight dishes newsletter features zesty recipes to break out of the winter stew rut. There’s pan-seared fish with pesto; spicy skirt steak, cooked under the broiler with tangerines; and sheet-pan lemony chicken with brussels sprouts. (The sprouts are optional if you’re feeding picky eaters.) NOW TIME TO PLAY The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was arachnid. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Result of brainstorming (four letters). Take the news quiz to see how well you followed the week’s headlines. Here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Lauren Hard, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted January 27, 2023 Author Members Share Posted January 27, 2023 January 23, 2023 By German Lopez Good morning. Once again, America is confronting the aftermath of a gun massacre. Monterey Park, Calif., on Sunday.Mark Abramson for The New York Times American tragedy A gunman shot to death 10 people and injured at least 10 others on Saturday at a ballroom dance studio in Monterey Park, Calif., a city of about 60,000 people east of Los Angeles. He opened fire as many people in the city, which is predominantly Asian, were celebrating the eve of Lunar New Year. Many of the victims were in their 50s and 60s, said Sheriff Robert Luna of Los Angeles County, though he did not identify them. The gunman, whom the authorities identified as 72-year-old Huu Can Tran, is believed to have then gone to a dance hall in the neighboring city of Alhambra. But he fled, according to the authorities. Officers later found him in a parked van after he reportedly shot himself to death. The gunman used “a magazine-fed semiautomatic assault pistol” that is probably not legal in California, Luna said. His motives remain under investigation. “Gun violence needs to stop,” Luna said. “There’s too much of it.” This kind of mass shooting has become tragically common in the U.S.; what would be a rare horror in any other developed country is typical here. Yet the cause is no mystery. America has an enormous amount of guns, making it easier for someone to carry out a deadly shooting. It is a point this newsletter has made before: All over the world, there are people who argue, fight over relationships, suffer from mental health issues or hold racist views. But in the U.S., those people can more easily obtain a gun and shoot someone. The data bears out this explanation. The U.S. is a clear outlier for both civilian gun ownership and number of gun deaths among the world’s developed countries, as this chart by my colleague Ashley Wu shows: Ownership rates are for 2017 and homicide rates are for 2018. | Source: Small Arms Survey If anything, the chart, which uses data from 2017 and 2018, understates America’s problem. The U.S. rate of gun homicides has increased in recent years, according to the Small Arms Survey. The data exposes a clear trend: Where there are more guns, there are more gun deaths. Studies have found this to be true at the state and national level, and for homicides, suicides, mass shootings and police shootings. Stricter regulations on firearms are linked to fewer gun deaths. But efforts to reduce access to firearms have mostly stalled in the U.S., unable to overcome the Supreme Court’s interpretations of the Second Amendment, mixed public opinion and a closely divided federal government. So America continues to suffer more mass shootings and gun deaths than its peers. Monterey Park, Calif., is simply the latest tragedy. More on the shooting We don’t know much yet about the victims. People at the dance hall were practicing guangchang wu, a dance popular among middle-aged and older Chinese patrons. A 26-year-old coder wrested an assault pistol from the gunman’s hands. The suspect shot and killed himself, the authorities said. The shooting in Monterey Park is the deadliest in the U.S. since the Uvalde massacre last May. Officials have offered no motive for the rampage. The Times is covering developments. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS International A face covered by a wireframe, which is used to create a deepfake image.Reuters TV, via Reuters China has adopted rules restricting digital deepfakes, as other countries struggle to balance public trust and freedom of speech. China is also expanding its power in the Solomon Islands, but residents are pushing back against its influence. U.S. officials say they believe Russian military officers directed a far-right group to send letter bombs to Spain’s prime minister and others. Canada agreed to pay about $2 billion to settle a lawsuit over the harm done to Indigenous people through residential schools. Cholera is surging in Malawi, which had nearly eradicated the disease. Other Big Stories Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s close alliance with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene helps explain his rise and the Republican Party’s shift to the right. President Biden is planning to name his former coronavirus response coordinator, Jeffrey Zients, as the White House chief of staff. People in their 20s are struggling to save because of student debt and housing costs. A legacy of tears: Family and friends mourned Lisa Marie Presley at Graceland this weekend. Opinions Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss Biden’s classified documents and Representative George Santos. A.I. enhances our lives — but it can also spread misinformation, racially profile and make deadly mistakes, and Congress must act, Representative Ted Lieu argues. Explore all The New York Times has to offer with All Access — News, plus Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic — at a special rate. Subscribe today. MORNING READS The cave village of Chenini in Tunisia’s southern desert.Zied Ben Romdhane for The New York Times Thousand-year history: A mass exodus threatens the future of a Tunisian cave village. Seven-foot-seven skeleton: An “Irish Giant” will no longer be on display in London. Climate future: Two activists with four decades between them discuss next steps. Metropolitan Diary: A wrong turn yields an act of kindness. Quiz time: Take our latest news quiz and share your score (the average was 8.4). A Times classic: How a college student cured her loneliness. Lives Lived: Betty Lee Sung was a pioneering scholar of the Asian American diaspora. She died at 98. SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC Bengals and 49ers advance: Joe Burrow and Cincinnati beat the Bills in Buffalo, and San Francisco survived a frantic game with the Cowboys. The N.F.L.’s final four are set. No. 1 goes down: Temple upset the top-ranked Houston in college basketball, a loss that could send the Cougars tumbling down the seed line. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS A custom playhouse for three cats and two dogs.Adam Macchia A suite for Fido As Americans embrace their dogs as full-fledged members of the family, some are asking home builders to pamper their furry children, Lia Picard writes in The Times. One client with French bulldogs asked for a kennel-like area off the primary bedroom, with a dog door that opens from the outside and a dedicated fridge, said Mel Bean, an interior designer. The room leads directly to a dog shower, she said, since French bulldogs are “notoriously messy eaters.” When Kelly Ladwig was having a new home built, she requested a playhouse for her three cats and two dogs, with a balcony she calls the catio. “These are our children,” she said. PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times Make these meatballs with any kind of meat. What to Read Let books take you through Boston with help from the author Paul Theroux. The Movies Sometimes stairs aren’t just stairs. Each step is a potential stage, screaming for a dance. Now Time to Play The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was tenacity. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: During (five letters). And here’s today’s Wordle. After, use our bot to get better. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — German P.S. Meet Cecilio Campis, who has run a food cart outside the Times Building in New York for more than a decade. Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about the debt ceiling. Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Continue reading the main story Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted January 27, 2023 Author Members Share Posted January 27, 2023 January 24, 2023 By German Lopez Good morning. Unionization efforts have reached a new industry. The PlayStation 5 booth during the 2023 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.Caroline Brehman/EPA, via Shutterstock Worker activism Tonight, tens of millions of Americans will wind down from a day of work or school with a leisure activity that did not exist a century ago: video games. Until fairly recently, games were considered a niche hobby, typically associated with children. But the industry has grown widely in recent decades. About two-thirds of Americans, most of them adults, play video games. The video game industry was worth nearly $200 billion in 2021 — more than music, U.S. book publishing and North American sports combined. It employs hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. alone. Some of you non-gamers are probably wondering why you should care. My answer is that the game industry’s story is a universal one, of a new business growing up and becoming a major cultural institution, one that hundreds of millions of Americans regularly engage with. It is similar to the rise of the movie industry or football over the past century. They are now cornerstones of American life that started as niche forms of entertainment. And similar to the types of abuses and tragedies in Hollywood or the N.F.L. that reverberate beyond fans of movies and sports, the game industry has also faced accusations of brutal work conditions, discrimination and harassment. The conditions have prompted more workers to move to unionize. This month, Microsoft recognized its first union after video game testers organized. Today’s newsletter will look at how game developers are confronting problems that have entangled other companies, including Amazon and Starbucks, as workers push to shape a relatively new industry. “Game developers are not alone in this,” said Johanna Weststar, an expert on labor in the game industry at Western University in Ontario. “There’s been a rise in worker activism across many different sectors.” Unsafe workplaces A common refrain in the video game industry is that no one goes into it for the money; they could earn more doing similar jobs at other software companies, but instead passion drives them to games. Industry workers have accused employers of taking advantage of this devotion to allow poor conditions to flourish. “The impact so many games have had on me — I want to be part of giving that to someone else,” said Amanda Laven, a game tester at the company Activision Blizzard. “Corporate leadership know we’d rather be here testing a video game than another piece of software, so they can pay us way less.” Among the more criticized practices of the industry is “crunch,” when employees are pushed to work 60 to 100 hours a week for up to several months to hit a milestone on a project. Jason Schreier, a video game journalist, highlighted the issue in Times Opinion in 2017. While crunching, one programmer working on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in 2011 ended up at an emergency room three times because of severe stomach pain. After he stopped crunching, the pain disappeared. Video game companies say that they sometimes need crunch to finish projects on time and on budget, but are working to minimize their use of it. Workers like Laven argue that many companies have done too little and continue to overuse crunch. Activision Blizzard says it pays employees more than its competitors on average and tries to mitigate crunch by paying overtime, spreading hours among team members and expensing meals. “We care deeply for our employees,” said Joe Christinat, a spokesman for Activision Blizzard. “We don’t want any of them to feel like they have to make unfair sacrifices.” Another pervasive claim: gender-based discrimination and sexual harassment. In 2021, California sued Activision Blizzard for what the state described as the company’s “frat boy” culture in which women were underpaid and sexually harassed. Activision Blizzard said that the accusations were a misrepresentation of the company’s inner workings, and that it had taken steps to improve its culture in recent years. The accusations got a lot of attention, but those in the industry say the problems go beyond Activision Blizzard. Other big companies have also faced claims of discrimination and harassment, including Riot, Ubisoft and Sony. Those companies’ responses have ranged from saying they’re working to be more inclusive to dismissing some accusations. Schreier has written that many of these problems go back to the early days of the industry, when game developers facilitated “a frat-like image of boys who pulled all-nighters to make their games, pounding Diet Cokes and pizzas and who kept pictures of scantily clad women on their desks.” But as games have grown, workers’ expectations have changed. Blizzard Entertainment Headquarters in Irvine, Calif.Adam Amengual for The New York Times Moving to organize The conditions have driven more employees to try to unionize, including several studios at Activision Blizzard and Microsoft. Organizers told me that dozens more efforts are underway in the U.S., though most are not public yet. Most game developers support unionization, a recent survey found. Companies have responded differently to the efforts. Microsoft pledged neutrality when its workers moved to unionize. Activision Blizzard (which Microsoft is trying to buy) has tried to block unionization drives. The push to unionize is part of a broader trend in relatively new industries, including tech and digital media. Spurred by what they see as poor conditions, many employees in those sectors have come to see unions as the best way to protect themselves. The total number of union members nationwide increased by nearly 300,000 last year, my colleague Noam Scheiber wrote. Some workers described this drive as part of a process as the game industry is fairly new and still experiencing growing pains and professionalization. By leveraging the current moment, they hope to change the industry for good. “We are trying to help ourselves,” Laven said. “But we’re also trying to help everyone who comes after us.” Related: The ability to work from home, create collective power and support co-workers are other reasons game developers gave for unionizing, the gaming website Polygon reported. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS California Shootings A gunman killed at least seven people in Half Moon Bay, the second mass shooting in California in three days. A suspect, believed to be a worker at an agricultural nursery, was found in his car in a sheriff’s office substation parking lot in the seaside town. In Monterey Park, where a gunman killed 11 people at a dance hall he knew well on Saturday, the authorities are focusing on the theory that he was driven by personal grievances. “They had parties every night”: The dance hall used to be a dreamy refuge for immigrants. Politics Representative Ruben GallegoAnna Moneymaker/Getty Images Representative Ruben Gallego, a progressive Arizona Democrat, will seek the Senate seat of Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat turned independent, in 2024. Four members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia were found guilty of seditious conspiracy for trying to keep Donald Trump in office. A federal jury convicted an Arkansas man who posed with his boot on a desk in Nancy Pelosi’s office during the Capitol attack. Economy Americans are welcoming slower inflation. Experts are split on how fast and how much it is cooling. In Egypt, inflation is so high that eggs are a luxury. Spotify is laying off about 600 employees, joining a wave of firings in the tech world. What’s behind the tech layoffs? One answer: The era of rock-bottom rates fueling $1 billion start-ups has ended. Microsoft will invest billions in OpenAI, the lab behind the A.I. bot ChatGPT. Other Big Stories Laying flowers at the statue of a Ukrainian poet in Moscow this month.Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times Some Russians are protesting the war in Ukraine by placing offerings near a statue of a Ukrainian poet. Prosecutors charged a former top F.B.I. official with helping a Russian oligarch. The Environmental Protection Agency has not recovered from an exodus of scientists during the Trump administration. The trial of a South Carolina lawyer charged with the murder of his wife and son began yesterday. The F.D.A. proposed to offer Americans Covid boosters each fall, like flu shots. M&M’s said it would stop using its “spokescandies.” Figures on the political right, including Tucker Carlson, have criticized the candy as “Woke M&M’s.” Opinions Jacinda Ardern put New Zealand on the geopolitical map, but she failed to keep many of her promises, Josie Pagani says. Meghan Markle’s makeup snafu reflects an American truth: Sharing lip gloss is a bonding ritual, Jessica Bennett writes. Explore all The New York Times has to offer with All Access — News, plus Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic — at a special rate. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Responsible fashion: Two moms started a business selling used children’s clothes. Cash cow: Some dog walkers are making six-figure salaries. Sauvignon wishes and sashimi dreams: A road trip through New Zealand. Advice from Wirecutter: Clean your dishwasher filter. Lives Lived: Marion Meade’s biography of the sardonic critic Dorothy Parker, published in 1988, revived interest in Parker’s writing. Meade died at 88. SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC On the field: The chiefs coach Andy Reid said that Patrick Mahomes would play in this weekend’s A.F.C. title game despite a high ankle sprain. A trade: Los Angeles acquired wing help in the form of the Wizards guard Rui Hachimura, who could provide a boost to a Lakers team treading water. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS The Crown Room at Hallmark in the 1950s.Hallmark Empty chairs at empty tables Corporate cafeterias, long seen as a perk for white-collar workers who reported to the office five days a week, are struggling to survive in the era of hybrid schedules, Kim Severson writes in The Times. Some businesses have abandoned cafeterias in favor of subsidizing food delivery. Others have remodeled them into smaller, more flexible spaces, encouraging the informal gatherings that some workers see as the main benefit of coming to the office. Even old-school corporate dining has taken a hit. The Crown Room, at Hallmark’s headquarters in Kansas City, Mo., is one of the oldest and most beloved office cafeterias in the country. Now, it’s open just three days a week. PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook David Malosh for The New York Times This salmon dish cooks in 15 minutes and creates a silky miso sauce that tastes lavish. What to Read Martin Riker’s novel “The Guest Lecture” details a tortured night inside the head of a young economist. What to Watch “The Wandering Earth II,” the sequel to China’s first major sci-fi blockbuster, lacks “all of the glee of its predecessor,” The Times’s reviewer writes. Late Night Wanda Sykes joked on “The Daily Show” about an awkward eulogy by Trump. Now Time to Play The pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were habitual and halibut. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Like a tired baby (five letters). And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — German P.S. Enjoy this video of the Times reporter Katie Rosman’s dog, Gertie, skateboarding. Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about Biden’s classified documents. Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. C Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted January 27, 2023 Author Members Share Posted January 27, 2023 January 25, 2023 Continue reading the main story SUPPORTED BY By Julie Bosman National Correspondent Good morning. The drumbeat of layoffs in Silicon Valley is partly a result of how the pandemic upended the economy. Amazon’s lobby in Midtown Manhattan last year.Karsten Moran for The New York Times Future barometer The layoff announcements dropped one after another, accelerating throughout the second half of 2022. Amazon began laying off what will be 18,000 employees. Lyft, the ride-share company, said it would dismiss 700 of its workers, or 13 percent of its staff. The technology giants Meta and Twitter announced that they were cutting thousands of employees. The new year brought even more bleeding in Silicon Valley: Last week, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, said it planned to lay off 12,000 of its workers, Microsoft said it would cut 10,000 employees and on Monday, Spotify said it would reduce its staff by 6 percent, about 600 people. Add up the losses and more than 216,000 tech employees have been laid off since the start of 2022, according to Layoffs.fyi, a site that tracks job cuts in the sector. The layoffs have an ominous feel to anyone who is tracking news on the economy and the tumult in recent months relating to inflation, interest rates and the labor market. But the tech job cuts are not necessarily bad news for the economy overall, or even for Silicon Valley. (They account for about 4 percent of the tech sector’s total workers.) In today’s newsletter, I will explain what the cuts mean for the broader economy. Boom and bust To understand why tech companies are laying off workers now, turn back to the pandemic, when the industry was booming. In 2020 and 2021, sales spiked for companies like Amazon, as e-commerce took off and consumers who were suddenly spending much more time at home were buying goods at a record pace. Demand for workers quickly escalated, and tech companies were competing against each other to hire talent. A virtual gold rush was on for engineers, according to my colleague Tripp Mickle, a reporter based in San Francisco who covers Apple and the tech industry. As the pandemic waned, many companies faced a new problem: They had been on a hiring binge, but now they were confronting a possible recession — and heavy pressure from investors to scale back. “Now, tech is in a position of resetting itself,” Tripp said. “But if you look at the fundamentals of most of these businesses, they remain pretty strong. It’s just that they went through a period of accelerated growth, and the ability to sustain that is difficult.” Still, the layoffs contain at least one positive sign for the labor market: A lot of traditional industries need tech employees, so this is an opportunity for those companies to scoop up talent. The health care industry, the federal government, private companies in retail or manufacturing — all of them need engineers and other people with high-tech skills. What is Google’s loss could be Walmart’s gain. But there are no signs that the layoffs will end anytime soon, especially as the Federal Reserve has suggested that it will keep increasing interest rates this year to try to cool the economy. Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.Laura Morton for The New York Times Early warning Consider the tech industry’s place in the broader economy — and whether tech layoffs will spread to other industries. One factor that makes the tech industry stand out is its dependence on valuation, since companies often raise a lot of money to pour into risky or unproven assets. Companies that are very forward looking tend to take a hit when interest rates increase, which could partly explain the waves of layoffs, Jeanna Smialek, a Times reporter who covers the Federal Reserve and the economy, told me. The tech sector can be a leading indicator, telling us where the economy is headed before the rest of the economy goes there. “You don’t want to dismiss tech layoffs as meaningless,” Jeanna said. “They can sometimes be the canary in the coal mine.” But she also warned not to read too much into them. Besides being especially market-sensitive, the tech sector is a very small slice of the overall work force in the United States — about 2 percent of all jobs in the economy. Jobless claims overall remain very low, and more than 10.5 million jobs are open across the country. For more Layoffs can be even more chaotic when you find out about them while working from home. The Justice Department sued Google, accusing it of abusing a monopoly in advertising tech and seeking to break up its online ad business. Rupert Murdoch dropped a plan to combine his media companies, Fox and News Corp, describing a merger as “not optimal for shareholders.” Walmart is raising its minimum pay for hourly workers to $14 an hour, from $12. Continue reading the main story A MESSAGE FROM Apple TV+ Watch “Shrinking” on Apple TV+ Sometimes you need to break down to have a breakthrough. Streaming this Friday on Apple TV+. Learn More THE LATEST NEWS Politics Aides to former Vice President Mike Pence found classified documents at his Indiana home. A bipartisan group of senators accused Ticketmaster of bullying competitors at a hearing prompted by a debacle around Taylor Swift concert tickets. President Biden’s handling of classified documents blurs the case against Donald Trump. Politically, it has effectively let Trump off the hook for hoarding secret papers. Gun Violence Monterey Park, Calif.Mark Abramson for The New York Times The 11 people killed over the weekend in the Monterey Park, Calif., shooting ranged from 57 to 76. Many were Chinese immigrants. The authorities have not yet named the seven people killed in Monday’s shooting in Half Moon Bay, Calif. A gunman killed three people at a convenience store in Washington State yesterday. He killed himself after a manhunt, the police said. “We shouldn’t be asking average civilians to be heroes”: Bystanders have put their bodies on the line to end mass shootings. Mass shootings across the U.S. have killed at least 69 people in January. War in Ukraine The U.S. and Germany are both planning to send battle tanks to Ukraine after weeks of political wrangling. Ukraine fired several top officials in a corruption scandal, a big upheaval in Volodymyr Zelensky’s government. Other Big Stories Storm damage in Pasadena, Texas, yesterday.Mark Mulligan/Houston Chronicle, via Associated Press A tornado tore through communities near Houston yesterday. The threat of severe weather is moving east today. A shortage of natural gas has hit China this winter. Local governments are struggling to afford it after enormous zero-Covid spending. Sixty-seven journalists were killed around the world in 2022, the most in five years. Ben Jealous, a civil rights activist and author, will become the first person of color to lead the Sierra Club, a prominent U.S. environmental group. The F.D.A. proposed limits for the amount of lead in baby foods after studies showed that many processed products contained dangerous levels. The price of U.S. stamps has gone up again. A first-class Forever stamp is now 63 cents, instead of 60. Opinions Alec Baldwin’s case is a reminder that if you are involved in a serious incident, it’s best not to talk to the police without an attorney present, Farhad Manjoo writes. It’s in the best interest of the U.S. to help China develop new treatments to blunt Covid’s spread, Michael Callahan argues. Explore all The New York Times has to offer with All Access — News, plus Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic — at a special rate. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Joshua trees around Avi Kwa Ame.John Burcham for The New York Times Spirit Mountain: A sacred site near Las Vegas is finally becoming a national monument. Top 1 percent of restaurants: There are fruit beetles on the menu. Will that type of eating last? R.I.P.: A beloved celebrity bear in Italy has died. Tips: You should actually follow these food expiration dates. Advice from Wirecutter: A good ice scraper is worth it. Lives Lived: Witty and contrarian, Victor Navasky was the longtime editor and later publisher of The Nation magazine and wrote an acclaimed book about the Hollywood blacklisting era. He died at 90. SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC Hall of Fame: Scott Rolen, a veteran of 17 big league seasons, will be the only player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this year. Hoyas snap streak: Georgetown beat DePaul last night, the Hoyas’ first win in Big East play in their last 29 games. All-Star game: Bronny James, LeBron James’s son, will play in the McDonald’s All-American Game, an event that has hosted some of basketball’s biggest stars. Continue reading the main story A MESSAGE FROM Apple TV+ Watch “Shrinking” on Apple TV+ Sometimes you need to break down to have a breakthrough. Streaming this Friday on Apple TV+. Learn More ARTS AND IDEAS A scene from “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”A24 This year’s Oscar nominations “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the dimension-bending adventure from the directing duo known as the Daniels, was nominated for 11 Academy Awards. It’s up for best picture, best director and acting awards for its four stars, Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu and Jamie Lee Curtis. Among the other nominees: Two big-budget action movies, “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Top Gun: Maverick,” received best picture nominations, alongside more traditional awards-show fare like “Tár” and Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans.” “The Banshees of Inisherin,” a dark comedy, and the German war film “All Quiet on the Western Front” earned nine nominations each. Among the snubs: Jordan Peele’s “Nope” and the action hit “The Woman King” were overlooked, and no women were nominated for best director. Here’s the list of nominees and where to stream them. PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook Armando Rafael for The New York Times Soup is great. These recipes prove it. What to Read Kathryn Ma’s new novel, “The Chinese Groove,” turns an immigration struggle into a comedy of errors. What to Watch The gimmick behind “Missing,” a strenuous techno-thriller, is that the directors and screenwriters frame the action on computer screens. Late Night The hosts talked about Pence and his classified documents. Now Time to Play The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was windmilled. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: I, for one (five letters). And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. P.S. Anna Kodé, a Times Real Estate reporter, traveled to Nashville, Denver and Seattle to write about America’s startlingly similar-looking residential buildings. Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about nonprofit hospitals. Matthew Cullen, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted January 27, 2023 Author Members Share Posted January 27, 2023 January 26, 2023 Continue reading the main story SUPPORTED BY By German Lopez Good morning. “The 1619 Project” continues to provoke national debate about race and history. Hulu A lasting impact Three and a half years ago, The New York Times Magazine published The 1619 Project. It argued that 1619, the year the first slave ship is widely believed to have arrived in what is now the U.S., was as foundational to America as the year 1776, and that the legacy of chattel slavery still shapes our society. Essays from historians, scholars and others covered issues including capitalism, criminal justice and music, and sparked a national debate about race and history that is still raging. Today, “The 1619 Project” premieres as a documentary series on Hulu. I spoke to The 1619 Project’s creator, Nikole Hannah-Jones, about what went into making the documentary and how the events of the past few years like the pandemic and racial justice protests shaped it. German: American slavery ended generations ago, but one of the project’s arguments was that slavery’s legacy is still very much with us. Where do you see that most clearly? Nikole: Every episode in the documentary is about modern America. It is following and it’s taking on some institution or aspect of modern American life and then showing how slavery has shaped that institution. There’s a theme throughout the series: Black people suffer the most from the legacy of slavery, but most Americans suffer from it to some degree. In one episode, we talk about how capitalism in the United States was shaped largely by chattel slavery and the exploitation of labor, even when workers are paid. And it hurts all of us because we have accepted inequalities in the United States, particularly among workers, no matter their race. We follow the effort to unionize Amazon facilities on Staten Island and in Alabama, where workers are organizing to address those disparities. One way I’ve heard experts describe this is that politicians and other elites have used racist language and policies to divide white working-class and Black working class people who would otherwise share a common cause. Is that what you’re speaking to? Yes. An expert, historian Robin D.G. Kelley, talks in the capitalism episode about how the modern ideology around race was created to divide white laborers — like indentured servants — from enslaved Black people and Black people overall. The white, landed elite was exploiting all of these people. By creating race and giving white people this honorary status and certain legal and societal rights, that was an effective way to divide those who were being exploited from one another. That has effects today. We know Black people are more likely to be unemployed and more likely to live in poverty. But the American worker overall, no matter their race, is generally doing worse than those in other Western industrialized countries. Who’s the most interesting person you interviewed for this? One who stuck out is MacArthur Cotton, who was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or S.N.C.C., a student-led civil rights organization in the 1960s. He dropped out of college to fight to democratize America. He goes to prison for trying to register voters, where he was tortured — strung up by his wrists until he defecated on himself. He said the only thing that saved his life was that there was a group visiting the prison that day. I got emotional hearing that story and said, “I’m sorry that you had to go through that.” And he was like, “Don’t be sorry. This is what we had to do.” Though The 1619 Project got a positive reception when The Times published it, it also became a political flash point. Conservative politicians have criticized it, and some states have banned it from curriculums. Why do you think that is? The reason The 1619 Project needed to exist in the first place is because we have not, as a nation, wanted to grapple with this issue. For those who believe in American exceptionalism, they saw The 1619 Project as a direct challenge to that. Telling histories this way — centering slavery, centering marginalized people — has always been contested. I think that is because it is very hard to buy into the notion of American exceptionalism and then deal with the history of Black people in this country. Beyond that response, a lot has happened since The 1619 Project came out — Covid, the 2020 protests about police brutality and the Jan. 6 riot, to name a few events. Have they changed your thinking about the project? A lot of it has confirmed and affirmed the thesis. We are still struggling with this founding paradox and which type of country we are going to be and who has the right to be part of “we the people” and determine our self-governance. Many Americans want to understand: How does George Floyd happen? How does the Jan. 6 insurrection happen in this country? They feel they have not been equipped with the history they need to grapple with the through line in all these events. That is why this project exists. What was different about doing this project for TV versus doing it for a magazine or book? Well, I spent my entire life in print. It was my collaborators — Roger Ross Williams, who’s an executive producer; Shoshana Guy, the showrunner; and all the other producers who worked with me to map out how to translate this to television. The essays are dense. I can take as long as I want to read a complicated passage when I’m reading something. But on TV, you have to take it in all at once. So there was a lot of figuring out: How do we translate all of this to a visual medium? Where do we film? How much voice-over? How much action? I didn’t go into it with the hubris that I knew how to do this. I knew I had to rely on the experts in making television. Related: Watch “The 1619 Project” on Hulu and read the essays. Continue reading the main story A MESSAGE FROM Amazon "Amazon paid for my G.E.D." Amazon offers prepaid tuition for nearly one million hourly employees and delivery partners. Learn more THE LATEST NEWS Politics President Biden last week.Doug Mills/The New York Times Some Democrats are criticizing President Biden’s handling of classified documents. Donald Trump will regain access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts, Meta said. The company had suspended him on the platforms after the Capitol attack. Republicans in at least 25 states have proposed anti-transgender bills. A drugmaker filed a lawsuit in federal court to challenge West Virginia’s ban on abortion pills, in a case that could set a precedent for other state bans. Louisiana’s practice of detaining inmates beyond their court-ordered release dates violates the Constitution, the Justice Department found. International M1 Abrams tanks at Fort Carson in Colorado.Christian Murcock/The Gazette, via Associated Press Biden’s decision to send tanks to Ukraine unlocked a flow of heavy arms from Europe and inched the U.S. closer to direct conflict with Russia. In Britain, more people with jobs are turning to food banks to feed their children. Other Big Stories The trial of Alex Murdaugh, a former lawyer charged with murdering his wife and son, had a dramatic start as prosecutors presented new evidence. “I can’t understand so much hate”: This week’s mass shooting in Half Moon Bay, Calif., has shaken its immigrant community. On the day a 6-year-old shot his teacher in Virginia, school officials received three warnings that the boy might have had a gun, a lawyer for the teacher said. As egg prices skyrocket, more people are trying to bring them across the U.S. border with Mexico. Now that Splash Mountain, the popular ride at Walt Disney World, has closed for good, superfans are selling what they say is its water. Opinions Weaponizing identity politics saps progressive power, Maurice Mitchell argues on “First Person.” Mass shootings are a symptom of another pressing societal problem: deaths of despair, Jillian Peterson and James Densley write. Explore all The New York Times has to offer with All Access — News, plus Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic — at a special rate. Subscribe today. MORNING READS Working on a G-Shock watch in Japan.Noriko Hayashi for The New York Times The Casio G-Shock: On the durable watch’s 40th anniversary, visit a factory that makes it. Tech fix: Think twice before you give out your email address. Quiz: What are these apes trying to say? Well: You’re never too old for yoga. Advice from Wirecutter: When it comes to bedding, nothing beats a fluffy comforter. Lives Lived: As a domestic servant in South Africa, Myrtle Witbooi experienced the inequities of servitude firsthand. As an activist, she helped lead national and international unions to address them. She died at 75. SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC Potential trade discussions: Aaron Rodgers hasn’t decided his football future, but if he plans to play somewhere other than Green Bay next year, the Jets should be first in line. The next Brock Purdy? N.F.L. teams will try to capture the same luck as San Francisco did when picking Purdy in last year’s draft. The Athletic’s Andy Staples identified candidates. Continue reading the main story A MESSAGE FROM Amazon "Amazon paid for my G.E.D." Amazon offers prepaid tuition for nearly one million hourly employees and delivery partners. Learn more ARTS AND IDEAS The Resistance Museum in Amsterdam.Dutch Resistance Museum/Verzetsmuseum The difficulty of nuance The Resistance Museum in Amsterdam, which for decades has highlighted the Dutch resistance against Nazi terror during World War II, recently put on display dozens of vignettes meant to show more perspectives on the war, including those of the perpetrators. The exhibition has touched a nerve in the Netherlands, The Times’s Nina Siegal writes. “We show pictures of some Nazis, especially Dutch Nazis,” the museum’s director said, “because they are also part of our history. The bad sides of history also have to be included.” But some visitors, including survivors of the Holocaust, are upset to see the Nazis’ stories alongside those of murdered Dutch Jews. By treating every person as a fallible human, a descendant of one resister said, “the whole wartime disappears into a grayish state.” PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook David Malosh for The New York Times These whole-wheat pancakes are tender and delicate. Off Broadway The comic Colin Quinn’s new show, “Small Talk,” extols the virtues of meaningless banter. What to Listen to The Italian band Maneskin has a new album, a best new artist Grammy nomination — and a lot of thoughts on fashion. Late Night The hosts talked about the U.S. decision to send tanks to Ukraine. Now Time to Play The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was brought. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Capital of Norway (four letters). And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. Corrections: Yesterday’s newsletter misstated the status of Spirit Mountain in Nevada. It hasn’t been named a national monument; such a designation is still under consideration. The newsletter also said incorrectly that Scott Rolen would be the only player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this year. Fred McGriff will join him. P.S. Abbie VanSickle of The Marshall Project is joining The Times to cover the Supreme Court. Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about childhood obesity. Matthew Cullen, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 2, 2023 Author Members Share Posted February 2, 2023 January 27, 2023 By German Lopez Good morning. The U.S. government classifies tens of millions of documents a year, and experts say the practice is excessive. The National Archives is asking former presidents and vice presidents to look for classified items.Mark Tenally/Associated Press Not so confidential Classified documents keep turning up in the homes of former presidents and vice presidents. First, law enforcement found hundreds of them in Donald Trump’s home. President Biden’s aides recently gave back classified documents that were found in his office and home, dating to his time as vice president and senator. And last week, Mike Pence’s aides found classified documents in his home. After all of these discoveries, the National Archives asked former presidents and vice presidents yesterday to look through their personal records for any documents that should not be there. The three cases have important differences. Notably, Trump resisted efforts to retrieve the documents, while Biden and Pence returned them voluntarily. But they have all raised the public’s awareness of what has long been a government phenomenon: Current and former officials at all levels discover and turn over classified documents several times a year, The Associated Press reported. Why does this keep happening? One possible reason, experts say, is that too many documents are classified in the first place. The federal government classifies more than 50 million documents a year. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to keep track of all of them. Some get lost and found years later — and many more are likely still out there. Today’s newsletter will look at how the over-classification of government documents became so widespread. Playing it safe The government classifies all kinds of information, including informants’ identities, war plans and diplomatic cables. There are three broad categories of classification: confidential, secret and top secret. Technically, the president decides what is classified. But the job is delegated to cabinet and agency heads, who further delegate, through agency guidelines, to lower-ranked officials. That system effectively encourages federal officials to take a better-safe-than-sorry approach to classification. The classification of a document reduces the risk that important secret information leaks and leads to trouble, particularly when it concerns national security. But if a document is not classified and is obtained by America’s enemies or competitors, the people who originally handled that information could lose their jobs, or worse. In many agencies, officials “face no downsides for over-classifying something,” said Oona Hathaway, a professor at Yale Law School and former special counsel at the Pentagon. “But if you under-classify something, really dire consequences could come for you.” So officials tend to play it safe. Of the more than 50 million documents classified every year, just 5 to 10 percent warrant the classification, Hathaway estimated, based on her experience at the Pentagon. One example of the extremes of classification: In a cable leaked by Chelsea Manning, an official marked details of wedding rituals in the Russian region of Dagestan as “confidential” — as if most such details were not already well known in a region of more than three million people. Presidents have criticized the classification system, too. “There’s classified, and then there’s classified,” Barack Obama said in 2016. “There’s stuff that is really top-secret top-secret, and there’s stuff that is being presented to the president or the secretary of state that you might not want on the transom, or going out over the wire, but is basically stuff that you could get in open-source.” In 2010, Obama signed the Reducing Over-Classification Act. It didn’t solve the problem, experts said. The downsides So what’s the harm? Experts say there are several potential dangers to over-classification. For one, it keeps potentially relevant information from the public, making it harder for voters and journalists to hold their leaders accountable. One example: Starting in the 2000s, the U.S. ran a highly classified drone program to identify, locate and hunt down suspected terrorists in the Middle East and South Asia. The program’s existence was well known, and the destruction it caused was widely reported. Yet elected officials, including members of Congress briefed on the program, could answer few questions from constituents or reporters about it because the details were classified. Over-classification can also make it difficult for agencies to share information with others, whether they are other U.S. agencies or foreign partners. “There are national security concerns — in terms of information not getting shared that should be,” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program. And, of course, the recent discoveries show how hard it can be to track all of these classified documents. “We’ve just overloaded the system,” Goitein said. “And that makes slippage inevitable.” Related: How the government handles classified information, explained. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Politics Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who led the first impeachment trial of Trump, is running for Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat. Internal dissent and ethical disputes roiled the Justice Department’s re-examination of the Russia inquiry, The Times has found. Trump in 2024? Republican Party leaders are expressing doubts about his ability to win back the White House. The Death of Tyre Nichols A vigil in Memphis yesterday for Tyre Nichols.Brad J. Vest for The New York Times Five fired Memphis police officers were charged with murder in the death of Tyre Nichols, who was hospitalized after a traffic stop this month. Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, had a 4-year-old son and a passion for skateboarding. The city has been bracing for today’s release of a video of the fatal encounter, which one law enforcement official described as “absolutely appalling.” Other Big Stories A man who drove a truck down a Hudson River bike path in 2017, killing eight people, was convicted of murder. He could face the death penalty. The seven states that rely on water from the shrinking Colorado River probably won’t agree on cuts. The Biden administration may have to impose reductions. China is arresting people who joined protests against the government’s zero-Covid policy. The New York Public Library acquired the joint archive of Joan Didion and her husband. It includes manuscripts, photographs, dinner party guest lists and more. The U.S. economy grew at a 2.9 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2022, reflecting the resilience of consumers and businesses. A woman is suing the maker of Fireball Cinnamon Whisky for fraud, because the beverage doesn’t contain much actual whisky. Opinions Making life fairer and safer for women is the solution to South Korea’s plummeting birthrate, Hawon Jung says. Knitting has always been political, Peggy Orenstein argues. Mutual escalation between the U.S. and China is making conflict increasingly likely, Jessica Chen Weiss argues on “The Ezra Klein Show.” Expand upon The Morning experience with New York Times All Access. Readers of The Morning now can access everything The Times has to offer, including breaking news and analysis, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, with the New York Times All Access subscription. Subscribe now at this special rate. MORNING READS The Brooklyn Banks in 1989.Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times Brooklyn Banks: A famed New York City skateboarding spot could get a second life. Support for faraway soldiers: A Pennsylvania church sells borscht to raise funds for Ukraine’s war effort. You call that snow? Explore more than 50 years of snowfall in 57 cities. Modern Love: A teasing sense of humor can be an asset for a sex worker. Advice from Wirecutter: What to do if you’re worried about your gas stove. Lives Lived: Paul La Farge’s novels and short stories defied easy categorization. In works like “Haussmann: Or the Distinction” and “The Night Ocean,” La Farge played with history and with narrative techniques. He died at 52. SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC A fresh start: Executives are departing the U.S. men’s soccer program. Their replacements are crucial as a talented squad begins preparation for the 2026 tournament. A hire: The Carolina Panthers announced Frank Reich as their head coach, opting for the former Colts head coach over interim coach Steve Wilks. Digging in: After criticism, the Knicks owner James Dolan defended his company’s practice of using facial recognition technology to enforce bans at his arenas. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS Mercedes Jimenez-Cortes recently purchased a traffic mirror for her apartment.Marilyne Moja Mwangi for The New York Times Warped selfies The bulging convex traffic mirrors that hang in parking garages and on the sides of school buses are meant to reflect blind spots and maximize safety. They’re also all over TikTok, part of Gen Z’s latest approach to the self-portrait. The mirrors turn an everyday scene surreal, bending concrete as if it were jelly and exaggerating the size of a subject’s face, iPhone and outfit. And friends can crowd easily into their reflection, ensuring no one is left out. “It looks funny,” Mercedes Jimenez-Cortes, 24, said. “But it looks funny on purpose.” Whether they realize it or not, these selfie-takers are part of a long lineage of youthful distortion, from the fish-eye lenses of 1990s music videos to the “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” painted by the artist Parmigianino, around age 21, in 16th-century Italy. PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook Julia Gartland for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne. To cook bacon without the flipping or fussing, bake it in the oven. What to Read “Words are the only victors”: Salman Rushdie has a new novel nearly six months after being attacked. What to Listen to Sam Smith’s fourth album, “Gloria,” includes danceable tracks that show flashes of boldness. Late Night “Jimmy Kimmel Live” celebrated 20 years on air. News Quiz How well did you keep up with the headlines this week? Now Time to Play The pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were availability, livability and viability. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Snowman’s neckwear (five letters). And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — German P.S. A blizzard stranded drivers, knocked out power and killed scores of people from the Midwest to the Appalachians 45 years ago this week. Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about Iran. Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 2, 2023 Author Members Share Posted February 2, 2023 January 28, 2023 Today, I’m handing The Morning to my colleagues to cover the release of video of the police beating of Tyre Nichols in Memphis. See you next Saturday. — Melissa Kirsch By German Lopez and Ian Prasad Philbrick Good morning. Americans once again protested after another recorded instance of police brutality. Video of the traffic stop that turned deadly for Tyre Nichols.Memphis Police Department Four videos Memphis police officers held down Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, and took turns punching and kicking him as he pleaded for them to stop, according to video footage released by officials yesterday. Nichols died in the hospital three days after the Jan. 7 traffic stop. The videos are grim and at times difficult to watch, but what they show is important. Today’s newsletter will focus on what we know and don’t know about the beating and the reaction from the public and officials. The videos: The confrontation began while Nichols was still in his car, based on footage from a surveillance camera and those worn by police officers. Almost immediately, officers yelled at Nichols to get out of the vehicle, using expletives. They then forcefully pulled Nichols out and held him down. Nichols appeared to cooperate, telling the officers, “I’m just trying to go home.” Although he showed no signs of resistance, they continued to yell at and threaten him. As he lay on the ground, officers pepper-sprayed him. Nichols then fled, and officers pursued him. “I hope they stomp his ass,” one officer who remained behind said. The officers caught Nichols and then held him down as they punched and kicked him, hit him with a baton and pepper-sprayed him while he grew increasingly incapacitated. He did not appear to fight back or resist. He yelled for his mother at one point. Afterward, Nichols sat propped up against a car as police officers surrounded him. Medics arrived on the scene, but they did not attend to Nichols for 16 minutes. He was taken to the hospital nearly an hour after the initial traffic stop. (Here’s a timeline of the encounter.) What we don’t know: The videos do not show why Nichols was first stopped. Later, within minutes of the beating, officers said on video that Nichols had grabbed for their firearms, with one saying Nichols “had his hand on my gun.” If he did, it did not appear on the recordings. The officers have also said that they had stopped Nichols on suspicion of reckless driving, but in an interview with NBC News, Police Chief Cerelyn Davis said her department has been unable to find evidence for why he was stopped. The reaction: Memphis, a predominantly Black city with a history of Black police chiefs, had largely avoided the national spotlight amid protests over police misconduct. Nichols’s killing changed that. Last night, protesters blocked a bridge linking the city to Arkansas and an interstate highway, trying to stop traffic. Demonstrators in cities across the country expressed sorrow, anger and exhaustion at watching the video images of Nichols. The protests remained largely nonviolent, though the police in New York City did detain three protesters and a demonstrator smashed the windshield of police cruiser. The charges: Before the video’s release, the five officers involved in the beating, who are all Black, were indicted on charges of second-degree murder, kidnapping and other crimes. “No one out there that night intended for Tyre Nichols to die,” a lawyer for one of the officers said. All five posted bail and have been released from jail. The officers have been fired from the Memphis Police Department. They had served in a specialized unit, called Scorpion, which stands for “Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods” and was formed to crack down on serious crimes. The unit has been inactive since the traffic stop that killed Nichols, Mayor Jim Strickland said. Two county sheriff’s deputies who were on the scene after the beating were also relieved of duty pending an investigation. Policing overhauls: Nichols’s family has called for changes to the Memphis police force and for the department to disband the Scorpion unit. From 2016 to 2022, police used force against Black residents nearly three times more frequently that against white residents, according to city data. After the 2020 demonstrations over George Floyd’s murder, state and local officials around the country implemented changes including bans on chokeholds, restrictions on the use of force and requirements that officers wear cameras. But activists argue that the steps have fallen short of holding the police accountable and have failed to prevent unnecessary violence. What’s next: Protesters planned more demonstrations today in Memphis. Commentary Americans abandoned the issue of police reform and should be ashamed, Charles M. Blow writes. It’s not especially surprising that the five officers indicted in Nichols’s death are Black, the journalist Wesley Lowery tweeted. “In tracking police violence, we never found that race of the officer made much difference.” Automated speed cameras, license-plate readers and other technology can better and more safely enforce traffic laws than the police, Sarah Seo of Columbia Law School has written for Times Opinion. For more Officials made public roughly an hour of footage that included critical moments in which officers attacked Nichols while he screamed in anguish. “He was chill. He was peaceful.” He was also wary of the police: Loved ones recalled Nichols, who had a passion for skateboarding. Experts in police training said they could find no justification for the actions of the Memphis officers. Officers regularly kill unarmed motorists with impunity, a 2021 Times investigation of traffic stops found. In response, some cities have moved to overhaul traffic policing. From camcorder video of Rodney King’s beating to cellphone footage of George Floyd’s murder, visual evidence of police violence has often galvanized public opinion. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS The Israeli border police at the site of the shooting.Mahmoud Illean/Associated Press A gunman opened fire at an East Jerusalem synagogue, killing at least seven in an attack that capped the bloodiest month in Israel and the occupied territories, outside of war, in years. Police body camera footage showed the frenzied seconds when a hammer-wielding intruder attacked Paul Pelosi last fall. Pregnant women and new mothers died in sharply increasing numbers during the pandemic. U.S. officials insist that the dismissal of top Ukrainian officials shows that President Volodymyr Zelensky is committed to fighting corruption. Truth Social, the social network started by Donald Trump, has struggled to attract large brands. THE WEEK IN CULTURE Bill Nighy was nominated for an Oscar for best actor for “Living.”Ross Ferguson/Sony Pictures Classics Among the Oscar nomination surprises: Every man in the best actor category is a first-time nominee. Lion heads and full-body crystals: Kylie Jenner and Doja Cat shocked social media with their outfits at Paris’s haute couture fashion week. Haider Ackermann triumphed at Jean Paul Gaultier, and Fendi and Valentino upended expectations, Vanessa Friedman writes. Gucci named its new creative director today: Sabato De Sarno from Valentino. The decluttering guru Marie Kondo admitted she had “kind of given up” on keeping her home tidy after having her third child, The Washington Post reported. Have you noticed the same artisanal brands in independent boutiques? It’s not just you — those are “shoppy shops,” New York magazine writes. M&M’s hinted that its announcement to pull back on using spokescandies might be part of a Super Bowl advertising stunt. The anchors T.J. Holmes and Amy Robach are negotiating departures from ABC News after the revelation of their romantic relationship. The pianist Yuja Wang will play a three-and-a-half-hour Rachmaninoff marathon at Carnegie Hall tonight, a challenge likened to climbing Mount Everest. Expand upon The Morning experience with New York Times All Access. Readers of The Morning now can access everything The Times has to offer, including breaking news and analysis, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, with the New York Times All Access subscription. Subscribe now at this special rate. CULTURE CALENDAR By Gilbert Cruz 🍿 “Knock at the Cabin” (Friday): M. Night Shyamalan has directed some of the creepiest and more entertaining movies of the past 20-something years. And he has also directed some movies that I have walked out on (what’s up, “Lady in the Water”?) or angrily turned off (I see you, “The Last Airbender”). Here, two men and their daughter go away for a relaxing trip to a nice cabin in the woods. Then there’s a knock at the door. This is precisely why trees make me nervous. 📺 “Dear Edward” (Friday): This Apple TV+ series based on the best-selling 2020 Ann Napolitano novel tells the story of the sole survivor of a passenger jet crash — an adolescent boy — and those left behind by the tragedy. Jason Katims, the showrunner of “Friday Night Lights” and “Parenthood,” is behind this series, and he knows from grief, misfortune and hope. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT RECIPE OF THE WEEK Con Poulos for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Jerrie-Joy Redman-Lloyd. By Melissa Clark Slow Cooker Spinach-Artichoke Chicken Stew If you adore spinach-artichoke dip but feel that eating an entire bowl for dinner is just somehow wrong, Sarah DiGregorio has an excellent solution. She turned those same flavors into a creamy, winy sauce for braised chicken, simmered in a slow cooker. Stirring some cream cheese into the pot makes this very velvety, but you can leave it out for a lighter, brothier dish. In either case, the tanginess of marinated artichokes and a handful of chopped, fresh dill add brightness and verve. Serve this with pita bread — or even chips — for a meal that’s almost a party unto itself. A selection of New York Times recipes is available to all readers. Please consider a Cooking subscription for full access. REAL ESTATE Amanda Anhorn What you get for $800,000: An 18th-century farmhouse in Hyde Park, N.Y.; a Tudor Revival in Durham, N.C.; or a Craftsman bungalow in Houston. Tough market: To live in a special wing of this building, would-be residents have to audition. The hunt: Three friends wanted to buy a Queens house together. Which one did they choose? Play our game. LIVING Future cringe: One day we’ll look back at this moment and wonder, “What were we thinking?” Five stars, zero clue: Sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor are trying to stop the flood of fake reviews. Work trip: Pack a popover dress. Essential kitchen tools: Try these mortars and pestles or knives like Grandma’s. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER Cozy up with board games If Monopoly is the only thing that springs to mind when you think about board games, you may be surprised to know that tabletop games have in recent years become innovative expressions of story and mechanics. With thousands of games released every year, knowing where to start can be intimidating. Wirecutter has tested games for years and has picks for all sorts of situations or experience levels, for beginners and for strategic players who prefer an intense, hourslong experience. — James Austin GAME OF THE WEEKEND Novak Djokovic vs. Stefanos Tsitsipas, Australian Open men’s final: Last year, the Australian government expelled Djokovic from the country because he was unvaccinated, a public fiasco that caused him to miss the Grand Slam. This year, he has settled in nicely, losing just one set on his way to the finals. Djokovic has won this tournament nine times, more than any other man. Tsitsipas, a fan favorite in Australia, has reached just one Grand Slam final before — the 2021 French Open, which he lost to Djokovic. 3 a.m. Eastern tomorrow on ESPN, with an encore airing at 9 a.m. on ESPN2. Related: Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus beat Elena Rybakina, representing Kazakhstan, this morning to win the Australian Open women’s singles title. NOW TIME TO PLAY The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was janitor. Here is today’s puzzle. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. Here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Lauren Hard, Claire Moses, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 2, 2023 Author Members Share Posted February 2, 2023 January 29, 2023 By Ashley Wu Good morning. One company controls a wide swath of the concert industry, and lawmakers say music fans are paying the price. Protesters outside the Senate this past week.Kenny Holston/The New York Times Facing the music Ticketmaster has come under intense scrutiny since it botched the rollout of tickets to Taylor Swift’s tour late last year. Though the company has long been accused of anti-consumer practices, the backlash to the Swift debacle brought a new level of public attention. This week, the Senate held a hearing that explored whether Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, have an unfair monopoly over the live music industry. I spoke with Ben Sisario, who covers the music industry for The Times, about how Ticketmaster become so dominant. Ashley: How did we get from Taylor Swift tickets to a Senate hearing? Ben: It was a phenomenal pop-culture moment. Taylor Swift, the biggest artist in the world, announced that she was going on tour for the first time in years. When there are millions of people trying to get a limited supply of tickets, there are going to be a lot of people left unhappy. But Ticketmaster’s website also had a lot of problems. Ticketmaster said its system was overwhelmed by bots, which are used by scalpers to grab tickets ahead of real fans, and then sell those tickets back to them at inflated prices.When people logged on to purchase tickets, they were dumped into a digital queue with every other fan — and all the bots. Some fans said that even if they got through the line and added tickets to their shopping cart, by the time they went to check out, the tickets were gone. It broke the internet. Huge numbers of people complained that they didn’t get a ticket and said that Ticketmaster failed to do its job. That caught the attention of politicians. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for Live Nation and Ticketmaster to be broken up, and Senator Amy Klobuchar announced a hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee. The complaints from fans pointed to a longstanding criticism that Ticketmaster lacks any real competition. How did the industry come to be dominated by one company? Live Nation Entertainment as we know it is the combination of two companies: Live Nation, the events promoter — which hires artists and puts on shows — and Ticketmaster, the ticket seller. These are usually separate jobs in the live music business. The whole world of concert promotion had been small-scale and regional until the late 1990s, when it was all rolled up and Live Nation became the biggest concert company ever. Ticketmaster had been around for a long time, but it had never been in the business of hiring artists to play shows. The two companies were already dominant in their respective industries, and in 2010, they merged. Usually with mergers that big, the government has to ensure that the new company will protect consumer interests. Were officials worried about a monopoly at the time? To approve the merger, the Justice Department required that the combined company agree to certain rules. One was that Ticketmaster wasn’t allowed to force venues to sign ticketing deals by threatening to deny them access to Live Nation tours. They couldn’t say, “If you don’t use Ticketmaster, you’re not getting X-Y-Z tours next year.” But a few years ago, the Justice Department investigated and found that Ticketmaster had in fact done this a number of times. And at the hearing this week, the C.E.O. of rival ticketing service SeatGeek testified that when they pitch their services, venues will be impressed with their proposal, but say that they’re worried about losing concerts if they drop Ticketmaster. Senator Klobuchar said that this is the definition of monopoly — that Live Nation doesn’t even need to exert pressure, and people just fall in line. How do artists feel about this? Could they just sell their own tickets? Nearly 30 years ago, Pearl Jam sued Ticketmaster, which the band said had a monopoly on concert tickets. They tried to book a tour without Ticketmaster, but it was a challenge for them to find venues to play outside the Ticketmaster ecosystem. They eventually abandoned the fight and came back to Ticketmaster. For very large artists, it could be possible. Taylor Swift sells her own merch; maybe she could sell tickets too? But there is a status quo built into the marketplace for live music: An artist goes out and makes a deal with a promoter to put on a show, the promoter finds a venue for the show to happen, and the venue has a deal with a ticketing system for everyone who performs there. It’s not easy to change, especially when one big player controls multiple parts of it. Back in 2018, we reported that Ticketmaster handles 80 of the top 100 U.S. venues. The company’s market share is a matter of debate, but it is still very high. What might come after the Senate hearing? It’s unclear. If the Justice Department does seek to break up the company, it would be a very big deal. Even though the senators were united in their displeasure about the power that Live Nation Entertainment has, I think it’s an uphill battle to change the system. For now, those who argue that Live Nation and Ticketmaster are a monopoly say that the company’s position in the market is so strong that they can fail Taylor Swift and other huge artists like Bad Bunny, and still not be fired. And when the next superstar artist goes on tour, they will have virtually no choice but to work with Ticketmaster. Ben Sisario has written for The Times since 1998. His first live concert was Henry Mancini sometime in the early 1980s, with his parents. For more Barclays Center in Brooklyn switched from Ticketmaster to SeatGeek in October 2021. This month, it switched back to Ticketmaster. Senators deployed a lot of Taylor Swift puns during the hearing. Here are the best ones, according to Slate. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT NEWS Tyre Nichols’s Death A march in Memphis yesterday.Brad J. Vest for The New York Times The Memphis Police Department disbanded the unit that included the five officers charged in Tyre Nichols’s beating death. The department’s relatively swift action reflects a national shift in how the authorities respond to police violence. Protesters marched in cities across the country. The race of the officers charged, all of whom are Black, redirected demonstrators’ focus toward police culture. The Times critic A.O. Scott asks: Is it a civic duty to watch the video of police beating Tyre Nichols? Or a moral obligation not to? International Violence continued to grip Jerusalem and the West Bank. Two Israelis were shot in East Jerusalem and a Palestinian man was killed in the West Bank. Two men facing Russia’s draft used a small fishing boat to seek asylum in the U.S. Other Big Stories A drug company made $114 billion by gaming the U.S. patent system at patients’ expense. Both sides in the abortion fight are focused on influencing state supreme courts and constitutions. Donald Trump’s social media posts became more extreme during his exile from Facebook and Twitter. Novak Djokovic won the Australian Open men’s single title, a year after missing the tournament over his refusal to get a Covid vaccine. Tom Verlaine, whose band Television was a pioneer in the New York punk scene of the 1970s, died at 73. “Saturday Night Live” spoofed the government’s hunt for classified documents. FROM OPINION There are ways to fire people while still respecting their dignity. Doing it by email isn’t one of them, says Elizabeth Spiers. Mass shootings in which Asian immigrants target other Asian immigrants are grim markers of assimilation, Jeff Yang argues. The Catholic Church’s civil war is on, says Ross Douthat. The Sunday question: Will tanks turn the tide in Ukraine? Western-supplied tanks will help Ukraine repel Russia’s next offensive and retake more territory, says The Financial Times’s editorial board. But they could take years to arrive and risk prompting Russia to further escalate the war, Phyllis Bennis argues in The Guardian. Expand upon The Morning experience with New York Times All Access. Readers of The Morning now can access everything The Times has to offer, including breaking news and analysis, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, with the New York Times All Access subscription. Subscribe now at this special rate. MORNING READS Jorge Guerrero/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Radioactive: Australian authorities are scouring a vast desert highway for a capsule smaller than a penny. Couples counseling: Picking the right therapist can save a relationship. Vows: After canceling four times, the fifth time was a charm for their first date. Sunday routine: The actor Stephen Lang, known for his tough-guy roles, does yoga and takes naps. Advice from Wirecutter: How to deck out a vacation rental. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT BOOKS Small-town affairs: These romance novels brim with coziness and cupcake bakeries. By the Book: The fiction writer Patricia Engel has become habituated to reading in digital formats. Our editors’ picks: “The Deluge,” a novel that imagines the impact of climate change on the future, and eight other books. Times best sellers: Grady Hendrix’s “How to Sell a Haunted House” is new on the hardcover fiction best-seller list. THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE Shawn Hubbard for The New York Times On the cover: Some college sports players are allowed to cut sponsorship deals — but at what cost to other teams? Poetry: Read this piece by Adam Wolfond, a nonspeaking autistic artist. Ethicist: They gave their relatives a house. Can they make them pay for the upkeep? Read the full issue. THE WEEK AHEAD What to Watch For Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling to Egypt, Israel, and the West Bank starting today to discuss the war in Ukraine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The N.F.L. conference championships are today. The Philadelphia Eagles play the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs face the Cincinnati Bengals. Federal Reserve officials are expected to announce a slowdown in interest rate increases on Wednesday. Black History Month begins on Wednesday. Groundhog Day is on Thursday. What to Cook This Week Dane Tashima for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne. When Emily Weinstein starts to cook dinner, she reflexively looks for something green to add. In her latest weeknight meals newsletter, she has recipes that hit that mark, including broiled salmon and asparagus, baked risotto with greens and peas and a lush saag paneer with a pound of spinach. NOW TIME TO PLAY The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was upheaval. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: World’s fastest growing religion (five letters). Take the news quiz to see how well you followed the week’s headlines. Here’s today’s Wordle. And read today’s front page. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick and Tom Wright-Piersanti contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 2, 2023 Author Members Share Posted February 2, 2023 January 30, 2023 By Nicholas Fandos Good morning. A surge of migrants taking buses northward has led Mayor Eric Adams to describe New York City as close to a “breaking point.” Migrants arriving in New York City by bus from Texas in December.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times Seeking a strategy Many Americans see the flow of migrants crossing into the U.S. as primarily a border issue — and with good reason. As this newsletter has documented, the boundary between Mexico and the United States is where the vast majority of illegal border crossings occur and where many people come to seek asylum. But as the country confronts a surge in migration, its effects are increasingly far-flung. Thousands of migrants are transported to Democratic-run cities like Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington. Today’s newsletter will zero in on perhaps the biggest destination, New York City, to explain how the movement is testing the city’s pledge for compassion and scrambling politics thousands of miles from the southwestern border. New York City has prided itself for centuries on being a haven for immigrants. Even today, nearly two in five city residents were born in other countries. However, the pace of the current wave of arrivals has little precedent. Since last spring, at least 42,000 migrants who say they are seeking asylum have arrived in the city in need of shelter and basic services. The escalating emergency has prompted Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, to declare that New York is nearing “its breaking point.” He made the migrant situation a focus of his annual State of the City address last week. And he has increasingly gone where others in his party have balked, joining Republicans to call on the White House to step up its response. How it started The origins of the current migrant influx to New York can be traced to last summer, when Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas began paying for buses northward for foreigners who had sought asylum at the border. The gambit had clear political motivations. Abbott is a sharp critic of President Biden’s immigration policies. He was seeking to saddle Democratic cities with some of the financial burden of caring for the migrants and to increase pressure on the president to crack down on illegal border crossings. Democrats accused him of cynical partisanship and cruelly using migrants as political pawns. But Republican governors in Arizona and Florida soon followed suit. Border cities and nearby states run by Democrats have also helped thousands of migrants travel to major urban centers, though typically without invoking political overtones. New York City has seen far more migrants arrive than other big Northern cities. In one recent week, more than 3,000 asylum seekers arrived in New York City alone. By comparison, Chicago has absorbed more than 5,000 asylum seekers total since August, according to The Chicago Sun-Times. A strained support network New York and its vast network of aid groups pride themselves on supporting migrants. The city also has a decades-old legal requirement to shelter anyone who asks. For now, city leaders are including migrants who recently entered the country. As a result, the city is reporting a record number of people sleeping in its shelter network and has opened nearly 80 hotels and other relief centers with beds to migrants, including one at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. In some cases, the city or nonprofit groups are also paying for translation services, legal support and meals; enrolling children in schools; and assisting parents who are awaiting court hearings in a system with a yearslong backlog. (My colleagues Karen Zraick, Brittany Kriegstein and Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura have written about how the city and its newest arrivals are rushing to respond.) The city says it has spent more than $300 million since last spring. For a rough comparison, the city spends about $400 million a year on public libraries. In a turbulent economy, the extra costs could force the city to trim some popular social services, though state and federal aid could lighten the burden. The politics When Texas first began sending migrants northward, Adams and Abbott got into a high-profile partisan fight about right and wrong. But at least part of the governor’s plan appears to be having its desired effect. That is because Adams has begun using his sizable platform as mayor of the nation’s largest city — and his close alliance with Biden — to put public pressure on the White House. He recently visited the southwestern border himself and used a keynote speech this month at a mayors’ conference in Washington to call on the president to put in place a national strategy to quickly take the burden off cities. “What’s the short-term plan?” he asked last week on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “If my house is burning, I don’t want to hear about fire prevention.” Adams has cast more blame on Republicans for blocking progress on a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws than on his own party. But by speaking out, Adams is undermining the Biden administration’s attempt to defang the politics of a thorny policy issue, as my colleague Michael Shear, who covers the White House, explained to me. “Their strategy at the White House is to cast the Republicans as outrageous, Trump-like and obsessed with border security,” he said. “It becomes harder to make that distinction if your own party is yelling at you.” Related: Hear the story of one mother and daughter who risked their lives trying to reach the southern border. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Tyre Nichols’s Death A memorial for Tyre Nichols, at the street corner where he was fatally beaten by Memphis police officers.Desiree Rios/The New York Times The Memphis police gave Tyre Nichols at least 71 commands in 13 minutes. Many were contradictory or impossible to obey. City leaders are questioning whether a Memphis police unit created to get tough on crime was flawed from the start. International A military jet in Ukraine last year.Scott Olson/Getty Images Ukraine is asking for fighter jets and for its allies to speed up weapons deliveries. Russian convicts have fought as mercenaries in Ukraine, but some are returning to freedom with military training and battlefield traumas. Israel attacked an Iranian military facility in a city known for making missiles, officials said. A bus plunged into a ravine in Pakistan, killing at least 40 people. Even after China reopened its borders, many residents still aren’t traveling abroad as they used to. K-pop singers are showing up in the metaverse, a sign of South Korea’s role as the world’s testing ground for tech. Climate One scientist is being paid by the gas industry to tell people gas stoves are safe. Tech workers and investors are flocking to start-ups that promise to combat climate change. Two recent earthquakes in Texas were part of a surge in seismic activity there related to oil and gas production. A building boom is driving up temperatures in Baghdad, already one of the world’s hottest cities. Other Big Stories A man in a ski mask threw a lit Molotov cocktail at a New Jersey synagogue. Utah banned transition care for transgender youth. California’s strict gun laws still struggle to stop mass shootings in a country filled with weapons. Representative Matt Gaetz has gained political power by becoming the chief tormentor of Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Damar Hamlin’s injury has drawn attention to young N.F.L. players who have been hurt early in their careers and struggle to get help. Opinions Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss mass shootings and raising the debt ceiling. By prizing spectacle over excellence, personal branding damages our personhood, Tish Harrison Warren argues. Don’t worry so much about population decline. Its causes are largely a happy story of greater longevity and freedom, Wang Feng writes. Barnes & Noble has come back from the near dead and thrived in the age of Amazon by being a place to be among books, Ezra Klein writes. Expand upon The Morning experience with New York Times All Access. Readers of The Morning now can access everything The Times has to offer, including breaking news and analysis, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, with the New York Times All Access subscription. Subscribe now at this special rate. MORNING READS The Dutch National Archives hold a hand-drawn map by a Nazi soldier.Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times Treasure hunt: Nazi soldiers buried jewels and gold in 1945. Nearly 80 years later, the search is back on. “Granny flats”: Backyard studios are becoming senior housing that seniors actually like. Metropolitan Diary: A famous singer’s subway stumble. Quiz time: Take our latest news quiz and share your score (the average was 9.5). Advice from Wirecutter: Bad weather trapped you indoors? Here’s how to have fun. Lives Lived: Annie Wersching was an actress best known for her roles on the television series “Star Trek: Picard” and “24.” She died at 45. SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC Super Bowl set: The Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles will meet in the title game on Feb. 12. The top 100 M.L.B. prospects: Corbin Carroll, an outfielder in the Diamondbacks’ system, comes in at No. 1. in Keith Law’s annual list, which has become ubiquitous in baseball circles. A town transformed: The actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, who bought the British soccer club Wrexham, have had a stark effect on the team and its community — evident during Wrexham’s 3-3 F.A. Cup draw with Sheffield United yesterday. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS A scene from season two of “The White Lotus.”Fabio Lovino/HBO “The White Lotus,” remixed Even if you haven’t watched HBO’s “The White Lotus,” you may have heard the theme song, with its yodelicious beat. Since the second season, set in Sicily, aired last fall, remixes have spread across social media, the EDM community and even night clubs and music festivals. The Season 2 song, “Renaissance,” expanded on the first season’s catchy theme, adding oscillating harp and a club-ready bass drop. Why did the new version inspire so many remixes? “It captured the feral nature that’s inside all of us and that especially comes out on the dance floor,” Tyler Morris, a New York-based D.J., told The Times. PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook Karsten Moran for The New York Times Make pizza at home with this easy dough. What to Read Pamela Anderson’s second memoir, “Love, Pamela,” is an attempt to set the record straight. What to Watch Harrison Ford, 80, is doing the heavy lifting on the new Apple TV+ series “Shrinking.” Now Time to Play The pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were curtain and taciturn. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: “___ Lasso” (three letters). And here’s today’s Wordle. After, use our bot to get better. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. P.S. Follow The Times’s TikTok account. Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about Tyre Nichols. Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 2, 2023 Author Members Share Posted February 2, 2023 January 31, 2023 By German Lopez Good morning. Doctors are now a major barrier to Paxlovid. Paxlovid being manufactured in Italy in 2021.Pfizer, via Reuters Unnecessary deaths Covid is still linked to hundreds of deaths a day in the U.S. We have a treatment that could bring down those deaths: a prescribed pill called Paxlovid, which reduces the severity of a Covid infection, particularly among older and more vulnerable Americans. Yet that treatment remains underused. Doctors prescribed it in about 45 percent of recorded Covid cases nationwide during the first two weeks of January, according to White House data. In some states, Paxlovid is given in less than 25 or even 20 percent of recorded cases. (Those are likely overestimates because cases are underreported.) Why is Paxlovid still relatively untapped? Part of the answer lies in a lack of public awareness. Some Covid patients also may decide that they don’t need Paxlovid because they are already vaccinated, have had Covid before or are younger. (My colleagues explained why even mild cases often still warrant a dose of Paxlovid.) The political polarization of the virus plays a role, too: People in blue states are more likely to use Paxlovid than in red states. Experts have increasingly pointed to another explanation for Paxlovid’s underuse: Doctors still resist prescribing it. Today’s newsletter will focus on that cause. Physician resistance Some doctors have concerns that are rooted in real issues with Paxlovid and inform their reluctance to prescribe it. But experts are unconvinced that those fears are enough to avoid prescribing Paxlovid altogether, especially to older and higher-risk patients. “What I’m doing for a living is weighing the benefits and the risks for everything,” said Dr. Robert Wachter, the chair of the medicine department at the University of California, San Francisco. In deciding whether to prescribe Paxlovid, he said, the benefits significantly outweigh the risks. Some of doctors’ doubts will sound familiar to regular readers of this newsletter. The medication is relatively new (in a field that typically takes years to adopt new treatments). They worry about side effects, including diarrhea, muscle pain and an altered sense of taste. They also point to “rebound” Covid cases, which can cause symptoms to come back after subsiding, as happened to Dr. Anthony Fauci and President Biden after they took Paxlovid. (Although Covid symptoms can rebound without Paxlovid.) Doctors also sometimes believe that a patient is not sick enough to prescribe Paxlovid. But the point of Paxlovid is to prevent Covid from getting severe. The medication works best when prescribed in the first few days after a patient shows symptoms, so a doctor does not have time to wait to see how bad an infection gets. Another concern topped a recent survey of medical professionals by the health care website Medscape: potential interactions between Paxlovid and a long list of other drugs. Doctors might see that their patients are on one of those medications and choose not to prescribe Paxlovid. That justification is especially concerning to experts because it is more likely to be used to deny Paxlovid to older patients and those with other health conditions, since they are more likely to be on multiple medications. But these two groups are also among the most vulnerable to Covid hospitalization and death. To avoid harmful drug interactions, experts said, doctors can temporarily get a patient off a medication or provide an alternative during a course of Paxlovid — something they already often do with other treatments. “This is not some extraordinary thing that physicians don’t know how to do,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House Covid response coordinator. Only two of the 100 most prescribed medications, rivaroxaban (typically prescribed for blood clots) and salmeterol (for lung disease), produce interactions so severe that Paxlovid should be avoided altogether, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Some doctors would also like to see more evidence for Paxlovid. The arc of Covid has changed since Paxlovid started rolling out by early 2022, with more widespread vaccinations and the emergence of new variants. Some physicians want data demonstrating which patients still benefit from the drug, said Dr. Lindsay Petty, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Michigan. Wachter agreed that more data would be good, but argued that the existing studies show convincing evidence of Paxlovid’s benefit. “If you’re an impartial reader and sit down to look at the research and compare it to other research we used to decide people should take statins or have their blood pressure treated, Paxlovid feels like it’s in the same category,” he said. Breaking through The White House and health organizations are working to get more physicians to prescribe Paxlovid. They have made some progress in increasing use and closing gaps based on race and class, Jha said. But with Covid still tied to hundreds of deaths and thousands of hospitalizations a day, those advances are slower than anyone would like. As with vaccines and boosters, it’s hard to see what will get more Americans to embrace one of the most effective treatments we have for Covid. More Covid news The Biden administration plans to end the coronavirus public health emergency in May, which could limit access to free tests and treatments. Learning loss for children during the pandemic amounted to about one-third of a school year, a study found. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS The Death of Tyre Nichols The Memphis Police Department suspended two more officers in connection with Nichols’s death. A police report said one officer used a stun gun. The initial police report described Nichols as irate and violent. Video evidence offered a starkly different account. Nichols’s parents will attend Biden’s State of the Union address next week. Economy A clothing factory in China.Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times The global economy is poised for a rebound as inflation eases and will probably avoid a recession, the International Monetary Fund projected. Europe’s economy performed better than expected last year, helped by lower natural gas prices and government financial support. Russia’s neighbors and allies have increased trading with the country, aiding its economy despite Western sanctions. If the U.S. fails to raise its debt limit, Wall Street is betting that the Treasury will use an untested trick to try to limit the economic damage. International Secretary of State Antony Blinken is visiting Israel and the occupied West Bank after violence surged in the region. Russia’s invasion has put people who sell sex in Ukraine in greater danger of coercion. A suicide bombing at a mosque in Pakistan killed at least 87 people. Politics Manhattan prosecutors presented evidence to a grand jury about Donald Trump’s role in paying hush money to a porn star in 2016. The Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour will play three events at Trump’s golf courses this year. The White House protects sensitive documents with tracking numbers and burn bags. “Inch by inch”: Gabrielle Giffords, the former representative, likens the country’s slow progress on gun safety to her long recovery from a mass shooting. Other Big Stories Two monkeys were apparently taken from the Dallas Zoo, the latest among bizarre episodes there including the escape and death of other animals. An interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast inspired people to search for mammoth tusks in New York’s East River. Bobby Hull, the N.H.L. Hall of Famer who had a fearsome slap shot, died at 84. Opinions Florida banning an A.P. African American Studies course isn’t just performative white supremacy; it indoctrinates students with ignorance, Janai Nelson argues. The gulf between the true state of the economy and the public’s perception of it is growing, Paul Krugman writes. Expand upon The Morning experience with New York Times All Access. Readers of The Morning now can access everything The Times has to offer, including breaking news and analysis, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, with the New York Times All Access subscription. Subscribe now at this special rate. MORNING READS Floating saunas in Oslo.David B. Torch for The New York Times 36 Hours: Oslo has reinvented itself. Detox: A juice cleanse might make you feel better, but there’s not much science behind it. Well: How long does it take to get fit again? Advice from Wirecutter: It’s probably time to replace these household essentials. Lives Lived: Cindy Williams was an actress best known for her role on the 1970s slapstick sitcom “Laverne & Shirley.” She died at 75. SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC San Francisco’s quarterback: Brock Purdy completely tore his U.C.L. in the 49ers’ loss Sunday, setting up a tense off-season for the team. Luka Dončić scores 53: The Mavericks superstar logged his fourth 50-point game of the season last night in Dallas’ win over the Pistons. Doctor accused of misconduct: Multiple hockey players in the Detroit suburbs have accused Dr. Zvi Levran of sexual abuse, and prosecutors have charged him with 27 counts of criminal sexual misconduct. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS Amar Kaur, the Punjabi grandmother behind the popular YouTube account Veg Village Food.Veg Village Food In the kitchen with Granny On a recent episode of “Grandmas Project,” a web series in which film directors document their grandmothers as they cook at home, a star of the show, Munise Bostanci, wonders who would watch her go about her day. “How typical of a grandma to underestimate her popularity and her reach!” The Times’s Tejal Rao writes. It turns out that the internet has a boundless appetite for watching wholesome grandmothers live their lives. Grandfluencers, as they are known, command large audiences on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Watching a grandmother cook can be educational and entertaining. It can be deeply nostalgic, too — it’s not a coincidence, Tejal notes, that grandfluencer traffic tends to spike around the holidays. PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook David Malosh for The New York Times Eat this quinoa and broccoli salad with a spoon. What to Watch For funny former spies or upbeat flights of anarchy, stream these action movies. What to Read In “Maame,” by Jessica George, a young woman strives for independence while carrying the weight of her family’s world. Late Night Jimmy Kimmel made fun of Trump’s return to the campaign trail. Now Time to Play The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was hyphenate. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Like the sky on a rainy day (four letters). And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. P.S. The word “candygate,” about M&M’s spokescandies rebrand, appeared for the first time in The Times recently. Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about the Colorado River. Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 2, 2023 Author Members Share Posted February 2, 2023 February 1, 2023 By German Lopez Good morning. Memphis’s Scorpion is the latest special police unit to come under scrutiny. The Memphis Police Department’s Scorpion unit in 2021.Memphis Police Department, via Reuters Culture of impunity The Memphis police officers charged in the death of Tyre Nichols were part of an elite unit known as Scorpion that was set up to crack down on high-crime neighborhoods. The officers’ actions as they stopped and beat Nichols show how the squad’s work could, and did, go very wrong. Stories of botched work by special law enforcement units are notably common in the U.S. In Baltimore, members of a gun-tracing task force robbed residents of cash, drugs and jewelry. By the time federal officials investigated the New Orleans Police Department in 2010, residents perceived its special units as corrupt and brutal. In Los Angeles, a “special investigation section” in the 1990s was involved in multiple deadly shootouts. There are many more examples. Police departments establish these squads with a good intention: addressing a genuine crime problem. But they fall short in the implementation — tainted by poor leadership, the wrong benchmarks or a culture of impunity. Today’s newsletter will explain how Scorpion, which officials in Memphis disbanded last week, fit into a broader pattern in American law enforcement of well-intentioned efforts to fight crime instead leading to abuses. A sound idea The Memphis Police Department founded the Scorpion unit in late 2021 to do what officials call “hot-spot” policing. For regular readers of this newsletter, the term may sound familiar. The idea is to focus police resources on high-crime neighborhoods or city blocks or even people (such as repeat offenders). They can also zero in on specific crimes, like shootings or drug trafficking. The term is broad, and over time just about every big-city police department in the U.S. has said it is focusing on hot spots in some way. When done correctly, the strategy reduces crime without simply displacing it to other areas, studies have found. But those three words are the catch: when done correctly. “When people use the term ‘hot-spot policing,’ that could mean lots of different things,” said Anna Harvey, a public safety researcher at New York University. Many departments ignore important tenets of the concept, sometimes resulting in abuses. For example, the Louisville, Ky., police unit that investigated Breonna Taylor’s ex-boyfriend was also following a hot-spot model. (Officers shot Taylor to death in her home in 2020.) In some hot-spot efforts, police officers merely try to make their presence known — to produce a kind of scarecrow effect, as people are less likely to commit crimes in front of an officer. In others, officers aggressively enforce the law with as many stops and arrests as possible. Exemplary hot-spot policing demands a balancing act between maximizing the deterrence of officers’ presence and minimizing the social costs of hassling, stopping and arresting more people. “You can do hot-spot policing in a way that’s super aggressive, or you can do it in a way that’s more respectful,” said Neil Gross, a sociologist at Colby College who studies the police. Flawed implementation So what went wrong in Memphis? Officials appeared to emphasize the wrong things, experts said. Police officials deployed Scorpion to the city’s most volatile neighborhoods — “hot spots” — to crack down on all sorts of crimes, like reckless driving or shootings, with punitive tactics even against minor offenses. City officials praised Scorpion for high arrest numbers, effectively encouraging aggressive tactics. Chief Cerelyn Davis lauded the approach, advocating “being tough on tough people.” (Officials could have emphasized other goals, like reductions in crime rates in specific neighborhoods, to help focus officers on results instead of antagonistic methods, experts said.) “It’s the command staff implementing a version of hot-spot policing that is not consistent with what the research evidence says is best,” Harvey said. The unit also seemed captured by a culture of impunity. Consider that at least some of the officers who beat Nichols were wearing cameras that were recording their actions. The fact that they punched and kicked Nichols anyway suggests that they thought they were above the law and could get away with it, said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. It is a common phenomenon among American police departments: Evidence-based policies can fall apart in their implementation. Researchers can call for law enforcement strategies that focus on specific places and people and try to minimize the social costs. But if those ideas are filtered through a culture or leadership style that prizes toughness and aggressive action, they can lead to abuse. More Tyre Nichols news Four officers charged in Nichols’s death had been disciplined before, including two who hadn’t reported using force during arrests, records show. Nichols’s family and the broader community will mourn him at his funeral today. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Politics Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis.Scott McIntyre for The New York Times Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed to overhaul Florida’s higher education system. His plans would eliminate diversity programs and reduce tenure protections. Republicans won’t say which spending cuts they want in the debt ceiling showdown. President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy are meeting about it today. Bias and human error played a role in the F.B.I.’s failure to predict — or prevent — the Capitol riot, new documents suggest. Representative George Santos, whose résumé was full of fabrications, said he would temporarily recuse himself from his congressional committees. International Reviewing drone videos near Bakhmut, Ukraine.Nicole Tung for The New York Times Russia is sending large numbers of soldiers into Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine that has become an epicenter of fighting. This week’s attack on a mosque in Pakistan that killed more than 100 people has raised fears of a new wave of militancy. Italy’s older population is growing, and its birthrate is plummeting, making it the West’s fastest-shrinking nation. The Justice Department charged four men in the U.S. with involvement in the 2021 assassination of Haiti’s president. Other Big Stories Chief Justice John Roberts’s wife has made millions recruiting lawyers, some with business before the court. Her ties have raised ethics questions. The case against a former N.Y.P.D. detective accused of faking evidence was dismissed after prosecutors withheld evidence. Many Black families say they are leaving New York because raising children there has become too expensive. Black taxpayers are at least three times as likely to be audited by the I.R.S., a study found. The Federal Reserve is having its first meeting of 2023 today and is expected to raise interest rates by a quarter point. Two monkeys that went missing from the Dallas Zoo were found inside a closet at an empty home nearby. Opinions Banning TikTok would enrage its fans and invite retaliation from China. Pass a law to protect Americans’ online data instead, says Glenn Gerstell. The failures of America’s organ recovery system are killing patients, Kendall Ciesemier says. Expand upon The Morning experience with New York Times All Access. Readers of The Morning now can access everything The Times has to offer, including breaking news and analysis, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, with the New York Times All Access subscription. Subscribe now at this special rate. MORNING READS The Navy’s Marine Mammal Program in San Diego.Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York Times Mine hunters: These Navy dolphins may be geriatric, but they still have a lot to teach us. Memes, rants, private parts: Dissecting Elon Musk’s tweets. The last Boeing 747: The “Queen of the Skies” has left the factory. Bog bodies: Ancient remains reveal an often-violent burial ritual. Advice from Wirecutter: Weatherize your home. Lives Lived: Harold Brown was one of the last surviving Black pilots of the Tuskegee Airmen and faced a lynch mob of villagers in Austria after his plane was downed in 1945. He died at 98. SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC Hires: Sean Payton, arguably the best coaching candidate on the market, is the new head coach in Denver. The Texans hired another hot name: the 49ers defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans. A unique call: North Carolina’s new women’s field hockey coach is Erin Matson, a 22-year-old former star player. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS Salman Rushdie in 2015.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times A resilient author’s return Salman Rushdie, the author and free speech icon, was stabbed onstage last summer after years of living under the threat of a fatwa. Though the attack left him blind in one eye, he pushed ahead with releasing a new novel. “Victory City,” out next week, is the story of a long-lost empire, told as a translation of a fictitious Sanskrit epic. Fellow writers are seizing the moment to turn attention back to Rushdie’s fiction. “In the face of danger, even in the face of death, he manages to say that storytelling is one currency we all have,” the novelist Colum McCann said. The Times review: “Blindness is foretold in the novel’s very first sentence,” Michael Gorra writes. “In its haunting, uncanny, predictive power ‘Victory City’ shows once again why his work will always matter.” PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook Armando Rafael for The New York Times Rotisserie chicken makes for a nourishing pasta sauce. What to Read The novel “Stolen,” by Ann-Helén Laestadius, reflects the culture of an Indigenous people living near the Arctic Circle to a broad audience. What to Watch “Pamela, a Love Story” powerfully rewinds Pamela Anderson’s life and fame. Late Night Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder, appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” Now Time to Play The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was pinewood. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: In good shape (five letters). And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — German P.S. Sia Michel, an innovative journalist who has edited Pulitzer Prize-winning criticism, is The Times’s new Culture editor. Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about the U.S. economy. Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 3, 2023 Author Members Share Posted February 3, 2023 February 2, 2023 By Ben Casselman Economics Reporter Good morning. New data suggests a promising possibility for the economy — that the U.S. avoids big job losses. Construction workers in New York this week.John Taggart for The New York Times A constructive step American workers are getting smaller raises. Counterintuitively, that may be good news for the economy, and for hopes that the United States can avoid a recession. Regular readers of this newsletter know that the big question facing the economy right now is whether policymakers can bring down inflation without driving up unemployment and putting millions of people out of work. Some encouraging signs have emerged on that front lately. Inflation has moderated significantly over the past six months, though it remains too high. The job market has proved remarkably resilient: Despite high-profile layoffs in tech and a few other sectors, overall unemployment remains at a half-century low. Data released by the Labor Department yesterday showed only a slight increase in layoffs in December; we’ll get fresh data on unemployment tomorrow, when the government releases its monthly jobs report. But many economists, including policymakers at the Federal Reserve, have viewed those signs of progress warily. That’s partly because they’ve been burned before, initially dismissing high inflation as temporary, only to see it prove more severe and last longer than almost anyone anticipated. But it’s also partly because of signs within the economic data that suggest inflation may persist. Chief among those signs: wages, which have been rising much faster than they were before the pandemic. Fed officials have repeatedly argued that it will be hard for inflation to fall back to their long-term goal of 2 percent as long as wages keep rising at a rate of 5 percent or more a year, as they have been since the middle of 2021. On Tuesday, however, there was a hopeful sign. Wages in the private sector rose just 1 percent in the final three months of 2022, the equivalent of a 4.2 percent annual growth rate. Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, called the data “constructive” yesterday and applauded the evidence of moderating inflation, even as he warned that both pay and prices were still rising faster than policymakers were comfortable with. Slower wage growth, slower inflation? Calling slower wage growth a “hopeful sign” might strike some readers as callous. And ordinarily, faster pay increases are better for both workers and the economy as a whole. Indeed, one of the most persistent problems in the decade before the pandemic was that wages were rising too slowly. When that began to change in 2021, many progressives cheered it as evidence that the balance of economic power was, at least temporarily, shifting back toward workers. But it’s important to remember that the late-pandemic economy hasn’t been particularly friendly to workers, despite their rapidly rising wages. That’s because prices have been rising even faster. After adjusting for inflation, hourly pay actually fell last year, meaning that workers, on average, saw their standard of living decline. (One notable exception: Pay has increased faster than inflation for many workers in the lowest-paid service industries.) Ultimately, what matters for workers and their families isn’t wage growth, in isolation. It is wage growth in relation to inflation: An economy with 4 percent wage growth and 2 percent inflation will be better for workers than one with 6 percent wage growth and 8 percent inflation. Avoiding job losses To be clear, most economists don’t think that wage growth is the primary reason that inflation has been high recently. And policymakers have said repeatedly that they see no evidence of a dreaded cycle in which pay and prices perpetually push each other higher. But they also think it will be hard to get inflation fully under control as long as wages keep increasing as fast as they have been. That’s especially true in the service sector, where workers’ compensation accounts for a large share of companies’ costs, and where profit margins are often thin. Hourly pay in restaurants, for example, is up nearly 25 percent over the past two years. Few businesses can sustain that kind of rapid increase in labor costs without also raising prices for customers. Economists disagree on what it will take for wage growth to slow. One camp, led most prominently by Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury secretary, holds that only a sharp increase in unemployment is likely to cool off salaries and prices of goods and services. That view is based on classic economic models that assume a fairly direct link between the job market and inflation: When unemployment is low, employers compete for workers by raising pay, and then in turn must increase prices to cover their higher costs. Other economists, however, argue that the world is more complicated. In the period before the pandemic, for example, the job market was strong, but inflation stayed low. In the 1970s, unemployment and inflation were both high. Isn’t it possible that this period, when the economy and job market are adapting after three years of disruption and turmoil, will once again break the rules? It’s too soon to know. But the wage numbers released this week, in conjunction with other recent economic data, hold out the tantalizing possibility that the answer could be yes. If so, that’s good news, suggesting that inflation could continue to fall without the wave of job losses that so many forecasters have been predicting, and that Americans have been fearing. More economic news The Fed again raised interest rates, though the quarter-point increase was the smallest in nearly a year. Powell said that the Fed was planning “a couple more” increases, and that he expected rates to remain high through 2023. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS International The U.S. will increase its military presence in the Philippines, strengthening the Southeast Asian country’s role as a strategic partner in the event of a conflict with China. Pro-government media in Hungary have accused the U.S. ambassador there — who is a gay human rights lawyer — of being a menace to the country. Politics “No agreements, no promises,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy said after meeting with President Biden about the debt limit. Nikki Haley, the Republican former governor of South Carolina, seems close to announcing a 2024 presidential run. The Biden administration cleared the way for an oil drilling project in Alaska. Opponents call the plan a “carbon bomb.” Tears and hugs: Biden bade farewell to Ron Klain, his departing chief of staff, in a sentimental ceremony. The Death of Tyre Nichols The coffin of Tyre Nichols in Memphis.Desiree Rios/The New York Times Tyre Nichols’s family gathered in Memphis alongside community leaders and hundreds of others for his funeral. “We mourn with you,” Vice President Kamala Harris said. Other Big Stories Empty shells are turned into weapons at a U.S. ammunition plant.Lyndon French for The New York Times Ukrainian soldiers have fired thousands of American-made artillery shells a day. The journey of that ammunition starts in Pennsylvania. The College Board revised its A.P. African American studies course after Florida banned it from public high schools. (See some of the changes.) The start-up behind ChatGPT will offer a commercial version of the online chatbot for a monthly fee. Microsoft said it would use the bot to simplify its Teams messaging app. A Nebraska county is sitting on minerals essential to the green economy. Mining would transform the community, but many feel an obligation to dig. The gossip site Gawker is shutting down again. Opinions The Boeing 747’s success should inspire the creation of a plane that’s fast, affordable, safe and green, Sam Howe Verhovek says. Parents who lose children to violence often subjugate their personal grief to public advocacy. It takes a toll, Charles Blow writes. The battle over an Atlanta-area forest is a microcosm of a national crisis over the environment, racism and inequality, Richard Powers argues. Expand upon The Morning experience with New York Times All Access. Readers of The Morning now can access everything The Times has to offer, including breaking news and analysis, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, with the New York Times All Access subscription. Subscribe now at this special rate. MORNING READS Yaba Market in Nigeria.Stephen Tayo for The New York Times Where We Are: In Lagos, Nigeria, the cool kids have found one another at a thrift market. The highest mountain: She’s climbed Mount Everest 10 times. She trained while working at Whole Foods. Ruminations: Stuck in a mental loop of worries that seem to have no end? Here’s what you can do. A morning listen: Meet the teenager leading the smartphone liberation movement. Advice from Wirecutter: How to paint a room. Lives Lived: Carin Goldberg was a graphic designer who reimagined old typefaces on the covers of hundreds of albums and thousands of books. She died at 69. SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC A retirement, again: Tom Brady said he would retire from football for the second straight offseason, though he says this one will stick. A strong roster: The W.N.B.A. superstar Breanna Stewart will sign with the New York Liberty. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS Chef Anthony Mangieri at Una Pizza Napoletana.Daniel Krieger for The New York Times The art of frozen pizza Frozen pizza was long the stuff of midnight meals and after-school snacks. But as freezer and shipping technology improves, some of the country’s best pizzerias have begun to offer at-home versions of their pies. Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix didn’t offer takeout before the pandemic. Now, it ships frozen pizzas around the country. “Survival is an interesting motivator for change,” Chris Bianco, the restaurant’s owner, said. But it is not cheap. For example, three frozen pies from one San Francisco pizzeria, shipped via Goldbelly, will cost you $104.95. For more: The Times did a blind taste test of 11 nationally available margherita pies. PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook Andrew Purcell for The New York Times For a homemade spin on pizza, try this vegan version of a classic margherita. What to Watch The revival of the 1980s show “Night Court” is the most popular new sitcom in years. What to Read In “Reckoning,” the creator of “The Vagina Monologues” tackles racism, colonialism and sexual violence. Late Night Jimmy Fallon discussed Biden’s document drama. Now Time to Play The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was itemizing. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Do agricultural work (four letters). And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. P.S. The Times urged readers not to trust Groundhog Day predictions 113 years ago this week: “He has gone back on us for three years.” Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about Democratic primaries. Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Continue reading the main story Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 3, 2023 Author Members Share Posted February 3, 2023 February 3, 2023 By Ashley Wu Good morning. Inflation and avian flu have driven up the price of eggs. Cackle Hatchery in Lebanon, Mo.Neeta Satam for The New York Times Shelling out Prices have risen for just about everything over the past couple of years. But anyone shopping for groceries recently has probably noticed the cost of one item in particular: eggs. Buying eggs has become very expensive. In December 2022, the average price of a dozen eggs in the U.S. was $4.25, more than twice what they cost a year earlier: Prices are in December 2022 dollars. | Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics A combination of factors is at work here. Some, like inflation, have a broader, more long-term impact on goods in general. Others, like the outbreaks of a highly contagious avian flu, are specific to eggs and poultry. Today’s newsletter will explain how these causes contributed to record-high egg prices. Inflation Americans eat a lot of eggs. They consumed an average of 278 per person last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That amounts to an egg at breakfast most days. Keeping the supply of these eggs flowing depends on the hens that lay them. Like so much else, feeding hens their typical diet of grains like corn, oats and barley now costs more for egg farmers. This chart shows grain prices in 2022 compared with previous years: Prices are in December 2022 dollars. | Source: U.S.D.A. Russia and Ukraine are key suppliers of the world’s wheat and grains, and the war in Ukraine greatly reduced their exports last year, restricting the global supply and thus driving up prices. In addition to paying more to feed their chickens, egg farmers have been confronting increased energy costs to run their farms and paying more for gas to transport their yields. Still, inflation alone doesn’t explain the sharp increase in the price of eggs that occurred toward the end of last year. Avian flu Another factor in egg prices is the supply of hens themselves. The population of egg-laying hens in the U.S. fell drastically when a highly contagious avian influenza broke out early last year and again in the fall. About 44 million egg-laying hens died as a result, or slightly more than one in 10 hens from the pre-outbreak population. The virus, which is often fatal, killed many birds. Farmers slaughtered others that were exposed to stop the flu from spreading. It can take months after an outbreak for farmers’ egg output to return to previous levels. In addition to clearing infected flocks, they have to clean the facilities, bring in new hens and wait for them to grow and lay eggs. The highest demand for eggs usually comes at Easter, for egg hunts and decorating, and around the end-of-the-year holidays, when many people are baking, said Amy Smith, an agriculture business expert at Advanced Economic Solutions, a food industry consulting firm. So the timing of these outbreaks, shown in the chart below, were particularly noticeable to consumers. Source: U.S.D.A. Eight years ago, about 43 million egg-laying birds died as a result of avian flu. Egg prices rose sharply then, too (as you can see in the first chart), and peaked about three months after the outbreak ended. Last year, the industry had less time between outbreaks to restock their hens. As of December, the egg-laying population in the U.S. had yet to return to pre-outbreak levels. Sticky egg demand Even as the price of eggs has steadily risen in recent months, demand for them has mostly persisted. Experts say it would take still larger price increases to reduce demand by even a small amount. For now, even if only the most expensive cartons of eggs are all that’s on the supermarket shelf, someone will probably still buy them. Some people have sought alternatives, like plant-based substitutes. Others have tried to raise their own chickens. (Smith told me this wouldn’t necessarily save money.) Border agents have even discovered more people trying to bring eggs in from Mexico. For most consumers, there are no real substitutes. Smith summed it up: “Eggs are eggs. And people want eggs.” For more Home cooks are lamenting egg prices. Bird flu’s spread makes the case for better viral surveillance to quickly catch and contain outbreaks, David Quammen has written in Times Opinion. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Politics Representative Ilhan Omar.Kenny Holston/The New York Times House Republicans voted to oust Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, from the Foreign Affairs Committee over past comments about Israel that were widely condemned as antisemitic. Allen Weisselberg, a jailed former Trump Organization executive, may face more charges as prosecutors pressure him to cooperate in an inquiry into Donald Trump. Is Trump the 2024 Republican front-runner or is he already trailing? Nate Cohn makes sense of strangely inconsistent poll results. The Pentagon says it has detected what appears to be a Chinese spy balloon hovering over Montana. President Biden has chosen not to shoot it down, for now. International A soldier’s gravesite in Bucha, Ukraine.Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times Nearly a year into the invasion of Ukraine, almost 200,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded, according to U.S. and other Western officials. On the 80th anniversary of a Soviet triumph in World War II, President Vladimir Putin vowed that Russia would be victorious in Ukraine. After visiting the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pope Francis is set to arrive today in the world’s newest country, South Sudan. An old aircraft carrier, once the pride of Brazil’s Navy, is now a floating pariah: No country will let it dock to be dismantled because it is filled with asbestos. Other Big Stories Wind chills could reach minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit in New England this weekend. Boston closed its public schools today. Shares of Meta had their best gain in almost a decade after the company reported better-than-expected earnings. A neighbor called the police on Bobbi Wilson, a 9-year-old Black girl hunting for spotted lanternflies. Then Yale added her insects to its museum. In some areas, 911 dispatchers are being inundated with emergency calls from Apple Watches worn by skiers who are very much alive. An eye drop product, EzriCare Artificial Tears, is being recalled after health officials linked it to a bacteria strain that has caused vision loss and at least one death. Opinions HBO’s “The Last of Us,” like many modern zombie dystopia stories, is fundamentally conservative in its politics, Michelle Goldberg argues. The age of A.I. will reward creativity, empathy, unpredictability and other distinctly human traits, says David Brooks. “Homeless” to “houseless.” “Pro-choice” to “pro-decision.” The campaign to make language more inclusive can be performative and alienating, Nicholas Kristof writes. Expand upon The Morning experience with New York Times All Access. Readers of The Morning now can access everything The Times has to offer, including breaking news and analysis, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, with the New York Times All Access subscription. Subscribe now at this special rate. MORNING READS Ian Park, a biologist with Delaware’s Division of Fish and Wildlife.Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times Sturgeons: They outlasted the dinosaurs. Can they survive us? Modern Love: Two kisses they never talked about. A morning listen: On “Hard Fork,” can TikTok win over skeptics? Green homes: Under a new law, Americans can save thousands of dollars on heat pumps, solar panels and more. Advice from Wirecutter: Try touch-screen winter gloves. Lives Lived: In 1973, John Adams brought his bass drum to a Cleveland Indians game. They won, and a tradition was born. Adams loudly banged his drum at more than 3,700 home games. He died at 71. SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC A W.N.B.A. superteam: Courtney Vandersloot, a star guard, is joining the New York Liberty one day after Breanna Stewart agreed to sign with the team. M.L.B.’s scheduling change: More interleague games, fewer division matchups and some extravagant destinations — it’s all part of baseball’s dramatic scheduling overhaul. Mixon wanted in Cincinnati: The police issued an arrest warrant for the Bengals running back Joe Mixon, saying he threatened and pointed a gun at someone last month. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS A self-portrait of Edward Hopper.Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Dress like Picasso Visitors to the Whitney Museum of American Art can buy a $118 felt fedora that replicates the one in Edward Hopper’s famous self-portrait. On Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, passers-by snap photos of a robot avatar of Yayoi Kusama, miming the painting of her signature dots in a Louis Vuitton store window. Today’s art-loving public finds as much inspiration in creators’ personas as in the works they create, Blake Gopnik writes in The Times. Though the phenomenon may be growing, it’s not new: One early critic of Andy Warhol, Gopnik notes, described him as the culmination of “that curious yet significant tradition in which the artist is his own work of art.” PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook Ryan Liebe for The New York Times This Nashville-style hot fried chicken will make your eyes water. What to watch In M. Night Shyamalan’s “Knock at the Cabin,” Dave Bautista brings the end of the world to a peaceful country cottage. What to Read Unexpected plot twists elevate Kate Alice Marshall’s new novel, “What Lies in the Woods.” Late Night Jimmy Kimmel addressed the Netflix crackdown on password sharing. News Quiz How well did you follow this week’s headlines? Now Time to Play The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was aground. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: What hornets and hurtful words can do (five letters). And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — Ashley P.S. Listen to the trailer for “Between the Lines,” a podcast from The Athletic, the Times-owned sports website, about being Black in the N.F.L. Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about the U.S. ending the public health emergency for Covid. Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick and Tom Wright-Piersanti contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 5, 2023 Author Members Share Posted February 5, 2023 February 4, 2023 Today, I’m handing over The Morning to my colleague Nikita Richardson. See you next Saturday. — Melissa Kirsch By Nikita Richardson Good morning. When you travel, is tracking down a fantastic meal just as important as seeing the sights? I have tips to help. María Jesús Contreras Dining (way, way) out This year seems like a good year for a great trip. On The Times’s Food desk, where I’m an editor and also write a weekly newsletter about New York City restaurants, we’re already scouting for the year’s best restaurants, and I’m guessing many of you are planning trips with food in mind, too. Trying to figure out what reservations you need and what’s worth a line can be overwhelming, but don’t fret. I asked two of my colleagues, Priya Krishna and Brett Anderson, and we have tips for how to choose where to eat when you’re on the road — or even in your own backyard. Ask the locals Traveling to a new place can be nerve-racking, but don’t be afraid to ask for recommendations from the barista at that coffee shop near your hotel or your tour guide. Often, locals won’t send you to the restaurants that show up on every best-of list but instead to their beloved haunts. “My first move is to mine my contacts for locals to hit up for advice or contacts who might be able to introduce me to locals,” Brett told me. Both he and Priya look to local newspapers and websites, though, increasingly, vigorous local food scene coverage can be hard to find. “Local news is much more helpful in larger cities,” Brett added. Use maps features In October, I went to Paris and felt as if I were drowning in choice. Thank goodness for Instagram’s Saved Places feature. Use it as a way to save restaurants you’re interested in visiting. Just click the address in a restaurant’s Instagram bio, and that should send you to a page with its location, tagged posts and other items, including a small bookmark. Click that bookmark to add it to your Saved Places. To find that list, open Instagram’s sandwich bar (located in the top right corner of your profile page) and click on the bookmark icon next to Saved. A similar feature is available on Google Maps. You can also use Instagram to see which restaurants are frequently tagged in a city. That may mean they’re trendy, but I find that a medium amount of tags (about 1,000 or so) usually denotes local adoration. Priya uses Instagram in a slightly different way when scouting. “I like to check the Instagram pages of chefs in the area that I respect,” she told me. Then she looks at who they follow or where they go to eat regularly. For instance, it was through the Instagram of Donald Hawk, the chef at Valentine in Phoenix, that she found Kabob Grill N’ Go, one of her favorite restaurants of 2022. When to book reservations If you simply must go to a popular restaurant, set a reminder about one month ahead of time to start looking for a table. For instance, here in New York City, many so-called hot restaurants take reservations no more than three weeks ahead. New reservations tend to go online around 10 a.m. on platforms like Resy. And if you plum forget to make a reservation — hey, it happens! — cancellations usually roll in around 24 hours before the scheduled dining time. (A chef told me last year that about 25 percent of reservations at his popular restaurant were canceled on the day of.) And don’t be afraid to walk down a popular restaurant stretch and pop into a place where the menu really draws you in. As Brett put it, “I am moved by menus that make me hungry.” Follow your hunger, and you (probably) can’t go wrong. For more Browse the 50 American restaurants Times reporters and critics enjoyed the most in 2022. Ahead of Valentine’s Day, consider enjoying any of these three delicious chocolate desserts, including an Earl Grey crème brûlée. Many Americans face a frigid weekend, making a good soup necessary. Check out 24 options for keeping cozy and warm. If you enjoyed these dining tips, sign up for Where to Eat: New York City, my weekly restaurants newsletter. (This week, my Times colleagues shared how they like to spend Valentine’s Day.) Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE WEEK IN CULTURE Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated Press Beyoncé needs three wins at tomorrow’s Grammys to match the record for most overall awards, though she has won few major categories as a lead artist. Willie Nelson, Missy Elliott, Sheryl Crow, the White Stripes and Cyndi Lauper were chosen as first-time nominees for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The Spanish designer Paco Rabanne created futuristic fashion that gave shape to the dreams of the space age and redefined couture. He died at 88. Marc Jacobs’s latest fashion show was something of a memorial to Vivienne Westwood. “Richard Avedon: Murals,” an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, showcases floor-to-ceiling works that were milestones in photographic printing. An exhibition in Amsterdam is bringing together more paintings by Johannes Vermeer than ever. Yet the artist remains a mystery. Madeline McIntosh, the head of Penguin Random House, resigned, the latest shake-up in the books industry. Tom Brady retired again. So The Times’s Sports desk revised its article about his first retirement. “Schoolhouse Rock!” hosted a 50th anniversary singalong. Netflix is going to crack down on password sharing. Among other things, it’ll ask you to verify your devices, Vulture explained. Gary Glitter was released from prison after serving half of a 16-year sentence for sexually abusing three girls. THE LATEST NEWS The high-altitude Chinese balloon over Billings, Mont.Larry Mayer/The Billings Gazette, via Associated Press Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a trip to Beijing over what the Pentagon described as a Chinese “intelligence-gathering balloon” flying above the U.S. Lawmakers were concerned about the balloon because of a recent classified report that outlined American adversaries’ potential use of advanced spy technology. U.S. employers added 517,000 jobs last month, an unexpected burst of hiring that dropped the unemployment rate to its lowest in more than a half-century. The Northeast is waking up to dangerously cold temperatures, with wind chills falling below zero degrees in some places. U.S. officials’ concerns that Russia will launch a nuclear weapon have eased up since tense moments last fall. A jury found Elon Musk not liable for Tesla investors’ losses after he tweeted about the company in 2018. Expand upon The Morning experience with New York Times All Access. Readers of The Morning now can access everything The Times has to offer, including breaking news and analysis, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, with the New York Times All Access subscription. Subscribe now at this special rate. CULTURE CALENDAR By Gilbert Cruz 🍿 “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” (Friday): Steven Soderbergh remains one of the most interesting American film directors around. In just the past four years, he has released a Covid-era thriller (“Kimi”), a period neo-noir crime film (“No Sudden Move”), a light Meryl Streep drama (“Let Them All Talk”), a quirky semi-comedy about the Panama Papers (“The Laundromat”) and a movie about a sports agent that he filmed on an iPhone (“High Flying Bird”). Now, he returns with the third installment in a series that kicked off with the 2012 film “Magic Mike.” Salma Hayek joins Channing Tatum in this one. There’s something for everyone. 📚 “Big Swiss” (Tuesday): A woman has a job transcribing a sex therapist’s recorded sessions. While listening to some of those conversations — among the most intimate one can imagine — she starts to fall in love with one particular patient, a tall blonde woman whom she labels with the nickname that gives the book its title. Then, she runs into her in real life. (If this summary intrigues you, read this Vulture profile of the author, Jen Beagin.) Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT RECIPE OF THE WEEK Sang an for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. By Melissa Clark Waffles When did you last pull out your waffle iron? If you can’t remember, then it’s high time for a brunch of crisp, golden waffles, slathered in butter and maple syrup. This straightforward recipe has everything you want in a waffle — the crunchy edges, that airy texture, those little square pockets just waiting to be filled with syrup. Whip up a batch this weekend, then freeze any leftovers, which are easy to reheat in the toaster. Your future self will be very grateful to find them on Monday morning, when such a deluxe breakfast is usually off the table. A selection of New York Times recipes is available to all readers. Please consider a Cooking subscription for full access. REAL ESTATE Kevin Brost What you get for $1.9 million: A Spanish-style house in Phoenix; a Craftsman bungalow in Tampa, Fla.; or a 1916 Colonial Revival home in Lexington, Mass. The hunt: A teacher became a broker to buy her own house near Washington, D.C. Which home did she choose? Play our game. A place to hang: Create a playroom that appeals to children and adults. Ownership gap: Single women own more homes than single men. LIVING The Dior designer Maria Grazia Chiuri.Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via Shutterstock Elegant and understated: Dress like a designer. Time off: Taking short breaks helps your brain refocus. Loneliness: Retirees lose millions of dollars a year to romance scams. Here’s how to protect loved ones. Better workout secret: Caffeine can help you lift more weight and run faster. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER The art of de-pilling sweaters Nothing spoils a cozy outfit like fuzz balls marring a sweater, but a little effort and a couple of Wirecutter-approved tools can help revive even the worst offenders in your winter wardrobe. When de-pilling synthetic fabrics, use a motorized tool. Go slowly, and lay your garment on a flat surface to avoid snips and snags. For delicate natural fibers like wool and cashmere, Wirecutter experts recommend using a more gentle metal sweater comb. Gently glide the comb’s teeth over pilled areas while pulling the fabric taut. Lift any lingering fluff with a sticky lint roller, then confidently step out in your like-new knits. — Zoe Vanderweide GAME OF THE WEEKEND No. 1 South Carolina vs. No. 5 Connecticut, women’s college basketball: When UConn announced that Paige Bueckers, the former national player of the year, would miss this season because of a knee injury, all eyes fell on Azzi Fudd, one of the game’s brightest young stars. Then Fudd hurt her knee, too. “So much for having two of the generational players, right?” Geno Auriemma, UConn’s longtime coach, told The Times. Injuries have so depleted UConn’s roster that the team had to postpone a game last month. And yet, the Huskies keep winning; the team is now 21-2, despite sometimes having only seven players in the lineup. Noon Eastern tomorrow on Fox. Related: Women’s basketball has seen a rash of injuries this season. NOW TIME TO PLAY The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was enveloped. Here is today’s puzzle. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. Here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Continue reading the main story Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 5, 2023 Author Members Share Posted February 5, 2023 February 5, 2023 By Lauren Jackson Good morning. Menopause has long been a taboo topic. Talking about it can help women learn more about an overlooked treatment. Photograph by Marta Blue for The New York Times Silent suffering Menopause, for many women, is an unknown — a confusing tunnel to pass through, with limited signage for what to expect. But one effective treatment has been overlooked for decades, signaling that women’s suffering is widely regarded as unimportant, according to the cover story in today’s New York Times Magazine. I spoke with Susan Dominus, who wrote the article, about her reporting and the reactions it has received from women. Lauren: I learned more from your story than I’ve ever learned about menopause. It has been so absent from public discourse. Susan: I too knew almost nothing going into this. I told a friend I was working on a story about menopause. Her eyes went wide and she just said, “Thank you.” And I could tell that what she meant by that was: That’s good, because I know nothing. After I got up to speed, I was constantly bringing the subject up at dinner parties, asking my friends, “Hey, how is your menopause going?” You’d think that would be really inappropriate — except that practically all of the women around my age I spoke to were bewildered, really struggling and eager to talk about it. Yet a lot of them just accepted their uncomfortable reality: years of horrible hot flashes, night sweats, sleeplessness, depression and brain fog as their bodies approached their last menstrual cycles. But you explain that those symptoms can be managed — that there is a treatment for menopausal suffering that is often overlooked. Why do you think so many in the medical community do not readily offer it? It’s called menopausal hormone therapy, an estrogen and progesterone prescription that comes in various formulations: pills, patches or vaginal rings. It is the single most effective treatment for hot flashes. The therapy does carry some risk, as do many medications people take to relieve serious discomfort. But many women, if they’ve even heard of this treatment, regard it as vaguely dangerous. I know I did. We’ve made that assessment on the basis of what I would call misleading information. In the early 2000s, researchers who studied the therapy found that it could hurt women’s heart health and increase the risk of stroke, clotting and breast cancer. They announced the risks before developing a clear sense of how it affected women of different ages. Most menopause experts now believe that for healthy women under 60 suffering from bothersome hot flashes and night sweats, the benefits of the therapy outweigh the risks. What do you see as other factors that have contributed to our aversion to talking about menopause? In 1966 there was this blockbuster book called “Feminine Forever,” and the author, a gynecologist named Robert Wilson, talked about menopause as a kind of castration — the start of a woman’s desexualization, decline and definitely her inevitable misery. That shame has held. I remember being 45 and asking an older friend about menopause, and she got really uncomfortable. I was shocked because we were so close. And she just said: “I don’t want to talk about it. It feels too personal.” Women also feel reluctant to talk about symptoms because they don’t want it held against them in the workplace. That awkwardness and aversion flows through conversations with medical practitioners as well. Some people may say sexism is the response to the question: Why is menopause so understudied? But is the answer more complicated than that? It’s important to note that menopause is not life threatening. It is part of life. So much energy has been put into studying pregnancy and childbirth, which can be very dangerous and even fatal. But I do also think that there is some sexism at play. To paraphrase Rebecca Thurston, a leading figure in menopause research, we have a high tolerance for women’s suffering. She considers it one of the great blind spots of medicine. Bewilderment is the operative word for many women, of all ages, trying to understand their bodies with limited information. We play roulette with birth control side effects and hope they will be manageable. We get blindsided by the violence of pregnancy and menopause. Do you see signs of change? If you’re good at anything by the time you’re a 50-year-old woman, it’s coping. But I think that, since we went through the collective trauma of Covid, many people have become more open about their health in general. And I have the feeling that talking about menopause more is likely part of that. I’ve been moved by how many women have written to me to say they feel seen, or they feel empowered to get help, rather than just suffer. But in a way, the most powerful emails I’ve received have been from doctors expressing regret about what they did not know all these years — and saying they’re encouraging their colleagues, in various fields, to learn more about it. Susan Dominus is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. Her interests are wide-ranging, but she frequently covers the intersection of science and culture. More from the magazine The author Robin Wall Kimmerer says you don’t have to be complicit in a culture of destruction. Atlanta’s district attorney built a career taking down gangs. Now she may be coming for Donald Trump. Letter of Recommendation: Hunt for sidewalk fossils. Poetry: “Birthday,” by Ana Božičević, reminds that wonder needs no ornaments. Read this week’s full issue. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT NEWS Chinese Balloon A U.S. fighter jet shot the Chinese balloon off the coast of South Carolina.Randall Hill/Reuters The U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic Ocean, ending a saga that inflamed tensions. (This video captured the moment.) The balloon had spent five days traveling southeast from Idaho to the Carolinas. China declared its “strong discontent and protest” at the shooting down and continued to claim the balloon was a civilian research airship blown off course. Severe Weather The Northeast confronted record-setting cold yesterday. The weather system led to the death of an infant in Massachusetts. Wildfires in Chile, which is in the middle of a scorching heat wave, have killed at least 13 people. Other Big Stories Pervez Musharraf in 2008, when he resigned as president of Pakistan.Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press Pervez Musharraf, the former military ruler of Pakistan and a U.S. ally after the Sept. 11 attacks, died at 79. Memphis’s Scorpion police unit spread fear, and records show that Black men were overwhelmingly their targets. Five Scorpion officers are charged in the death of Tyre Nichols. The U.S. Navy wanted to retire eight flawed combat ships. Lobbying saved several of them. A prospective aide who briefly worked in Representative George Santos’s office accused him of sexual harassment. Democrats approved changes to their primary calendar, prioritizing racially diverse states. Bowen Yang played the Chinese balloon wreckage on “Saturday Night Live.” Pedro Pascal hosted. FROM OPINION Factory farms claim to slaughter pigs humanely. Watch this video and decide for yourself, Nicholas Kristof says. Doctors aren’t just suffering from burnout; they’re demoralized by America’s diseased health care system, Eric Reinhart argues. Floods and fires are already producing climate refugees in the U.S., Jake Bittle writes. Online culture encourages young people to put themselves on display even as they’re discovering who they are, Elle Mills writes. An avian flu pandemic would be even more devastating than Covid. The world needs to act now, Zeynep Tufekci writes. The Sunday question: Is Biden right to end the Covid public health emergency? Covid has become endemic, and ending the emergency will help public health officials focus resources on the people who remain most vulnerable, The Washington Post’s Dr. Leana Wen argues. But it will probably also limit access to tests, vaccines and treatments, especially for uninsured Americans, The Atlantic’s Katherine Wu notes. Expand upon The Morning experience with New York Times All Access. Readers of The Morning now can access everything The Times has to offer, including breaking news and analysis, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, with the New York Times All Access subscription. Subscribe now at this special rate. MORNING READS Photo illustration by Margeaux Walter for The New York Times Work friend: Attempts to avoid a co-worker’s baby photos escalated. The bright side: Traits that optimists share can help improve anyone’s outlook. Rarefied clothes: See the fashion inside and outside the Paris couture shows. Vows: They waited nearly a decade to go on a first date. Sunday routine: A radio producer considers foraging in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Advice from Wirecutter: Revive a dead car battery with a portable jump starter. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT BOOKS The author Leigh Bardugo.Rozette Rago for The New York Times A Yale library: Leigh Bardugo transforms a temple to learning into a portal to Hell. Chronicle of an investigation: Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor, likens Trump to the mob boss John Gotti in a new book. By the Book: The journalist Alex Prud’homme has a growing colorful pile of books by his bed. Our editors’ picks: “The World and All That It Holds,” a love story in the time of war, and eight other titles. Times best sellers: “The Bill of Obligations,” a case for reimagining American citizenship, is a new hardcover nonfiction best seller. The Book Review podcast: Previewing the next big books. THE WEEK AHEAD What to Watch For The European Union expands its embargo of Russian energy supplies today to include diesel and gasoline. The Grammys are tonight. Beyoncé leads with nine nominations. NASCAR opens its season tonight with a race at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. President Biden will deliver his State of the Union address on Tuesday. New York Fashion Week begins on Friday. What to Cook This Week David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. This week’s edition of the Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter is about the joys of using a knife. Cut up shallots for creamy chickpea pasta; chop onions for a vegetarian dish with farro and lentils; or mince eight cloves of garlic for these garlic-ginger chicken breasts with cilantro and mint. NOW TIME TO PLAY The pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were hematic, mathematic and thematic. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Martini garnish (five letters). Take the news quiz to see how well you followed the week’s headlines. Here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Here’s today’s front page. Lauren Hard, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Continue reading the main story Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 7, 2023 Author Members Share Posted February 7, 2023 February 6, 2023 By David Leonhardt Good morning. After a four-month book leave, I’m looking at what changed during that time. Ukrainian soldiers firing into a Russian-controlled town in eastern Ukraine last month.Nicole Tung for The New York Times Seven surprises This is my first newsletter after a four-month book leave, and I want to try something a little different. As I prepared to come back, I spent time talking with Times colleagues and outside experts about how the world has changed while I was gone. Which news developments will have lasting import? What has been surprising? What do we know now that we didn’t before? As I was making the list, I realized that it would be worth sharing it with readers. It helps give some perspective to a dizzying news environment in which all of us struggle to distinguish between stories that are ephemeral and those with lasting significance. During a cynical time in American life, the list also offers a reminder that there has been good news along with the bad. In descending order of significance — and, yes, this ranking is subjective and weighted toward the U.S. — here are the seven biggest stories of the past few months. The list 7. A.I. arrives. Artificial intelligence felt theoretical to many people until November, when OpenAI, a technology company in San Francisco, released ChatGPT. Since then, millions of Americans have experimented with the software or read some of its output. “ChatGPT is still young — only 2 months old! — and yet we’re already getting a glimpse of the many ways these A.I. chatbots could change our lives,” my colleague Kevin Roose says. Some of the implications seem scary: A.I. can write a solid college essay. Other implications are exciting: Surely, a computer can learn to write more comprehensible instructions for many household gadgets than is the norm today. 6. A milder Covid winter. In each of the past two winters, the country endured a terrible surge of severe Covid illnesses, but not this winter. Chart shows a seven-day daily average. | Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services It’s a sign that the virus has become endemic, with immunity from vaccinations and previous infections making the average Covid case less severe. If anything, the best-known Covid statistics on hospitalizations and deaths probably exaggerate its toll, because they count people who had incidental cases. Still, Covid is causing more damage than is necessary — both because many Americans remain unvaccinated and because Covid treatments are being underused, as German Lopez has explained. 5. Milder inflation, too. The pace of consumer price increases has declined more in recent months than most economists expected. Why? The pandemic’s supply-chain disruptions have eased, and the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate increases are starting to have their intended effect. “Inflation is still very elevated, so it’s not mission accomplished for the Fed by any means,” said Jeanna Smialek, an economics correspondent based in Washington, “but we are finally headed in the right direction.” It remains unclear whether the Fed can engineer the soft landing — reducing inflation further without causing a recession — that is its goal. The strong job market captured in Friday’s employment report suggests that the economy may still be running hot enough to require significantly higher interest rates. 4. Peak China? China’s ruling Communist Party has had a rough few months. It abruptly abandoned its zero-Covid policy in December, effectively acknowledging a huge failure (without actually acknowledging it). Weeks later, China released data showing that its population had peaked, which creates a major economic challenge. The number of workers relative to retirees will be declining for the foreseeable future. Of course, China has long been preparing for this challenge and has defied repeated predictions of looming decline in recent decades, my colleague Max Fisher points out. It would be a mistake to assume that decline has now begun. But Xi Jinping’s government will need to do a better job of managing the situation than it has of managing the pandemic. (The spy balloon isn’t hugely significant on its own, but it adds to the sense that Beijing’s competence has been exaggerated. Here’s the latest.) 3. The final days of affirmative action. When the Supreme Court heard arguments about race-based affirmative action in October, the six Republican-appointed justices seemed ready to ban it. A ruling is expected by June. One big question is how colleges, the military and other organizations will try to replace the current programs. A focus of this newsletter in 2023 will be the future of class-based affirmative action. It is unquestionably legal, yet many colleges do relatively little to take into account economic class, as measured by income, wealth, neighborhood conditions and more. There are large racial gaps in those indicators. 2. Russia’s miscalculation. The overall situation in Ukraine has remained similar since late last year: Russia controls parts of the east and the south, but far less than its strategic goals, and both sides are hoping for a breakthrough soon. Elsewhere, though, the war has shifted geopolitics. Japan and western Europe have been spooked enough by Russia’s invasion to increase their military spending after years of largely outsourcing military power to the U.S. If the trend continues, the global alliance of democracies will be strengthened. And the U.S. might be able to shift some of its own military spending to invest in technologies of the future. Donald Trump and Kari Lake during her campaign for governor of Arizona in 2022.Rebecca Noble for The New York Times 1. Democracy won. The biggest surprise of the past four months to me was the defeat of nearly every major election denier who was on the ballot this year. “A critical segment of the electorate is not interested in Trumpism,” Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, said. Nate estimated that Trump-aligned candidates performed about five percentage points worse than other Republicans, with the effects seeming to be largest in states where Trump tried to overturn the 2020 result, like Arizona and Pennsylvania. It happened even as many other conservative Republicans fared well. That is a big deal. A democracy can survive intense policy disagreements over taxes, government benefits, abortion, affirmative action and more. But if the true winner of a major election is prevented from taking office, a country is not really a democracy anymore. What’s missing I recognize this list omits several important subjects on which the big picture has not changed much lately. The planet keeps warming. The U.S. immigration system is a mess. Police violence has continued. Crime, though down slightly, is far above its pre-Covid levels. We will cover all these stories — and any promising solutions — in 2023. Give us feedback: What did I overlook, and what other stories do you want us to cover this year? Related Can you tell the difference between text written by A.I. and text written by a fourth grader? Play our game. I learned a lot from Ezra Klein’s recent podcast with Yuen Yuen Ang in which she described how Xi Jinping ended China’s era of reformist policy. Times photographers are documenting the war in Ukraine. See their latest work. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Turkey Earthquake Searching for survivors in Turkey today.Ilyas Akengin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images An earthquake has killed more than 1,200 people in Syria and Turkey. The toll will almost certainly rise. The epicenter was in southern Turkey, as this map shows. The region was experiencing aftershocks. Syria, still scarred from its civil war, will be ill equipped to recover. Politics President Biden plans to call for bipartisanship tomorrow in his first State of the Union address since Republicans took the House. The Chinese balloon incident shows how little Washington and Beijing communicate, The Times’s David Sanger writes. Kamala Harris made history by becoming vice president, but she has struggled to define her role. The Koch network, an alliance of conservative donors, is preparing to get involved in the 2024 presidential primaries to fight Donald Trump. Other Big Stories A raid by the Israeli Army in the West Bank killed at least five Palestinians. The army said it had been seeking to arrest gunmen accused of attempting an attack. Rather than banning ChatGPT to prevent cheating, some teachers are asking their students to think critically about advances in artificial intelligence. The chief executive of Goldman Sachs has a side gig as a D.J. He says it’s a hobby, but it could pose conflicts of interest. Opinions Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss tomorrow’s State of the Union. Many cystic fibrosis patients thought they wouldn’t live past 30. A new treatment has drastically changed life expectancy, Dr. Daniela Lamas writes. Expand upon The Morning experience with New York Times All Access. Readers of The Morning now can access everything The Times has to offer, including breaking news and analysis, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, with the New York Times All Access subscription. Subscribe now at this special rate. MORNING READS Jill Kortleve, a midsize model, made her runway debut for Alexander McQueen in 2018.Melissa Schriek for The New York Times Size 8 to 10: Midsize models are rarely cast in glossy brand campaigns. Why not? Mystery: He disappeared after going to Alaska in 1976. Now, a skull may provide answers. Metropolitan Diary: Spotting an ex across the subway tracks. Quiz time: Take the latest news quiz and share your score (the average was 9.5). Advice from Wirecutter: Warm up with a space heater. Lives Lived: Charles Kimbrough was nominated for an Emmy Award for portraying the comically rigid news anchor Jim Dial on the sitcom “Murphy Brown.” He died at 86. SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC On the move: The Nets traded Kyrie Irving, whose run was marred by scandals, to the Dallas Mavericks. First and last? The announcers Greg Olsen and Kevin Burkhardt are calling their first Super Bowl together on Sunday. It could also be their last, because Tom Brady is joining the Fox booth soon. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS Beyoncé accepting the award for best dance/electronic album.Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Highlights from the Grammys Beyoncé made history last night: She now holds the record for the most Grammy wins. But she didn’t win any of the top prizes. Those went to Harry Styles, who won album of the year for “Harry’s House,” and to Lizzo, who won record of the year for “About Damn Time.” Other top prizes: Song of the year, which honors songwriting, went to Bonnie Raitt for “Just Like That.” Samara Joy, a jazz singer from the Bronx, won best new artist. (Here’s the full list.) The centerpiece: A joyous performance celebrated five decades of hip-hop. The Times’s Jon Caramanica called it “unexpectedly emotional.” Fashion: See Styles’s sparkling harlequin jumpsuit and other red carpet looks. PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook Christopher Simpson for The New York Times Barely salted chips, melted cheese and pickled jalapeños: Make classic nachos. Five Minutes … … that will make you love 21st-century jazz. What to Read “An Assassin in Utopia” links President James Garfield’s killer to an atmosphere of free love and religious fervor that gripped Oneida, N.Y., in the late 1800s. Now Time to Play The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was mothball. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Glossy (five letters). And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David P.S. King George VI died 71 years ago today. His daughter succeeded him, becoming Queen Elizabeth II. Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about the Chinese balloon. Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 7, 2023 Author Members Share Posted February 7, 2023 February 7, 2023 By David Leonhardt and Claire Moses Good morning. Time is running out and cold weather is impeding the search for survivors after a major earthquake hit Turkey. Searching for survivors in Adana, Turkey, early this morning.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times Digging for Survivors The earthquakes were horrific on their own. First — shortly after 4 a.m. local time on Monday — came Turkey’s strongest quake in more than 80 years, followed hours later by an unusually powerful aftershock. The latest death count is more than 5,000 and will probably rise. Compounding the damage are three existing crises in the region where the quakes hit, near the Syrian border in southern Turkey: first, Syria’s civil war; second, a surge of refugees into Turkey because of the war; third, economic problems in both countries. Today’s newsletter gives you the latest details and photographs from Turkey and Syria as well as an explanation of the larger problems facing the region. Those problems are complicating the recovery from the quake and will continue to do so. Source: U.S. Geological Survey What we know The earthquake buckled thousands of buildings, including around 15 hospitals in Turkey and a 2,000-year-old castle. In one apartment block, residents gathered around a bonfire to stay warm. Because of aftershocks, thousands of people slept in cars or outside to avoid getting stuck in their buildings. The area was vulnerable to a major earthquake. Older buildings with concrete frames are common. And in northern Syria, infrastructure was already fragile after years of bombardments. This map shows the destruction. Temperatures are near freezing in much of the region, and snow or rain is forecast. When the earthquake hit, many people were asleep and had not been prepared for the cold. “This is a race against time and hypothermia,” a meteorologist at Istanbul Technical University said. About 22 hours after the earthquake, rescuers pulled a woman from the rubble. But time is running out — most rescues tend to happen within three days. More than 16,000 rescuers are involved in the search, according to Turkish state news media. In the Turkish city of Malatya, electricity was out in many parts and there was no fuel at gas stations, said Emin Ozmen, a photographer covering the devastation for The Times. “I started walking in the most hit neighborhood. I saw dozens of collapsed buildings, but only two groups of rescuers,” Emin told us. “If it’s like this in a big city, I can’t imagine the situation in towns and villages.” Sergey Ponomarev, another photographer for The Times, who just arrived in Iskenderun, Turkey, described a plume of black smoke rising from burning containers in the port, and the constant sound of alarms and ambulances. In another part of the city, he told us, multiple apartment buildings and a hospital collapsed. “There’s a lot of dust,” Sergey said. “There are quite a lot of people just sitting and watching. Probably, they spent the whole night on the street so they look very exhausted.” Governments — including those of the U.S., the E.U., India, Israel, Russia and Ukraine — sent search teams and medical squads. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, declared seven days of national mourning. Devastation in the village of Besnia, in northwestern Syria, yesterday.Omar Haj Kadour/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Crisis No. 1: Syria’s war “We kept looking up to the sky for jets,” said Osama Salloum, a doctor in a part of northwestern Syria where the quakes hit. “My mind was playing tricks on me, telling me it was war again.” The region includes the city of Aleppo, the site of some of the worst fighting during Syria’s decade-long civil war (which has been halted by a cease-fire since 2020). Syria’s government leveled large sections of Aleppo between 2012 and 2016 and killed thousands of people. The assault succeeded, and the battle of Aleppo was a turning point that helped Syria’s government effectively win the civil war. Rebuilding since then has been limited, our colleague Raja Abdulrahim writes, and the earthquake has created an acute set of new problems. “Anywhere else in the world this would be an emergency,” a spokesman for the International Rescue Committee said. “What we have in Syria is an emergency within an emergency.” Searching through the rubble in Zardana, Syria, yesterday.Mohammed Al-Rifai/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images No. 2: The refugees The flow of Syrian refugees into Western Europe has received a lot of attention in recent years. In some countries, including Italy and Germany, it appears to have bolstered far-right political parties. But the scale of war-related immigration to Turkey is of another order of magnitude. As The Economist writes: At the end of 2010, just before the start of the war, Turkey had only 10,000 refugees and asylum seekers. Twelve years on, it hosts 3.6 million Syrians, more than the rest of Europe put together, plus over a million migrants from Africa, Central Asia, the Middle East and Russia. Turkey is a country transformed. Recovering from the quakes will be even harder for refugees living in temporary quarters, such as the three “container cities” in the southeastern part of the country. Rescuers carrying a man out of a collapsed building in Malatya, Turkey.Emin Ozmen for The New York Times No. 3: The economy As prices have soared across much of the world over the past few years, central banks have raised interest rates. Economists across the ideological spectrum agree with the approach (even if they disagree about the details): By making loans more expensive, the central banks depress demand and reduce inflation. Turkey, however, has pursued a very different monetary policy. It has reduced interest rates. I’ll spare you the technical arguments that its government has offered in defense of the policy, because it has failed. Annual inflation has hovered between 50 percent and 90 percent over the past year, causing hardship for many families and businesses. The earthquakes are likely to make matters worse by disrupting production and supply chains. As the world experienced during Covid, supply-chain problems reduce the supply of goods and, by extension, often cause price increases. Southeastern Turkey, where the quakes hit, was already one the country’s poorest regions. The economic slump appears to be aggravating concerns about the influx of refugees. Syria’s economy is in even worse condition than Turkey’s, because of the war. Syria’s G.D.P. — which measures total economic production — fell by more than half between 2010 and 2020, our colleague Liz Alderman notes. For more: Many organizations are aiding the rescue efforts. Here’s how you can help the victims. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Politics President Biden will deliver the State of the Union address tonight. His preparation includes weeks of rehearsal to overcome his stutter. Republican presidential hopefuls are focusing on education, including criticizing schools’ handling of race and gender. Tensions between Washington and Beijing may impact who buys the land next door: States are pursuing legislation to bar Chinese buyers. International A Ukrainian soldier cleaning a gun on Sunday.Lynsey Addario for The New York Times Russia is preparing a new offensive in eastern Ukraine. In villages on the front line, residents again face the decision to stay or flee. Forty-seven pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong went on trial, charged with subversion by China. China says 80,000 people died in its recent Covid wave, but a survey of top academics’ obituaries suggests the toll may be larger. The Chinese balloon that bumbled its way across the U.S. prompted many questions about its real intent. It’s also questioning Xi Jinping’s judgment. Other Big Stories Memphis wasn’t the only city to again turn to specialized police teams to fight a surge in crime after disbanding them. Elon Musk pledged to cleanse Twitter of child abuse imagery, but the content abounds. The site’s own systems sometimes promote it. Federal officials charged two people, one of them a neo-Nazi, with plotting to destroy Baltimore’s power grid. A single Powerball ticket won $754.6 million. Changes to Powerball and Mega Millions have led to more large jackpots. Opinions Biden has been a great president. But he should not run again, Michelle Goldberg argues. In his address tonight, Biden should remind voters that the Supreme Court is part of the democratic fabric, not above it, Kate Shaw writes. Inflation doomsayers seem to have gotten it wrong, Paul Krugman says. Expand upon The Morning experience with New York Times All Access. Readers of The Morning now can access everything The Times has to offer, including breaking news and analysis, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, with the New York Times All Access subscription. Subscribe now at this special rate. MORNING READS Bruce Cholst walks Sean and Sammie-Sue through the lobby of their Upper East Side building.Desiree Rios/The New York Times Furry neighbors: In some New York high-rises, dogs are allowed, as long as they’re out of sight. The coffee’s out: Harry Styles mentioned a cafe in a lyric. Now his fans flock there. Advice from Wirecutter: The best fitness gear. Lives Lived: The lawyer Harry Whittington gained sudden fame in 2006 as the unintended victim of a shotgun blast by Vice President Dick Cheney. He drew more attention days later when he apologized to Cheney. Whittington died at 95. SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC Scandal: Premier League officials charged Manchester City, the reigning champion, with financial rules violations. The club could face suspension or even expulsion. A year off: Tom Brady said he would join the Fox broadcast booth in 2024. That takes some pressure off Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen, who will call Sunday’s Super Bowl. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS The McMillan Memorial Library in Nairobi.Patrick Meinhardt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images ‘Palaces for the people’ When the first library in Nairobi, Kenya, opened in 1931, access was restricted to white patrons. Nearly a century later, a nonprofit group is trying to turn the city’s old libraries into inclusive public spaces, The Times’s Abdi Latif Dahir writes. In addition to restoring several libraries that fell into disrepair over the years, the nonprofit is working to digitize their archives, bring in more books in African languages and help people with disabilities “Our public libraries can be glamorous spaces of storytelling,” said Angela Wachuka, a Kenyan publisher. “We are here to also reclaim history, to occupy its architecture and to subvert its intended use.” PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook Bobbi Lin for The New York Times One-pan creamed spinach with eggs is simple. Television Recap Read what happened on Episode 4 of “The Last of Us.” (Beware: It’s full of spoilers.) What to Read Some consider Colette the greatest French author of the early 20th century. If you haven’t read her, here’s where to start. Late Night Chelsea Handler, guest-hosting “The Daily Show,” poked fun at the Chinese surveillance balloon. Now Time to Play The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was fanciful. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Wow (five letters). And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. P.S. Jason Bailey, a Times critic who looks for hidden gems, watched 651 movies last year. Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about the earthquake. . Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 9, 2023 Author Members Share Posted February 9, 2023 February 8, 2023 By German Lopez Good morning. Biden’s State of the Union speech benefited from recent good news, but the future is less certain. President Biden delivering his address last night.Kenny Holston/The New York Times A high point President Biden used his State of the Union speech to portray the U.S. as a country in recovery, and he is right that there has been a lot of good news lately. Price increases have slowed. Covid deaths are down about 80 percent compared with a year ago. Ukraine is holding off Russia’s invasion. Congress passed legislation addressing climate change, infrastructure and gun violence, and some of it was bipartisan. What Biden did not emphasize last night was that the U.S. also faces a lot of uncertainty. Depending on what happens over the next few months, the current moment may end up looking like a temporary high point for the country and Biden’s presidency — or another step toward better times. Today’s newsletter provides a fuller picture of the state of the union, looking at four topics that will shape 2023. After those four, we will also give you the highlights from Biden’s speech and reactions to it. Republican House Biden spent much of his speech celebrating bipartisan accomplishments from the last year, including funding for scientific research, electoral overhaul and same-sex marriage protections. “We’re often told that Democrats and Republicans can’t work together,” Biden said. “But over the past two years, we’ve proved the cynics and naysayers wrong.” But that bipartisanship was before Republicans took control of the House, and they have been clear that they intend to stifle Biden’s presidency. They have already started investigations into his son’s business dealings and the influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. The biggest source of uncertainty is the clashes Republicans have promised over spending. Those fights could lead to government shutdowns or, worse, financial calamity if Congress fails to increase the nation’s debt limit. Inflation The rate at which prices have been rising — inflation — has now cooled for six straight months. But inflation is still high. America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, targets an annual rate of roughly 2 percent, and its preferred inflation measure is still closer to 5 percent. The labor market also remains very hot, with last week’s jobs report putting the unemployment rate at its lowest level since 1969. A historically low unemployment rate is normally good news. But in an economy with high inflation, a tight labor market can lead to even higher prices. The Federal Reserve could respond by trying to slow the economy further, which could cause a recession. War in Ukraine Ukraine has done much better in its fight against Russia than most analysts expected. But will Ukraine continue to hold out? It is a genuinely open question. Russia has redoubled its efforts, drafting hundreds of thousands of men to the battlefield over the last few months. Vladimir Putin’s forces are planning a renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine, where the fighting has become particularly bloody as Russia tries to take the city of Bakhmut. Ukraine has defied expectations so far, and could continue doing so. But if Ukraine falls, it would signal to the world that autocrats can get away with invading democratic countries. It would suggest the Western alliance isn’t as powerful as it once was — shifting global power away from democracies like the U.S. and members of the E.U. and toward authoritarian powers like Russia and China. And for Biden, it could damage his standing domestically and globally, much as America’s messy exit from Afghanistan did. Crime trends Murders quickly spiked over 2020 and 2021, spawning fears of a new national crime wave. Then good news came in 2022: Murders declined by 5 percent in the country’s largest cities. But as experts often say, one year does not make a trend. Murder rates are still about 30 percent higher than they were in 2019. Other kinds of crime, including robberies and thefts, increased last year. The crime data speak to the uncertainty the U.S. faces on all of these topics: The trends are good, but not good enough to fully reverse the problems of recent years. Biden spent the first half of his speech celebrating economic progress.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times More from the speech Biden touted the low unemployment rate and said that bipartisan bills to improve infrastructure and grow high-tech manufacturing would create even more jobs. Republicans heckled Biden and called him a liar when he said members of their party wanted to end Social Security and Medicare. He argued back, leading to a back-and-forth rarely seen in these speeches. Biden’s call for consensus “amounted to the opening of a re-election campaign he plans to formally announce by spring,” The Times’s Peter Baker writes. Mitt Romney scolded George Santos, the New York representative who fabricated parts of his résumé, telling him that he “shouldn’t have been there.” The Republican rebuttal from Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas centered on culture-war issues, accusing Biden of surrendering to the “woke mob.” Here are more takeaways, a fact check and a transcript. Commentary on the speech “Smart of Biden to start the speech with conciliation and working together,” The Washington Post’s Henry Olsen wrote. “Biden made perhaps the best speech of his presidency. The heckling from Republicans only helped make his points,” The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser tweeted. “Joe Biden sparring with the crowd and winning wasn’t something I expected,” Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican representative, said. Biden’s message — that he’s delivering the infrastructure spending and economic nationalism Donald Trump promised — is a potent case for re-election, Ross Douthat writes in Times Opinion. “What did he say on abortion that was new, powerful, energizing or reassuring? Nothing,” the writer Jessica Valenti tweeted. “It came across as an afterthought.” Biden spent the most time discussing the economy, according to NBC News, followed by infrastructure, policing and taxes. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Turkey Earthquake Kahramanmaras, Turkey, yesterday.Emin Ozmen for The New York Times The death toll in Turkey and Syria from a devastating set of earthquakes passed 11,000. Crews rescued more than 8,000 people in Turkey. But it’s the third day, and hope is dwindling. Many of the victims are children. In one case, rescuers saved a baby who was born in the rubble. One man heard his brother’s voice from the wreckage of a collapsed building. A bittersweet rescue followed. Artificial Intelligence Microsoft is incorporating an A.I. chatbot into its search engine, beating Google to what could be the next revolution in Silicon Valley. “Deepfake” videos of fictitious news anchors are spreading disinformation. Other Big Stories The Memphis Police Department said one officer charged in the killing of Tyre Nichols sent a photo of a bloodied Nichols to at least five people. Six officers involved in Nichols’s arrest used physical force against him, a Times video investigation found. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is making a surprise visit to Britain today. An outbreak on a Spanish mink farm suggests bird flu can spread between mammals. Experts stressed the need for vigilance but not panic. Opinions India is finally ascendant. It’s also become less free, less tolerant and less democratic, Lydia Polgreen argues. Madonna has reinvented herself over and over again. Her new face is a provocation, Jennifer Weiner writes. Expand upon The Morning experience with New York Times All Access. Readers of The Morning now can access everything The Times has to offer, including breaking news and analysis, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, with the New York Times All Access subscription. Subscribe now at this special rate. MORNING READS Are gel manicures safe? Avoid cancer risks by trying an alternative. “Should I have kids?” Times reporters answered questions about climate change. Middle seat: AMC movie theaters will start charging different ticket prices depending on where you sit. Advice from Wirecutter: Valentine’s gifts for kids. Lives Lived: David Harris called on young people to protest the Vietnam War by resisting the draft. He went to jail for refusing to serve. He died at 76. SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC LeBron James after he passed the record last night.Ashley Landis/Associated Press Making history: LeBron James, the Los Angeles Lakers star, broke the N.B.A. career scoring record, overtaking Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with his 38,388th point. Watch the moment it happened. “An iconic figure”: Respect for James among the league, players and fans is nearly unanimous. Contemplation: The Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers will contemplate his football future at a “darkness retreat,” during which he will sit in a small house and meditate. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS Gustavo Dudamel conducting.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times New York’s new maestro Gustavo Dudamel will be the next music director of the New York Philharmonic. Dudamel was born in Venezuela and took over the Los Angeles Philharmonic when he was 26. When he arrives in New York in 2026, he’ll oversee an ensemble associated with famous maestros like Leonard Bernstein and Arturo Toscanini. Dudamel is the rare classical artist to break into the mainstream. He has appeared in a Super Bowl halftime show and was an inspiration for the Amazon series “Mozart in the Jungle.” For more: The Philharmonic hopes Dudamel can help recapture the populist glamour of the Bernstein era, Zachary Woolfe writes. PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook Julia Gartland for The New York Times Try this creamy one-pot pasta with chicken and mushrooms. What to Read “Lives of the Wives” explores five literary marriages fraught with resentment and abysmal behavior. What to Watch A terrified woman finds her childhood home contains more than bad memories in the loopy horror movie “They Wait in the Dark.” Late Night The hosts discussed the State of the Union. Now Time to Play The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was talkative. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: “Hoo boy!” (four letters). And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — German P.S. Doug Schorzman, who has guided Times coverage of Hong Kong and other subjects, is the paper’s next Asia editor. Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about the Scorpion police unit. Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 10, 2023 Author Members Share Posted February 10, 2023 February 9, 2023 By David Leonhardt Good morning. We explain why the Biden administration is trying to crack down on those sneaky fees charged by hotels, rental cars, internet providers and more. Ticketmaster is especially aggressive about imposing fees.Paul Sakuma/Associated Press A market failure Sneaky fees have become a big part of America’s consumer economy. Hertz charges almost $6 a day simply for using a toll transponder in a rental car. Marriott and Hilton add nightly “resort fees” to the bill even at hotels that nobody would consider to be resorts. American, Delta and United list one airfare when you first search for a seat — and then add charges for basic features like the ability to sit next to your spouse. Ticketmaster is especially aggressive about imposing fees, as I experienced recently while buying two tickets to a football game. When I initially selected my seats on Ticketmaster’s online stadium map, they cost $48. The bill at checkout was more than one-third higher — $64.40. President Biden has announced a crackdown on these fees (which his administration calls “junk fees”), and he devoted a section of his State of the Union address to them. “Look, junk fees may not matter to the very wealthy, but they matter to most other folks in homes like the one I grew up in,” he said Tuesday night. “I know how unfair it feels when a company overcharges you and gets away with it.” Today, I want to explain why anybody is even worrying about this problem. After all, in a competitive capitalist economy like ours, shouldn’t the market have already solved it? ‘Sludge’ The market solution to sneaky fees seems straightforward. When Marriott starts charging $50 nightly “resort fees,” Hilton can call out its competitor and try to steal Marriott customers. And some companies do take this approach: Southwest Airlines advertises a “Bags Fly Free” policy, an obvious swipe at rivals. But the mushrooming number of fees has made clear that competition does not usually eliminate the practice. Why not? Academic research has suggested that there are two main reasons. First, human beings are not the efficiently rational machines that economic theory pretends they are. An entire branch of the field, behavioral economics, has sprung up in recent decades to make sense of our limited attention spans. If you are familiar with the best-selling book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” by Daniel Kahneman, you will recognize these ideas. We lead busy lives that keep us from analyzing every purchase, and we get distracted by salient but misleading information (like a low list price). Big companies, with the resources at their disposal, have learned to take advantage of these limitations. The economist Richard Thaler refers to practices like these as “sludge,” the evil counterpart to nudges that use behavioral economics to improve life. True, one company could call out another for using sludge. But doing so often requires a complex marketing message that tries to persuade people to overcome their psychological instincts (like the appeal of a low list price). For that reason, Hilton can probably make more money by charging its own sneaky resort fees than by criticizing Marriott’s. “Once some subset of hotels start charging these fees and generating a significant amount of revenue,” Bharat Ramamurti, a Biden adviser, told me, “that creates pressure on hotels to do this, or otherwise they’re getting left behind.” No choices The second major reason is monopoly power. In some markets, consumers don’t have much choice. Ticketmaster’s fees outrage many people. But I didn’t have any choice when I bought those football tickets. There was no rival service selling them. In recent decades, many American industries have become more concentrated, partly because Washington became more lax about enforcing antitrust laws. Thomas Philippon, an N.Y.U. economist, has estimated that increased corporate concentration costs the typical American household more than $5,000 a year. In some industries, sludge and monopoly power feed off each other. The small number of dominant internet providers, for instance, reduces the chances that a new entrant can design a business strategy around undercutting Comcast’s and Verizon’s sneaky fees. Those new entrants don’t exist. Comcast and Verizon have also figured out how to make the cancellation of internet service unpleasant and time-consuming. Airlines — another concentrated industry — use frequent-flier programs in a similar way, effectively punishing customers for switching to a different carrier. Bharat Ramamurti, a Biden adviser.Oliver Contreras for The New York Times The crackdown The Biden administration is trying to address both causes of sneaky fees. On antitrust, it has adopted a policy more confrontational than that of any other administration in decades. That effort is in its early stages, without many big victories. Still, the administration does seem to be taking corporate concentration seriously. As for the sludge itself, the administration has already taken steps to restrict a few examples, such as charges for late payments on credit cards. Biden has asked Congress to pass a law with stricter rules for other industries. The administration’s bigger focus for now is on disclosure — requiring companies to tell consumers up front what the full cost will be. The Transportation Department has proposed such a rule for airlines. Disclosure rules often have the advantage of being easier to enforce than outright bans on sneaky fees: If the government bans one kind of fee, companies can often repackage it in another way. “The best we could hope for is that consumers see the full costs transparently and that the government facilitates that,” Thaler, a Nobel laureate in economics, told me. Ramamurti, the Biden adviser, put it this way: “We don’t want firms to be competing with each other to be hiding the true price of their product.” How much of a difference Biden’s actions will make remains unclear. But the administration’s effort is based on an idea supported by a lot of evidence: The free market doesn’t solve all problems. The U.S. government over the past half-century has moved toward an economic policy that often allows corporations to behave as they want, based on the theory that the free market will solve any excesses. The results haven’t been very good. During that same half century, economic growth has slowed, corporate profits have risen faster than wages, income inequality has soared, and living standards have grown slowly. Sneaky fees turn out to be a small but telling example of why the modern economy isn’t working so well for many Americans. More on Biden Biden’s State of the Union address focused on taxing the rich and creating new government programs. It’s part of a bid to win back working-class voters through their wallets. “Lots of luck in your senior year”: decoding a Bidenism from the State of the Union. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Turkey Earthquakes Searching the rubble in Iskenderun, Turkey, yesterday.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times Millions of people are suffering from cold and grief as they wait for help. Syria could receive its first aid delivery today, but destroyed roads and a lack of fuel are slowing rescue efforts. The quakes have killed at least 17,000 people in Turkey and Syria. Footage shows people digging a mass burial site in Syria. Tech Bing (yes, Bing) has made search interesting again by integrating A.I., The Times’s Kevin Roose writes. Researchers warn that A.I. chatbots are an effective tool for creating disinformation and conspiracies. Disney will lay off as many as 7,000 employees. International It’s not just in the U.S.: China uses spy balloons to gather information on militaries around the world. Russia’s increased trade with Asia has kept cash from oil flowing to the Kremlin. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, asked Britain for fighter jets during a two-day visit to Western allies. High-rise hog farms (giant towers full of pigs) have sprung up in China in a drive to enhance the country’s agricultural competitiveness. Other Big Stories New York City, which has struggled to house an influx of migrants, is buying bus tickets for those who want to seek asylum in Canada. A Texas man who killed 23 people in El Paso in 2019, the deadliest anti-Latino attack in recent U.S. history, pleaded guilty to hate crimes. A new drug quashes all Covid variants. Regulatory hurdles make it unlikely to reach the U.S. anytime soon. Opinions Your height — and your children’s height — shouldn’t matter, Mara Altman argues on a podcast. Don’t give advice, do acknowledge reality: David Brooks reflects on how to support someone in despair after losing a friend to suicide. Expand upon The Morning experience with New York Times All Access. Readers of The Morning now can access everything The Times has to offer, including breaking news and analysis, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, with the New York Times All Access subscription. Subscribe now at this special rate. MORNING READS Members of the Ryuyukai softball team.Shiho Fukada for The New York Times Strike out: A softball team for retired Japanese gangsters helps them stay out of trouble. Space mystery: There’s a ring around this dwarf planet. It shouldn’t be there. Resort parking lots: Where #vanlife meets #skibum. The no-jet set: Some people have given up flying to help lower carbon emissions. Advice from Wirecutter: Charge your phone faster. Lives Lived: Mukarram Jah was the heir of India’s richest royal family, but he abandoned his throne and became a sheep farmer in Australia. He died at 89. SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC N.B.A. trades: The Nets agreed to send Kevin Durant to the Phoenix Suns, days after the team traded Kyrie Irving. And the Los Angeles Lakers helped engineer a three-team trade, acquiring D’Angelo Russell of Minnesota and shipping Russell Westbrook to Utah. First time in 30 years: Marquette’s women’s basketball team upended No. 4 UConn last night, giving the Huskies back-to-back losses for the first time since 1993. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS Adrien Winter, a member of the New York Dippers Club.Hilary Swift for The New York Times Take the plunge Every morning at 9 a.m. sharp, around a dozen New Yorkers meet to jump into the icy Atlantic Ocean. They’re part of the New York Dippers Club, one of the many cold water therapy groups that began this winter. Cold plunges are having a moment, Alyson Krueger writes in The Times. But the idea isn’t new: The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates believed that water therapy could alleviate fatigue. Modern fans of the practice say it improves mental clarity or alleviates pain. The science behind it, however, isn’t clear. PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook Chris Simpson for The New York Times These garlic shrimp are a taste of Hawaii’s food truck cuisine. What to Read “I know this sister”: A trailblazing Black cartoonist’s work is full of relatable characters. What to Watch Winnie the Pooh and Piglet are coming back to the big screen. It’s going to be terrifying. Late Night The State of the Union wasn’t as boring as Chelsea Handler thought it would be. Now Time to Play The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was dormitory. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Rapper Rick ___ (four letters). And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. P.S. The Times gained more than one million digital-only subscribers last year and now has 9.6 million paying subscribers in total. Thank you, readers. Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about the American downtown. Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Continue reading the main story Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 10, 2023 Author Members Share Posted February 10, 2023 February 10, 2023 By David Leonhardt Good morning. We talk with Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, about the artificial-intelligence craze. Sam AltmanRuth Fremson/The New York Times A smarter search engine As President Biden was reciting a list of bipartisan accomplishments during his State of the Union address this week, he seemed to use a phrase that I had never heard before: toxic bird pits. Was it some major news story that I had missed while on leave over the past few months? Or was it the latest Biden malapropism, destined to dominate post-speech commentary? I tried to figure out the answer by typing the words into Google and Twitter, but they offered no clarity. Google had nothing for me. A Twitter search yielded dozens of people tweeting a version of “toxic bird pits???” and not much else. You may have experienced your own version of this frustration at some point. Maybe you were watching the Oscars or a basketball game on TV, and you saw something that you wanted to understand in the moment. Maybe you had a question that was too complex for Google but was nonetheless answerable (like “How many of the same songs did Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday each record?”). As powerful as search engines and social media are, they still do a poor job with many forms of synthesis. Enter artificial intelligence. A.I. holds the promise of solving these problems, and there is now a race among the world’s technology companies to do so. Microsoft has taken an early lead, thanks to its investment in the company OpenAI, and it announced this week that it was incorporating A.I. technology into Bing, Microsoft’s long-mocked and suddenly relevant search engine. Google has responded by announcing its own plan to add A.I. to search. Microsoft unveiled a revamped Bing this week.Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Rizz and bussin If you want to learn more about this subject, I recommend a new Times podcast conversation with Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, and Kevin Scott, Microsoft’s chief technology officer. During the conversation, Scott offered his own example of my toxic-bird-pit confusion when he mentioned that his 14-year-old daughter sometimes used terms that meant nothing to him, like “rizz” and “bussin.” A.I. allows him to learn them, without enduring the small humiliation of admitting he didn’t know what she was talking about. As my colleague Kevin Roose, one of the podcast interviewers, said, “You automated the cool dad.” A.I. technology isn’t yet good enough to answer such questions reliably, as highlighted by Google’s embarrassing recent gaffe involving the Webb Space Telescope, but the technology is improving rapidly. It has the potential to combine information across multiple websites and integrate it into a plain-spoken explanation, much as an in-the-know teenager might. There are obviously more profound uses of A.I. than looking up slang, some of them promising and others alarming. A.I. might open computer programming to people who don’t know a programming language. (“The hottest new programming language is English,” Andrej Karpathy, a computer scientist, has said.) A.I. also has the potential to help immigrants who don’t know English communicate with their children’s teachers. On the other hand, A.I. can spread conspiracy theories and disinformation even more quickly than the internet already does. One striking part of the podcast conversation is Altman’s acknowledgment of A.I.’s downsides and his belief that no company, including his, should be trusted to solve these problems. “Where we are right now is not where we want to be,” Altman said. “The way this should work is that there are extremely wide bounds of what these systems can do that are decided by not Microsoft or OpenAI, but society, governments, something like that.” That’s a different case than the one traditionally made by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder, and other technology executives who have claimed that they can simultaneously look out for their company’s interests and for society’s. But their “trust us” argument doesn’t look so good today. Digital technology has exacerbated the spread of disinformation, political polarization and children’s mental illness. Our society has chosen to enjoy the benefits of technology without trying to mitigate its substantial downsides. As Altman points out, there are other options. You can listen to the interview, part of The Times’s Hard Fork podcast, here. Postscript: Biden was actually referring to — or meant to refer to — toxic burn pits, the name for bonfires in which the U.S. military incinerated trash while fighting overseas. These fires caused health problems for many troops, and Biden believes they contributed to the cancer that killed his son Beau. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE LATEST NEWS Politics The Chinese spy balloon had the ability to collect electronic communications and was part of a fleet that surveilled more than 40 countries, the State Department said. The special counsel investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election subpoenaed Mike Pence. Senator John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, is in the hospital after feeling lightheaded. His doctors have ruled out another stroke. Representative George Santos was charged with theft in 2017 over nine bad checks, including at least one to a dog breeder. Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast spreads more misinformation than other political shows, the Brookings Institution found. Turkey Earthquakes The ruins of Antakya, Turkey.Emily Garthwaite for The New York Times Collapsed apartment buildings and a stadium converted into shelter: See what the earthquake destroyed in a city near its epicenter. More than 20,000 people have died; with so many victims, families are forced to rush traditional funerals. The Turkish city of Antakya, built on top of centuries of civilization, is in ruins again. Residents are living in cars and tents. Hundreds of bodies lined the pavement of a parking lot in southern Turkey, waiting for families to identify them. International Russia attacked cities across Ukraine with drones and rockets as President Volodymyr Zelensky wrapped up a two-day visit to European allies. “They’re hunting me”: The mayor of Kherson, Ukraine, has been almost killed six times. People in South Africa are enduring daily power outages of up to 10 hours as the country’s aging coal plants fall into disrepair. Nicaragua released hundreds of political prisoners to try to restart relations with the U.S. Other Big Stories What recession? Experts are rethinking their predictions of a downturn in the U.S. A free-speech case will test the government’s effort to fight disinformation. American schools secretly and sometimes illegally remove students with disabilities from classes. The Memphis authorities will review cases involving the five officers charged in the death of Tyre Nichols. SpaceX tested the most powerful rocket ever built. NASA plans to use it to carry astronauts to the moon later in the decade. Opinions Chinese censorship has stunted a generation’s ability to speak, write and even think about freedom, Mengyin Lin writes. Liberals dismiss Ron DeSantis’s appeal at their peril, Pamela Paul says. “I don’t think that the changes we need now are going to come from the people in power”: David Wallace-Wells interviewed the climate activist Greta Thunberg. Expand upon The Morning experience with New York Times All Access. Readers of The Morning now can access everything The Times has to offer, including breaking news and analysis, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, with the New York Times All Access subscription. Subscribe now at this special rate. MORNING READS Parked at the beach in Santa Monica, Calif.Adali Schell for The New York Times Coming of age: The beauty of your first car. Pappy Van Winkle: Liquor officials are accused of hoarding a rare bourbon. Expiration-date dating: Falling for someone who’s leaving can be so much fun. Lead levels: Should you avoid dark chocolate? Advice from Wirecutter: Get warm, waterproof boots. Lives Lived: Burt Bacharach earned a spot in the pantheon of pop songwriting, helping to compose hit songs including “The Look of Love” (Dusty Springfield) and “What’s New Pussycat?” (Tom Jones). Bacharach died at 94. SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC M.V.P.: Patrick Mahomes, the Chiefs quarterback, is the N.F.L.’s most valuable player for the second time in his six-year career. Early exits: The S.E.C. will have 16 teams in 2024 after Oklahoma and Texas successfully negotiated their release from the Big 12. A top contender: The Kevin Durant trade is still sending shock waves through the N.B.A. The Phoenix Suns jumped to No. 2 in the title odds after the move. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS “Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window” (1657-58).Melissa Schriek for The New York Times The definitive Vermeer An exhibition of the 17th century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer opens today in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, a show that is probably “never to be replicated,” the Times critic Jason Farago writes. It is the most comprehensive Vermeer collection assembled, bringing together more than three-quarters of his surviving works. It took years of diplomacy to organize because no museum wants to send away its Vermeers, even for a short while. The museum has already sold more than 200,000 tickets. Vermeer’s popularity faded for centuries after his death, but the modern world has embraced him. Perhaps that’s because, in this frantic era, his hushed scenes of writers and maids remind us “that we are still human, and if only we find the right master, we can slow down time,” Jason writes. PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook Mark Weinberg for The New York Times These sundaes need ice cream, hot fudge sauce, crunchy peanuts and whipped cream. What to Watch Channing Tatum returns in “Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” the final part of a trilogy about ambition and abs. Travel Spend 36 hours in New Orleans by waking up early. Late Night The hosts joked about the Chinese spy balloon. News Quiz How well did you keep up with the headlines this week? Now Time to Play The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was nicknaming. Here is today’s puzzle. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Precious gem (five letters). And here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David P.S. Sam Ezersky, who runs Spelling Bee, made a custom University of Virginia-themed puzzle for his alma mater’s alumni magazine. Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about sports betting. Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 12, 2023 Author Members Share Posted February 12, 2023 February 11, 2023 By Melissa Kirsch Good morning. In honor of Valentine’s Day on Tuesday, let’s look at the language of love. María Jesús Contreras Sweet nothings Of course there’s a method to the madness of conversation hearts. Long before the candies hit drugstore shelves (a seasonal harbinger of spring that I continue to appreciate), candy companies refine their messaging, dispensing with dated slang like FAX ME and introducing new terms of endearment like BAE, as Kim Severson reported in The Times this week. Once, in the late ’90s or thereabouts, I received a little pastel heart with the words DEFRAG ME printed on it. Silly, but also touching: Reorganize me, improve my performance, make me make sense. I like imagining a candy conglomerate’s attempts to universalize the language of love. What are the precise combinations of words that make people feel adored? It’s tricky. Last year, one of the major conversation heart manufacturers went with a supportive theme — I wish I’d seen the one that said FEAR LESS, a powerful directive to receive from a candy. This year, it’s going with a pet theme, acknowledging all those now-adolescent pandemic puppies howling into the midwinter afternoon while their owners are at work. The most intimate terms of endearment don’t necessarily translate. Pet names and pillow talk often sound ridiculous when they spill past the boundaries of a whispered congress. Even so, that feeling you get when you hear people call their partners by their secret sobriquets is a potent mixture of alienating and thrilling. A weird window into other people’s intimacy, like being shown one page of their diary. Candy hearts are the opposite. They’re broad, democratic, all-inclusive. Their messages are marvels of economy, limited to nine letters, fewer if there’s a W involved. PURR FECT might not have the same personal ring that an earnestly penned love letter does, but I’m cheered that people still write the hearts. How long until the candy companies let artificial intelligence determine the language of love? Let’s hope we have a few more years of BE MINE and SAY YES before the robots take over. For more Ghosting, orbiting, rizz: a guide to modern dating terms. (Think you know them? Take our quiz.) How the language of therapy took over dating. The five love languages have been around for 30 years. Multilingual couples have their own set of challenges when expressing love. Three centuries of Valentines. “The book of love is long and boring / No one can lift the damn thing / It’s full of charts and facts and figures / And instructions for dancing.” The Magnetic Fields, live from 2012. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT THE WEEK IN CULTURE Kevin Winter/Getty Images Rihanna’s Super Bowl halftime show tomorrow will mark her return to music. Her mystique has only grown since her last album, The Times’s Lindsay Zoladz writes. Beyoncé set a record for the most career Grammys, but she again missed taking home the night’s major awards. (Those went to Harry Styles and Lizzo.) Bad Bunny’s opening act and Kim Petras’s moving speech about transgender existence were some of the highlights from the Grammys. See the night’s red carpet looks and most over-the-top outfits. Listen to The Guardian’s picks of the 10 best songs by Burt Bacharach, the famed pop composer who died this week. Fans of LeBron James flew from around the world to see him break the N.B.A.’s career scoring record. Gustavo Dudamel’s decision to become the conductor of the New York Philharmonic is a blow to Los Angeles, where he is a major public figure. Jinger Duggar Vuolo, one of 19 children on a popular reality show, has become a voice for young adults re-examining their conservative Christian childhoods. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida gained control of a tax board overseeing development at Disney World, whose parent company he has long criticized. Ronald Lauder will keep a Gustav Klimt painting he has owned after agreeing to repurchase it from the heirs of a Jewish woman who owned it before World War II. Lawyers for Alec Baldwin argued that prosecutors based their charges against him on the wrong law in the shooting death of a cinematographer. Artists are shining a light on abuses by the Iranian government, a curator says. Bob Iger, Disney’s chief executive, announced a new organizational structure and roughly 7,000 layoffs in his first earnings call since returning to the company. HarperCollins reached a tentative deal with striking workers that includes wage increases and a one-time bonus. THE LATEST NEWS Damage from Russian shells in Bakhmut, Ukraine, yesterday.Libkos/Associated Press Russia launched a wave of attack drones on Ukrainian infrastructure overnight, capping a day of a major aerial assaults. The U.S. shot down an unidentified object over frozen waters around Alaska. Officials did not say where it came from or whether it was another balloon. A makeshift health care system has sprung up in Turkey to help victims of a pair of major earthquakes, which destroyed many hospitals. Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania is adapting to his job while recovering from a stroke, and Congress is trying to accommodate him. Some conservatives who oppose abortion are embracing a policy of sending cash to families. The F.B.I. found one classified document in a search of the Indiana home of former Vice President Mike Pence. Expand upon The Morning experience with New York Times All Access. Readers of The Morning now can access everything The Times has to offer, including breaking news and analysis, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, with the New York Times All Access subscription. Subscribe now at this special rate. CULTURE CALENDAR By Gilbert Cruz 🍿 “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” (Friday): I’ll admit, it’s a little odd to recommend this latest Marvel movie — the third in the franchise that stars Paul Rudd — like it’s some obscure film that needs an extra boost. Yet the primary appeal is the always compelling Jonathan Majors as a villain named … Kang the Conqueror. I’ll watch him in anything. (In less than a month, I’ll also be there for Majors in “Creed III.”) 📚 “Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy” (Tuesday): The New York Times journalists Rachel Abrams and James B. Stewart are behind this propulsive book about the final years of the Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone and the scandal that brought down the CBS head Leslie Moonves. As our reviewer Adam Davidson writes, it’s hard “to imagine anyone who reads this book not coming to some clear conclusions: Wealth and power can metastasize until they become toxic, destroying families, companies and countless lives.” Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT RECIPE OF THE WEEK Julia Gartland for The New York Times By Melissa Clark Chocolate Pudding With Raspberry Cream Valentine’s Day falls on a Tuesday this year, which can be inconvenient if you want to whip up a homemade treat for your darling. But here’s Yossy Arefi to the rescue with her bittersweet chocolate puddings with raspberry cream. A pantry-friendly mix of cocoa, sugar, milk and eggs, it can be made almost entirely in advance. Stir the pudding together this weekend whenever you have half an hour to spare, then let it chill until Tuesday. The topping — a pretty-in-pink combination of whipped cream and fresh berries — is dolloped on just before serving. Fudgy, fruity and creamy, it’s a crowd-pleasing dessert that, on Valentine’s Day, is even better served for two. A selection of New York Times recipes is available to all readers. Please consider a Cooking subscription for full access. REAL ESTATE Aaron Leitz A Brooklyn transformation: “If we were ever going to make a dream home, this would be it.” Settling the estate: Can you buy your sibling’s share of a family house? What you get for $370,000: A three-bedroom home in Indianapolis; a two-bedroom condominium in Waitsfield, Vt.; or an early 19th-century farmhouse in Washington, Ga. The hunt: A couple just wanted an apartment with closets. Which Brooklyn condo did they choose? Play our game. LIVING Gritchelle Fallesgon for The New York Times Forget about crunches: Do “dead bugs” and other exercises for a chiseled six-pack. Tinder or Hinge: People present themselves differently depending on the dating app. Court style: Wear a pickleball dress. Getting sleepy: Hypnotherapy can help with anxiety and depression. Start with compliments: Many sex problems stem from poor communication. ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER Marilyn Ong Make a romantic dinner If Melissa Clark’s suggestion of pudding has you thinking about a Valentine’s Day meal, here’s an idea for dinner: Try firing up the burner for a cozy hot-pot meal. Preparing meats, greens and root vegetables in a simmering broth at the table is a lovely way to enjoy each other’s company. In Wirecutter’s guide to hot pot, experts recommend a portable butane or induction burner as a tabletop heat source and a wide, shallow pot. A Dutch oven, braiser or even well-seasoned wok work — or you could spring for a gorgeous split pot. Pour in a soup base, and treat your love to a slow, sumptuous feast. — Marilyn Ong NOW TIME TO PLAY NYT The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was fixable. Here is today’s puzzle. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines. Here’s today’s Wordle. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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