Members phkrause Posted August 23, 2022 Author Members 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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted August 25, 2022 Author Members 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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted January 26, 2023 Author Members 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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted January 26, 2023 Author Members 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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted January 26, 2023 Author Members 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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted January 27, 2023 Author Members 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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted January 27, 2023 Author Members 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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted January 27, 2023 Author Members 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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted January 27, 2023 Author Members 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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted February 2, 2023 Author Members 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. 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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 Obstinacy is a barrier to all improvement. - ChL 60
Members phkrause Posted February 2, 2023 Author Members 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
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