Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2-15, 2020 i New York Magazine

1 For New York’s latest issue, literary critic Molly Young explored the seemingly unstoppable spread of corporate-speak (“Garbage Language,” February 17–March 1). Many people who work in industries inundated with “garbage language” contributed their own experiences. “Recalls to mind Goethe’s quote: When ideas fail, words come handy,” commenter LaliZ wrote, explaining that as an editor in the financial industry, “I do battle against garbage language every day. Sometimes I even win.” Kelleyalison wrote, “I hate how this garbage language has seeped into academia, so that ‘on-boarding,’ ‘think partners,’ etc. are now in fairly common usage even at the Ivy League school where I work.” Patrick Porter elaborated on that: “For the rest of us, some of whom work in education, garbage business speak is worse than demoralizing. It relentlessly promotes…

WHEN Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster met Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss last year, it was inevitable that they would have a lot to talk about. Both sets of siblings are twins. Both had been rowers. Both had founded companies to make money in the world of blockchain technology. In other words, both are literal, actual tech bros. “We were telling them this story about how we realized we could get a lot more out of teaming up as twin brothers working together,” Griffin recalled of the Cock Foster–Winklevoss summit. “And they were like, ‘Oh yeah, we hear you on that.’ ” The Winklevosses—Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard schoolmates, immortalized in The Social Network, who famously sued him for stealing Facebook and later became bitcoin billionaires—were then about to buy the 24-year-old Cock…

THE STRATEGIST HAS SURFACED thousands of best-in-class drugstore items over the years, from the nasal inhalers that tuk-tuk drivers use in Thailand to the circa-1864 mouthwash that historian Walter Isaacson swears by. But neither a Rite Aid nor a high-end apothecary carries all of our specific favorites—so we created our own drugstore at thestrategist.com. Here, we’ve stocked a perfect medicine cabinet with products recommended by our own staff writers, frequent travelers, celebrities with exacting taste, and lots of doctors (of course, you should consult your own doctor, too). These creams, sprays, and powders tend to cost about as much as any of their CVS counterparts—with exceptions, like the $23 Yves Klein–blue eyedrops that turn the reddest eyes a pleasing white. VISIT thestrategist.com for product details and where to buy everything.…

AT SNAPCHAT’S New York offices this winter, members of the creative team behind the popular reality series Endless were feeling the limitations of mobile storytelling. The episode they had gathered to edit included a big set piece: Star Summer McKeen and her friend Jessica Matis walk through Times Square without realizing that McKeen’s ex-boyfriend, Dylan Jordan, is there at the same time. As McKeen disappears into the crowd, there is a Sliding Doors moment; behind her, Jordan appears on a billboard-size screen, filmed by a camera that captures footage of tourists. On a reality show made for TV, this is where you would cut to a wide shot, measuring the distance between the two exes. But on one made for a phone-size screen, it didn’t quite … fit. The team…

Parul Sehgal is a book critic at the New York Times. She’s known for her clear-eyed, razor-sharp reviews, such as her recent dissection of the controversial novel American Dirt. Before joining the Times in 2012, she was books editor for NPR. Sehgal has lived in India, Hungary, the Philippines, and Canada and now resides in Fort Greene with her daughter and husband. Here’s how she gets it done. On a typical morning: I usually go to bed around 3 or 4 a.m. I have a 3-year-old daughter, so I need those unbroken hours to trick myself into thinking and reading. My husband handles the morning with my daughter. I emerge after about five hours of sleep, like a character stumbling onstage in a Eugene O’Neill play. There are simmering resentments…

DECEMBER 15 Goldman Sachs … promises to stop financing Arctic oil drilling and thermal coal operations anywhere. JANUARY 14 BlackRock … the world’s largest asset manager, announces the company will begin to move away from investments that “present a high sustainability-related risk,” such as coal—while, for the time being, continuing to invest in oil and gas. JANUARY 16 Microsoft … announces that it aims to go carbon negative by 2030 and to remove as much carbon from the atmosphere by 2050 as it has ever emitted, acknowledging that the climate crisis “will require technology that does not exist today.” FEBRUARY 12 BP … vows to become carbon neutral by 2050, though careful analysis suggests it is using that term in a quite misleading way. In February, BP said it planned…

ZOË OLIVER 22, Student, Crown Heights You’re so flexible. I’m double-jointed in my shoulders and can put both my legs behind my head. That’s why I love coming to Movement class—because I can do things with my body that are almost grotesque, but it’s good. How’d you find the class? Julia was my teacher at NYU. It can be really emotional. Once, I came in and I was in a horrible mood. I’d just had this missed connection on the subway—this handsome guy tried to start a flirty conversation with me, and I panicked and ran away, totally sabotaging myself. We were stretching, and Julia mouthed to me, “Are you okay?” I started crying and cried for two hours while I moved. Everyone was kind of emotional that day, laughing…

Wife 1 Catherine of Aragon married 1509–33 Played by Adrianna Hicks IRL: Daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain and widow of Henry’s brother, Arthur. Her only child to survive was Mary (later, “Bloody Mary”). He tried to dump her for Anne Boleyn, using her previous marriage to his brother as an excuse. But the pope wouldn’t grant him an annulment. So Henry invented the Church of England in order to get one. AS A DIVA: In Hicks’s interpretation, Catherine is a combination of J.Lo, Jennifer Hudson, and Lemonade-era Beyoncé. HER SONG: “No Way,” an up-tempo kiss-off number. “The first song has to be what the audience expects: ‘Sit down, shut up, I’m an independent woman,’ ” Moss says. “Before you then do interesting stuff.” STANDOUT LYRIC: “You…

A FEW YEARS AGO, before Matthew Schneier worked at the Cut, we were colleagues on the fashion circuit. One bleak February afternoon, we were walking along 52nd Street between shows and found ourselves in front of one of mid-century New York’s dining temples, La Grenouille. “Let’s have a power lunch!,” I suggested—half-joke, half-dare—knowing it was a bit reckless to enter the golden, floral glow of the bar area, where for more than five decades the rich and influential (not to mention the rich and idle) have closed deals over pike quenelles and white Burgundy. Luckily for our credit cards and our deadlines, the restaurant was closed for a private event that day. But I always wanted to go back, and when Matthew suggested it as the place to shoot New…

IF YOU’RE READING this in the Northern Hemisphere, there’s a decent chance you’re wearing a turtleneck right now. And you may be getting tired of it. You can do only so much Love Actually cosplay before you’re itching for something new. Why not decorate your turtleneck? The obvious way is with a necklace, a trick that has been used by everyone from Gucci Mane to Joyce Carol Oates to the Rock. But there’s another level: Take a cue from the Schiaparelli 2020 haute couture show, where the jewelry wasn’t an afterthought but the main event. Even if you don’t have access to couture jewelry, you can still adorn your neck like a Christmas tree. The Tony Soprano Wearing a black turtleneck with a leather jacket and a gold chain is…

LIKE MANY PEOPLE, I have become engrossed in Cheer, Netflix’s new docuseries about the superstar squad at Navarro College. But mostly I have become enthralled by one character, a real-life legend who makes Friday Night Lights’ Coach Taylor look like a rec-league zhlub: Coach Monica Aldama, the Bill Belichick of cheerleading with perfect square French tips. “If you’re not giving your best, you’re going to have a problem with Monica,” her husband says with a haunted look in his eyes. “She doesn’t put up with weakness.” Clearly, her tactics work, because Monica’s kids would do anything for her. As one of her cheerleaders says when Monica asks her to try an incredibly dangerous toss for the first time, “People have broken their necks doing this, but Monica needs me to…

I LIVE IN A WORLD OF THIN PEOPLE. I interview the famously thin—actors, models, musicians, influencers—but mostly I observe them. I know their habits, but I’m also aware that I am not one of them. Once, I went to a photo shoot to meet the actress Emily Blunt for a magazine profile I was writing. She was getting her hair and makeup done, so I was killing time before we were introduced. I set my bag on a green velvet sofa and eventually made my way to a table strewn with the remnants of a catered lunch: quinoa salad, grilled chicken, iced tea, and a plate of dairy-free, flourless brownies. I sat down and ate one brownie after another, the way I always eat things, without savoring them, as if…

Here is a partial list of what one company promises sitting under a small panel of red lights will improve: athletic performance and recovery (owing to faster muscle recovery and joint repair), sleep (thanks to increased melatonin production and a “healthy circadian rhythm”), and skin quality (because of reduced inflammation and increased collagen production). These red lights, in this case made by Joovv, are one of dozens of at-home versions of what’s known as light therapy, or photomedicine, or photobiomodulation, a technology based on the idea that light can change us on a cellular level. This past summer, the journal Frontiers in Medicine published an issue dedicated to photomedicine, and its 12 articles have an overwhelming effect similar to Joovv’s marketing copy, covering dermatological concerns like aging, skin cancer, and…

Before Iggy Azalea became synonymous with a certain kind of cultural appropriation, her song “Work” was everywhere in 2013. The lyrics “Walk a mile in these Louboutins / But they don’t wear these shits where I’m from” reference her rise from a 16-year-old with “No money, no family” to a person who raps professionally about luxury shoes. Now a younger generation has borrowed the song for its own uses on the social-media platform TikTok. There you’ll find users making “Louboutins” out of mundane household objects: oven mitts, Legos, watermelons, trash-can lids, entire trash cans, string-cheese sticks stuck on forks taped to feet—the possibilities range from the surreal to the dangerous.…

Cordoning off the five boroughs with the NYPD and National Guardsmen is logistically inconceivable and, more importantly, ineffective. Even a voluntary quarantine is unlikely because there is no reason to believe New Yorkers would cooperate. Either people will flee in anticipation or they will “von Trapp it out of the city,” says Kelly Hills, a bioethicist who studies quarantines. During the 2003 SARS outbreak, Toronto attempted to quarantine 23,000 people—but only 57 percent complied. More recently, the mayor of Wuhan estimated that almost half of the city’s population left before the quarantine was enacted.…

THE MORNING AFTER PRESIDENT TRUMP delivered his self-congratulatory State of the Union speech while still in the midst of impeachment, several reporters are waiting in a Providence, Rhode Island, vegan café for Michael Bloomberg. Most of them came from Philadelphia last night, where they covered his nighttime rally that had a laser-light show, buffet, open bar, and rap performance. Like the rest of the media at the time, they have been caught up in a kind of fever dream in which, suddenly, in the brief interval between the Iowa collapse of Joe Biden and the appearance of Bloomberg himself on a Nevada debate stage, it seems possible that a plutocrat could waltz his way to the Democratic nomination as comfortably as he had to the New York City mayoralty, including…

ANY CHANCE YOU COULD GRAB US a bottle of wine or something? Lol,” former California congresswoman Katie Hill texted. We settled on rosé. Hill and I had never met, but she was in the midst of a professional and personal crisis. It was 4:30 in the afternoon, and she would be going live on air with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes that night. “ROUGH day,” she wrote. I brought wine as well as a bag of pretzels to Hill’s Manhattan hotel room. Wearing leggings and a hoodie, she took the wine and glanced down at her phone. An editor at the New York Times had questions about an op-ed the 32-year-old Hill wrote about contemplating suicide, one that’s set to publish the next day; they’d been going back and forth for hours.…

OUTFITTED IN GRUNGY FISHNETS, an array of glittery hair clips, and a black satin slipdress layered atop a long-sleeved T-shirt, Sophie Allison keeps the dream of the ’90s alive—never mind that the 22-year-old musician, who records as Soccer Mommy, was alive for only about two and a half years of that decade. Actually, maybe that’s the point. “I love ’90s stuff, I love early 2000s stuff,” she tells me one drizzly Thursday in mid-February before we head out to go antiquing at Furnish Green, this shop that’s hidden away on the third floor of an old building near Herald Square. “I feel like that’s because that was the culture when I was, like, a 5-year-old,” she adds. “I was imagining being a teen and being a young adult and how…

ABOUT HALFWAY through Eliza Hittman’s third feature, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, comes an almost overwhelmingly intimate and excruciating scene. Autumn (newcomer Sidney Flanigan), 17, sits on an exam table in a New York Planned Parenthood; she has covertly traveled there from rural Pennsylvania with her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. A counselor calmly performs a pre-abortion interview. “I want to spend a few minutes talking with you about your relationships,” says the counselor. “All you have to do is answer ‘Never,’ ‘Rarely,’ ‘Sometimes,’ or ‘Always.’ ” Hittman’s camera trains on Autumn, who up until now has been a fortress against any sort of attention—because for most of her short and seemingly painful life, it has been of the unwanted male variety. As the counselor asks whether…

SOMETIMES WHEN I’M WEARING a low-cut top, I’ll glance down at my own cleavage. What’s going on down there? Does the inside of my blouse look like the balloon-filled ceiling of a political convention before the big drop? Like two hearty scoops of flan wobbling serenely in their fabric bowls? On a recent inspection, I was dismayed. There, at the bottom of a once-lavender-colored bra I had lived in for the better part of two years, my breasts pooled limply in its tired, gaping cups. From its murky depths, the tops of my areolae gazed up at me sadly. Despite the titillating promises made by lingerie ads, most bras aren’t so much seductive accessories as basic utilities, a containment device you need to be able to move through the world…

HOW FORTUNATE WE ARE TO COEXIST with so many remarkable life-forms: cave salamanders that refuse to move for years. Marsupials that die after marathon mating sessions. And a bird so alluring I will spend the rest of my life in awe of her beauty. Writer Jordan Blok blessed my Twitter timeline with three images of the sexiest bird I’ve ever seen. “Thinking about ~her~,” they tweeted. I can’t stress this enough: Everything about this bird is sensual as hell. Her name: secretary bird (hot). Her scientific name: Sagittarius serpentarius (incredibly voluptuous). Her lashes are long. Her legs go on for miles. And she has this look on her face that says, I’m going to peck your eyes out. Render me blind, you stunning queen. If you’re the last thing I…