New York Magazine February 18-March 3, 2019

1 For New York’s most recent cover story, Mark Harris, David Edelstein, Max Read, Andrea Long Chu, and others examined how a 1999 blockbuster predicted—and shaped—the world today (“The Matrix Is Everywhere,” February 4–17). @stdondley tweeted, “I’ve been saying this for a while now: The Matrix has poisoned people’s minds. And now there’s an article that has concluded the same thing.” Talk Poverty’s S.E. Smith added, “It’s so bizarre that The Matrix, a world created by two trans women, has become such a touchstone for misogynistic garbage people.” Some readers felt we might have gone too far in our analysis, including commenter lkswodnawel, who wrote, “Can we just stop being so introspective about everything in this life, especially movies?” But Camila Gomez reflected, “Matrix will be forever one of my…

MONTEREY COUNTY, in Northern California, is one of those places that appear to tell a tale of two Americas. The part that runs along the Pacific coastline, from Pebble Beach and Carmel down to Big Sur, is breathtaking and breathtakingly affluent. Travel 20 miles inland, over a narrow ridge of mountains, and you end up in the Salinas Valley, the Salad Bowl of the World, which is greened by endless rows of lettuce, cauliflower, and broccoli and tended by a predominantly immigrant and poor community of farmworkers. Some of those fields run practically up to the main entrance of Natividad Medical Center in the town of Salinas, where, more than two decades ago, an environmental epidemiologist named Brenda Eskenazi came to study the effects of pesticides on children’s brain development.…

March 29, 2017: Overturned the proposed ban on chlorpyrifos, a pesticide linked to cognitive and behavioral deficits in children. August 2, 2018: Announced a plan to “correct” emissions standards for cars and light trucks. Traffic-related air-pollution exposure has been linked to respiratory problems, early signs of neurodegenerative disease, and even autism-spectrum disorder. August 21, 2018: Rolled back restrictions on pollution from coal-burning power plants. The EPA’s own analysis predicts 1,400 more deaths annually from the resulting increase in pollution. August 29, 2018: Proposed dismantling Obama-era regulations governing mercury emissions from power plants. Scientists have known for decades that developing fetuses are especially susceptible to mercury poisoning.…

THE LAST TIME you went out for your weekly linguine appointment, you may have noticed some unfamiliar noodles on the menu. “Sopre-huh?” “Mallor-what?” New York is in the throes of a pasta boom, with chefs clamoring to find obscure shapes and sometimes even inventing them. “It’s like Play-Doh, right? It’s a dough that we can do anything with,” says Vic’s chef Hillary Sterling. “There are endless possibilities of pasta.” This rush of innovation is being driven in part by increased knowledge of regional Italian cooking, but the internet’s influence is also at play: YouTube makes research easier while Instagram encourages finding foods that stand out. However, no budding pasta geek’s library is complete without a copy of the Encyclopedia of Pasta, which Lilia and Misi pasta savant Missy Robbins says…

ON A DAY when the cold makes the skyline snap into focus as if you’re seeing it through new lenses, Hudson Yards seems more virtual than real. Jagged and reflective, the five new towers have a high-definition clarity that the physical world mostly lacks. At a distance, the tallest looks like a high-browed robotic duck with a beak so generous you could almost land a helicopter on it. That’s the outdoor observation deck, which juts out 65 feet and comes to a point 1,100 feet above the street. From here—or better yet, from the set of bleachers that allows you to peer over the glass railing—I can look down on the Empire State Building. I can behold the widescreen, high-res view of a New York more orderly and wondrous than…

➨ No garbage trucks In the (forthcoming) western section of Hudson Yards, the trash from the apartment buildings will be piped out through three separate chutes at 45 mph. It’ll be ground and dehydrated along the way, ending up at a dispensary on 12th Avenue. ➨ Chilled roots The trains running under the platform generate heat, and it can get up to 150 degrees down below. So the deck is filled with pipes that circulate cool water under the trees to keep them from being cooked. ➨ Its own comms network Usually, your emails and calls go out on a network to your service provider—Verizon or whomever—and then back to your building. Here, there’s a private loop of fiber, embedded in the platform under the buildings and connecting them all,…