drth t67ijdyt

CONTROVERSY

IS THERE A BORDER POLICY? p.6 Vice President Kamala Harris

MAIN STORIES

A condo’s shocking collapse p.5

TALKING POINTS

Rich, famous but utterly powerless p.17

Britney Spears

THE BEST OF THE U.S. AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

Balancing act Can Biden get two major infrastructure bills through a divided Congress? p.4

JULY 9/JULY 16, 2021 VOLUME 21 ISSUE 1035-1036 ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS

WWW.THEWEEK.COM

Paid Advertisement

Technology has changed a lot in 25 years.

Shouldn’t internet regulations change too?

2021 marks the 25th anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the last comprehensive update to internet regulations.

We support updated internet regulations on today’s key issues, including: • Protecting people’s privacy • Enabling safe and easy data portability between platforms • Preventing election interference • Reforming Section 230

See our progress on key issues and next steps at about.fb.com/regulations

Paid for by Facebook - about.fb.com

Contents

3

Editor’s letter If our fight against Covid-19 were a horror movie, then we’d probably be in that clichéd second-to-last scene right now. You know the one: The villain has been thrown off a building, blown up, or crushed by a truck, and the surviving protagonists are gasping with relief. Except, of course, the monster isn’t really dead. So just before the final credits roll, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, or some other serial slayer pounces back on to the screen, giving viewers one final scare and setting up the next installment in the franchise. Here in the real world, it’s tempting to think that we’ve defeated our own viral villain. Thanks to remarkably effective vaccines, new Covid cases in the U.S. are at their lowest level in more than a year and life is returning to a pre-2020 normal. Polls show that some 30 percent of Americans now think the pandemic is over. But if horror movies have taught me anything, apart from the dangers of investigating suspicious sounds in a poorly lit basement, it’s that this killer isn’t done with us yet.

The warning signs are all around. In the U.K. and Israel, authorities have slowed reopening plans and reimposed mask mandates, respectively, because of outbreaks of the highly contagious Delta variant. Los Angeles County is so worried about this mutant strain that it’s recommending all residents wear masks in indoor public spaces. Most of those infected with the new variant are unvaccinated adults and children; the relatively few “breakthrough” cases in fully inoculated people tend not to result in serious illness. But only 46 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated; that share drops to about 30 percent in deep-red states such as Mississippi and Alabama. Come fall, when temperatures drop and coronaviruses spread more easily, we will likely see an explosion of Delta infections and deaths among the unvaccinated and—because many young kids won’t yet be eligible for shots— more school shutdowns. A happy ending to our Theunis Bates national Covid horror remains a long way off. Managing editor

NEWS 4 Main stories A tentative bipartisan infrastructure deal takes shape; a devastating condo collapse in Florida 6

Managing editors: Theunis Bates, Mark Gimein Assistant managing editor: Jay Wilkins Deputy editor/International: Susan Caskie Deputy editor/Arts: Chris Mitchell Senior editors: Nick Aspinwall, Chris Erikson, Danny Funt, Dale Obbie, Zach Schonbrun, Hallie Stiller Art director: Dan Josephs Photo editor: Mark Rykoff Copy editor: Jane A. Halsey Researchers: Joyce Chu, Ryan Rosenberg Contributing editors: Ryan Devlin, Bruno Maddox

Controversy of the week Are President Biden’s policies worsening the migrant crisis at the southern border?

7 The U.S. at a glance The Northwest bakes under a heat dome; Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction overturned 8 The world at a glance Fan arrested over Tour de France crash; Ethiopian government forces retreat in Tigray 10 People Joni Mitchell’s daring vulnerability; Wolfgang Puck’s escape from abuse 11 Briefing Baseball’s sticky new cheating scandal

AP, Getty

Editor-in-chief: William Falk

12 Best U.S. columns Derek Chauvin’s prison sentence; the culture war comes for the military 15 Best international columns Australia battles a biblical plague of mice 16 Talking points The former cop who could lead New York City; the Pentagon’s UFO report; the fight to “free” Britney Spears

Rescue workers search for survivors in Surfside, Fla. (p.5)

ARTS 26 Books When the government paid writers to create a new story of America 28 Author of the week Brandon Taylor on learning to accept the animal within 30 Art & Music Cézanne’s radical drawings 32 Film & Home Media A solo outing for Marvel’s Black Widow Joni Mitchell (p.10)

LEISURE 35 Food & Drink The smoky joys of grilled oysters; ranking fast-food chicken sandwiches 36 Consumer Honda gives the Civic a sleek overhaul; essential gear for campsite cookouts BUSINESS 40 News at a glance Facebook antitrust suits dismissed; United orders 270 jets 41 Making money Fico’s outdated credit scores; how political fundraisers scam the elderly 42 Best columns Microsoft’s quiet success story; Peter Thiel’s $5 billion Roth IRA

Group publisher: Paul Vizza (paul_vizza@theweek.com) Associate publisher: Sara Schiano (sara_schiano@theweek.com) West Coast executive director: Tony Imperato East coast account director: Meg Power Group custom content director: Barbara Baker Clark Director, digital operations & advertising: Andy Price Media planning manager: Andrea Crino Direct response: Anthony Smyth (anthony@smythps.com) North American CEO: Randy Siegel SVP, finance: Maria Beckett Director, financial reporting: Arielle Starkman SVP, global marketing: Lisa Boyars VP consumer marketing: Yanna Wilson-Fischer Consumer marketing director: Leslie Guarnieri Senior digital marketing director: Mathieu Muzzy Manufacturing manager, North America: Lori Crook HR manager: Joy Hart Operations manager: Cassandra Mondonedo Chairman: Jack Griffin Dennis Group CEO: James Tye Group CRO: Julian Lloyd-Evans U.K. founding editor: Jolyon Connell Company founder: Felix Dennis

Visit us at TheWeek.com.

For customer service go to TheWeek.com/service.

Renew a subscription at RenewTheWeek.com or give a gift at GiveTheWeek.com.

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

4 NEWS

The main stories...

Biden’s quest for a bipartisan infrastructure bill What happened

Republicans give this false compromise the “veneer” of bipartisanship?

What the editorials said

Republicans shouldn’t fall for this “charade,” said the National Review.

The “so-called compromise proposal” involves nearly $600 billion in new spending our deficit-ridden nation can ill afford and is “vague about how everything will be paid for.” Democrats have made clear that the GOP’s willingness to compromise won’t stop them from ramming through a reconciliation bill “stuffed with liberal wish-list items.” With two bills, Democrats will get everything they want, so why should THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

budget resolution” that the Democratic caucus can agree on. Once both are written, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer is expected to bring them to the floor for a vote in July. The “real drama” is whether Democrats will be able to agree on a reconciliation bill, said Andrew Prokop in Vox.com. And “if the reconciliation effort falls apart,” would progressives really withhold their support for the smaller bipartisan bill?

Sixty percent of Progressive Caucus members asked said they would. That “may be a bluff”— but they’re clearly hoping moderates will “fall in line so we don’t have to find out.”

Leaders of both parties should get behind the bill and “disconnect its fate from other legislation,” said William Galston in The Wall Street Journal.

Spending on roads, tunnels, water systems, and the electric grid “has broad support across party lines.”

Most Americans prefer “compromise to partisan intransigence.” If lawmakers want to rebuild “confidence in their institution,” they should listen to these constituents, “not just to the loudest voices” on the partisan extremes.

Illustration by Fred Harper.

Cover photos from AP (2), Newscom

Reuters

President Biden hit the road to sell Americans on a bipartisan infrastruc“There is much to like in the bipartisan ture package this week, even as back in framework”—but Democrats gave Washington intraparty wrangling over up too much, said the Los Angeles the compromise plan left its passage in Times. Biden’s proposed investments doubt. Biden and a bipartisan group of in the clean-energy sector are missing, 10 senators announced last week they’d and so is funding for housing, schools, reached an agreement for a $1.2 trillion and child care. Still, Americans should package focused on the physical infrawelcome the deal as a sign that Senate structure projects supported by RepubDemocrats and Republicans can still licans. It would spend billions—though “agree on something important.” Such $600 billion less than Biden initially compromise “is necessary, even if it’s sought—on roads, bridges, airports, not sufficient.” mass transit, electric-vehicle charging Biden: ‘A blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America’ stations, and expanding broadband What the columnists said access. It’s a “historic bipartisan framework” that’s “good for the Biden and Democratic leaders now must pull off a daunting economy and the country,” said Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, who tightrope act, said Jonathan Weisman in The New York Times. The backed the deal along with Sen. Mitt Romney and three other infrastructure deal needs backing from at least five more GOP senGOP moderates. The deal delivers “not just for red states or blue states, but for everybody,” said Biden in La Crosse, Wis. “This is a ators to pass, and some are vowing to vote against it if Democrats link it to a reconciliation bill. Meanwhile, Democrats “must unite blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America.” around a reconciliation bill” that’s not too big to alienate moderate Democrats like Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema “but also cannot The deal’s future, however, was threatened by Democrats’ plan jettison so many liberal priorities that it loses the left flank.” to use the filibuster-proof budget-reconciliation process to pass a second spending bill on a 51-50 party-line vote. That bill would This is how things used to work before rank partisanship drove earmark trillions more for progressive priorities such as child and everything, said Jonah Goldberg in TheDispatch.com. Deals elder care, universal pre-K, and combating climate change. Some Republicans balked at backing the bipartisan package if Democrats got hammered out in committees and moderates prevailed over extremists. Moderate Democrats “understand that funding tradiplanned to push through a second bill with no GOP support. And tional infrastructure helps them and the party,” while a progressive some progressives, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, vowed to withspending blowout “might put them in peril.” Manchin is not the hold support from the bipartisan package if it were not linked to only Democrat to see that a far-left agenda will cost them in 2022 passage of the reconciliation bill—a threat Biden himself made beand 2024. Right now moderates are “the most powerful bloc in fore he walked it back in response to Republican anger. “It almost government”—and that’s “the old normal.” makes your head spin,” said Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor. “An expression of bipartisanship and then an The bipartisan deal “is probably doomed,” said Jonathan Chait ultimatum on behalf of your left-wing base.” in NYMag.com. McConnell might have been willing to support it “if it Meanwhile, there was a stark divide What next? brought the benefit of slimming down among Democrats over how large a sec“The marathon of negotiations” needed to move or possibly killing off Biden’s social ond “human infrastructure” bill should two infrastructure packages through Congress agenda.” But with Democrats insistbe. Sanders called for a $6 trillion pack“is just getting underway,” said Lauren Fox in ing on a massive reconciliation bill, a age, while centrist Sen. Joe Manchin of CNN.com. And it will take not “days or weeks show of bipartisanship that’ll bolster West Virginia—whose vote is critical but months.”

When senators return from recess Biden’s dealmaker image “is all cost, to any Democratic plan—indicated he July 12, the first order of business will be turning no benefit” for the GOP. McConnell’s wouldn’t back anything over “maybe the bipartisan framework into legislative text. incentive now is to “kill it off,” and $2 trillion.”

“On reconciliation, the first step is to pass a he’ll very likely succeed.

... and how they were covered

NEWS 5

Searching for answers after Florida condo collapse What happened

“We’d be fools not to wonder” whether South Florida’s “sordid history of shoddy building practices” might be to blame, said the Miami Herald. The 1980s construction boom was an era of “slipshod construction and look-theother-way enforcement.” Could faulty construction have allowed enough corrosive saltwater and sea spray to penetrate the concrete and doom the building?

Florida updated its building codes after Hurricane Andrew destroyed some 25,500 homes in 1992. “This disaster must serve as yet another turning point.”

Rescue teams intensified their search for survivors amid the wreckage of a collapsed Miami-area condo tower this week, with some digging through the rubble with their hands, even as the chances of anyone being found alive rapidly diminished. At least 16 people have been confirmed dead and nearly 150 remain missing following the unexplained cave-in of Champlain Towers South, a 13-story beachside condo in Surfside, Fla. “We have people waiting and waiting and waiting,” Miami-Dade County Rescue workers at Champlain Towers South Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said of What the columnists said the families of the missing. “That is excruciating.” Constructed in For Florida’s largest metro area, the catastrophe has “a very deep 1981, the building abruptly crumpled as residents slept last week. and terrifying resonance,” said Steve Bousquet in the South Florida Minutes before the collapse, one now missing resident told her Sun-Sentinel. High-rise condos line our barrier beaches; they’re husband over the phone that she saw the pool deck crater into the “as much a part of our collective psyche as air-conditioning and parking garage below—then the line went dead. Another resident, the I-95.” Our community has long prepared for hurricanes, but Marian Lopez, opened the door of her sixth-floor apartment and it’s not clear we’ve paid enough attention to quieter threats such as saw sky and beach where her neighbors’ doors once stood. “That subsidence; one recent study found Champlain Towers had sunk complete side of the building was not there,” she said. about 2 millimeters a year in the 1990s. This collapse “will underAn investigation into what may be the deadliest accidental building standably cause a lot of anxiety for a lot of people for a long time.” collapse in U.S. history is now underway. Three years before the Investigators may find multiple causes behind this disaster, said collapse, an engineer warned of a “major error” in the building’s design—waterproofing below the pool deck and entrance drive had Lizette Alvarez in The Washington Post. Residents said that construction at the condo building next door shook their apartments, been placed on a flat slab rather than a sloped surface, allowing and perhaps ongoing repairs to Champlain South’s roof played a water to accumulate—and noted “abundant cracking” of beams and supporting columns, crumbling concrete, and the corrosion of role. “One thing is for sure: In Florida, water is always a prime steel reinforcements. A $12 million program to repair that damage suspect.” The building’s underground garage apparently routinely flooded with seawater. It’s possible that a column, critically corroded was set to start soon. Structural engineers said other factors could by saltwater, simply gave way and set off a structural avalanche. have played a role in the collapse, including the gradual sinking of the reclaimed wetland underneath the building.

Climate change will only intensify Florida’s water woes, said The Economist. Sea levels around Miami are rising at an average of What the editorials said 9 millimeters a year, three times the global average, and ever “more The sheer scale of this tragedy is hard to fathom, said the New buildings will be exposed to stresses they were not designed to withYork Daily News. The tower’s residents came from at least half a dozen nations, including Argentina, Colombia, Israel, and Venezu- stand.” Towers in Surfside currently need only be given thorough inspections every 40 years; in our age of rapid climatic change, ela. Among the presumed dead are “aging snowbirds from parts “more regular assessments and potential retrofits” must be a priornorth, young families building their lives.” And for now, “there ity for any coastal community. seems to be no clear culprit, either individual or institutional.”

AP, Reuters

It wasn’t all bad Q A diner ordered fried pickle chips, drinks, and two chili dogs at a New Hampshire restaurant—then shocked the staff by leaving a $16,000 tip. The patron at the Stumble Inn Bar & Grill in Londonderry seemed to be just an ordinary customer until he left the tip on his $37.93 credit card tab, telling staff—who will split the tip—that he appreciated their hard work. Bartender Michelle McCudden praised the generosity of the diner, who asked the restaurant not to reveal his name, after the struggles of the pandemic.

“It’s just been a really rough year for all of us,” she said.

Q A giant panda gave birth to rare twin cubs at Japan’s Ueno

Zoo, the first panda births there in four years. The twins were born an hour and a half apart to proud parents Shin Shin, a 15-year-old female, and Ri Ri, also 15; the pair also have a 4-year-old daughter, Xiang Xiang. “I was shocked and extremely happy,” said Yutaka Fukuda, the zoo’s director. News of a possible pregnancy earlier this month caused share prices to soar for restaurants with locations near the zoo. It’s a joyous moment for the endangered species—giant pandas are notoriously finicky when it comes to breedThe newborn arrival—not yet giant ing in captivity.

Note to readers The Week will not publish an issue for one week.

Your next issue will arrive in two weeks. Our next edition will be dated July 23, and should begin arriving on July 16.

The Week currently publishes 48 issues a year.

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

6 NEWS

Controversy of the week

The border: Do Biden and Harris have a plan? “root causes” of migration in Central America, so fewer people Kamala Harris held out for as long as she could, said Mark make that dangerous trek. Migrants arrive seeking physical Krikorian in NationalReview.com, but last week Joe Biden’s safety, “as is their right under U.S. and international law,” said appointed “border czarina” finally caved to her critics and Nicole Narea in Vox.com. Some have been deported, some visited the U.S.-Mexico border. The vice president chose are being held in jail-like detention centers to await Democrat-run El Paso for her brief “photo op,” asylum hearings, and thousands have been released 800 miles from the South Texas border at McAllen, into the U.S. while awaiting court dates. Now the where the “disaster” she and Biden have creadministration needs to create a system for processated is unfolding. But there is no hiding from ing the asylum claims of families so that they can the numbers. Since January, when Biden halted be decided in a matter of weeks, rather than years. construction of the border wall and started repealing former President Trump’s asylum poli“Root causes, huh?” said Ruben Navarette in cies, 900,000 migrants—including thousands of TheDailyBeast.com. On Harris’ recent trip to the unaccompanied children—have been taken into region, her message to millions of desperate people custody at the border. That’s double the 400,000 Harris: ‘A tough situation’ whose “countries are imploding” was a simple apprehended migrants in all of 2020—and it’s only “Do not come.”

Yes, the administration has proposed $4 billion July. Somehow, Harris found the gall to try to blame this “historic in aid to Central America, but much of that money will only go surge” on Biden’s predecessor, said John Davidson in NYPost.com, to strengthen corrupt “military and police that—far from keeping claiming she and Biden “inherited a tough situation.” But the people safe—often help drive people out.” real explanation is straightforward. When you repeal policies like Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” plan that successfully deter people Biden needs to “go on offense,” said Paul Waldman in Washington from coming to the U.S., “they will come.”

Post.com. The administration actually is working hard to build a more efficient and compassionate asylum system—an effort that The Biden administration did, in fact, inherit a mess, said Maria 71 percent of battleground-state voters support, according to new Cardona in TheHill.com. Trump used the Covid-19 pandemic to polling. Those same polls, however, show Biden with a 57 percent block all asylum claims, and tens of thousands of migrants were disapproval rating on immigration. Why the huge discrepancy? penned up in squalid tent cities on the Mexican side of the border.

Despite Trump’s “draconian” policies, including separating children With Fox News blaring scare stories about “the crisis” at the border, Democrats have been “tentative and uncertain” about touting from their parents, migrants kept coming. Biden inherited a backlog in immigration courts of 1.3 million people and 350,000 pend- their more humane immigration policies, lest it aid Republicans ing asylum applications. Desperate migrants are willing to risk any- in riling up their nativist voters. But why try to appease nativists thing as they flee rampant crime, gang violence, and lack of jobs in who want no immigration? It’s time for Biden and the Democrats to focus on “getting the policy right” and stop worrying about Central America’s “Northern Triangle”—Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. The actual job Biden gave Harris was to address the “people who probably aren’t going to vote for them anyway.”

Q Denver police shot and killed a man who had just shot and killed a man who had just shot and killed a police officer. Police called civilian Johnny Hurley, 40, a “hero” for taking down the gunman who killed Officer Gordon Beesley. But when Hurley picked up the gunman’s AR-15, he was himself shot by officers arriving on the scene. “You’re asking people to make split-second decisions about who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy,” said police trainer Pete Blair.

Q Brandeis University is advising faculty not to use the term “trigger warning,” because the word “trigger,” having gun associations, may itself be triggering. A newly updated “Oppressive Language List” also discourages use of the terms “killing it” for doing well, and “take a shot at” for trying.

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

Good week for: Ditherers, after Popeyes, the fast-chicken chain, introduced the

“I Don’t Know Meal,” for customers who for some reason can’t decide what to order at Popeyes. The meal comprises a chicken sandwich and a “premium lemonade.”

Making lemonade, after the historic Western drought left drinking water in Sacramento tasting like dirt and algae. City officials said the water was safe and advised adding lemon “if people find the taste unpleasant.”

Getting a tinfoil hat, after Fox News host Tucker Carlson said he’d found out that the National Security Agency was spying on his communications and “is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.” The NSA called the claim “untrue.”

Bad week for: The Lost Cause, after the House voted 285-120 to remove from the Capitol rotunda the statues of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and former Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, author of the Dred Scott ruling that Black people had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

Brogues, after doctors told an Australian woman who woke up with an Irish accent following tonsil surgery that she may be stuck with the accent for life. “It is just so sudden and so bizarre,” said Angie Yen, 28, an Asian woman who has never been to Ireland.

Privacy, after a new study found that 1,715 stars in our immediate galactic vicinity have enjoyed an unobstructed view of Earth over the full course of human civilization. “Hiding is not really an option,” said study author Lisa Kaltenegger of Cornell University.

In other news House will probe Jan. 6 Capitol attack The House this week approved a committee to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, one month after Senate Republicans blocked an independent, bipartisan probe. The 13-member House panel will have subpoena power and could force testimony from lawmakers who were in contact with former President Trump in the hours leading up to what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s resolution calls a “domestic terrorist attack.” Pelosi said she would name seven Democrats and one Republican to the committee and let Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy suggest five panelists, though it’s not clear that Republicans will participate. Though 35 House Republicans voted earlier for an independent probe, only two joined Democrats to authorize the current plan.

Getty

Only in America

The U.S. at a glance ...

Getty, Reuters, NIAID, AP

punishing drought conditions and prepares Oregon, Washington for wildfire season. While heat dome events Boiling point: The most intense heat wave have occurred before, scientists say, climate in the history of the Pacific Northwest change makes them more frequent, and obliterated temperature records this week three to five degrees hotter. “Three to five and caused a health crisis in a region degrees doesn’t sound like a lot,” said cliwhere many people don’t bother having matologist Michael Wehner, “but the differair-conditioning. Portland, Ore., hit 116 degrees, the highest temperature in 80 years ence between 107 and 111 degrees is a lot in terms of how dangerous it is.” of record keeping, forcing streetcars to With temperatures in the upper 90s well suspend service after transit cables melted. into the night, officials scrambled to get Seattle reached a high of 108 degrees and vulnerable people to cooling shelters. A experienced the city’s first-ever three-day health agency serving the Seattle area said streak of triple-digit temperatures. The emergency departments saw patients sufscorching weather, 30 to 40 degrees above fering from dizziness, vomiting, and temnormal, resulted from a heat dome, which porary unconsciousness. In the Canadian occurs when hot air creates a dome of province of British Columbia, where one pressure that diverts surrounding weather town recorded astonishing systems. Meteorologists called 121-degree heat, medical this week’s enormous and officials reported 233 deaths powerful heat dome “bonfrom Friday to Monday, kers” and “insane,” saying nearly double the usual it should be expected once number, with the additional every few thousand years. deaths likely linked to the The heat dome arrived as heat wave. much of the West battles Portland: 116 degrees

Missouri, Arkansas, and Mississippi Delta variant: The highly contagious Delta coronavirus variant caused infections to surge this week in low-vaccination regions. The variant, first detected in India and believed to be roughly twice as infectious as the original coronavirus strain, now accounts for more than 20 percent of U.S. Covid-19 cases—double what it was two weeks ago. The variant accounts for 30 percent of new cases in Missouri, which A new viral threat now leads the U.S. in new infections. Across the border in Arkansas, hospital admissions climbed 30 percent as the state reported its biggest one-day case jump in three months.

The Delta variant now accounts for more than 90 percent of cases in the U.K., and although the full two-dose regimen of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines appears to provide robust defense, a single dose apparently does not. Los Angeles County advised everyone, regardless of vaccination status, to wear masks indoors, although county health director Barbara Ferrer said that, at this point, “This is a pandemic of unvaccinated people.”

Ollie, Ky. Festival chaos: A huge country music festival billed as a “Redneck Rave” descended into violence and mass arrests last week.

The five-day event, which brought more than 20,000 people to a tiny town without a single stoplight, quickly became chaotic, leading to 14 arrests and 48 people charged. A 29-year-old man allegedly strangled a woman to unconsciousness in an argument over a blanket, two intoxicated friends got into a fight that left one of them with a slit throat, and one partygoer drove over a log that went through the floorboard of his vehicle and impaled him in the abdomen. Another man had a finger crushed by a car. Sheriff’s deputies set up a traffic stop outside the event and made an arrest on their first stop, after finding methamphetamine and marijuana. “We were like, Well, this doesn’t bode well for the weekend,” Sheriff Shane Doyle said.

NEWS 7

New York City Criminal charges: Prosecutors were expected this week to charge the Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial Weisselberg officer, but not former President Trump himself, with tax-related crimes, in an initial round of indictments that follows a three-year investigation.

The charges stem from the perks and benefits given to CFO Allen Weisselberg and others—including leased MercedesBenzes, rent-free apartments, school tuition, and cash bonuses—that allegedly weren’t reported on tax returns. Trump said the charges are based on “things that are standard practice throughout the U.S. business community, and in no way a crime.” Tax experts say it’s unusual to bring charges based solely on failure to report benefits, but prosecutors could be looking at a broader scheme. Weisselberg, 73, has worked for the Trumps for 48 years, and he’s resisted pressure to cooperate with prosecutors in a potential case against Trump. Prosecutors are also investigating whether the company misled lenders, insurers, and tax authorities about the value of its properties.

Philadelphia Conviction overturned: A divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled this week that Bill Cosby was denied a fair trial in 2018 and freed him from prison, where the comedian was serving a 10-year sentence as the first high-profile convict of the #MeToo era. Cosby, 83, was convicted of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand, to whom he had been a mentor, in 2004, but the state Supreme Court said Cosby should not have been prosecuted in the first place. The case relied on testimony Cosby gave in a deposition for a lawsuit brought by Constand; a district attorney had promised Cosby he wouldn’t be charged based on that testimony. The DA’s successor elected to bring charges in 2015, but the appeals court said he was bound by his predecessor’s promise.

Cosby cannot be retried. Accused of sexually assaulting 57 women, generally after drugging them, Cosby was denied parole in May for refusing to admit wrongdoing and attend sex-offender therapy sessions.

Released THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

8 NEWS

The world at a glance ...

Landerneau, France Tour de France crash: A Tour de France spectator was arrested this week for causing a mass wreck that injured nine cyclists during the event’s first stage. The 30-year-old French woman, whose name has not been released, stepped in front of the racing pack with a sign reading Allez Opi-Omi (Go, Grandpa and Grandma!)

After the pileup and clipped German rider Tony Martin.

He lost his balance, fell, and set off a cascade of collisions. It looked “like a war zone,” said doctor Gilbert Versier. German athlete Jasha Sütterlin dropped out of the competition because of injuries suffered during the pileup. The woman is accused of involuntarily causing injury and putting the lives of others at risk; she could face up to two years in prison and a fine of $35,000.

London Health minister disgraced: Already battling criticism that he mishandled Britain’s pandemic response, Health Minister Matt Hancock was Hancock: Rule breaker forced to resign this week after being caught on video kissing and cuddling with a female aide in violation of Covid distancing rules. The Sun tabloid published the office surveillance footage, which showed Hancock embracing Gina Coladangelo, a millionaire lobbyist and an old friend from Oxford University whom the married minister had hired as an aide. Prime Minister Boris Johnson initially stood by Hancock, but after the health minister was pilloried by the press and fellow Conservative lawmakers, Johnson accepted his resignation. Hancock had frequently lectured the public to stay 6 feet away from non–family members, and once described lockdown-breaking flings as “a matter for the police.”

Managua, Nicaragua Dissidents flee: As Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega continues his crackdown on dissent, journalists and opposition politicians have begun fleeing abroad rather than wait to be arrested. In the past month, authorities have jailed at least five opposition leaders who could have run against Ortega in the upcoming November election, and detained dozens of other Nicaraguans regarded as foes of the Sandinista regime. Journalists Sergio Marin, Julio López, and Carlos Chamorro left the country in recent weeks, and Luis Carrión—a Sandinista commander who fought alongside Ortega in the Nicaraguan revolution—went into exile after hearing his arrest was imminent. Carrión said that Ortega is taking “political hostages” to use as bargaining chips to pressure the U.S. into lifting sanctions against his regime.

Cúcuta, Colombia Targeting the president: A helicopter carrying Colombian President Iván Duque and other top officials was shot at last week as it passed over a cocaine-producing region near the border with Venezuela. The attack left bullet holes in the aircraft, which was also carrying Defense Minister Diego Molano and Interior Minister Daniel Palacios, but Duque said no one on board was wounded.

It’s not known which of Colombia’s several armed groups opened fire on the helicopter. The nearby border city of Cúcuta was already on a security alert after a car bomb exploded at a military base two weeks ago, wounding 36 people. Authorities suspect that attack was launched by a splinter faction of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which disarmed after signing a 2016 peace deal with Duque’s predecessor, Juan Manuel Santos.

Duque has called the deal too lenient on FARC commanders, and his government has been slow to distribute economic aid to former fighters as agreed under the pact.

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

Lima Dirty tricks: Peru’s feared ex–spy chief was caught this week trying to arrange bribes to swing the country’s presidential election to Keiko Fujimori—the daughter of his old boss, jailed former President Alberto Fujimori. Vladimiro Montesinos is also in Montesinos prison, serving multiple sentences for corruption and arms trafficking, yet he somehow obtained a phone and made 17 calls to another Fujimori crony suggesting members of the electoral tribunal be bribed to switch votes. Keiko Fujimori lost the June 6 presidential election to Marxist schoolteacher Pedro Castillo by just 44,000 votes out of more than 19 million. Because Fujimori is challenging 200,000 ballots, the tribunal has yet to declare a winner. Peruvian authorities obtained recordings of Montesinos’ conversations, and at one point he implied that other shenanigans had been planned, saying, “If we had done the job as we had proposed it, we would not be in this s----y problem.”

Reuters (2), AP (2)

Port-au-Prince, Haiti Gang violence racks city: A weeks-long wave of gang violence in the Haitian capital has forced more than 14,000 people from poor neighborhoods to flee their homes and shelter in churches and sports stadiums. The mayhem began in mid-June, when Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier—an ex-cop who now heads the heavily armed G9 gang federation—said he was launching a revolution to free Haiti from all elites: the government, the opposition, and the wealthy.

Armed gangs looted major food warehouses and set up blockades, making access to parts of the city impossible, and they attacked a Doctors Without Borders clinic, the only source of free medical care in the area. Meanwhile, the coronavirus is spreading rapBarbecue idly and hospitals are reporting oxygen shortages.

The world at a glance ...

Minsk, Belarus Weaponizing migrants: Lithuania this week accused neighboring Belarus of funneling migrants toward the Baltic nation as a way of exacting revenge on the European Union. The EU hit Belarus with punishing sanctions in May, including a total flight ban, after dictator Alexander Lukashenko forced a Lithuania-bound Ryanair plane to land in Minsk so he could arrest a dissident journalist on board.

Since then, the number of migrants crossing illegally to Lithuania from Belarus has rocketed. Some 412 cases were registered in the first half of June, compared with 37 in all of 2019, and many migrants had paid up to $15,000 to be transported across the border. Most of the border crossers are from the Middle East, and Lithuania says it’s no coincidence that Belarus’ state airline recently added dozens of flights from Baghdad and Istanbul to Minsk.

“This is obviously a profitable crime involving the regime,” said Lithuanian Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite.

NEWS 9

Baghdad U.S. airstrikes: Iraq responded with fury this week after American warplanes bombed facilities used by two Iranian-backed militias that the U.S. has accused of launching kamikaze Bombing a militia site drone attacks on American forces in Iraq. The Iraqi government called the strikes—one target was inside Iraq and the other two just across the border in Syria—an “unacceptable violation of Iraqi sovereignty and national security.”

Maj. Gen. Yahya Rasool, military spokesman for Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, said Iraq does not want to be turned into an “arena for settling accounts” between the U.S. and Iran. The two militias hit by the U.S. are part of the Popular Mobilization Forces group, formed to fight ISIS in 2014. The militias are on the Iraqi government payroll, but keep attacking Americans.

DoD, Lam Yik Fei/The New York Times/Redux, Reuters, Getty, F. O’Reilly/The New York Times/Redux

Hong Kong Ominous anniversary: One year after Chinese authorities imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong, Beijing is ramping up its efforts to stamp out all dissent in the formerly semiautonomous city. Although Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam vowed the law would “only target an extremely small minority” of crimes, it has been used to shut down a pro-democracy newspaper, arrest residents who try to flee abroad, and detain anyone involved in opposition politics. Residents can now call police hotlines to inform on disloyal neighbors, and public libraries have yanked dozens of potentially troublesome volumes from circulation, including books about Martin Luther King Jr. A new school curriculum has also been imposed to instill children with “affection for the Chinese people.” High school teacher Lo Kit Ling says the new lessons are “just like a kind of brainwashing.”

Cracking down

Kampala, Uganda Delta surges across Africa: Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni called on citizens to plead for divine intervention this week as the Delta variant of Covid-19 ripped through his country and medical facilities ran out of oxygen. Uganda is in full lockdown, with only vehicles carrying cargo or the sick allowed on the roads and employees forced to sleep at their workplaces. Many other African countries are in a similar plight. John Nkengasong of the African CDC said that in just the past week, Covid-19 infections on the continent had jumped by 31 percent, to 5.4 million, and deaths by 19 percent, to 142,000. “The hospitals are completely overwhelmed,” he said.

South Africa, which accounts for 40 percent of the deaths, has also gone into a two-week lockdown, with a curfew and a ban on alcohol sales.

Distributing oxygen tanks

Ramallah Activist killed: Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets across the West Bank this week to protest the death of an anti-corruption activist while in custody of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Blogger Nizar Banat, 42, was known for his fierce criticisms of the PA, which exercises partial control over the West Bank. Banat’s family said security officers forced their way into the activist’s home in Hebron last week, beat him with crowbars and batons, doused him with pepper spray, Justice for Banat then dragged him away. Two hours later, officials announced Banat had died from an unspecified health problem.

The PA responded to the protests with brutality, deploying riot police who shot tear gas into the crowds, and plainclothes security officers who attacked demonstrators with rocks and clubs.

Mekele, Ethiopia Tigrayans claim victory: Rebel forces in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region were celebrating a shock win this week in their eight-month fight against the country’s central government, after Tigrayan troops retook their region’s capital, Mekele, to the delight of cheering crowds. With its soldiers in retreat, the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said it had declared a “unilateral cease-fire.”

But Tigrayan leaders said they would not stop fighting until the entire region was liberated, and vowed to enter neighboring Eritrea if necessary to comprehensively defeat the Eritrean forces that have fought alongside the Ethiopian army. The civil war has displaced some 2 million people and Celebrating in Mekele put the region at risk of famine.

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

10 NEWS

People

Puck’s flight from abuse Wolfgang Puck has always found refuge in cooking, said Kevin Fallon in TheDailyBeast.com.

The celebrity chef grew up poor on an Austrian farm with no running water; his greatest joy was making Wiener schnitzel with his mother in the kitchen—the only place he could escape his violent stepfather. “He terrorized us,” says Puck, 71. At age 14, Puck ran away to become a potato peeler at an Alpine hotel. “When I left, I said, I’m going to come home with a Mercedes and drive it through the front door. If not, I’m not going to come home.” He went on to work in hotels in Monaco and Paris, becoming a head chef at 24, and in the early 1970s moved to the U.S., where he won acclaim for his pioneering California cuisine. “Desperation makes you do things you don’t think you have in yourself.” He worked constantly; if his children wanted to see him, they had to eat at his Beverly Hills restaurant, Spago. His wife and business partner, Barbara Lazaroff, filed for divorce in 2003, forcing Puck to reassess his life. “I said, Who am I? My passion was the kitchen. But who am I without that?” Recently, he has achieved something approaching a work-life balance. “When you get older, you start asking, How many summers do I have left?

It’s coming together now, and it seems to work—so far.”

The conservationist who fell to Earth

Q Hammer thrower Gwen Berry turned

away from the American flag while the national anthem played at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials last week, triggering calls from Republicans that she be removed from the team. Berry, who is Black, said she was promised that the anthem would play before she took the podium to receive a bronze medal at the event in Eugene, Ore. When the “Star Spangled Banner” came on, she turned away, then put a T-shirt over her head that read “activist athlete.”

Her two white competitors faced the flag and covered their hearts. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), a former THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

Mitchell’s daring vulnerability It’s been 50 years since Joni Mitchell released Blue and transformed pop songwriting, said Cameron Crowe in the Los Angeles Times.

Recorded in the wake of her breakup with fellow musician Graham Nash, Mitchell’s fourth album was her most personal yet, capturing the joys and agonies of love like nothing before it. Now regarded as a confessional masterpiece—artists ranging from Prince to Liz Phair have hailed it as an influence—Blue was met with skepticism on its debut in 1971. “The initial response I got was critical, mostly from the male singer-songwriters,” says Mitchell, 77. “They were afraid. Is this contagious? Do we all have to get this honest now?” Recording the album had been a painful process. She recalls having a dream at the time in which she was in the audience of a concert, “except I’m a clear cellophane bag of exposed human organs with a heart beating in the center. I felt exposed, like everybody could see that I was suffering.” But Mitchell didn’t cry during the sessions. “I’m not a weeper. I’m a snarler. I just put all the weeping in the words.” When she hears songs from Blue today, she still feels deeply connected to the 27-year-old who wrote them. “I’m the same person. I mean, I’ve changed styles and things, but not the core of who I am, ever.”

Navy SEAL, responded, “The entire point of the Olympics team” is to represent the U.S., saying Berry, 32, should be left off the team in Tokyo. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) referenced Berry’s protest on Twitter, asking, “Why does the Left hate America?” Berry says she objects to the anthem because of racial injustice. “The anthem doesn’t speak for me,” she said. “It never has.”

Q Singer Marilyn Manson agreed to turn himself in to police last week to face assault charges from a 2019 concert in Gilford, N.H. A female videographer in the stage pit area alleges that Manson, a notoriously outrageous performer whose real name is Brian Warner, spat on her. Manson, 52, refused for nearly two years to return to New Hampshire and face the charges, which his attorney called “ludicrous.” Los Angeles

authorities are also investigating allegations of domestic violence involving the singer from 2009 to 2011, after two former romantic partners, actresses Esmé Bianco and Evan Rachel Wood, accused Manson of sexual assault and domestic abuse.

Q Ringo Starr dropped a lawsuit last week against a company that sells sex toys under the “Ring O” brand name. The Beatles drummer, 80, had said the product looked and sounded too similar to his trademarked stage name and could damage his reputation. “Consumers will likely believe that [Starr’s] newest venture is sex toys—and this is an association that [he] does not want,” his lawsuit asserted. In a settlement, the company agreed to put a space between “Ring” and “O” in any branding and avoid innuendo connecting the rock legend with sex toys.

Getty, Newscom, Getty

On Christmas Eve of 1971, Juliane Diller and her mother took off from Lima in a small propeller plane, said Franz Lidz in The New York Times. Their final destination was Panguana—a research station in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon run by Diller’s zoologist parents. But 25 minutes into the flight, a bolt of lightning struck a wing, and the plane broke apart. Diller, then 17, plunged 10,000 feet through the air toward the jungle canopy. “From above, the treetops resembled heads of broccoli,” recalls Diller, now 66. She blacked out and awoke on the ground. Dense foliage had cushioned her landing; she had suffered a broken collarbone and deep cuts but was alive, the plane’s sole survivor. She lay there for a whole day and night, listening to bird calls and the croaks of frogs. “What I experienced was not fear but a boundless feeling of abandonment.” Diller set off hiking through the Amazon, and after 11 days stumbled into a camp of forest workers who fed her cassava and flushed the maggots from her wounds with gasoline. The harrowing experience did not dim her love of the jungle, and she later took over her parents’ research station and became a fierce advocate for the rain forest.

“The jungle is as much a part of me as my love for my husband,” Diller says, “and the scars that remain from the plane crash.”

Briefing

NEWS 11

Baseball’s latest cheating scandal The players in our national pastime have always looked for an unfair edge. Pitchers recently found a new one.

AP

How are players cheating?

Is cheating new?

Pitchers have been doctoring the It goes back to the dawn of pro baseball with sticky stuff, baffling baseball. In the 1910s, Chicago batters with enhanced pitches that White Sox pitcher Eddie Cicotte can seem unhittable. Unlike the threw a signature “shine ball” classic spitball—which pitchers coated with talcum powder hidden began throwing more than a cenin his pants pocket. Mid-20thtury ago, using Vaseline, K-Y Jelly, century greats like Gaylord Perry, or actual saliva to make the ball Whitey Ford, and Joe Niekro were slip out of their hand and wobble well-known mound scientists, lubunpredictably—the new trick relies ing up spitballs or scuffing the ball on commercial substances that with secret emery boards or sharpgive pitchers improved grip. The ened belt buckles and wedding stickiness enables pitchers to throw rings to make pitches break unexharder while maintaining control, pectedly. In 1980, Seattle Mariners and to increase their pitches’ spin pitcher Rick Honeycutt forgot he’d rate and make sliders, curveballs, taped a thumbtack to his finger An umpire inspects Baltimore Orioles pitcher Tyler Wells and sinkers bend and dive like never and accidentally gashed his face. before. The average pitcher this season is striking out 1 in every 4 batters—on par with all-time greats What about batters? such as Sandy Koufax and Nolan Ryan. Major League Baseball They’ve used plenty of their own tricks. Six sluggers since 1970 began sending this year’s game-used balls to a lab, finding suspihave been busted for using a “corked” bat—drilling a hole in the cious “dark, amber-colored markings that are sticky to the touch” end of the bat and filling the barrel with cork, making a large on a majority of specimens. “This should be the biggest scandal in bat lighter and thus easier to swing. During the steroid era in the sports,” a team executive recently told Sports Illustrated.

1990s and early 2000s, hitters used performance-enhancing drugs to build massive, Popeye-like forearms and biceps. Sluggers such as Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds grew so masWhy is this stuff so effective? sive they could hit the ball out with a flick of the bat, and shatPitchers have always been allowed to use rosin—extracted from pine trees—to modestly improve their grip; in its unadorned state, tered virtually all home run records. Then there’s the art of “stealing” catcher’s signs to the pitcher—legal if players on the field a baseball is shiny and slippery, and nobody wants a fastball slipsimply use their eyesight, but against the rules when teams use ping from someone’s hand and beaning a batter. In recent years, technology. The Houston Astros’ 2017 championship was marred pitchers began lathering their arms with sunscreen and mixing that with rosin to form a stickier composite. Then they discovered when it emerged that the Astros used an outfield camera hooked up to a video monitor to steal signs and relay them to the dugout, concoctions of hair gel, or Spider Tack, a glue meant for World’s where players or team staff banged on a trash can to tell batters Strongest Man competitions, or Pelican Grip, made for bat whether to expect a fastball, breaking handles. Pitchers sneak these “foreign ball, or changeup. substances” onto the mound in their The impact on the game gloves or on their jockstraps, hat brims, Major League Baseball cracked down on docshoelaces, or belt buckles.

Can MLB stop the cheating? tored balls out of fear fans would be bored by Starting last week, the league began the lack of hitting and run scoring.

The leaguethreatening 10-game suspensions Have they gotten caught? for any pitcher caught using foreign Until recently, umpires mostly looked the wide batting average is about .237, the secondlowest mark in MLB’s 146-year history. During substances. Umpires began searchother way, as did teams, rather than call the height of the steroids era, the league batting ing every pitcher’s hat, glove, and attention to their own pitchers. But the average was .270. Striking out one batter per hands during games, to the irritation stickiness of these new substances isn’t inning, once the mark of an electric pitching of some pitchers: Oakland reliever subtle: A ball once stuck to a catcher’s performance, is now the league norm, and Sergio Romo sarcastically dropped chest protector like Velcro without conthere have been an astonishing seven no-hitters his pants while being searched. The sequence, and another team was spotted thrown so far this year, tying the modern record crackdown seems to be working. The playing with a sticky ball in the dugout, for an entire season. There are several factors average pitch spin rate has dropped laughing as it dangled from players’ behind pitching dominance—improved mechanto its lowest level all season, and open palms. Trevor Bauer, now of the ics, teams positioning their fielders based on some pitchers, including Bauer, have Los Angeles Dodgers, said in 2018 he’d advanced analytics, batters being trained to become noticeably more hittable. done tests in a pitching lab and found uppercut and swing for the fences—but there’s After Tampa Bay ace Tyler Glasnow that the new sticky substances enabled no doubt that sticky substances are many pitchtore his elbow ligament, he blamed it him to increase his spin rate enormously. ers’ secret weapon. “Guys are throwing 97 mph on the new rules enforcement, saying “If I used that s---, I’d be the best pitcher super sinkers, or balls that just go straight up he had to grip the ball tighter. “I had in the big leagues,” he said. “But I have with all this sticky stuff, ” says Colorado outto change everything I’d been doing morals.” In 2020, his spin suddenly the entire season,” he complained. climbed, and the once-mediocre pitcher fielder Charlie Blackmon. “It’s really hard not to “You can’t just tell us to use nothing. landed a contract paying him at least strike out.”

It’s crazy.” $38 million this season.

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

How Barr incriminates himself Greg Sargent

The Washington Post

Yes, there is racial progress Erin Aubry Kaplan

Politico.com

A cynical attack on the military Shay Khatiri

TheBulwark.com

Viewpoint

Best columns: The U.S. After he went to “extraordinary lengths to help Donald Trump corrupt the presidency, William Barr is working overtime to launder his postTrump reputation,” said Greg Sargent. In an interview with The Atlantic’s Jonathan Karl, the former attorney general says he quickly concluded that Trump’s claim of massive election fraud “was all bullshit,” and that he told this to a red-faced, infuriated Trump in an Oval Office meeting. What Barr leaves out of this self-serving account is that before the election he warned that mail-in ballots could be used by foreign governments to steal the election from Trump, and that after the election he ordered U.S. attorneys to open baseless election-fraud investigations for one reason: “to placate Trump.” Barr also admits that at the behest of then–Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, he agreed to publicly state that the election was over so that McConnell and other Republicans would not have to. Why? McConnell feared that an angry Trump would punish him by undermining GOP chances in Georgia’s Senate runoffs. Barr’s clumsy attempt to exonerate himself only proves what a blatant partisan he was, and “strengthens the case for a fuller fumigation of Trump’s effort to subvert the election.”

The sentencing of Derek Chauvin marked a somber but important milestone of progress, said Erin Aubry Kaplan. It “should not be remarkable” that the former Minneapolis police officer was ordered last week to serve 22 ½ years in prison for killing George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for nearly 10 minutes. But for decades, police have been able to beat or kill Black men without fear of consequences. In 1992, a video captured Rodney King being savagely beaten by four police officers, yet all four were acquitted. Los Angeles erupted into “historic days of civil unrest.” Afterward, white America largely doubled down on its support of aggressive policing in Black and brown communities.

But Floyd’s gruesome murder shook America out of its “long racial lethargy,” and millions of people of all races marched last year in the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests. Chauvin’s trial ended with a swift, all-counts conviction, a tough sentence, and no further turmoil.

Clearly, there’s much more work to be done on police violence. But most Americans came to see Floyd as a “human being who deserved empathy,” and his murder by a cop as an abomination that demanded justice. That “shift in perspective” is “simple but radical.”

Now the GOP is trying “to drag the military into its culture-war politics,” said Shay Khatiri. Right-wing TV personalities and “grandstanding politicians” last week joined forces to attack Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accusing him of promoting critical race theory and wokeism. At a House committee hearing, Republicans Matt Gaetz and Michael Waltz both lit into Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin over the military’s efforts to encourage discussions among troops about race and racism, and for its recent attempt to root out white supremacists in the ranks. When the military leaders responded that it’s important for our diverse armed forces to have an understanding of racial issues, including “white rage,” Fox News’ Tucker Carlson called Milley “stupid” and “a pig,” while fellow Fox host Laura Ingraham called for defunding the military. Clearly, the GOP wants to “score cheap political points” ahead of the 2022 midterms by claiming the armed forces have been taken over by Marxist critical race theorists. But this cynical ploy risks damaging our armed forces, which depend on volunteers and public confidence. If the GOP forces the military to choose sides in the culture war, the loser will be “America’s security.”

“Zoom out into space and look back at the Earth. Where, and when, would you live if you had an unfettered choice? In my estimation, there is only one sensible answer to that question: in America, now. There is nothing at all wrong with our bitching and moaning all day about the government or the culture or this or that; indeed, as citizens, that is our right and our responsibility. But it is a great sin to do so absent context, and the reality is that Americans who are alive in 2021 have won the grand prize in the cosmic lottery. To be ungrateful for this would be absurd.”

Charles Cooke in NationalReview.com THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

It must be true...

I read it in the tabloids Q A Ukrainian couple who handcuffed themselves together for 123 days in a bid to help their rocky relationship have cut off their shackles and split up. Don’t “repeat what we have done,” Viktoria Pustovitova warned other couples.

The 29-year-old beautician said having no personal space was wearying, but the real issue was that, even when chained together, she didn’t get enough of Alexandr Kudlay’s attention. “He did not tell me ‘I miss you,’ while I would like to hear that.”

Kudlay, a car salesman, said the experiment had brought him to an inescapable conclusion. “We are not on the same wavelength,” he said.

“We are totally different.”

Q A British man has claimed a new Guinness World Record by stacking five M&Ms on top of one another. “Five M&Ms doesn’t sound like a lot,” says Will Cutbill of Solihull, England, “but it was nearly impossible.” Pandemic isolation was his inspiration. “I was eating a bag of M&Ms, and I was incredibly bored, so I just decided to see how many of them I could stack on top of each other,” he said. On learning the current record was four, he was determined to best it. When he managed it, “I was absolutely ecstatic,” he said. “I considered attempting six, but there’s no chance.”

Q A pair of identical twins from Perth, Australia, are so bonded they share everything including a boyfriend, whom they’ve been with for 10 years. “We think of each other as one person,” said Lucy DeCinque, 35. “We’re just never apart, that will never happen.” They shower and go to the bathroom together, sleep in the same bed, and even plan to raise each other’s children as if they were one mom. “You name it and we do it,” said sister Anna. “I don’t think we’d function without each other.”

Guinness Book of World Records

12 NEWS

Bucksport Camden Rockland Bath Portland

Boothbay Harbor

Gloucester Boston Provincetown

Martha’s Vineyard Newport

Cruise Close to Home™

along the scenic shores of New England Explore picturesque seaport towns and quaint island villages on this 11-day Boston round-trip cruise. Discover the best of New England, while visiting Newport, Provincetown, Martha’s Vineyard, Bar Harbor, and more.

Small Ship Cruising Done Perfectly®

Call 1-800-460-4591 to request a FREE Cruise Guide

Bar Harbor

14 NEWS GREECE

Our bias against migrants hurts us all Stelios Kouloglou

Tvxs.gr

GERMANY

Greenpeace exposes our defenselessness Joachim Käppner

Süddeutsche Zeitung

Best columns: Europe Greece is becoming as bigoted as the U.S., said Stelios Kouloglou. When Babis Anagnostopoulos, a 33-year-old pilot, claimed that a foreign gang had burst into his home on the outskirts of Athens, tied him up, and strangled his 20-year-old British wife, Caroline Crouch, police and the public were all too ready to believe his story. Just as American police will often arrest the first Black person they see near a crime scene, our police looked for an outsider to pin the murder on, nabbing a Georgian national at the border. The man, whose name has not been released, says the police beat him for four days, trying to get him to confess to the killing of

a woman he had never met. Of course, “the real culprit” was in front of us all the time: It was the husband, who confessed last week after being presented with phone and security camera evidence that contradicted his preposterous story. But what if it had gone differently? What if the Georgian had made a false confession, “as is often the case with tortured people,” who will say anything “just to end the torment”? Then all “our prejudices would have been confirmed,” while a murderer would be walking free. The “xenophobic cloud that arose over this crime” is a terrible portent for the future of Greek justice.

A “stupid and irresponsible” Greenpeace stunt has exposed the frightening vulnerability of German sports fans, said Joachim Käppner. Just before the kickoff at a European Championship match last month, an environmental activist flew into a Munich soccer stadium in a motorized paraglider emblazoned with the slogan “Kick out oil!”— a criticism of VW, one of the sponsors. The pilot lost control of the craft and hit overhead camera cables, sending debris onto the pitch and narrowly missing the stands before crashing in front of the penalty area. Two people were injured, and Greenpeace was widely condemned. Still, we can thank

the eco-group for inadvertently revealing the extreme vulnerability of sports stadiums to terrorist attacks from the air. Just imagine the carnage if a jihadist had used an explosives-laden paraglider to smash into the spectators from above. In such a scenario, the security services would have to decide in an instant whether to blow the aircraft out of the sky, a decision made more complicated by a 2006 court ruling that forbids our air force from shooting down a hijacked airliner heading for a government building or nuclear power plant.

Greenpeace’s mishap shows that Germany needs a response plan—or much better surveillance.

The annual maritime drill in the There’s a new front in Russia’s proBlack Sea involves NATO members paganda war with the West, said Keir and partner nations such as Ukraine, Giles in Independent.co.uk. A British and it has always irritated Moscow. warship, the HMS Defender, was sailThis week’s exercise is the largest ing across the Black Sea from Ukraine to since the first Sea Breeze was held in Georgia last week when it passed near 1997—32 countries and 5,000 personthe Crimean Peninsula—internationally nel are taking part—and Russia calls recognized as part of Ukraine but anit “patently aggressive.” There’s a lot nexed by Russia in 2014. The Kremlin of history here, said Dmitry Trenin in claims that the Royal Navy destroyer The Moscow Times (Russia). Russia’s entered Russian territorial waters, and Black Sea Fleet has been based at the that it changed course only after a RusCrimean city of Sevastopol since the sian patrol ship fired warning shots and late 18th century, and the Kremlin is an attack jet dropped bombs near the HMS Defender: Testing Russia’s red lines fiercely protective of this warm-water British vessel. It’s a typical story spun by port because much of Russia’s coastline is icebound for months Moscow for a domestic audience: that Russia “is under threat every year. To this day, most Crimeans are ethnic Russians, not from a dangerous, aggressive West” yet is also strong enough to “see off unwelcome intruders.” The U.K. denied the incident ever Ukrainians. Look, “no one in Moscow expects the West to achappened, saying blandly that the Defender was in international cept Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea in the foreseeable future.”

But it is a reality, and it’s unwise for Britain and other Western waters and that its crew heard a Russian military exercise in the nations to constantly test Russia’s “red lines.” distance. That doesn’t appear to be quite true: a BBC journalist on board the Defender said that some 20 Russian planes buzzed The British weren’t the only ones being provocative, said Konoverhead and that two Russian coast guard boats came within 300 feet. The warship, of course, was expecting that harassment, stantin Eggert in DeutscheWelle.de (Germany). Russian President because the entire point of sailing by Crimea was to demonstrate Vladimir Putin knows his decrepit navy can’t realistically challenge the West. But he is afraid to appear weak and “prefers to play to Moscow that the West does not accept its annexation and madman—even if that means risking lethal consequences.” Both does not recognize Russia’s claim to Crimea’s waters. sides are flirting with danger, said Nikolas Busse in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany). But in the end, the principle of Russia views the Black Sea as its private backyard, said Carmen freedom of navigation must be defended. NATO has “every right” Valica in Romania.EuropaLibera.org, even though five other to patrol a sea bordered by its members, and it must defend the countries border the sea, including NATO members Romania, sovereignty of Ukraine, which hopes to become a member. Putin is Bulgaria, and Turkey. It’s no accident that Russia tried to bully the Defender on the eve of the U.S.-led Sea Breeze 2021 Exercise. now on notice that the Black Sea “is not Russia’s bathtub.”

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

Reuters

Black Sea: Russia and NATO tussle for control

Best columns: International

NEWS 15

Australia: Will the mouse infestation ever end? that if left untreated can cause kidney failure The biblical mouse plague ravaging Australia is and meningitis. Farmers are baiting fields with showing no signs of letup, said Daniella White the poison zinc phosphide, which is expensive in The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia). The and time-consuming, but the worst part is the millions of mice now scurrying across the southick factor. “Farmers and their families are uneast have gobbled some $775 million worth able to get a decent night’s sleep,” said John of crops and are gnawing through anything in Warlters of the charity Rural Aid, “without their path—including barns, homes, and even mice chewing on toes and scampering across cars. A rural prison in the state of New South beds.” Some have resorted to placing the Wales was being evacuated this week because legs of their beds in buckets of water to stop mice had chewed through ceiling tiles and wirmice from scuttling up in the night. Mice are ing and their stinking dead bodies are piling up even showing up in the stomachs of fish, said in wall cavities. Once the rodents start rotting, Matilda Boseley in The Guardian (U.K.). says state prison commissioner Peter Severin, Freshwater Murray cod tend to vomit when “the next problem is mites.” Some 420 inmates they’re hauled into the boat, and these days the and 200 staff will be relocated while the facilriver fish are hacking up half-digested mice. ity is purged, and more such evacuations could The upside is that cod stocks, depleted by follow. Blame the British, said The Economist (U.K.). Australia was mouse free until British Mice scurry on a pile of stored grain. drought, are rebounding. The downside is that nobody wants to eat mice-gorged fish. convict ships arrived there in the late 18th century, carrying both prisoners and rodents. The mice spread rapidly—a female mouse can bear a litter every month—and have It’s going to be “a long battle,” said Peter Hannam in The Age (Australia). Population growth should slow now that the Austrabeen wreaking havoc ever since. The current plague is likely a lian winter has arrived. But “the mice are expected to return with result of this year’s heavy rains, which “allowed grain growers to renewed menace” when spring crops ripen. Some farmers had plant the largest area of winter crop ever recorded.” With plenty placed their hopes in New South Wales’ emergency appeal to the of food in the fields and populations of their slower-breeding predators reduced by two years of drought and bushfires, the con- federal government to allow use of the banned poison bromadiolone, an anticoagulant known as “mouse napalm.” The federal ditions were perfect “for a mass mouse-breeding season.” government said no, because the bromadiolone would likely kill too much native wildlife. The plague will likely only end with the The infestation is so severe “that mice are biting people in their right combination of weather, food shortages, and rodent disease. beds, sending some residents to the hospital in a critical condiUntil then, farmers must cope with “the gruesome task of dispostion,” said Lucy Thackray in ABC.net.au (Australia). Dozens ing of thousands of dead, stinking mouse corpses.” of people have contracted leptospirosis, a bacterial infection

PAKISTAN

Finally saying ‘no’ to America Maleeha Hashmey

The Nation

LEBANON

Why Arab performers keep quitting Zineb Benmoussa

AP

Raseef22.net

With two words, Prime Minister Imran Khan has put America in its place, said Maleeha Hashmey. As the U.S. withdraws from Afghanistan after 20 years of war, it has been badgering Pakistan to let CIA drones be stationed on our soil for counterterrorism operations. When asked “for the billionth time” during a recent interview whether he would allow such a deployment, Khan replied, “Absolutely not.” The Americans should take him at his word.

Khan campaigned on getting Americans out of Pakistan, and since he was elected in 2018, he has allowed no drone strikes here. We’ve already paid an “unbelievably high” price in America’s so-called

War on Terrorism. At least 100,000 Pakistanis have died in this futile conflict, and our country has suffered an estimated $118 billion in economic losses. Over the past few years, we’ve gone to great lengths to protect ourselves against militant incursions from Afghanistan—even building a double chain-link fence, topped with barbed-wire coils, along all 1,640 miles of our border—and allowing U.S. drone launches could jeopardize that newfound safety. Most of all, Khan wants regional stability, to ensure that a $62 billion package of Chinesefunded infrastructure projects will go ahead. The “old Pakistan” that bowed to the U.S. is gone.

How can Arabs succeed in the entertainment business when they keep renouncing the industry as sinful? asked Zineb Benmoussa. Rising Moroccan actor Hachem Bastaoui last month became the latest star to retire prematurely and dedicate his life to Islam. In an Instagram post, he disavowed his former profession and asked fans to delete his films, adding, “May God forgive us all.” The most famous of these holy dropouts was Lebanese singer Fadel Chaker, who quit music in 2012 and joined a jihadist terrorist group. He is now serving 22 years in prison. Lebanese singer Amal Hijazi, whose 2002 album Zaman is one of the

best-selling Arabic records of all time, retired from secular pop in 2017 after taking the hijab. Arab societies “plant a guilt complex in the hearts of their citizens,” so that every singer or actor feels that to perform is to “carry an alleged sin” on his or her shoulders. Yet there is no fatwa against performance. Most senior imams say that they are not against high art, “as long as it is refined, and there is no vulgarity in it.” We can’t stop artists from retiring, if they wish, but we should be wary of embracing their repudiations of past works.

After all, if they believe everything they did was sinful, they are also condemning us, their fans.

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

16 NEWS

Talking points

Noted

New York: The Democrats’ anti-crime candidate

Q In May, more than 99 percent of new Covid hospitalizations and deaths in the U.S. occurred among unvaccinated people, with a tiny number of “breakthrough” infections causing serious illness in fully vaccinated people.

Nearly every Covid death “is, at this point, entirely preventable,” said CDC director Rochelle Walensky.

rates of gun violence and “Something hopeful” just homicides” and he promhappened in New York, said ised to make New Yorkers Peggy Noonan in The Wall “safe.” When he was a Street Journal. Brooklyn Borcop, he was an outspoken ough President Eric Adams critic of police abuses of has taken the lead in the city’s Black men, and it’s unclear ranked-choice Democratic how he’ll achieve both primary largely by pledging to reform and a crackdown on fight a citywide rise in crime. criminals. His stated plans With 120,000 absentee ballots aren’t encouraging, said yet to be tabulated, Adams, Kali Holloway in TheDaily a Black New York cop for Adams: Will the former cop become mayor?

Beast.com. Adams advo22 years, got 51 percent of cates a return to broken-windows policing, which the ranked-choice votes by assembling a “multitargets mostly young men of color for minor racial coalition” of voters who understandably offenses like graffiti and vandalism, and wants fear violent street crime and were turned off by progressive talk of scaling back policing. Perhaps to bring back the “sustained campaign of harassment” that is stop and frisk. This is not the path Democrats will finally realize they must “tack to “rehabbing an institution rife with anti-Black rightward” on crime to “secure the Black vote.” racism, corruption, and criminality.”

Adams has a chance to “write a new chapter in urban policing,” said Michael Goodwin in the Pundits are ascribing way too much significance New York Post. In the wake of Black Lives Matto Adams’ narrow lead in an election that’s not ter protests, Democrats have failed to adopt a yet final, said Alex Pareene in NewRepublic.com. coherent policing strategy. The “working-class In reality, Adams was both “the law-and-order Black and Latino neighborhoods” that voted for candidate and the police-reform candidate.” He Adams want better policing—but not less of it. emphasized his Black identity, accused rivals of racism, and was endorsed by both critics of police No, this election was not “a referendum on abuses and the conservative New York Post. His ‘defund the police,’” said Zak Cheney-Rice in NYMag.com. None of the leading candidates sup- apparent victory was “predictable” in a one-party town where many Democrats lean right. What ported any such proposal. Adams saw that votdoes it tell us about national politics? Not much. ers in this election were concerned about “rising

Associated Press

Q In 15 states, less than half of the staffers at nursing homes have been fully vaccinated for Covid-19, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. These tend to be states with lower vaccination rates overall, such as Wyoming, Alabama, and Mississippi.

WashingtonExaminer.com

UFOs: The truth is still out there

San Francisco Chronicle

Q Since 2015, more than 400,000 Americans have been taken to emergency rooms after violent interactions with police or security guards, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the federal government and most police departments do not track the seriousness of their injuries.

NBCNews.com THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

The report offers one particularly startling finding, said Gideon Lewis-Kraus in NewYorker.com.

It said 80 of the sightings “involved observation with multiple sensors” and concluded that these UFOs were actual physical objects. And 18 of these objects demonstrated inexplicable capabili-

ties, such as maneuvering abruptly or moving at intense speeds without obvious “means of propulsion.” The presence of 18 such recent cases “seems to suggest that ‘Other’ might not, after all, be a negligible bin.” These sightings probably have “mundane explanations,” said former Harvard University astronomy chair Avi Loeb in Scientific American.com, but we can’t rule out that they are spacecraft from alien civilizations so far advanced that their technology looks “magical” to us. It’s time for “the scientific community to take a closer look” by intensively studying the sky with our finest detection devices and computers.

Come on, said David Axe in TheDailyBeast.com.

We may not know what these objects are, but “we can say with reasonable certainty what they’re not”—and that’s aliens. Why would extraterrestrials travel “galactic distances” to Earth, fly “loop-de-loops” around military jets, and then zip away “without making any effort to communicate”? After decades of unanswered questions, will this mystery ever be solved? asked astronomer Seth Shostak in NBCNews.com. If you’re disappointed, “take solace in the fact that the story is not over.” And “despite the fervent hopes of many, I’m not sure it ever will be.”

AP, Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/Polaris

Q San Francisco has created six “safe sleeping villages” where about 260 homeless people sleep in tents and receive three meals a day, at the cost of more than $60,000 per tent per year. That’s about twice the median cost of a one-bedroom apartment.

After months of heated anticipation and leaks, the Pentagon has finally released a task force’s report into unidentified flying objects, said Daniel Politi in Slate.com. “And its big conclusion is that there is no conclusion.” The task force focused on 144 reports by military pilots since 2004 of encounters with UFOs, or as the military calls them, UAPs— unidentified aerial phenomena. The study found no evidence the UAPs were alien spacecraft, but offers “no good explanation for what they may have been.” The report essentially casts doubt on four possible explanations: a secret technology from an adversary, our own classified technology, “airborne clutter” such as weather balloons, and “natural atmospheric phenomena.” That leaves a fifth category, the suggestive catch-all “Other.”

The government’s striking admission that it can’t explain the sightings is sure to “fuel conspiracy theorists and people convinced of the existence of extraterrestrial life.”

Talking points Britney Spears: A life controlled by others dried, right? Not exactly.”

Britney Spears “has long Legal experts doubt that been one of the most she can be freed without a watched people on Earth,” thorough medical evaluasaid Spencer Kornhaber in tion, and “a court hearing TheAtlantic.com, “but it’s that allows the other side different to be heard.” In a to present its case” could recorded court hearing, the conclude that she remains a 39-year-old singer spoke danger to herself or others. out last week for the first This wouldn’t have haptime about living under a pened to “the male version strict conservatorship. Sevof Britney Spears,” said eral public meltdowns led Spears: ‘I cry every day.’

Helaine Olen in The Washto her involuntary instituington Post. Michael Jackson, Kanye West, and tionalization in a mental hospital in 2008, after Robert Downey Jr. all had severe mental health which a judge gave her father legal control over episodes or major drug problems; no one took her life. But 13 years later, Spears’ “chilling” away their autonomy or seized control of their testimony includes that she was forced to take reproductive systems. lithium—a sedating medication often used to treat bipolar disorder—and that her father, who “It’s not just her father and a judge who robbed draws a $16,000 monthly salary from her while her of agency,” said Jessica Goldstein in New giving her a $2,000 weekly allowance, controls everything from her kitchen décor to whether she Republic.com. Middle-aged men at a record company launched her career as a hypersexualcan marry her boyfriend. (No, she may not.) She alleges that she is even forbidden from having her ized, 16-year-old Lolita singing “Baby One More Time,” and various males steered her into a level IUD implant removed, to prevent her from having more children. “I’m not happy,” she testified. of global pop stardom that generated $60 million in revenue but left her constantly swarmed “I cry every day.” by paparazzi and gossipmongers. Only when she unraveled under incredible pressure was she Spears testified that her lawyer hadn’t told her deemed “responsible for the mess she was in.” she had the right to challenge the conservatorIt’s time to “free Britney Spears” and return “her ship, said Christie D’Zurilla in the Los Angeles Times. Now she knows and wants out. “Cut and story to its rightful owner.”

DeSantis: Champion of academic free speech?

Getty

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a chilling bill last week giving him the right to police free speech at state universities, said Eric Lutz in VanityFair .com. The new law requires public colleges and universities to survey students, faculty, and staff each year to find out whether “competing ideas and perspectives are presented”—that is, conservative ideas DeSantis agrees with. Arguing that colleges have become “intellectually repressive environments” force-feeding students socialism, Marxism, and “false history” like the 1619 Project, DeSantis claims he’s protecting “free speech” on campus. His authoritarian survey will do just the opposite, said Sarah Jones in NYMag.com.

DeSantis threatened that if survey results disappoint him and Republican legislators, “budget cuts could be looming.” At least DeSantis “is an honest warrior” with a clear goal: “punishing speech he doesn’t like.”

Actually, this survey will address a real problem, said Scott Shackford in Reason.com. It will gauge ideological diversity on campus, and whether people “feel free to express their beliefs.” Isn’t that how liberals would describe the bedrock ideals of higher education? Critics of DeSantis claim he’s out to punish liberal professors, but “the entire

First Amendment, and a bunch of Supreme Court case law,” clearly protects professors’ right to say whatever they want. But on many campuses, intellectual repression is becoming the norm, with some rather mainstream ideas and beliefs being deemed microaggressions or “hate speech” that must be silenced. A recently exposed University of Oklahoma training session encouraged professors to tell students, “You don’t have the right to say that, stop talking right now.” Is that really how we want taxpayer-supported colleges to operate?

What a hypocrite DeSantis is, said Charles Pierce in Esquire.com. He recently signed a law banning critical racial theory from being taught in Florida public schools. How’s that for intellectual diversity? DeSantis is an “opportunistic charlatan” who knows that “ginned-up hysteria over imaginary educational bogeyfolk” will play well on Fox News. After impressing conservatives by keeping most of Florida open during the pandemic, said Chris Cillizza in CNN.com, DeSantis is throwing more red meat to the Trump base with this attack on colleges. DeSantis is running neck and neck with the former president in 2024 straw polls, and it’s clear that DeSantis “is actively positioning himself to be the rightful heir to Trumpism.”

NEWS 17 Wit & Wisdom “We are each of us an endangered species. When we die, our species disappears with us. Nobody like us will ever exist again.”

Journalist Janet Malcolm, quoted in Artforum.com

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

James Baldwin, quoted in AVClub.com

“There has never been a single tweet that couldn’t be replaced with ‘PLEASE AUTHENTICATE MY EXISTENCE.’” Journalist and screenwriter Charlie Brooker, quoted in Vogue

“Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians.”

Hannah Arendt, quoted in The Press and Journal (U.K.)

“I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.”

George Bernard Shaw, quoted in Forbes.com

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

Philosopher Simone Weil, quoted in The Arizona Republic

“A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.”

Educator Laurence Peter, quoted in INews.co.uk

Poll watch Q 26% of Americans can be described as “highly right-wing authoritarian,” a new survey found. The research defines authoritarianism as “the desire to submit to some authority,” with aggression toward whomever “the authority says should be targeted.”

In this group, 85% are white, 76% are 45 years or older, 76% have no college degree, and 55% believe that President Biden won through voter fraud.

Morning Consult

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

18 NEWS

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

Pick of the week’s cartoons

For more political cartoons, visit: www.theweek.com/cartoons.

Pick of the week’s cartoons

NEWS 19

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

Technology

20 NEWS

Apps: Is there more to Tinder than lust? branded itself as “TikTok meets Tinder.”

It looks like it’s going to be an active sumAnother company, Feels, has attracted mer for online dating apps, said Sophie 150,000 users since April and features “a Mellor in Fortune.com. Already, “swipes carousel of short-form videos on profiles, are surging,” and an explosion of new where people are supposed to express themprofiles after lockdown restrictions began selves in more dimensions.” It’s being marto ease in the United States and Europe keted as the option for daters “who believe led to a record-breaking first quarter that swiping is boring.” But even Tinder is for the world’s largest dating company, evolving, said Ashley Carman in TheVerge Match Group, which owns Tinder, Hinge, .com. The controversial app, which popuOkCupid, and Match.com. Most datlarized the idea of “swiping” to match with ing apps fared well during the pandemic, another person based almost solely on apmostly because users “didn’t have a Tinder is looking beyond the swipe. pearance, recently launched a new feature choice: Stuck at home, it was often the called Hot Takes, “which occurs nightly from 6 p.m. to midnight only way to find a new connection.” But even with the end of local time and allows daters to answer questions” in a chat. The lockdowns, almost “every app on the market has seen an upidea is to give potential matches “something to talk about and tick as singletons prepare for a sweltering, mask-free summer.” therefore assess the actual conversation chemistry.” It’s part of an Many people, though, seem to be using dating apps differently now, said Aniruddha Ghosh in Reuters.com. Tinder and Bumble effort to make Tinder “more than just an app to judge people off have started promoting themselves “as a way of finding friends” their photos.” rather than just seeking out “amorous entanglements.” Match It’s all getting to be too much, said Katie Way in Vice.com. “The Group recently paid $1.7 billion for the South Korean social makers of dating apps are regularly dreaming up new features media firm Hyperconnect, to “let people chat from across the to keep hopeful users swiping.” But this misses the point. “The world using real-time translation,” another sign that the compoint of online dating is not to stay on the apps for an entertainpany is “pushing beyond love and lust.” ing experience,” it’s to find and connect with someone in real life.

“Dating apps work in large part because they’re so unpleasant to A new wave of dating apps is modeled after TikTok, said Arielle Pardes in Wired.com, featuring short-form video formats that feel spend time on.” The point of the technology is to make real-life dating better, not to keep people glued to a screen. familiar to Gen Z. Snack is a “video-first dating app” that has

A startup called Kernel is trying to build brain-scanning helmets, said Ashlee Vance in Bloomberg Businessweek. For years, neuroscientists, computer scientists, and electrical engineers have hoped to “peer through the human skull outside of university or government labs.” Kernel’s helmets are designed for researchers who want to analyze how the brain works in ordinary life, instead of a carefully calibrated environment. One version, Flow, measures changes in the brain’s blood oxygen levels. Another helmet, Flux, measures electromagnetic activity, more like a traditional MRI. Cutting room-size machines down to wearable size and tuning out extraneous signals, though, is a tall order. There are still plenty of skeptics—228 investors passed on the idea—but Kernel has raised $110 million to bring its devices to market.

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

Bytes: What’s new in tech Apple pushes back on regulation Apple CEO Tim Cook called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a warning about antitrust legislation, said Cecilia Kang in The New York Times. Six bills are making their way through the House after being advanced by the Judiciary Committee last week to strengthen regulators and prevent tech giants from using their power in one area to form a grip in another.

One piece of legislation takes aim at Apple’s ability to pre-install apps on the iPhone. In his call with Pelosi, “Cook said the bills were rushed. They would crimp innovation. And they would hurt consumers by disrupting the services that power Apple’s lucrative iPhone.”

Cook’s call is part of an intense lobbying campaign from the tech giants against the legislation. “They are fighting tooth and nail,” said one tech policy expert.

New mall target? The security robot The jury is still out on crime-fighting robots, said Cyrus Farivar in NBCNews.com. The dominant player in the security-robot business, Knightscope, leases machines to clients “for an average fee of $70,000 to $80,000 per year.”

Though interest is growing among banks, casinos, shopping malls, and apartment complexes, there is little evidence the robots reduce

crime. The Huntington Park, Calif., police department was the first to partner with Knightscope, deploying “HP RoboCop,” an eggshaped robot on wheels. But data constraints mean “the police can’t monitor the robot’s live video on a constant basis.” The department has struggled to cite examples of HP RoboCop leading to citations or arrests other than in cases of “robot tipping and vandalism against the robot itself.”

A pricey way to run in place Even going for a basic jog on Peloton’s $4,295 treadmill will now require a monthly fee, said Michael Kan in PCMag.com. Peloton’s treadmills had a free feature, Just Run, that worked even if owners didn’t want to pay for Peloton’s $39-a-month subscription service. Now Peloton’s Tread+ is in the midst of a recall after the machines caused injuries to dozens of children, including at least one fatality. “In response, Peloton created a passcode locking feature to prevent unauthorized access to the equipment,” sacrificing Just Run in the process.

The move has infuriated some users, including Jennifer Strong, who “lost interest in the exercise programs from Peloton” but still enjoyed using the Tread+ “like a normal treadmill.”

Now, she says, it’s “basically a paperweight.”

Getty

Innovation of the week

Health & Science

NEWS 21

Covid-19 can cause ‘significant’ brain shrinkage People who survive even mild cases of Covid-19 may suffer a loss of brain tissue, reports the Los Angeles Times. As part of an ongoing study in the U.K., researchers took brain scans from 782 volunteers with pre-pandemic scans on record, in order to compare the results. About half the participants had recovered from the coronavirus; most of those had experienced mild or moderate symptoms and only 15 had been hospitalized. The other half had not caught the disease. Studying the two sets of before-and-after scans, the researchers saw what they described as a “significant” decrease in gray matter in the regions of the Covid patients’ brains

No supernova expected anytime soon

Science Source (2), Media Bakery

Did Betelgeuse burp?

Astronomers say they’ve solved the mystery of why Betelgeuse, a bright star in the Orion constellation, abruptly dimmed in late 2019 and early 2020. At the time there was speculation that the red supergiant, which is some 15 to 20 times more massive than the sun, was about to explode in a supernova.

That would have been quite the light show: The last supernova in our galaxy that could be observed from Earth occurred in 1604 and was as bright as Venus in the sky. But a new study suggests the dimming was merely caused by an ejection of gas—a Betelgeuse burp. Detailed images of the star taken with the Very Large Telescope in Chile indicate the dimming was the result of two linked phenomena. A cool spot on Betelgeuse’s surface made the star appear less bright. And this cool spot was causing gas that had previously been ejected by the star to condense into dust—making things even dimmer.

When the dust eventually settled, the star returned to its normal brightness. “I don’t think this event means Betelgeuse is going to go supernova anytime soon,” co-author Emily Cannon, from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, tells BBC.com. “Even though that would be incredibly interesting.”

Land mine–detecting bacteria Israeli researchers are developing an unlikely assistant to help them find and clear land

linked to smell and taste—the loss of those senses is a common symptom of Covid-19.

Some of those regions are also involved in the memory of experiences that evoke emotional reactions, which may explain the “brain fog” reported by some sufferers of so-called long Covid. What causes this brain damage is unclear; it could be a result of the virus spreading to the brain or a consequence of the symptoms of the disease, such as inflammation and breathing difficulties. The study has yet to be peer-reviewed, and the authors say more research is needed to determine whether the loss of brain tissue will affect survivors’ memory. Still, former Food

mines: bacteria that glow in the presence of explosives. The process involves tweaking the genetic code of E.coli, reports The New York Times. First the researchers swapped in genes from bioluminescent marine bacteria that naturally emit light. They then trained the bacteria to light up in the presence of 2,4-dinitrotoluene, a chemical that leaks from TNT into the soil surrounding a land mine. Because the light is faint, the researchers also created a device that shields the bacteria and detects when it is glowing.

Field tests conducted with the Israeli army have been “generally very successful,” says research leader Shimshon Belkin. The team’s hope is that these bacteria can eventually be dropped into minefields by drones, minimizing the need for humans to get close to the explosives. One challenge Belkin and his colleagues are still working on is temperature.

The bacteria sensors work only between 59 and 99 degrees Fahrenheit, so they can’t be used in scorching desert conditions.

Aging can’t be defeated Bad news for all those Silicon Valley executives hoping to live forever: An interna-

Covid patients suffered a loss of gray matter.

and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb says the findings are “very concerning, because it does suggest that the virus could be having a direct effect on certain portions of the brain.”

tional study of unprecedented size has concluded that the aging process is, sadly, unstoppable. The research, a collaboration of scientists from 14 countries, tested the “invariant rate of aging” hypothesis.

This holds that a species ages at a relatively fixed rate once it reaches adulthood. The researchers compared age-specific birth and death data from a diverse set of human populations—including peoples from the 17th to the 20th century—and from 30 nonhuman primate populations, including chimpanzees and monkeys. They found that the pattern of mortality was the same across the board: The risk of death is high in infancy, drops and remains low until early adulthood, then starts to rise again. That suggests humans are living longer not because they’re delaying the aging process, but because more and more people are surviving the high-risk period in infancy. “The trajectory towards death in old age has not changed,” coauthor José Manuel Aburto, from Oxford University, tells The Guardian (U.K.). “Evolutionary biology trumps everything and, so far, medical advances have been unable to beat these biological constraints.”

liver disease than those who didn’t drink the brew, and a 49 percent Drinking three or four cups of lower risk of dying from chronic coffee a day can cut your risk liver disease. This positive of developing and dying effect increased as consumpfrom chronic liver diseases, tion rose, up to three or four a new study has found. cups of joe a day. People Researchers looked at about who sip caffeinated and 11 years of data on the liver decaffeinated ground coffee health of some 495,000 people had the biggest risk reduction, in the U.K.—ages 40 to Drink up, it’s good for you. but instant-coffee drinkers 69—385,000 of whom were also saw some benefits. coffee drinkers. After taking into account “Coffee is widely accessible,” co-author factors such as body mass index and Oliver Kennedy, from the University of alcohol consumption, the researchers Southampton, tells CNN.com. “The benfound that those who drank any amount efits we see from our study may mean it of coffee had a 20 percent lower risk of could offer a potential preventative treatdeveloping chronic liver disease or fatty ment for chronic liver disease.”

Coffee vs. liver disease

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

Inspire a love of reading T The BESGIFT G READINrious for cu s kid

Give 25 weekly issues and save 66% off the cover price.

ORDER ONLINE AT THEWEEKJUNIOR.COM/JULY SCAN TO ORDER

THE WEEK | SPECIAL REPORT: TRAVEL

The summer reopening Traveling in the United States now means joining in an energizing story of recovery by Naomi Barr When Beverly Goodman flew with her husband to Albuquerque at the end of April, she wasn’t sure what to expect. Though the country was inching its way out of quarantine, thanks to the massive vaccine rollout, she admits she felt some anxiety going on a trip for the first time after carefully maintaining a safe bubble for 13 months at home in Queens, New York. “We had layovers each way, which meant four flights through three different airports. But we both breathed such huge sighs of relief when we saw how clean each airport was,” says Goodman. “Workers were scrubbing down surfaces every step of the way, from check-in to the gate.”

Exceptionally sanitized airports (as well as mask-filled ones, at least until a federal mandate expires on Sept. 13) are just one of the benefits of 2021 travel, which is ramping up at warp speed now that summer is upon us and close to 50 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated. In another year, Goodman says, she would likely have gone abroad—perhaps to Europe, Israel, or Korea. The pandemic gave her a chance to see a part of the United States she’d missed in years of travels.

She is far from alone. With Europe only recently opening its doors again to foreigners (Canada, Asia, and parts of South America are still mostly off limits), summer 2021 is seeing a boom in domestic travel. Recent data from Tripadvisor show that just over half of us have taken or are planning to take our vacations here in U.S., while only 22 percent are looking to book a trip beyond the border.

Alamy

After being cooped up at home for so long, Americans are making fundamental changes in the way we travel. Thanks to accrued time off, the ability to work remotely, and the fact that nearly three-quarters of us did not take a summer vacation last year, Americans have a lot of time, financial savings, and pent-up wanderlust that they’re ready to tap into. “We’re seeing people book longer vacations—and spend more money on them—than pre-pandemic,” says Brian Hoyt, Tripadvisor’s head of global communications.

Indeed, according to research from Skyscanner, U.S. travelers are choosing more-expensive booking options than they did before the pandemic—and nearly 60 percent are planning trips for longer than 14 days.

For many, a cautious re-emergence from quarantine has meant a shift from the popular urban destinations like Miami Beach and Las Vegas to less-populated rural locations or nature getaways, such as Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom and Montana’s Glacier National Park. “My notion of where to go and why has really shifted after this year,” says Zoe Donaldson, a writer and content strategist in Bath, Maine. “I once primarily thought about where to travel based on the museums, food, and events that were available, but now the ‘culturally cool’ place has been replaced by one

The Black Hills: Stunning vistas and bison encounters

with greater access to the outdoors and a slower, more peaceful quality of life.”

The downside? The desire for wide-open spaces has been so strong this year that many of them have been booked up: Major national parks are full, beaches along the coasts are at capacity, and popular regional destinations such as Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the Black Hills of South Dakota are seeing unusually high demand.

That shouldn’t be too much of surprise, according to Nathan Lump, vice president of customer marketing at Expedia.

“These are all traditional summer destinations,” Lump explains, “but because so many people who would normally choose to travel internationally either aren’t able to or aren’t ready to do so yet, they’re heading to these places, too. So basically we’re seeing typical summer patterns, just on steroids.”

Still, planning a vacation adventure in our own backyard can provide many unexpected rewards even to the most seasoned of travelers. “I have to admit, if it weren’t for the pandemic, I never would’ve thought to look at New Mexico,” says Goodman. “But now I got to see a beautiful part of our country, and I’m really grateful for that.”

Americans eager to check out the country’s cities—which is a rapidly increasing number of us, according to the experts, who link the trend to rising vaccination rates—will also find unprecedented perks. Places like New York City, Denver, and San Francisco are brimming with new car-free streets and outdoor dining choices that didn’t exist prior to last year. Distancing restrictions at museums and cultural venues mean more space to linger and enjoy the art, music, and other exhibits.

One of the greatest aspects of taking a trip this year is participating in what feels like a hopeful moment of recovery. “Part of the fun of traveling in this period is experiencing the pervasive joyful energy and feeling of optimism that’s out there,” says Expedia’s Lump. “But it’s also more than that. A lot of small businesses, restaurants, bars, shops, hotels, you name it, suffered during the pandemic, and now they’re trying to recover. Traveling means you’re a part of that story and having a measurable impact on people’s lives and local economies. You’ll actually be doing some good by going somewhere.”

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021 | 23

THE WEEK | SPECIAL REPORT: TRAVEL heading to Silver City. Founded during a silver-mining boom, it’s now a gateway to the Gila National Forest, where you where can hike though coniferous woods or ride mountain bikes on worldclass trails as you make your way back to Albuquerque.

The open road From the time Henry Ford made his Model T and lawmakers started paving the roadways, Americans have had a love affair with the road trip.

Whether you drive your own car or can plan far enough ahead to rent one, taking to the highway remains a great way to see the country. Take one of these weeklong trips—or find your own road adventure.

If you are looking for an Eastern trip, try a New York–New England excursion. After flying into New York City, go straight to Kingston, New York state’s original capital.

For evergreens and high peaks, From there you can hop over to start your drive in Denver, then Hudson Valley towns such as head toward South Dakota’s Black Rhinebeck and Hudson. Then Hills, about six hours away. Check go up to Saratoga Springs, where White Sands’ unique landscape of gypsum dunes out Deadwood, the Old West town you can experience the area’s famous as the final resting place of Wild natural mineral springs, and in August go Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. From there, Southwestern New Mexico makes for a to the famous Saratoga Race Course. An drive southeast into Badlands National Park stunning yet somewhat off-the-beaten-path hour farther north is Fort Ticonderoga, and take your time traveling the 39-mile itinerary. After arriving in Albuquerque, on Lake Champlain, site of several RevoBadlands Loop State Scenic Byway to see head to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center lutionary War battles. Cross the bridge some of the most otherworldly canyon visto learn about the history and arts of the at Crown Point to reach Burlington, Vt. tas in the country. You’ll likely glimpse big- 19 pueblos of New Mexico and eat blue Soak up the views of the Green Mountains horn sheep, bison, prairie dogs, and prong- corn–amaranth waffles and buffalo short and the city’s Old New England charms horn along the way. Next, head back west ribs. Next on to Hatch, a charming village before going south into Massachusetts, to visit Mount Rushmore in Keystone, S.D., where vendors sell Mexican pottery and to contemporary-arts haven Mass MoCA and Wind Cave National Park, home to green chile–infused everything. From there, in North Adams. As you make your way one of the longest and most complex caves drive south to Las Cruces, with its distincfurther south, stay in Great Barrington and in the world. Return to Denver, taking time tive adobe architecture. Check out nearby take in a Tanglewood concert or a Shaketo check out its restaurants, microbreweries, White Sands National Park’s surreal landspeare performance in nearby Lenox before biking trails, and vibrant street-art scene. scape of windswept gypsum dunes, before heading home.

Cycling holidays are a fantastic way to explore the world, and you don’t have to be in Tour de Self-powered France shape to enjoy days of riding. Many getaways are already booked up for the summer and fall months, but Backroads, one of the leading cycling-tour companies, still has some available, including a four-day Aspen, Colo., getaway, a five-day trip along the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, a sixday exploration of Washington state’s San Juan Islands, and a California wine country ride that takes you from Santa Barbara to Ojai and the Santa Ynez Valley and back again. Other operators to check out are Pure Adventures, REI Adventures, or Summer Feet Cycling & Walking (Maine trips only). Those opting for urban vacations can also get in on the bike action: In Denver, Mile High Bike Tours combines art, history, architecture, and food in its rides around the city; in New Orleans, you can explore the city with Flambeaux Tours.

24 | THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

Into the woods

2,200 years old—is found there (and so is the second-largest, General Grant).

The Japanese call regular walks through the Maui Nui, Kauai, Oahu, and Hawaii Forest Reserves, Hawaii: The Hawaiian woods shinrin-yoku, or “forest bathing.”

Islands, the most isolated archipelago in the Part mindfulness, part exercise, the pracworld, has high forested mountains and a tice simply asks that you spend, ideally, an multitude of climate zones. Forests here are hour or more taking in the sights, sounds, traditionally revered as and smells a forest envilife-giving for the naturonment provides. The ral materials they proreward is undeniable. vide and the spiritual Immersing yourself in needs they satisfy. nature this way can cut Adirondack Park, depression, anxiety, stress, New York: Stretching and fatigue, while boostacross 6 million acres ing energy and mental of upper New York focus. Some of the best state and home to more places in the U.S. to work than a hundred peaks on your shinrin-yoku: Sequoia National Park and some 2,000 miles Chippewa National of hiking trails, the Adirondacks is the largForest, Minnesota: With 1,300 lakes and est publicly protected area in the contiguous more than 900 miles of rivers and streams, the Chippewa Forest was established in 1908. United States. Wish you could walk along the treetops? You can now, thanks to the It encompasses more than 660,000 acres— “Wild Walk,” a 30-foot-high trail of bridges mostly water—with hiking trails, canoe routes, and opportunities to see bald eagles. at the Wild Center in Tupper Lake, N.Y. Or…you can live among the trees: Sequoia National Park, California: Tucked away in the southern Sierra Nevada, Airbnb, Vrbo, and Glamping Hub have treehouses of all shapes and price ranges Sequoia Park spans 400,000 acres and is available to rent, including a renovated fire home to some of the biggest trees in the tower in Fernwood, Idaho, and a rustic world. The world’s largest tree—named General Sherman and thought to be roughly mountaintop retreat in Walhalla, S.C.

Getty, Alamy (2)

When two wheels are enough

THE WEEK | SPECIAL REPORT: TRAVEL

Best picks: Five excursions for a summer of revival out the 37th Appalachian Summer Festival, a monthlong music, dance, theater, visual arts, and film celebra-

Taking flight over St. Louis

The Great Forest Park Balloon Race This free St. Louis tradition is celebrating its 49th year Sept. 17-18 with more than 60 of the nation’s best hot-airballoon pilots in attendance.

While in the city, you should also visit the immersive Van Gogh Experience, which opens at the Starry Night Pavilion at the Saint Louis Galleria on Sept. 16, and the Missouri Botanical Garden, which is hosting a large-scale sculpture exhibit, “Origami in the Garden.”

Performing in Boone, N.C.

An L.A.-area beach spectacle

BeachLife Festival

Funk band Turkuaz at Telluride

Telluride Jazz Festival Set in the majestic town of Telluride high in the San Juan Mountains of south-

Newscom, Facebook, Getty, Telluride Jazz Festival, Alamy (2)

Ready to go abroad?

Though most Americans are sticking to domestic travel this summer, this may actually be one of the best times to take a trip abroad. Europe’s recent gradual reopening has meant that many popular tourist destinations that normally would be Positano, on the Amalfi Coast booked up by now may still be available to foreign travelers. “If you want to go to Cape Cod and haven’t booked your trip yet, forget it, it’s probably not going to be possible. But if you want to go to the Amalfi Coast in Italy, you might actually be able to do it,” says Expedia’s Nathan Lump.

Iceland is another summer port of call that you would normally have to plan for way in advance, but airlines are offering very attractive fares to lure visitors there. Some true bucket-list destinations also have surprising availability now—for instance, tours of the Galapagos Islands that in other years would have to be booked many months ahead. No matter where you choose to go, make sure you know your destination’s entry requirements before booking your trip; some countries, such as Canada, are still effectively closed to tourists. And though many have dropped mandatory quarantines upon arrival, some still require a negative Covid-19 test and/or proof of vaccination. –NB

newer hitmakers such as Gary Clark Jr. and Silversun Pickups.

Wright’s Midway Barn

Taliesin

tion going on through July 31.

The festival includes performances from The Good Wife’s Alan Cumming, Broadway actor Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Tony Award–winning playwright Sarah Jones.

An Appalachian Summer Festival This stunning southern section of the Appalachian Mountains extends from southern Pennsylvania to Georgia. Travel along the spectacular 469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway and head toward Boone, N.C., to check

western Colorado, this year’s festival, which runs Aug. 13-15, features the acclaimed Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Grammy-winning pianist Robert Glasper, and the Harlem Gospel Travelers, a quartet of richly talented young singers all between the ages of 19 and 22. Four-day camping passes are still available to pitch a tent and enjoy a stay on festival grounds.

This relatively new music festival—it missed its sophomore year in 2020 due to Covid-19—returns to Redondo Beach, Calif., Sept. 10-12 with a star-studded musical lineup.

Venerable groups Jane’s Addiction, Counting Crows, Men at Work, the English Beat, and Ziggy and Stephen Marley, are joined at this surf-culture-themed event by

The Spring Green, Wis., home, studio, school, and 800-acre estate of Frank Lloyd Wright reopened to visitors this past spring.

You can tour his stunning 37,000-square-foot home as well as buildings representing nearly every decade of his career, from the 1890s to the 1950s. While in Spring Green, buy tickets to the American Players Theatre, a regional powerhouse since 1980. The company’s summer season includes Tom Stoppard’s Rough Crossing, Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s An Iliad, Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, and Christopher Fry’s A Phoenix Too Frequent.

Traveling on the page...The Bears Ears The Bears Ears are two tall buttes in a part of southeastern Utah that has been inhabited for 13,000 years and contains some 100,000 Native American cultural and archaeological sites. The area has been protected since the end of 2016 as the Bears Ears National Monument.

Historian David Roberts calls it his favorite place on Earth, and his acclaimed new book, The Bears Ears, is a deeply researched memoir that takes the reader on an emotional and intellectual tour of this extraordinary, complex land and the political battles being waged to protect it.

Astronomer and photographer Stephen E. Strom’s stunning photo collection Bears Ears: Views From a Sacred Land was similarly inspired by the region’s sweeping vistas and cultural wealth. Strom’s photographs also illustrate reporter Rebecca Robinson’s Voices From Bears Ears, a collection of accounts

by Native Americans and others for whom the land has special significance. Finally, archaeologist R.E. Burrillo’s Behind the Bears Ears delivers an in-depth history, engagingly told, that stretches back thousands of years.

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021 | 25

ARTS Review of reviews: Books wrote an essay for an FWP book in which he revisited the racial terrorism he encountered as a child in the South. Zora Neale Hurston chose to focus on the lore and culture of Black communities in her native Florida. But beyond the big names labored many out-of-work teachers, clerks, copy writers, and librarians who contributed to the guidebooks, too.

Book of the week Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America

by Scott Borchert (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30)

Scott Borchert’s history of the Depressionera Federal Writers’ Project is “much more than a nostalgic road trip,” said Maureen Corrigan in NPR.org. The program, established in 1935, created roughly 4,500 jobs for out-of-work pencil pushers and produced meaty and memorable guides to each of America’s then 48 states. But while Borchert’s account of the project “teems with colorful characters and telling anecdotes,” his book is most useful for highlighting a moment when an ideologically diverse and geographically scattered group of people united to tell a story about America that celebrated the nation’s multitudinous nature and pushed back against the Eurocentric tale favored by the era’s white nativists. “That tug-of-war between two visions of America, as Borchert recognizes, has only intensified today.”

Hurston doing field research in 1935

“Embracing creative types in 1935 was not straightforward,” said Max Holleran in The New Republic. With families lined up at urban soup kitchens and others starving on Dust Bowl farms, writers weren’t many policymakers’ first priority. But of the 3 million jobs created by the Works Progress Administration, the 4,500 in the Federal Writers’ Project, or FWP, weren’t many, and the program at least demonstrated a recognition of the value of knowledge workers and their skills. Various greats drew paychecks from the program, including Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, and John Cheever. Richard Wright

“Borchert’s survey is absorbing from beginning to end,” said Yuval Taylor in The New York Times. “It neglects neither telling details nor big-picture conclusions.”

He tells the story mostly through six characters, including Wright, Hurston, Algren, founding director Henry Alsberg, and a lesser-known novelist, Vardis Fisher, who wrote almost the entire Idaho guide himself. Martin Dies Jr., a Texas congressman, plays the villain whose House Committee on Un-American Activities all but killed the FWP in 1939. Hiring unknowns to craft irreverent essays on America was a radical concept. But “that’s essentially what the FWP did, and what we almost certainly cannot hope for even from a president as ambitious as Joe Biden. Unless, of course, he reads Borchert’s book.”

Novel of the week Lorna Mott Comes Home

The Reason for the Darkness of In “Eureka,” Poe described “a startling number of what would turn out to be the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science prominent features of modern cosmology,”

by Diane Johnson (Knopf, $28)

by John Tresch (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30)

Diane Johnson’s new novel, her first in a decade, is “an engaging confection,” said Claire Messud in Harper’s.

Like her most famous work, Le Divorce, it “focuses on the mutual infatuation and bemusement of the French and the Americans.” Lorna, a middle-aged art historian, leaves a cheating husband in France and returns to her native San Francisco (and three struggling adult children), intent on re-establishing herself after years abroad. As this “clever, dry, and often highly amusing” novel proceeds to cut between the two countries, it becomes a “tender but decided indictment” of contemporary U.S. culture. Set during the Great Recession, the book is “a soap of sorts, one with age-old themes,” said Susan Keselenko Coll in The Washington Post. Family, money, and the feeling of being caught between two worlds are hurdles for Lorna, who narrates the story and is prone to unkind observations about everyone around her. She isn’t the most lovable of protagonists, but “we root for Lorna all the same.” After all, “you don’t have to like a character to relate to her.”

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

The 1840s were a period of great intellectual tumult, and Edgar Alan Poe “seems to have felt the era’s ups and downs more acutely than almost anyone,” said Henry Cowles in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

In John Tresch’s “splendid” new biography, the pioneering writer is revealed to have been a polymath whose enduring poetry and fiction are best understood in the context of his scientific ambitions. Poe wished to comprehend the entire universe, and in his time, such a goal invited zigzagging between astronomy and the occult. Tresch’s title refers to a scientific lecture, “Eureka,” that Poe gave just a year before his death at 40 and that he deemed his most greatest work. When it flopped, he spiraled downward. Then again, “the circumstances that made Poe’s life so hard to live help explain why it still captivates us.”

said Jeremy McCarter in The Wall Street Journal. The meandering lecture anticipated science’s later embrace of the Big Bang and the space-time continuum; it also championed ideas that were “ludicrously wrong.”

But Tresch doesn’t worry about such stumbles. He uses Poe’s omnivorousness to justify zooming out to take in the full era, complete with portraits of scientific contemporaries Poe never knew. The tactic is “ambitious, sometimes overly so.” Still, Tresch provides enough on the sorrows Poe suffered—with finances, alcohol, and self-destructiveness— to leave a reader saddened.

Tresch’s main thesis “seems unarguable,” said Michael Dirda in The Washington Post. Poe was deeply enough engaged in scientific inquiry that his interests in that area shaped everything he wrote, including the stories that are foundational to detective fiction, science fiction, and gothic horror.

But this book shouldn’t cause anyone to conclude that Poe became the most influential American writer of all time because of his commitment to rational inquest.

“Ultimately, it is Poe’s other aspect, his ability to convey monomaniacal intensity, verging on hysteria, that we are drawn to.”

Alamy

26

We keep more people safe online than anyone else in the world.

Author of the week Brandon Taylor Brandon Taylor sees the animal in you and wishes you’d get more comfortable with it, said Mitchell Kuga in GQ.com. His new story collection, Filthy Animals, broadcasts its intent in its title, and was inspired in part by the way human behavior was talked about in the Baptist household of his rural Alabama childhood.

“With all the behavior that was bad,” he says, “you were always likened to an animal in some way.” But Taylor, now 32, remembers being so chastised at the oddest times. “It was always moments when I felt most like myself, like me at my most human, when I was a kid crying really loud or just screaming into the trees, you know? Or when I would be really, really thirsty from playing in the sun and I’d run inside and drink water, my mom would be like, ‘Oh, you drink just like a dog.’”

It’s not that Taylor romanticizes the animal world, said Sarah Neilson in Shondaland .com. He grew up hunting and eating animals. What’s more, the stories in the new book dramatize some ugly conduct, even though, like his acclaimed debut novel, Real Life, they largely unfold among academics in a Midwestern university town.

“That’s just part of how I view human nature,” he says.

“People have a lot of potential to be incredibly cruel and to really maim each other.”

But Taylor, who once again features a protagonist who is a queer Black man, never forgets that we shouldn’t be ashamed of our animal nature. “All the characters in the book have in some way been called filthy just for being their human selves,” he says. His goal, he says, is to give them back “some sense of dignity.”

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

The Book List Best books…chosen by Riley Sager In Riley Sager’s new thriller, Survive the Night, a college student on a long drive home begins to suspect that she’s riding with a serial killer. Below, the author of Home Before Dark recommends six other books about people facing danger in confined spaces.

Misery by Stephen King (1987). The good news: Author Paul Sheldon has just been rescued from a car crash by his biggest fan. The bad news: The rescuer is deranged Annie Wilkes, who imprisons the bedridden writer in her remote Colorado home. With fans like her, who needs enemies?

One by One by Ruth Ware (2020). In a recent Christie riff, Ware takes us to a ski chalet in the French Alps, fills it with cutthroat app developers on a corporate retreat, and sets off an avalanche just as a killer strikes. Ware uses cold and a lack of supplies to push the characters, guilty and innocent alike, into ever tighter confines.

No Exit by Taylor Adams (2019). What’s worse than being stranded at an isolated highway rest stop in whiteout conditions? Learning that one of the other people stranded there has kidnapped a child and is keeping her locked in a van. Adams wrings every drop of suspense out of a brilliant premise.

Unbury Carol by Josh Malerman (2018). A genre bender about a woman afflicted by dayslong waking comas that make her look like she’s dead, the no-good husband who buries her alive, and the long-lost love racing to save her before time runs out. Malerman takes the story of Sleeping Beauty, stuffs it in a coffin, and starts the clock ticking.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (1939). When the queen of mysteries published this tale of 10 strangers summoned to an island only to get bumped off one by one, she invented a new subgenre—the isolated-vacation thriller. Some of the biggest sellers today—Lucy Foley’s The Guest List and Sarah Pearse’s The Sanatorium—are in Christie’s debt.

Room by Emma Donoghue (2010). Donoghue’s novel about a boy and his mother held captive in an 11-by-11-foot space is a feat of narrative brilliance. It’s a bold move to tackle a story about captivity. It’s even bolder to tell it through the eyes of a 5-year-old who can’t quite grasp his very dire predicament.

Also of interest...in family dramas One Two Three

Morningside Heights

by Laurie Frankel (Holt, $27)

by Joshua Henkin (Pantheon, $27)

“One Two Three tells a more complicated story than its title implies,” said Bethanne Patrick in The Washington Post. In a small town that lies along a contaminated river, 16-year-old triplets befriend a boy who is new to their school and a descendant of the family whose company did the poisoning. As he emerges as an unlikely ally, the story is made “funnier and more poignant” because it’s related by the sisters.

One Two Three winds up being “one of the summer’s freshest novels.”

“Yes, men write sensitive domestic novels, too,” said Heller McAlpin in The Wall Street Journal. Joshua Henkin’s “richly textured” family portrait centers on Pru and Spence, a couple who met when she was his student. Thirty years on, Spence has developed early-onset Alzheimer’s. But just when it seems the novel “might settle into an affecting chronicle of degenerative disease,” Henkin shifts gears, creating a “profoundly moving” portrait of marriage, family, and life’s unexpected challenges.

Strange Flowers

The Netanyahus

by Donal Ryan (Penguin, $17)

by Joshua Cohen (New York Review Books, $17)

Donal Ryan returns to the Ireland of his 1970s youth in this “gorgeously wrought” novel, said Beejay Silcox in TheGuardian.com. In “a perfect lure of an opening,” 20-year-old Moll Gladney disappears one day from the family home in Tipperary. When she returns five years later, she refuses to speak of her absence, even when an outsider and his young son move in nearby. “The question that hangs over this novel is whether any explanation can compete with the immaculate mystery of none at all.”

Joshua Cohen’s novel is a “frustrating, pretentious piece of work,” said Taffy Brodesser-Akner in The New York Times. It’s also “the best and most relevant novel I’ve read in what feels like forever.” Cohen fictionalizes a circa-1960 visit to Cornell by Benzion Netanyahu, father of Bibi. The prospective professor’s host is a Jewish historian, and the story of their chaotic weekend together becomes “a brilliant examination of the Jew’s role in American society, always a tense place.”

Bill Adams, Michael Livio

28 ARTS

Every day Google blocks ʽʼʼ īĔĦĦĔIJĬ ŋđĔŒđĔĬČ ÔNJ øīŋřŒ̶

keeping scammers out of your inbox.

We keep more people safe online than anyone else with products that are secure by default̶ private by design̶ ÔĬô put you in control. g.co/safety

30 ARTS

Review of reviews: Art & Music

Exhibit of the week

that informed his later paintings of bathers. But drawing wasn’t merely a way to learn for Cézanne. This show proves that he “produced his most radical work on paper.”

Cézanne Drawing Museum of Modern Art, New York City, through Sept. 25

Doja Cat

Tyler, the Creator

Lucy Dacus

Planet Her

Call Me If You Get Lost

Home Video

++++

++++

++++

Doja Cat’s third album was made for summer, said Leah Greenblatt in Entertainment Weekly.

The Los Angeles pop singer and rapper has been a star on the rise since she scored a No. 1 hit last May with “Say So,” a slice of disco pop “as sticky and effervescent as a mouthful of Pixy Stix.” She has now followed up with a 19-song record “so fizzy and golden that its release the same week of the summer equinox hardly seems like a coincidence.” Unfortunately, “Planet Her lacks the originality Doja made her name on,” said Gabrielle Sanchez in AVClub.com.

She first won attention with a goofy song called “Mooo!” and then proved herself an innovative and “not too serious” rapper.

But here, while imitating recent pop trends and making room for guest spots from Ariana Grande, SZA, and the Weeknd, she just reveals that they’re the superior singers. Only one track, “Ain’t S---,” showcases her bristling individuality. “It creates a yearning for more of this Doja Cat, the one with guts and oomph.”

Tyler, the Creator’s outstanding sixth album “reminds the world that hip-hop’s foremost trickster is really good at this rapping thing,” said Marcus Shorter in Consequence.net.

The Los Angeles native often sang on Igor, his Grammy-winning 2019 album that put hip-hop and soul in a blender. But instead of trying to repeat that success, he has returned to his rap roots to deliver “a concise piece of work about a very confident adult realizing his own ego is both his best asset and his worst enemy.” Beyond the album’s various boasts about yachts and world travel lies a love story, said Craig Jenkins in NYMag.com. Tyler can be “one of the coldest wordsmiths working.” But here he counters coarser tracks with looser, confessional songs, such as “Wilshire,” in which he opens up about falling in love with a friend’s girlfriend.

“The album’s story, then, isn’t just that Tyler is cozy in his prosperity. It’s this jetsetter being denied access to the one thing he craves the most.”

Lucy Dacus’ new album “plays out like a shortstory collection pulled from the musician’s own life,” said James Rettig in Stereogum .com. The 26-year-old singer-songwriter grew up in a Richmond, Va., suburb, and she consulted childhood journals to recall how she perceived various events and people, including a summer sweetheart who wrote bad poetry and an older man with whom she shared a “welcomed waste of time.”

Though the album opens with a driving rocker, most of the songs are gentler, with plenty of open space for Dacus’ wry storytelling. Dacus’ bandmates in Boygenius— Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers—lend harmonies here and there, said Peyton Thomas in Pitchfork.com. But she sings alone in the centerpiece, about a youth Bible camp where she struggled to square her queerness with her faith. Refreshingly, “she’s never caught in cycles of sorrow and regret.” Instead, she is putting memories in their place, freeing herself to “dive headfirst into the clean, cool waters of the future.”

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

MoMA

“I don’t think people sufficiently You don’t just regard a Cézanne, appreciate Cézanne’s weird“you study it, registering how it’s ness,” said Sebastian Smee in done—in the drawings, with tanThe Washington Post. Often gles of line and, often, patches of described as the father or grandwatercolor,” said Peter Schjeldahl father of every modernist who in The New Yorker. This type came after him, Paul Cézanne of viewing isn’t for everyone: “I (1839–1906) “pushed himself tire of being made to feel smart to such extremes of focused rather than pleased.” Still, there attention that, almost by acciis no denying Cézanne’s genius or dent, he invented modern art.” the effect his painting had when, A new show at MoMA, which a year after his death from pneugathers some 280 drawings and monia, a retrospective of his work watercolors that the French artForest Landscape (1904–06): Pencil, watercolor, and a yen for order was shown at a 1907 exhibition ist created mostly in preparation in Paris.

“It may be too much to say that Cézanne’s drawings offer full access to for his oil paintings, puts viewers “almost he changed everything in the course of art “the depths of his fearless imagination,” behind Cézanne’s eyes” as he works out history. But he was bound to make artists said Mary Tompkins Lewis in The Wall how to transcend the ephemeral nature whom he didn’t directly influence more Street Journal. In “Study for The Eternal of impressionist imagery by discerning Feminine,” you can almost hear him think- than a little nervous.” In his insistence on structure in everything he looks upon. He imposing order on the visual world, he ing aloud as “patches of shadow and light rejected the idea that it was enough for erased the difference between figure and rehearse the role of color” and figures an artist to capture what the eye sees, and ground, and “made pictorial vision the tumbling through space generate a chaotic “his willingness to transform objective exercise of an artist’s concerted will and maelstrom. He also drew to process other reality into something stratified, ordered, a challenge to a viewer’s understanding.” works of art, particularly sculpture. In his and apparently impersonal led the way Whether you cheer him for that achieveinto cubism.” Yet Cézanne’s art was never studies of Pierre Puget’s Hercules at Rest, ment or not probably depends on how you he found a rhythmic vitality in the sculpimpersonal. “It trembles with powerfully feel about modernism in general. ture’s shadows and rippling musculature contained emotion.”

Every day Google protects 4 billion devices from risky sites,

shielding you from malware.

We keep more people safe online than anyone else with products that are secure by default, private by design, and put you in control. g.co/safety

32 ARTS

Review of reviews: Film & Home Media

Black Widow Directed by Cate Shortland (PG-13)

++++ An Avenger and her sister battle an evil patriarch.

Zola Directed by Janicza Bravo (R)

++++ A stripper stumbles into a nightmare road trip.

Johansson’s Natasha in adult“Black Widow is the most entichood, she’s about to reunite with ing Marvel lead in ages,” said her sibling to defeat the Russian Johnny Oleksinski in the New mastermind who’s still exploiting York Post. As played by Scarlett women like them. Unfortunately, Johansson in the superhero’s the story begins to feel engifirst standalone feature, the forneered, not organic, the product mer KGB killer turned justiceof a Marvel Comics brain trust seeking Avenger proves to be that “homogenizes everything it a character with a backstory touches.” As Natasha’s younger worth exploring. Because she’s Johansson: Shades of 007 sister, the “remarkable” Florence human, she’s more James Bond Pugh banters winningly with Johansson and ends than Captain Marvel, and Johansson “has Bond’s the film poised to carry the franchise into the future, same confidence and swagger.” After a riveting opening, though, this much-anticipated July 9 release said David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter.

Moviegoers could do worse, because this highly settles into a “familiar, rather wearying rock-’emsatisfying action thriller isn’t just fan service. It “goes sock-’em-blast-’em-all-to-kingdom-come groove,” said Justin Chang in the Los Angeles Times. We first beyond the mere appearance of female representation and becomes a narrative entirely shaped by the see young Natasha Romanoff on the day she and her sister learn that their parents are Russian spies. A fearlessness, smarts, and badassery of two young women determined to liberate legions of others.” heart-pounding escape only lands the girls in train(In theaters or $30 via Disney+) ing for bloodier KGB missions, and when we rejoin Paige makes “a pitch-perfect “A wild, candy-coated road Zola,” said Shannon Miller in saga,” Zola “can hardly be AVClub.com. Often the sanest contained by the screen,” person in the room as she narsaid Leah Greenblatt in rates the story, “she steals scenes EntertainmentWeekly.com. The with her deadpan delivery” even kinetic black comedy dramatizes as Riley Keough “flexes her a Twitter story that went viral comedic muscles” as the motorin 2015, when an exotic dancer mouthed would-be ally. “Zola’s from Detroit wrote 148 tweets comic absurdities are entwined chronicling a hellish road trip Keough and Paige: A double dare with its horrors in a way that that she’d just taken with a felalmost shouldn’t work,” said Stephanie Zacharek low stripper. Taylour Paige stars as Zola, who was working at a Hooters when a brash blond customer in Time. But the movie succeeds because it’s partly (here renamed Stefani) talked her into joining her on a story about two magnetic women who fall into a a quick jaunt to Florida to dance for big money. The brief, ill-advised friendship. “Even if it’s hard to like Stefani, it’s easy to see where she’s coming from; her venture veers quickly into forced prostitution and ruthlessness is a survival mechanism.” And Zola? violence, but for all of the R-rated lunacy director There’s a reason that the whole world read all 148 Janicza Bravo puts on screen, “there’s real humor of her tweets. (In theaters only) and humanity in the movie’s chaotic neon heart.”

world, you take part in “disarmingly Playing Chicory: A Colorful Tale real” but “always kind” conversations “feels like a kind act of self-care,” about issues such as workaholism and said Shannon Liao in The Washington self-doubt. The advice you’ll hear “is Post. Created by Greg Lobanov and at all times empathetic, but doesn’t published by the indie studio Finji, this sugarcoat.” When I played, my consoothing puzzle game about a dog with versations with Chicory were “hearta magical paintbrush “reminds players wrenchingly relatable,” said Ash to slow down, enjoy the finer things Parrish in Kotaku.com. To you, she’s in life, take care of the community, accomplished and creative, “so why but also, just do you.” The whimsical does she talk down to herself, hate coloring-book adventure—“one of the herself, and lash out at people who best releases this year”—also explores only want to help her?” The eventual mental health issues, and how they A dog with a paintbrush meets a world hungry for color. resolution of the conflicts she generaffect artists in particular. The title dog janitor you get to name yourself. Soon, ates feels uplifting yet authentic. “If character, a rabbit, is a master brush you discover that a growing darkness tied you ever needed to know how to repair a wielder who is responsible for painting the relationship after a seemingly unforgivable world, said Rebekah Valentine in IGN.com. to Chicory’s struggles is troubling people rift, a couple of hours with Chicory will Chicory struggles with impostor syndrome, wherever you go. As you paint your way from town to town, restoring color to the show you how.” though, so she leaves her brush to you, a THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

Marvel Studios, A24/Everett, Finji

Video games: Chicory and the ache of being an artist

Streaming tips Fun times with the girls of punk and pop...

We Are Lady Parts An all-female, all-Muslim London punk trio recruits a geeky graduate student as their new lead guitarist in this surprise new hit comedy series that’s unlike anything else around. The laughs are great, but the band really rocks, too, proving it with original songs such as “Ain’t No One Gonna Honor Kill My Sister but Me.” Peacock

Girls5eva The ’90s are back, with back problems, in this hilarious series about a Spice Girls– like group that comes out of retirement after a young rapper samples one of its songs. Sara Bareilles, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Busy Philipps, and Paula Pell costar. Peacock

Little Voice Sara Bareilles has a hand in this charming but twee series, too, writing tunes for star Brittany O’Grady, who plays a young singersongwriter trying to make it in New York City. Apple TV+

Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer To be punk in an authoritarian state requires true courage. This documentary shows how Pussy Riot, a feminist punk rock collective, became world famous for a 40-second performance at a Moscow cathedral because it cost three of the members their freedom.

Amazon Prime

Television The Week’s guide to what’s worth watching The Beast Must Die Summer revenge thrillers are the TV equivalent of page-turning beach reads—as proven by this well-acted, well-plotted, and gorgeously shot bit of British noir. The Good Wife’s Cush Jumbo gives her all as a vengeful mother seeking the hit-and-run driver who killed her young son on the Isle of Wight. Jared Harris plays the prime suspect in her amateur investigation. Available Monday, July 5, AMC+ Monsters at Work Scares are out and jokes are in at Monsters, Inc., the power firm featured in Pixar’s 2001 hit movie and in this new sequel series. Months after star employees Mike and Sulley discover that laughter is a more powerful energy source than screams, a younger monster, voiced by Superstore’s Ben Feldman, is surprised to learn that scarers are no longer being hired. Instead, he takes an entry position amid a group of misfits voiced by Mindy Kaling, Henry Winkler, and others. Billy Crystal and John Goodman return as Mike and Sulley.

Available Wednesday, July 7, Disney+ Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes The downfall of Harvey Weinstein remains a watershed moment in our culture’s battle against sexual predation. This six-part half-hour series from Ronan Farrow expands on the journalist’s Catch and Kill book and podcast, focusing on the brave women whose on-the-record testimony to Farrow and other reporters helped topple the former Hollywood mogul. Available Monday, July 12, HBO Dr. Death You trust your life to surgeons. So what if one of them is a sociopath? In an eight-part drama series based on a hit podcast about Dr. Christopher Duntsch, Joshua Jackson plays the charismatic Dallas neurosurgeon who killed two patients and maimed many more before two peers, played here by Christian Slater and Alec Baldwin, fought to have the dangerous physician delicensed and prosecuted. Available Thursday, July 15, Peacock

Once upon a time, Miley Cyrus was the secret pop star every girl wanted to be.

Even then, you will discover, Miley rocked. Disney+

Other highlights I Think You Should Leave New episodes arrive of the outlandish, often hilarious sketch comedy show from the mind of former Saturday Night Live writer Tim Robinson. Available Tuesday, July 6, Netflix Gunpowder Milkshake A team of female assassins goes rogue to save a girl from a crime syndicate in this intentionally over-the-top action thriller. Karen Gillan, Lena Headey, Angela Bassett, Michelle Yeoh, Carla Gugino, and Paul Giamatti co-star. Available Wednesday, July 14, Netflix McCartney 3,2,1 Paul McCartney joins producer Rick Rubin in a recording studio to chat, play a little music, and marvel at the artistry of various Beatles tracks.

Available Friday, July 16, Hulu

Gossip Girl

The Runaways

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

Never Have I Ever The story of a nerdy Indian-American girl’s coming of age, narrated by hotheaded tennis legend John McEnroe? Never Have I Ever broke the mold for high school dramedy series in all the right ways. Season 2 catches up with Devi (the wonderful Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) as she tries to decide whether to pair up with fellow brain Ben or hunky Paxton—or just juggle the two.

Available Thursday, July 15, Netflix

Show of the week

Hannah Montana

This biopic, about a late1970s girl band that showed the glam boys how to rock, isn’t perfect. But it’s a good time and has a great cast, led by Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett. Netflix

The misfits of Monsters at Work

Born for the throne: Jordan Alexander as Julien

Gossip Girl is back for Gen Z, and a lot has changed since Serena, Blair, and their other super-rich private-school friends ruled the Upper East Side. These days, gossip spreads by Instagram and Twitter, not a blog. As for the girls at Constance Billard, they’re a bit more diverse.

Tops in the frenemy hierarchy are Julien, an effortlessly cool super-influencer of color, and her newly arrived half-sister, Zoya. Mindless flaunting of wealth has gone out of style, but (thankfully) not raciness, cattiness, or backstabbing.

Nor has Kristen Bell, who returns as omniscient narrator. Available Thursday, July 8, HBO Max

• All listings are Eastern Time.

Disney+, HBO

34 ARTS

LEISURE Food & Drink

35

Oysters from the grill: A briny, smoky summer indulgence Using tongs, arrange oysters over hot side of grill, placing them with cupped sides down, setting them so that oyster juices don’t pour out when they open. Cover and cook, checking every minute or so, and transferring any oysters that have begun to gape open to the baking sheet. After a total of 4 minutes, remove remaining oysters whether they’ve opened or not. Place saucepan on cool side of grill to melt butter.

Grilled oysters are “one of summer’s simplest pleasures,” said J. Kenji López-Alt in The New York Times. I have always loved raw oysters, but I became an advocate of grilling after tasting the results when I worked at a sashimi restaurant in Boston and an Italian restaurant in Louisiana.

With grilling, you don’t have to bother shucking the oysters. The heat also eliminates any concern about saltwater bacteria that can become concentrated in oysters plucked from warmer waters.

A variety of oysters in butter sauces

But the best reason to grill oysters: the pleasure of devouring a hot oyster lightly touched by smoke and swimming in a rich, flavorful sauce.

Recipe of the week Grilled oysters with lemony garlic-herb butter ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pats 1 cup fresh parsley leaves, roughly chopped 1 cup fresh basil leaves 6 medium garlic cloves, finely minced 1 lemon, zested and juiced Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 24 oysters (preferably with large, deeply cupped shells) scrubbed clean of any sand or grit under cool running water

Johnny Miller/The New York Times/Redux

Prepare the grill: Ignite a full chimney of coals and spread out under one side of grill

once they are fully covered in gray ash, or heat half the burners of a gas grill to high.

Cover and let grill heat for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, cut off a sheet of aluminum foil twice the length of a 13-by-18-inch rimmed baking sheet. Crumple it so that it fits into baking sheet and the crumpling will support the oysters and prevent them from tipping.

In a food processor, combine butter, parsley, basil, garlic, lemon zest and juice, a large pinch of salt and a few grinds of black pepper. Process until herbs are finely chopped and there are no large chunks of butter remaining, about 30 seconds total, stopping to scrape sides of the food processor as needed. Transfer mixture to a small, oven-safe saucepan.

As soon as oysters are cool enough to handle, pry off top shells with a butter knife or oyster knife, severing the muscle that holds the oyster to the shell and retaining as much juice as possible. For oysters that aren’t open, pry off lids by inserting the tip of a knife into the joint and firmly twisting.

Spoon a generous 1 tsp of melted garlicherb butter into each oyster, then lay oysters directly on grates on the hot side of grill. Cook, uncovered, until sauce mixture is bubbling hot, about 1 minute. Return oysters to foil-lined baking sheet and serve immediately.

And for a spicy alternative sauce: Follow all the steps above but create the sauce using ½ cup unsalted butter, 1⁄3 cup harissa, 1 oz grated Parmesan, and 6 minced garlic cloves.

Fast-food showdown: The very best chicken sandwiches

Wine: Argentina’s other red

Less than two years ago, Popeyes fired the first crispy-breaded shot in the great chicken sandwich wars, aiming squarely at powerhouse Chick-fil-A. Other fast-food chains have since jumped into the battle, and critics have weighed in. Below, the composite rankings, derived from multiple sources.

1. Popeyes Classic Chicken Sandwich The consensus top pick features “an absurdly crispy crust and tender chicken laced with a complex spice profile that slowly, yet relentlessly, reveals itself after each bite,” said Nick Kindelsperger in the Chicago Popeyes’ standard setter Tribune. “It’s nearly irresistible.”

2. KFC Chicken Sandwich KFC’s new-in-2021 chicken sandwich is an impressive surprise.

Our tasters “liked the flavorful breading, which had an almost homemade feel to it, and the quality of the bird,” said Emily Heil in The Washington Post.

3. Burger King Ch’King Sandwich Keep an eye on this entry, which went national only in June. To us, it “rises to Popeyes’ level,” said Megan Shaltegger in Thrillist.com. The chicken is “as juicy as a fast-food white-meat filet can be.”

4. Chick-fil-A Chicken Sandwich The sandwich that launched a thousand competitors still “offers a lot to like,” said Emily Heil in The Washington Post. Especially its “craggy crust and evidence of a bath in a flavorful, pickle-y brine.”

5. Jollibee Chicken Sandwich Classic “It’s time to fear the Jollibee,” said Dennis Lee in TheTakeout.com. The upstart Filipino fast-food chain’s chicken sandwich “is all about the chicken itself,” eschewing fancy sauces to “nail the basics.”

Compiled from rankings that appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, MLive.com, TheTakeout.com, Thrillist.com, Uproxx.com, and The Washington Post.

Argentina is rightfully known for its malbec, said Michael Schachner in WineMag.com. But another adopted Bordeaux variety, cabernet franc, thrives there, too, yielding wines that are “more voluptuous than those found in the Loire” yet retain “the telltale green pepper and herbal tones that are the variety’s signature.”

2018 Zuccardi ‘Polígonos del Valle de Uco’ ($30). Our favorite opens with plum and berry tones, “while flavors of black fruit, herbs, tea, and tomato linger on the smooth finish.”

2017 Zolo Reserve Estate Grown ($20). “Fully ripe but not heavy on the palate,” this cab franc from Mendoza offers “gamy, herbal, and berry flavors” and “aromas of earth and cinnamon.”

2016 Argento Reserva ($18). In this bottle, also from Mendoza, “blackberry and cassis flavors are backed by a savory stewed note” before the “smooth and composed” finish.

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

Consumer

36 LEISURE

The 2022 Honda Civic: What the critics say Motor Trend “Well, now Honda’s just showing off.”

The automaker didn’t need to overhaul its subcompact sedan, which smashed sales records in its previous generation.

That makes the all-new Civic “a fantastic surprise,” not least because it swaps the “insectoid” looks of its garish predecessor for the “sleek, tapered,” and “more mature” stylings of the Honda Accord.

The “comfortable and well-equipped” four-door handles better, too, thanks to greater structural rigidity and a retuned suspension. It’s “a fabulously tight little car,” one that “has no right to drive as well as it does.”

The Detroit News Inside, “the layout is master class.” Honda decluttered the dash by hiding the air vents behind a long strip of honeycombed grille. Visibility improves, too, and so does rear-seat legroom. The tech is next-level, too, especially in the $28,300 Civic Touring.

That top model includes all-digital displays and the Civic’s first Bose sound system.

“The gap between luxe and mainstream is narrowing.”

Jalopnik.com Even the screen animations used for the lane-keeping tech feel like the kind of “cool little details” you see in a Tesla. Somehow,

A more grown-up sedan, from $22,695 the Honda’s sticker price has barely budged.

“There’s a reason Civics are lauded by buyers from across the spectrum: versatility in purpose and appeal.” If you’re a fan of sedans, “it’s hard not to dig this one.”

The best of...campsite cooking

Coleman Classic Propane Stove A two-burner camp stove “should be an uncomplicated product.”

Coleman’s “straightforward and rugged” cooktop lacks an ignition switch, but the timetested workhorse “cooks quickly and evenly” and “will do it for a lifetime.” $48, walmart.com Source: TheWirecutter.com

GSI Outdoors Pinnacle Camper Cookset

REI Co-op Camp Prep Table

This set of nesting nonstick cookware “has exactly the features you want and need.” Two pots, a frying pan, and enough mugs, plates, and bowls for four all fit in a bag that doubles as a wash basin. $150, rei.com Source: OutdoorGearLab.com

Stanley Perfect-Brew Pour-Over Set

“Stable yet light and easy to haul,” REI’s folding table with a 2-by-4-foot top makes a great work station for outdoor meals. With its telescoping steel legs, it “stays level even if the ground is not.”

Don’t settle for sludge when camping.

Stanley’s pour-over set “makes coffee simple.”

There’s no need for disposable filters, and “cleanup is a cinch.” The filter top sits securely on the included mug or atop a Stanley thermos.

“If you want the best insulation and the longest-lasting cooler, look no further.” Yeti’s expensive yet “super durable” icebox keeps food frosty for nearly a week. When sealed with padlocks, it becomes certifiably bear-resistant.

$100, rei.com Source: Outside

$30, walmart.com Source: TheManual.com

$350, yeti.com Source: OutdoorGearLab.com

And for those who have Tip of the week...

How to keep a dog safe in a heat wave everything...

Q Limit outings. Dogs should be kept inside as much as possible when temperatures soar. They overheat far more quickly than we do, and “heat stroke can be fatal.” For that reason, never leave a dog in a parked car.

Q Create an oasis. If you must leave your dog outside, set up a wading pool in the shade. “Don’t assume a tree or bush provides enough shade, or that a bowl left in the sun will hold a day’s worth of water.”

Q Plan your walks. “Walk your dog before or shortly after sunrise or long after sunset, when temperatures dip.” If the pavement feels scalding to your touch, “your dog will feel the same.”

Q Pay attention. “Dogs will follow you to the ends of the Earth,” even if that means succumbing to heat exhaustion. Bring a bowl and plenty of water on hikes, and be mindful. “Watch for panting, rapid heartbeat, muscle tremors, a wobbly walk.”

Source: The Arizona Republic THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

Yeti Tundra 65

“Axe throwing is the new darts.” The trendy game that has cropped up in hip bars nationwide can now be enjoyed at home with The Small Viking Axe Game. Made by a little company in northern Sweden, the adults-only game consists of a thick wooden target and three throwing axes with pencil-length handles. Because of their size, “it’s much less likely you’ll lose control.” The sharp axe heads do sink into the wood when you land a clean hit, though, especially if you soak the target before playing. “And yes, the axe spins in the air. It feels a lot like playing darts, albeit with a much cooler throwing implement.” $108, smallvikingaxegame.com Source: CoolThings.com

Best apps...

For comparing prices while shopping Q ShopSavvy helps find the lowest price on any given product by comparing listings from both online retailers and local brick-and-mortar stores. You can search by product name, or if you’re in a store, use the app to scan barcodes.

Q BuyVia works similarly, but it specializes in tech products. Beyond price comparisons and barcode scanning, the free app can send an alert when a product goes on sale. BuyVia also advises gift buyers by decoding tech jargon and quoting thirdsource product reviews.

Q MyCartSavings can track the price of an item on Amazon, Walmart, and eBay and send an alert when the price drops to your desired target.

Q Price.com and its iOS app trawl the internet for low prices, coupon codes, and sales.

Snap a photo of a product and the app will recommend similar products.

Source: PCMag.com

THE

[LUKLYULZZ HUK KLSP]LYLK Å H^SLZZS` @V\ ^PSS [HZ[L [OL KP LYLUJL PU L]LY` ZPUNSL IP[L

Get 4 Burgers & 4 Chicken Breasts

FREE

THE BEST STEAKS OF YOUR LIFE OR YOUR MONEY BACK FREE FREE separately $302.92* SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICE

Order Now!

12999

$

OmahaSteaks.com/everytime623 | 1.800.811.7832 (ZR MVY MYLL I\YNLYZ JOPJRLU IYLHZ[Z ^P[O V LY 2;>

*Savings shown over aggregated single item base price. Photos exemplary of product advertised. Limit 2. 4 free (5 oz.) burgers and 4 free chicken breasts (1 lb. total) will be sent to each shipping address that includes (65542). Free WYVK\J[ Z TH` IL Z\IZ[P[\[LK :[HUKHYK : / HKKLK WLY HKKYLZZ 6 LY H]HPSHISL ^OPSL Z\WWSPLZ SHZ[ 0[LTZ TH` IL Z\IZ[P[\[LK K\L [V PU]LU[VY` SPTP[H[PVUZ *HUUV[ IL JVTIPULK ^P[O V[OLY V LYZ 6[OLY YLZ[YPJ[PVUZ TH` HWWS` (SS W\YJOHZLZ HJRUV^SLKNL HJJLW[HUJL VM ;LYTZ VM <ZL =PZP[ VTHOHZ[LHRZ JVT [LYTZVM \ZL6:0 VY JHSS MVY H JVW` ,_WPYLZ 6*. c 6THOH :[LHRZ 0UJ c :9*

38

Best properties on the market

This week: Georgian-influenced homes 1 X Cavendish, Vt. Bates

Mansion, an eight-bedroom Georgian Revival, dates to 1898. The house has whitemaple floors, mahogany doors, a grand staircase, eight fireplaces, electrified gas fixtures, a great room with overhead balcony, a modern kitchen, a Gilded Age dining room, and a ballroom turned playroom.

Brook Farm, the 43-acre property, is a National Historic Trust site, with orchards, blueberry bushes, vegetable and flower gardens, ponds, farm buildings, 18th-century cottage, and 4-acre vineyard with winery. $1,995,000. Story and Dia Jenks, LandVest, (802) 238-1332 2 W Everett, Wash. The 1901

Rucker Mansion, a blend of Georgian Revival, Italian Villa, and Queen Anne, is on the National Register of Historic Places. The six-bedroom home features ornate woodwork, cutvelvet walls, coffered ceilings, scrollwork windows, smoking room, library, conservatory, ballroom with balconies, and views of Port Gardner Bay and the Olympic and Cascade ranges.

The 2.8-acre landscaped grounds include a carriage house with antique horse stalls. $3,500,000.

Dan Gunderson, Windermere Real Estate, (425) 280-8107

Potomac, Md.: Constance Gauthier

3 X Potomac, Md. This 2002 six-bedroom house was inspired by a pre-Revolutionary Philadelphia mansion. Inside are 12-foot ceilings, custom millwork, six fireplaces, embassy-size formal rooms, two paneled libraries, a conservatory, a main suite with fireplace and spa bath, a chef’s kitchen, a theater, and an exercise room. Outside are 3 acres of lawns, trees, specimen plantings; patios, pool, pool house, sports court, and dual garages. $5,995,000.

Marc Fleisher, Compass, (202) 438-4880

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

Best properties on the market

39

4 X Dedham, Mass. Greystone, a six-bedroom

Georgian stone manor, was built in 1903. The house has decorative moldings, aged paneling, mahogany doors, nine fireplaces, grand entry hall, library, living and dining rooms, and a wing with chef’s kitchen, butler’s pantry, and hunt room. The 3-acre landscaped property on a private road includes a carriage house with two apartments and parking for five cars, and is near hiking trails, the commuter rail to Boston, and the Charles River kayak launch. $3,200,000. Robert Keogh, Hope McDermott Real Estate, (617) 922-7579 2 1

3

4 6 5

5 W Redding, Conn. Orchard Hill Farm is a 26-acre estate an hour

from New York City. Its five-bedroom Georgian Colonial–style manor, built in 1990, features custom millwork and built-ins, mahogany doors, oak floors, six fireplaces, a chef’s kitchen, and a primary suite with dual dressing rooms and steam shower. The property includes a 12-acre meadow with an apple orchard, 4 acres of lawn, a walled garden with a potting shed and apiary, a bluestone terrace with outdoor kitchen, and a post-and-beam party barn. $3,700,000. Michael McKee, William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty, (203) 249-9565

Steal of the week

6 X Colchester, Conn. The Nathaniel Foote house, built in

1785, retains its oak and chestnut floors, five fireplaces, antique window glass, and built-ins. Currently a mixeduse rental, it includes a first-floor dentist’s office with full handicap access and a second-floor two-bedroom apartment with new kitchen and bath. On the 3.4-acre grounds are trees, a lawn, a parking lot, and a post-andbeam building remodeled as a yoga studio. $465,000.

Kim Veronesi, Coldwell Banker Realty, (860) 214-4076 THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

The bottom line Q U.S. households added $13.5 trillion in wealth last year, according to the Federal Reserve, the biggest increase in records going back three decades. More than 70 percent of the increase in household wealth went to the top 20 percent of income earners.

About a third went to the top 1 percent.

The Wall Street Journal Q At least 9 million Americans who lost work during the pandemic didn’t receive any unemployment benefits.

Rejections varied by state.

California paid more than 70 percent of claims for regular unemployment during the 13 months beginning in March 2020, while Montana only paid benefits to 11 percent of those who applied.

Bloomberg.com Q The median earnings for Black men in 2019 amounted to only 56 cents for every dollar earned by white men.

In 1970, it was 59 cents.

The New York Times Q About threequarters of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. in mid-June went for the sticker price or above, according to research firm J.D. Power. The average was about 36 percent before the pandemic. Last month’s median sticker price, or MSRP, was $42,636.

The Wall Street Journal Q Heading into the July 4 holi-

day, gas prices are hovering at $3.09 a gallon on average nationally, the highest in seven years, according to data from AAA. Last year, only a quarter of U.S. gas stations were selling fuel above $2.25 a gallon.

MarketWatch.com Q In May, there were 500,219 applications for new businesses, the second-highest month on record, below only last July. Last year was the best year on record for new business creation since the Census Bureau began tracking it in 2004.

NPR.org THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

BUSINESS The news at a glance Facebook: Major antitrust suits dismissed Regulators have had a hard A federal judge sent regulators time “articulating what harms “back to the drawing board” this Big Tech is inflicting,” said the week in their effort to “brand Financial Times in an editorial.

Facebook as an illegal monopoly,” In the digital economy, we pay said Scott Rosenberg in Axios “with personal information, not .com. An antitrust suit filed by the currency,” and it’s not clear that Federal Trade Commission was the argument against Facebook deemed “legally insufficient” by can be framed under current U.S. District Judge James Boasantitrust law. The new FTC berg, who chastised the agency What makes a monopoly? chair, Lina Khan, believes “tech for failing to establish Facebook’s abuse of its market position beyond “a nod to the companies should be thought of as public utilities, conventional wisdom that Facebook is a monopo- requiring interventions that consider total welfare rather than pure economic efficiency.” There is list.” A separate suit filed by 46 states over Facea growing push to change antitrust laws to give book’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp regulators more power. “As sclerotic as the politiwas also tossed, for coming years too late. On cal process may be, it may be the quicker route” cue, investors sent Facebook’s total market value to curbing the power of Big Tech. over $1 trillion for the first time.

Airlines: United bets on rebound with 270-plane order United Airlines announced “the largest aircraft purchase in its history and the biggest order by any airline in about a decade,” said Chris Isidore in CNN.com. The order of 270 planes—200 from Boeing and 70 from Airbus—represents a big wager on the return of travel. The Boeing order is for 737 Max jets, cleared to fly again in November after two fatal accidents. The new planes will replace smaller regional jets that were unpopular with passengers. United said it also intends to hire 25,000 people over the next five years to handle the increase in passengers it expects.

Vaping: Juul agrees to settlement on teen marketing Juul agreed to pay North Carolina $40 million to settle claims that it marketed its e-cigarettes to teenagers, said Virginia Bridges in the Raleigh News & Observer. The lawsuit charged that the vape maker, part owned by cigarette giant Altria, using “sleek devices and sweet flavors,” reversed a “historic decline” in teen nicotine use. Juul was able to reach the settlement deal without admitting that it knowingly hooked kids on its pods, but it faces 13 similar suits filed by other states and hundreds more from individuals, school boards, and counties.

Mortgages: New protections for troubled borrowers New rules aim to “prevent avoidable foreclosures” before the government’s forbearance period expires in August, said Andrew Ackerman in The Wall Street Journal. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a temporary regulation this week stipulating that “mortgage lenders generally can’t foreclose on a home without first contacting homeowners to see if they qualify for a lower interest rate or some other loan change that makes it easier to repay.” Approximately 7 million homeowners took advantage of the government’s offer to postpone their monthly payments; however, “many borrowers will simply have their missed payments tacked on to the end of their loans.”

Banks: Raising payouts to shareholders “The country’s biggest banks are ready to put more money in their shareholders’ pockets,” said Lananh Nguyen in The New York Times.

Banks were hit with limits on dividends and buyback because of the pandemic; this week those limits were lifted after banks passed the Federal Reserve’s annual stress test, which assesses how banks would fare in a global economic crisis. Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo said they would double their dividend, while Bank of America will repurchase $25 billion in shares.

Kim Kardashian’s Olympic debut Kim Kardashian West’s company has become the official underwear outfitter of Team U.S.A., said Anna Kambhampaty in The New York Times. Yes, Ralph Lauren is still designing the opening and closing ceremony looks for American athletes, and Nike still provides competition garments, “including sports bras and spandex shorts.” But a new partnership is filling out the rest of the Olympic underwear drawer.

Kardashian West’s form-fitting shapewear brand, Skims, “will provide the official underwear, loungewear, and pajamas for female American athletes at the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games this summer.” It’s not the first “official underwear for Olympians”: Jockey is the supplier of undies for Team Australia.

Kardashian West, Skims’ largest shareholder, has another Olympic connection: Her mother, Kris Jenner, was married to the decathlon gold medalist Caitlyn (then Bruce) Jenner.

Reuters, AP

40

Best columns: Business

41

Goliaths: Microsoft’s quiet triumph Despite all of Microsoft’s other lines A “rejuvenated” Microsoft is finding of business, a lot is still riding on new ways to grow, said Jordan Novet in Windows 11, said Ina Fried in Axios CNBC.com. After announcing the up.com. It “still runs on nearly threecoming release of its first new version of quarters of the world’s computers,” Windows in almost six years, Microsoft but has been steadily “losing ground saw its market capitalization reach $2 trilto MacOS and Chrome OS.” That’s a lion last week—the second corporation, problem, since “the company’s ‘more after Apple, to reach that milestone. personal computing unit’, which inThe pandemic undoubtedly “bolstered cludes Windows, Surface, and Xbox,” demand for products such as the Teams made up 31 percent of its revenue last chat app that kept organizations funcquarter. The company’s biggest future tioning.” But it’s not just the pandemic; bets rely on Windows as well. “HoloMicrosoft’s share price has surged “more Lens, the augmented-reality headset, than 600 percent since Satya Nadella Investors love Nadella’s Microsoft. is at its core a Windows PC on your replaced CEO Steve Ballmer in 2014.”

While Ballmer failed to recognize the coming mobile-phone boom, face.” Microsoft said in 2015 that Windows 10 “was going to be the last version,” said Bob O’Donnell in USA Today. “Clearly, Nadella’s formula has been “looking beyond its dominant Windows operating system.” He’s acquired LinkedIn, the code-storage things have changed.” With Windows 11, Microsoft is making “an incredibly strong statement about the ongoing importance of service GitHub, and video-game developer Mojang, the maker of Minecraft. And Nadella has put Microsoft’s cloud business, Azure, PCs.” Enabling Android apps to run on Windows “shows that Microsoft has adjusted its thinking on how people use PCs.” on track to be the company’s largest source of revenue by 2022.

The rivalry with Apple goes back “to the formative days of the personal computer era,” said Tim Higgins and Aaron Tilley in The Wall Street Journal, and tensions are heating up again. Last month, Apple accused Microsoft of “pulling the strings” behind a high-profile court case involving the video-game developer Epic Games. The iPhone maker tried to discredit the testimony of a Microsoft vice president Epic called as a witness to discuss “her failed attempt to bring a bundled video-game service” to the App Store. And last week, Microsoft announced it was “lowering the cut it takes on content sold on its new app store,” a move some observers saw “as a swipe at Apple.”

It turns out that famed libertarian technology mogul Peter Thiel didn’t need a man-made island to avoid paying taxes, said Justin Elliott. He simply used a Roth IRA to amass a $5 billion tax-exempt fortune.

The program was created by the late Delaware Sen. William Roth Jr. in 1997 “to allow ‘hardworking, middle-class Americans’ to stow money away, taxfree, for retirement.” The rules limit contributions to $6,000 a year, taxed up front. But “from the start, a small number of entrepreneurs made an end run around the rules.” Thiel opened a Roth account in 1999 and contributed $1,664. But he used that money to buy 1.7 million shares of his months-old

startup, PayPal, for $0.001 per share. “Investors aren’t allowed to buy assets for less than their true value through an IRA.” But since the value wasn’t set on a public stock exchange, Thiel had a readymade excuse. By the time eBay purchased PayPal in 2002, that investment was worth $28.5 million. He used those tax-free proceeds for other investments. A $500,000 stake in Facebook in 2004 grew his Roth to $870 million by 2008. “As his fortune ballooned, Thiel scolded Americans for their financial imprudence,” advising people to “live modestly and save well.” Of course, it’s easier with a $5 billion escape hatch from the income tax system.

The option to work remotely is “the new signing bonus,” said Chip Cutter and Kathryn Dill. More Americans are quitting their jobs than at any time in at least 20 years. After almost a year and a half of working from home, many white-collar employees say they aren’t willing to give up the flexibility that Chip Cutter and Kathryn Dill comes with remote working. Some companies have The Wall Street Journal made bold statements—“No remote work,” or, conversely, “We’re getting rid of all of our offices.”

Then they bump into the realities of a labor shortage that has handed workers unprecedented leverage.

In practice, “it is the employees who are primarily

calling the shots.” Some companies are acting preemptively to stave off an exodus. The insurance giant Allstate “recently decided 75 percent of roles can be performed remotely, and another 24 percent on a hybrid basis.” A few firms, particularly those on Wall Street, are forging ahead with the traditional five-day workweek. The split among businesses between those who expect workers back in the office and those who don’t is letting potential employees choose how much workplace flexibility matters to them. It’s “like a free market of the future of work,” says one top software executive.

How to save $5 billion for retirement Justin Elliott

ProPublica.org

Thanks, but we prefer to stay home

Getty

Microsoft was the subject of the first major tech antitrust fight two decades ago, said Robert Hackett in Fortune.com, but in recent years it has developed a “seemingly uncanny ability to fly under the radar.” This may be because it is “the rare Goliath that does not tend to dominate its main markets.” Yes, Windows is the leader for operating systems, but “Amazon Web Services eclipses Azure; Facebook tops LinkedIn; Sony PlayStation beats Xbox; Zoom beats Teams.” If Microsoft were a country, “its athletes would reign as Olympic silver medalists.” After almost getting broken up once, Microsoft seems happy with duopolies— and that has served shareholders very well.

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

Making money

42 BUSINESS

Fico: A credit score past its prime from applicants’ checking or savings acFico’s credit-scoring monopoly is facing counts at other financial institutions,” new challenges, said Caroline Conway in such as whether they ever bounced a the Financial Times. Created in 1989 by check, to improve their chances at securthe data firm Fair, Isaac, and Co., the Fico ing a credit card without having a credit score—which uses a set of credit variables score. Skeptics may consider it another to access risk along a scoring range from “ploy to rope customers into onerous 300 to 850—“became central to U.S. terms,” as some banks did with subprime mortgage lending in 1995, when Fannie loans before the 2008 financial crisis, said Mae and Freddie Mac began mandating Brian Chappatta in Bloomberg.com. But I its use for mortgage-backed security underview it more optimistically: Big banks are writing.” Fannie and Freddie, federally finally recognizing the “credit invisible,” chartered corporations that buy loans from who are disproportionately Black and banks, largely determine bank lending Mortgages use a two-decade-old credit model.

Hispanic Americans, and are “doing what standards, so Fico quickly became “fully they should have been doing long ago” to help them. embedded in mortgage approvals.” Now the metric dominates other lending areas as well, but it leaves an estimated 53 milA major barrier to changes in credit scoring is that mortgage lion Americans without traditional credit. Competing models lending is based largely “on a formula that hasn’t changed much may finally be starting to gain traction. The three largest credit in two decades,” said Penelope Wang in Consumer Reports. bureaus—Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion—“have been purWhile many consumers are now familiar with their credit scores suing alternative credit data and analytics” that include factors through bank websites and credit information apps, often the such as rental and utility payments. Some of that data goes into Fico score you’ll get from those sites is much higher than your the 15-year-old VantageScore, which has expanded credit access mortgage Fico. One homebuyer in Atlanta walked in to get a “to 40 million otherwise unscored individuals.” But it hasn’t yet mortgage with what she thought was an excellent credit score ended Fico’s effective monopoly in mortgage lending. of 760, only to find that her mortgage credit score was just 700.

The old formula “doesn’t reflect some of the more consumerBanks are beginning to look beyond the credit score, said friendly changes that have been introduced” over the years—for Peter Rudegeair and AnnaMaria Andriotis in The Wall Street instance, dropping paid-off collections and counting medical Journal. JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bancorp are debt less heavily—and so judges consumers more harshly. among 10 banks that are starting to “factor in information

What the experts say Aggressive fundraising tactics by political campaigns are especially likely to ensnare older Americans, said Shane Goldmacher in The New York Times. Manipulative donation requests can trick people of all ages into giving more money than they intended. But an analysis of refunded donations, “which often occur when contributors feel unsatisfied or duped,” found that in 2020 “four times as much money was refunded to donors 70 and older as to adults under the age of 50.” Some email campaigns specifically target older internet users with subject lines like “Social Security.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent emails saying “Final Notice,” making it appear “as if actual bills are at risk of defaulting.” The Trump campaign last year received a “surge of fraud complaints” after it “made donations automatically recur weekly,” a practice widely seen as the “most egregious” fundraising abuse.

Why ETFs beat the mutual fund “America’s 40-year love affair with the mutual fund looks to be over,” said Stephen Foley in the Financial Times. Mutual funds have been losing ground to exchange-traded funds for years. Now a proposal for a big THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

hike in the capital gains tax for wealthy investors “could accelerate the shift.” Mutual fund managers “are required to distribute the capital gain when a fund sells a stock that has appreciated.” By contrast, managers of ETFs, which are structured as a single stock that investors can buy or sell, rarely have to sell stock in the companies they own. The flight to ETFs creates new mutual-fund risks, as shrinking funds might “find themselves with no choice but to sell the underlying stock.”

Money losers turn to the stock market Companies that are already public and losing money are using the current stock frenzy to raise cash, said Lu Wang and Vildana Hajric in Bloomberg.com. “Almost 750 moneylosing firms have sold shares in the secondary market” in the past 12 months. They outnumber stock offerings from profitable companies by 2 to 1, the biggest margin since at least 1982. While many companies are unprofitable at the initial public offering, older companies that have been losing money for years—such as AMC and GameStop—going back to sell more shares represent a new trend. Analysts “warn that the flood of shares coming from money losers is becoming extreme” and could represent “a bad omen for the market.”

Founded in 1998, the Global Lyme Alliance (global lymealliance.org) is committed to fighting Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, funding research for treatments and an eventual cure, as well as support and education for people suffering from Lyme. GLA has given nearly $12 million to institutions and researchers who have decoded the Lyme genome, detected how Lyme can survive antibiotic drugs, were the first to prove the existence of a chronic Lyme condition, and contributed key findings to the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of long-term Lyme and other tick-borne illnesses. GLA also provides one-on-one peer mentors to help provide emotional support to patients and caregivers, and connects them to financial and educational resources.

Each charity we feature has earned a four-star overall rating from Charity Navigator, which rates not-for-profit organizations on the strength of their finances, their governance practices, and the transparency of their operations.

Four stars is the group’s highest rating.

Getty

Unscrupulous political fundraising

Charity of the week

Obituaries The software entrepreneur who went rogue John McAfee made his fortune as the creator of antivirus software, 1945–2021 but his tech savvy was soon overshadowed by his bizarre escapades as a globe-trotting hedonist. The computer engineer started McAfee Associates in his Northern California home in 1987 and was soon earning $5 million a year from his ubiquitous program. After cashing out for an estimated $100 million in 1994, the self-declared sex, drugs, and firearms enthusiast embarked on a series of fantastical exploits that led to criminal charges across the U.S., Europe, and Central America. In 2012, he fled Belize after being sought for questioning in the shooting death of a neighbor whom McAfee had accused of poisoning his guard dogs. The 75-year-old McAfee was found dead of apparent suicide in a Spanish jail last week, hours after a court had approved his extradition to the U.S. to face tax evasion and security fraud charges. “I’m a madman to some people because I don’t follow the normal rules,” he once said. “The drummer that leads me is an odd drummer, but I follow the sound.”

John McAfee

McAfee grew up in Roanoke, Va., where his father, a road surveyor and an abusive alcoholic, “took his own life when John was 15,” said The Guardian (U.K.). After studying mathemat-

ics at Roanoke College, McAfee took a series of programming jobs, including at NASA and Xerox, and developed “a growing dependency on alcohol and drugs.” He “landed in Silicon Valley,” where he joined Alcoholics Anonymous after suffering a hallucinogen-fueled breakdown at work. He was at Lockheed when he read about a new Pakistani computer virus “and created a program to neutralize it.” After selling McAfee Associates, he embarked on other ventures, including a Colorado yoga retreat and a New Mexico “aerotrekking” business—which involved flying very small aircraft close to the ground at high speeds.

He moved to Belize after losing most of his fortune during the 2008 financial crisis, said The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). News accounts depicted McAfee “as a latter-day Kurtz leading a Heart of Darkness–style existence,” with a jungle encampment, a private security force, and a harem of teenage girlfriends. Returning to the U.S. in 2013, he married a prostitute, tried to run for president on the Libertarian ticket, and “reinvented himself” as a promoter of cybercurrency, said The Washington Post. “Boy, I do live an exciting life,” he said. “It’s too exciting, sometimes. But that happens if you live on the edge....

Sometimes, I fall off.”

The People founder who got the Zapruder tape During his six decades with the Time Inc. media empire, Richard 1928–2021 Stolley covered some of the most momentous stories of the postwar era. As a writer and editor at Life magazine, he reported on the civil rights movement and scored one of the great scoops by securing the rights to the Zapruder film of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.

Stolley would change the nature of journalism itself as the founding editor of People magazine, which was spun off from a celebrity section in Time in 1974 and soon became the country’s most-read magazine. People spawned a new era in personality-driven journalism and, Stolley argued, provided a revelatory service to both celebrities and readers. Many famous people “have to figure out who they are by talking to another person,” Stolley said. “They can pay $120 to a psychiatrist or they can talk to a People reporter.”

Getty, Newscom

Richard Stolley

Born in Pekin, Ill., Stolley “knew from an early age that he wanted to be a journalist,” said The New York Times. He landed a job at his local newspaper at age 15, and after studying journalism at Northwestern, he joined Life in 1953. He rose quickly through the ranks and was working

as the Los Angeles bureau chief when JFK was shot. Stolley hopped a plane and landed in Dallas hours after the assassination, where he was tipped off about a businessman named “Zah-proo-der” who had caught the killing on an 8 mm camera. He found Abraham Zapruder in the phone book, arranged a 9 a.m. meeting—and arrived at Zapruder’s house at 8, said the New York Post.

With dozens of other reporters banging on the door, Stolley bought the footage for $150,000.

Life published 31 frames from the film, but not the frame that showed “the president’s head exploding in red.”

Selected to helm People, Stolley put actress Mia Farrow on the inaugural issue’s cover, said The Washington Post. Although he gave room inside the magazine to “ordinary people doing extraordinary things,” Stolley had a simple formula for choosing cover stars: “Pretty is better than ugly. Rich is better than poor.” And crucially, “Anything is better than politics.” He edited People for eight years and was often asked if the magazine would exhaust possible topics. Stolley had a stock answer: “I don’t think we’re ever going to run out of people.”

43 The idiosyncratic senator who hated war and elitism Mike Gravel knew how to grab the public’s attention.

A Democratic senator from Alaska, he made headlines in 1971 by reading much of the Pentagon Papers—a Mike leaked collecGravel tion of secret 1930–2021 papers on U.S. involvement in Vietnam—into the Congressional Record. He spent three hours reading to a subcommittee, finally bursting into tears and declaring, “Metal is crashing through human bodies, because of a public policy this government and all of its branches continue to support.” He was just as passionate in his antiwar convictions when running as a fringe presidential candidate in 2007, asking then– Sen. Barack Obama during one debate, “Tell me, Barack, who do you want to nuke?”

Born to a working-class family in Springfield, Mass., Gravel gravitated toward politics early but “sensed that he would be hindered by his lack of connections and polish,” said The Washington Post.

He lit out for pre-statehood Alaska in 1956, working in real estate and as a brakeman on trains before being elected to the state legislature in 1963. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968, he battled fellow Democrats to secure the construction of the TransAlaska oil pipeline, which aided his 1974 re-election.

After losing the Democratic primary in 1980, and living through a quarter-century of financial struggles, Gravel staged an unconventional comeback, said The New York Times. He announced a presidential bid in 2006, promising to end the Iraq War and to allow citizens to enact laws via public referendum—a way, he said, to circumvent Congress and “minority rule by the elites of society.” That campaign floundered, as did a 2020 campaign run mainly by two teenage staffers. “My glands work in a certain way,” Gravel once admitted, “that makes me stand up, foolishly sometimes, and fight.”

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

The last word

44

Stolen by the sea Twelve-year-old Arunay Pruthi was swept out to the ocean by a ‘sneaker wave,’ said Nora Mishanec in the San Francisco Chronicle—one of many casualties of a little-understood Northern California coastal hazard. bottom of the steps leading to Cowell Ranch State Beach, 8-yearold Siddhant Pruthi grabbed a fistful of sand and turned to his older brother, Arunay.

Ahead lay the Pacific Ocean and an afternoon free of the pandemic’s confinements.

“Dadabhai,” Siddhant said, addressing his 12-year-old brother with a Bengali term of endearment. “This is a bad beach.”

I

weeks before the Pruthi family’s visit to the coast on Jan. 18, seven people had been fatally swept from Bay Area beaches into the Pacific Ocean.

N THE SEVEN

On Nov. 26, the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day, 4-yearold Katherine Huajun Xu of Pinole died after being He was referring to the dragged into the surf on a rocks in the sand, nothing family outing to McClures more. The boys’ parents Beach at Point Reyes National walked over to greet their Sharmistha and Tarun believe their son’s death could have been prevented.

Seashore. Her father charged cluster of friends camped near in after her and survived. The the base of a cliff. The tight-knit pandemic the group hauled the family onto the waves carried Katherine’s body back to bubble of four families often met along sand: Siddhant, then Tarun, and finally shore 45 minutes later.

Northern California’s San Mateo County Sharmistha. Tarun and Sharmistha lacked coast on weekends. This was the Fremont the strength to stand. But they had survived. On Dec. 8, a handyman was on a break from a job in Pacifica when a wave family’s first time at this secluded cove.

“Arunay is keeping his head above water,” snatched him from the rocks beneath the Sharmistha and Tarun Pruthi chatted with someone told him. The statement struck municipal pier. The season’s horror intensithe others while pitching a tent they had Tarun as odd. Arunay wasn’t in the water. fied on Jan. 3, when three members of a brought to shelter themselves from the Sharmistha, surrounded by the strangers Petaluma family were killed at Blind Beach midafternoon sun on a warm January who she said saved her life, regained her in Jenner. Michael Wyman, 40, drowned day. The beach was full of families. They senses and stood. What she saw as she while trying to save his two children, didn’t think anything of their youngest son looked toward the ocean made her want to 7-year-old Anna and 4-year-old John, who approaching the water’s edge to feel the rush back in: “I saw his head,” she said. “I had been swept out to sea. Rescuers recovcold surf graze his feet. knew who it was.” ered Wyman’s body that day. The children’s bodies were recovered two weeks later.

But the wave that came next wasn’t ankleUnbeknownst to the parents, as their deep, as previous waves had been. This one attention was focused on saving Siddhant, The next Sunday, Jan. 10, saw two more blasted Siddhant as he tried to run from it, another huge wave had hit the shoreline deaths. First, a wave pulled three friends first knocking him down and then dragand swept Arunay into the ocean. Tarun into the ocean beneath Point Bonita ging him under. In the split second it took called out to Arunay, but he knew it was Lighthouse at the Marin Headlands; only for Sharmistha to turn around, husband too late. A rip current was pulling the boy two made it back to shore. Less than one Tarun was already sprinting into the ocean. farther and farther away. hour later, 40 miles down the coast, at Sharmistha ran after him. She could feel the Pescadero State Beach, a wave overtook Dispatchers’ notes in the 911 call log only sand shifting beneath her feet as she threw Xuanxi He and her husband as they looked hint at Tarun and Sharmistha’s agony as herself into the water toward her husband for sea urchins. The husband washed back they watched their son in the violent surf. and son. Rocked by the force of the oncom“Too far out for anyone on the beach to get to shore and survived. Xuanxi, her waders ing waves, soon all three were immersed in him,” a dispatcher noted after speaking with filling with water, was pulled under. the churning water. a bystander. Three minutes later: “Trying to Witness descriptions of the wave that After several attempts to propel himself stay adrift.” Three minutes later: “Starting pitched Arunay into the surf bore the halltoward Siddhant during the lull between to go under for longer periods of time.” marks of a sneaker wave: Called “extreme waves, Tarun could not reach his son. runup events” by scientists, they catch Nearly two hours after they had last seen Sharmistha managed to grab hold of victims by surprise, dragging them into their son in the water, the parents left the Siddhant’s hand, but only for a moment, the ocean as the ground beneath their feet beach at the urging of San Mateo County losing her grip as one wave after another “suddenly becomes inundated,” researchers sheriff’s deputies. It was dark as they crashed over them. Sharmistha said she ascended the wooden stairs to the overlook at Oregon State University wrote in a 2018 thinks she lost consciousness underwater. paper, one of the first attempts to define the and walked to the parking lot to be interphenomenon. viewed for a police report and await word On the beach, friends and strangers linked arms to form a human chain. Somehow, THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

on their son. A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter

Anyone who has spent time along the

Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle/Polaris

U

whirred overhead, its roving search lights trained on the ocean. In the place where Arunay had been, the lights found only the sea.

PON REACHING THE

The last word Northern California coast has probably experienced waves that arrive during periods of calm and travel far higher up the shore, swamping chairs and towels and sand castles that had seemed well out of harm’s way. Sneaker waves similarly catch beachgoers off-guard, but are rarer events that strike with much more water and with the force to knock adults off their feet.

In any given year, the Bay Area may see one or two sneaker wave deaths. But the period from November to January was deadlier than any stretch authorities had seen before.

And they knew the reasons: an unusually high number of sneaker waves, a warm spell caused by La Niña weather, and a flood of families using beaches to escape the pandemic shutdown.

H. Tuba Ozkan-Haller, a professor of earth, ocean, and atmospheric sciences at Oregon State University and an expert in wave mechanics and nearshore hydrodynamics, said she had not heard of sneaker waves until she moved to Oregon 20 years ago. They affect a subset of coastal areas where the continental shelf is too narrow to provide a buffer from powerful waves unleashed by oceanic storms. Aside from Northern California, Oregon, and southern Washington, Ozkan-Haller knows of only one other area with a similarly hazardous submarine topography: Iceland.

Pruthi family

No single agency tracks sneaker wave deaths year to year. One reason for the lack of data: Experts shy away from labeling what is and isn’t a sneaker wave, unless they witness the event. Deaths like Arunay’s are rarely attributed to sneaker waves. State Parks labeled his disappearance an aquatic incident; the National Weather Service called it a high-surf death, referring to the category of warnings in effect that day.

ket and a backpack full of dry clothes for Arunay. He might be waiting on the beach.

When they descended the staircase, they encountered two strangers who had heard a boy was missing and were searching the sand. Tarun and Sharmistha joined them, roaming the quarter-mile stretch before heading back to the hotel after midnight.

At daybreak, the helicopter returned. Coast Guard search-and-rescue teams use computer modeling to calculate how long a person in distress can survive in open water, accounting for age and body type. Using real-time data from ocean buoys, the teams try to predict where a person would drift.

Pruthis’ circle of friends planned to continue on. One, Maneesh Saxena, set up a fundraising website and a Facebook page called “Search for Arunay Pruthi” that, within days, gained thousands of followers and more than $200,000. Acquaintances and strangers contributed from as far away as India and Germany.

The family hired helicopters to fly low as Eric Jones, a paramedic who had once pulled victims of the Sept. 11 attacks from the Pentagon, and other volunteers peered into each cove to scan for Arunay’s white shirt. A drone operator, meanwhile, took tens of thousands of thermal camera scans of the water. A boat with a sonar tracking device scanned the seafloor.

Each day brought them closer to the sixweek cutoff point at which it becomes unlikely a body will resurface. The volunteers who returned to the water day after day said they sought to give the Pruthi family one thing: closure.

Arunay went under as his brother was rescued.

To avoid unnecessary danger to rescuers, a mission coordinator helps make the decision to end searches when there is no hope.

Three hours after resuming operations in the morning, two Coast Guard representatives met the Pruthis at the hotel. There was, they explained, little chance of finding the boy alive. “They were showing us drawings and data and all the research,” Tarun said. “They gave us a bunch of papers.”

The parents could not believe their son was lost. To them, Arunay was still the boy at Near the stairs leading down to the beach the dinner table who had, less than two where Arunay was last seen is a small blue weeks earlier, compared the Capitol Hill riot sign that reads “Tsunami hazard zone,” accompanied by the image of a cartoon per- to the plot of Animal Farm; the son whose son scrambling to escape an oncoming wave. interest in politics had grown in the months since his mother took him to a Black Lives There is no sign warning against sneaker Matter protest; the soccer fanatic; the child waves, which strike Bay Area beaches with who alternately fought and played with far greater regularity than tsunamis. his younger brother when the coronavirus Tarun and Sharmistha never imagined shrank their worlds overnight. they would lose one son, and almost lose At 10:20 a.m. on Jan. 19, after 17 hours, another, to a phenomenon they hadn’t heard of. In the aftermath, they wanted two the Coast Guard called off its search. things: to find his body and to make sure HE SAN FRANCISCO Bay Area coast no parent lost a child the same way again. stretches 148 miles from the mouth of the Gualala River in Sonoma ARUN AND SHARMISTHA left and County to the jutting ledge of Año Nuevo checked into a room at the Half Point in San Mateo County. Over millions Moon Bay Lodge after 10 p.m. The of years, the surging Pacific has marked its parents hugged their son Siddhant goodbye— terraced cliffs with coves and caves.

“Go with Auntie for the night”—but then After the official search had ended, the returned to Cowell. They brought a blan-

T

45

T

For Tarun, the hardest part of moving on was knowing his son’s death could have been prevented. Shortly after the couple moved to California from Maryland, they took Arunay to the beach in Half Moon Bay, not far from where he would vanish nine years later. Siddhant was not yet born.

The family didn’t even think to take sweaters that spring day in 2012, Tarun said. In their minds, the California coast evoked images of beach balls and children splashing in the surf. California schoolchildren regularly rehearse for earthquakes and practice fire drills, yet few leave school with a commensurate respect for the dangers of the ocean. “We just didn’t know,” Tarun said. “We didn’t even think that this could happen.”

In early March, Arunay’s parents commissioned one last flight to look for his body.

The helicopter scanned the coast from Bodega Bay to Big Sur. Through the window in the cockpit, Jones pointed binoculars into every cove, hoping for any sign of a body, a T-shirt, a clue.

The day was exceptionally calm. The shadow of the spinning blades danced on the ocean as the helicopter flew over the craggy pinnacles that jut from the water near Cowell Ranch State Beach. The pilot hovered over the place where Arunay was last seen as Jones opened the door and let go of a bouquet—white roses, lilies, and snapdragons bound with twine. The flowers hit the water and disappeared.

Adapted from a story that originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Used with permission.

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

The Puzzle Page

Crossword No. 607: Four for the Fourth by Matt Gaffney 1

2

3

4

5

6

17

24

32

37

41

60

61

42 46

45 50

51

47

52

48 53

55

56

58

59

62

63

64

65

66

67

ACROSS 1 Christina of Sleepy Hollow and Speed Racer 6 ___ rally (high school event) 9 Its current world champion is Norway’s Magnus Carlsen 14 Ada County is this state’s most populous 15 Prefix for cycle or brow 16 Send in, as a payment 17 Immigration-based comedy released the week of July 4 (in 1988) 20 Lake carved out by glaciers 21 “I ___ it all along!”

22 Awesome, in Millennial slang 23 Revolutionary War drama released the week of July 4 (in 2000) 26 Sheer spite 27 Sound from a 59-Down 28 Cpl. or 46-Across, for example 29 Bobbers in the water 30 Certain sib 31 “Whoa!” in three letters 33 Go below the horizon 34 Ask nosy questions 35 With 50-Across, sports comedy about our national pastime that was released the week of July 4 (in 1992) 37 Silent Witness channel 40 Horrific 41 Golfer’s goal, often

39

33 36

40

54

38

26

35

49

13

29 31

34

12

22

25

30

11

19

28

44

10

21

27

57

9 16

18 20

43

8

15

14

23

7

The Week Contest

42 Historian’s period 43 Italian city where The Taming of the Shrew is set 46 See 28-Across 48 Nervous little chuckle 49 Eagerly anticipating 50 See 35-Across 54 ___ Speedwagon (“Keep On Loving You” band) 55 Cookie with an amusing Twitter account 56 Scott Turow best-seller about his first year at Harvard Law School 57 Will Smith thriller that, for obvious reasons, was released the week of July 4 (in 1996) 62 Time-tested saying 63 Sound from a crow’s nest 64 Spa brand 65 Wore 66 Watch carefully 67 Smart but possibly also cool DOWN 1 Ocasek who was lead singer of the Cars 2 Wedding affirmation 3 Required little effort 4 Sound from a nest 5 ___ Sea (it separates Italy and Greece) 6 Shot ___ (piece of Olympics equipment) 7 Long-stemmed mushroom 8 Key instrument 9 Flight workers 10 Preferred pronoun, to some

THE WEEK July 9/July 16, 2021

11 Estevez of The Breakfast Club 12 Mount Etna’s island 13 Brazil has 26 18 Decide to put on a jacket, say 19 Got together 23 16th of a cup (abbr.)

24 Locks on brushes 25 Mayor Virginia Raggi’s city 26 “On the other hand...”

29 Speller’s event 32 Way through a mountain chain 33 Operation performer 35 Towing org.

36 Big wound 37 “Beauty is in the eye of the ___” 38 Make coffee or beer 39 “Love and Marriage” lyricist Sammy 40 Programmer’s problem 43 Societal outcast 44 Plan for a meeting 45 Thingamajig 47 Long-term container 50 Gold prospector’s goal 51 Participate in a certain sport at the Tokyo Olympics 52 Good Morning America rival 53 Christopher who played Superman 55 Word after U.S., French, or Australian 58 Self-worth 59 Farm female 60 Put 2 and 2 together, say 61 “I’m so happy for you!”

This week’s question: Foo Fighters recently played to a capacity crowd of 20,000 vaccinated-only fans at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, the first concert in the iconic arena in more than a year. If the band were to rewrite a rock song and turn it into a pro-vaccination anthem, what should the track be titled?

Last week’s contest: Scientists at the University of California, San Diego have been studying the effects of cannabis on lobsters, inspired by a Maine restaurateur who experimented with getting lobsters high to see if it would make for a more humane execution. Please come up with the name of a restaurant that specializes in stoned seafood.

THE WINNER: Catch of the Dazed Eric Skagerberg, Santa Rosa, Calif.

SECOND PLACE: Grass-Fed Seafood Susan Faretra, Concord, N.H. THIRD PLACE: Red-Eyed Lobster George Strong, Plano, Texas For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go to theweek.com/contest.

How to enter: Submissions should be emailed to contest @theweek.com. Please include your name, address, and daytime telephone number for verification; this week, type “Vax anthem” in the subject line. Entries are due by noon, Eastern Time, Tuesday, July 13. Winners will appear on the Puzzle Page next issue and at theweek.com/puzzles on Friday, July 16. In the case of identical or similar entries, the first one received gets credit.

W The winner gets a one-year subscription to The Week.

Sudoku Fill in all the boxes so that each row, column, and outlined square includes all the numbers from 1 through 9.

Difficulty: hard

Find the solutions to all The Week’s puzzles online: www.theweek.com/puzzle.

©2021. All rights reserved.

The Week (ISSN 1533-8304) is published weekly with an additional issue in October, except for one week in each January, June, July, and September.

The Week is published by The Week Publications, Inc., 155 East 44th Street, 22nd fl., New York, NY 10017. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send change of address to The Week, PO Box 37252, Boone, IA 50037-0252. One-year subscription rates: U.S. $199; Canada $229; all other countries $267 in prepaid U.S. funds. Publications Mail Agreement No. 40031590, Registration No. 140467846. Return Undeliverable Canadian Addresses to P.O. Box 503, RPO West Beaver Creek, Richmond Hill, ON L4B 4R6.

The Week is a member of The New York Times News Service, The Washington Post/Bloomberg News Service, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services, and subscribes to The Associated Press.

Sources: A complete list of publications cited in The Week can be found at theweek.com/sources.

H M R S

46

Everyone has a book in them

a It’s called n autobiog raphy

Call oouirr mem rts expe y toda

+1-855-334-8091

lifetimememoirs.com/week

YOU GO T HE DI STAN CE F OR YOU R BUSI N E SS. SO DO WE .

Every business is on a journey. Whether you’re expanding your clientele or hiring new employees, Dell Technologies Advisors are here to help with the right tech solutions. So you can stop at nothing for your customers.

Contact a Dell Technologies Advisor at 855-341-5261 or Dell.com/smallbiz

XPS 13, featuring up to an 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i7 processor

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Copyright © 2021 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. Dell Technologies, Dell, EMC, Dell EMC and other trademarks are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. Other trademarks may be trademarks of their respective owners. 557798