Innholdsfortegnelse for November 14, 2025 i The Week Magazine

“Nazis. I hate these guys.” The first time I heard that line, I was 10 years old and sitting in a grubby cinema somewhere in southwest England. I was watching rapt as Indiana Jones—appearing in his last good movie, 1989’s The Last Crusade—realizes he’ll have to face off against his old goose-stepping foes. I like to think that I nodded enthusiastically at Indy’s words, because I also hated Nazis. While World War II was at that time some four decades in the past, it continued to rage in the British popular imagination. My childhood was filled with stories of relatives who’d survived the beaches of Dunkirk and tussled with the Luftwaffe in the skies over Europe. My bookshelves were stacked with comics like Battle and Commando, in which steel-helmeted German…

■ A Tennessee man spent more than a month in jail for criticizing President Trump. Larry Bushart, 61, posted a meme of President Trump with the words “We have to get over it”—a comment Trump made after a 2024 school shooting—in a Facebook thread on Charlie Kirk’s murder. Sheriff Nick Weems of Perry County promptly arrested Bushart, claiming he “intentionally sought to create hysteria within the community.” Bushart was released without charge last week. ■ Kentucky’s secretary of state issued a public advisory on Election Day, reminding Kentuckians they’re not eligible to vote in other states’ elections. After receiving multiple queries from concerned residents, Michael Adams wrote on X that Kentucky’s polling places were closed because “Kentucky votes next year. You cannot vote today in Kentucky for the mayor of…

Ferndale, Mich. Terrorism charges: Three men from the Detroit metro area were charged this week with attempting to aid the Islamic State and plotting a terrorist attack. The FBI arrested Mohmed Ali and Majed Mahmoud on Halloween and charged them with possessing AR-15-style rifles, handguns, and shotguns that prosecutors said were to be used in a terror attack in Ferndale, outside Detroit. A third Dearborn man, Ayob Nasser, was later arrested in connection with the alleged plot. The criminal complaint said that Ali and Mahmoud modified a semiautomatic weapon to increase its rate of fire. They allegedly called their plot “pumpkin day” and practiced shooting at firing ranges and outdoor locations. Authorities found over 1,600 rounds of ammunition in their homes. The complaint alleges that the pair discussed traveling to…

Jimmy Wales is often referred to as the good guy of the internet, said David Shariatmadari in The Guardian (U.K.). But the idea that the Wikipedia co-founder deliberately used his tech skills for good—creating a free repository of human knowledge—rather than to make billions of dollars misses the mark. “Early in the career of Wikipedia, a lot of journalists were asking that question, thinking I was some kind of communist because, like, why would you be doing this thing as a nonprofit,” says Wales, 59. “But I’m not. I’m actually quite in favor of business and capitalism and all that.” Wales, a former trader, says he just likes doing interesting work. “And Wikipedia is super interesting. I visit with Wikipedians around the world, go to schools, and meet prime ministers.”…

Highly processed foods make up most of our diet. Is that so bad? What are ultra-processed foods? It’s a bit of a fuzzy area, but the gist is they’re refined foods made from ingredients not typically found in home kitchens. Brazilian researcher Carlos Augusto Monteiro popularized the term in 2009, when he classified food into four categories. At one end of the spectrum lie foods from the farm, such as vegetables, fruits, milk, eggs, and meat; at the other, ultra-processed foods, including sodas and energy drinks, one-box meals, junk foods like chips, and fast food. The addition of high-fructose corn syrup is usually a hint that a food is ultra-processed. Eating these products has been linked to diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, depression, and obesity. Given that nearly one-third of teenagers…

Idrees Kahloon The Atlantic For the first time in nearly a century, said Idrees Kahloon, the U.S. will soon hit “net zero migration,” with fewer foreign-born people entering the country than leaving. The Trump administration has triumphantly predicted that net zero will be achieved this year, as a result of deportations, border controls, and extreme restrictions on work and student visas. The consequences will include “a shrinking population,” fewer workers to pay for retired Americans’ benefits, and “lower economic growth.” We know this “because the U.S. has tried it before.” Previous immigration crackdowns in the 1930s, the 1960s, and the early 2000s, paradoxically, did not produce more jobs or higher wages for native-born workers. Why? Deprived of cheap, low-skilled labor, employers often turn to automation or offshoring rather than increase…

Ruth de Aquino O Globo Rio de Janeiro Governor Cláudio Castro has unleashed Rio’s brutal police to do their worst, said Ruth de Aquino. Last week, 2,500 officers raided Vila Cruzeiro, a poor favela or shantytown, and killed over 130 suspected gang members. Mothers wept as residents, including children, carried bloody, mutilated bodies out of the Mountains of Mercy woods and laid them in the narrow streets. “There are people who have been executed, many of them shot in the back of the head, shot in the back,” resident Raul Santiago told AFP news agency. While most Brazilian authorities decried the bloodshed, Castro proclaimed the operation a success, saying no civilians were killed. It’s true that many residents are fed up with gangs who extort them “for access to essential…

A man has set a new record by living 271 days with a genetically modified pig kidney. Tim Andrews, 67, received the transplant at Massachusetts General Brigham in January. Suffering from end-stage kidney disease, he’d been undergoing six hours of dialysis three days a week. Andrews knew the “xenotransplant” procedure was risky but thought it was worth it if he could get off dialysis, at least for a little while, and help further the science of transplants. The pig kidney, which came from a genetically edited animal named Wilma, allowed him to return to normal activities: cooking, walking his dog, and on one occasion even throwing the first pitch at Fenway Park. “I was alive, and I hadn’t been in a long time,” he told CNN earlier this year, describing…

(Knopf, $30) The 670 pages of Philip Pullman’s new franchise capper “fly past at an astonishing rate,” said Laura Miller in Slate. The novel wraps up The Book of Dust, Pullman’s follow-up trilogy to the seminal fantasy series His Dark Materials. And though the book’s structure proves “rickety” at times, The Rose Field is “jam-packed with chases, daring escapes, and strange and magnificent creatures” as Lyra, the Dark Materials child heroine who has now reached her 20s, continues searching for Pan, her daemon or animal spirit, who earlier abandoned her. Her quest is revealed to be “inextricably entwined” with a global battle against theocratic authoritarianism, said Sarah Crown in The Guardian. “Here more than ever,” the world of the book “appears as a charged and slanted version of our own.”…

The Wounded Generation by David Nasaw (Penguin Press, $35) “David Nasaw’s book is a corrective,” said Brandan P. Buck in Reason. We rightly celebrate all who served in World War II, but “as he skillfully shows, victory came at a steep cost for those who survived the fighting.” Many suffered post-traumatic stress disorder before it was understood. Others endured alcohol addiction, marital trouble, and unemployment, and while Nasaw outlines the full scope of such challenges, his account “shines brightest” when it zooms in on individuals. McNamara at War by Philip and William Taubman (Norton, $40) This “fascinating” new biography attempts to humanize Robert McNamara, and it does, said Julian E. Zelizer in Foreign Policy. The defense secretary who expanded the U.S. war in Vietnam was tortured by the war from…

(R) A female boxer battles bias, abuse, and long odds. “There’s familiar, there’s formulaic, and then there’s Christy,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. A biopic that follows the dramatic life story of Christy Martin, a pioneer of women’s boxing, “this manipulative hybrid of Rocky, Million Dollar Baby, and Monster is so rote that even an AI wouldn’t dare try to pass it off as original.” Meanwhile, Sydney Sweeney’s lead performance “almost transcends her role’s derivativeness,” and although her work hasn’t guaranteed her a Best Actress nod, it affirms that the American Eagle model and steadily rising star is “capable of making headlines for more than just her jeans.” Thanks to the muscle she added and the months of training she put in, “you truly believe that Sweeney has…

Petite Plume ‘The Olivia’ Wide Leg Pima Pajama Set, Made with 100% Peruvian pima cotton, these PJs are “oh-so-buttery and cozy, yet still incredibly breathable.” Thanks to the “swingy” silhouette and pima’s resistance to wrinkling, you’ll look put together even while lounging. $138, petite-plume.com Source: Town & Country Damson Madder ‘Frill Florie’ Stripe Pajamas The playful, ruffled trim of this classic striped set is a typical Damson Madder flourish. The London-based brand “excels in personality pajamas,” and this 100% organic cotton set is no exception. $155, nordstrom.com Source: Vogue Eberjey x Casa Del Sol ‘Inez’ Silk Short PJ Set The magic of this lightweight pajama set lies in its 100% mulberry silk, which is washable and thermoregulating. It’s cozy in the winter and in the summer “keeps you feeling cool,…

President Trump renominated Elon Musk ally Jared Isaacman to lead NASA this week in a major about-face, said Kasha Patel in The Washington Post. “Trump originally named Isaacman,” a billionaire who has twice flown to space privately, “as his intended NASA nominee in December, but he withdrew the nomination in May” as Trump’s relations with Musk soured. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been running NASA on an interim basis and has floated the idea of folding it into his agency. Duffy drew Musk’s ire when he said that NASA would reopen contracts for a lunar lander under development by SpaceX. Treasure hoard: Buffett discloses massive cash holdings Warren Buffett is still holding firm to a historic cash pile, said Yun Li in CNBC.com. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway last week “reported a…

■ One key safeguard for your finances Every family needs a code word to keep their finances secure, said Julie Jargon in The Wall Street Journal. Generative artificial intelligence is getting increasingly good at being able to “mimic real people’s voices and con their loved ones out of money.” You might get a call someday from someone who sounds just like your grandson saying he “needs money or a gift card.” Earlier this year a woman in Colorado was scammed out of $2,000 after falling victim to an AI deepfake phone call that “sounded just like her daughter.” The simplest solution to this growing problem is creating a family code word or a code question “to which only a family member would know the answer.” If the caller can’t produce…

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Bill, do you really think “humanity isn’t doomed?” asked The Wall Street Journal. For years now, Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire turned philanthropist, has insisted that “a warming climate is an existential crisis that demands urgent political action.” But Gates has apparently changed his mind. Last week, in advance of the coming COP30 climate conference, Gates wrote that he thinks rising temperatures might be a serious problem, but climate change “will not be the end of civilization.” Gates calls this a “tough truth.” It’s only tough, though, if you’ve been mired in “Armageddon orthodoxy.” Now, Gates admits, the biggest problems for the world’s poor “are poverty and disease, just as they always have been.” Activists in wealthy Western countries have pushed to eliminate fossil fuels.…

What happened The Supreme Court this week appeared skeptical that President Trump has the legal authority to unilaterally impose tariffs on goods from across the globe, signaling that the justices may be prepared to strike down his signature economic policy. At oral arguments in a case that Trump described as “life or death,” several conservative justices joined their liberal bench mates in grilling Solicitor General D. John Sauer about whether Trump is usurping Congress’ taxation power. Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, expressed concern that handing tariff power to the president could lead to a “one-way ratchet” in which Congress struggles to reclaim its authority. Meanwhile, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, another Trump appointee, questioned whether it was necessary to tax imports from allies for national security reasons. “I mean, Spain?”…

Distancing, after President Trump claimed in a 60 Minutes interview that he had “no idea” who Changpeng Zhao is, despite having pardoned the cryptocurrency billionaire of enabling money laundering just days earlier. Zhao’s firm Binance has had business dealings with the Trump family’s crypto company World Liberty Financial. Emergency rations, after a 77-year-old Frenchman fell into a 130-foot-deep ravine while cycling home from a market in the mountainous region of Cévennes. He was rescued three days later, having sustained himself on several bottles of red wine that mercifully survived the fall. Fido 2.0, after Tom Brady revealed that his young pit bull mix Junie is actually a clone of Lua, a family pet who died two years ago. The ex-NFL star thanked Colossal Biosciences, which specializes in “species restoration,” for…

At 17, Keira Knightley suddenly became one of the most famous women in the world, said Caitlin Moran in The Times (U.K.). The British actress made her big-screen breakthrough with Bend It Like Beckham and, over the next year, starred in Pirates of the Caribbean and Love Actually. “I remember waking up one day and there were 10 men outside my front door,” says Knightley, 40, “and they didn’t leave for about five years.” It was the early 2000s, and the paparazzi would shout abuse—“It was mostly ‘whore’; ‘slut’ sometimes”—as she left her home in a bid to get a newsworthy reaction. Knightley chose passive resistance. She wore the same clothes every day and would simply stop walking if photographers were following her. “I’d literally stand there. Stock still. It…

Krissy Clark Vox As millions of food stamp recipients face real hunger, the myth of the “welfare queen” has come roaring back to life, said Krissy Clark. Popularized by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, this mythical figure was based on “a very old set of tropes and stereotypes” about shiftless Black women who refuse to work to keep the welfare spigot turned on. Now that Republicans and President Trump are holding SNAP, or food stamp benefits, for 42 million Americans hostage in the government shutdown battle, their supporters are posting phony, AI-generated videos of female SNAP recipients boasting of using their benefits to buy steaks and luxury items. One Trump ally, lawyer Mike Davis, posted on X that food stamp recipients should “get off your fat ghetto asses.” But this…

“The central danger of populism is that it invites its practitioners to prefer what is popular to what is true or moral. The populist’s instinct, when contradicted, is to insist that The People must be right, and that contradicting the populist just shows that you are an out-of-touch, ivory-tower elitist who Doesn’t Get It—or worse, a bought-and-paid-for shill for The Man. Truth or falsehood doesn’t enter into the discussion, except perhaps through the implication that whatever is wanted by The People (or at least by a preferred subset of them) must be right.” Dan McLaughlin in National Review…

Luis Hernández Navarro La Jornada Mexico eradicated the “devastating New World screwworm” decades ago, said Luis Hernández Navarro, but the parasite is now returning “with a vengeance.” The screwworm is a parasitic fly whose larvae burrow into animals’ flesh, causing fatal infections. Smugglers have brought it across our southern border via the 800,000 head of cattle that are illegally imported each year, mostly from Nicaragua. How is it that over 2,000 animals a day, some of them infected with screwworm, can enter Mexican territory “without any authority noticing”? The answer is they do notice—they just don’t care. An operation this big can’t function without the “complicity and impunity” of crooked health inspectors, police, soldiers, politicians, truckers, and ranchers. “Like skilled magicians, black marketeers transform illegal cattle into legal ones” with…

Marcus Rubin Politiken Denmark’s Independent Greens party defines itself as pro-climate and anti-racist, but apparently antisemitism is just fine, said Marcus Rubin. The party’s new campaign poster, featuring the slogan “Free Copenhagen from Zionism,” is “very far over the line.” There’s nothing wrong with making “political use of the understandable anger that Israel’s war in Gaza has created.” Danes are free to oppose the idea of a Jewish state, and even some who support Zionism oppose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government and its expansion of West Bank settlements. But this new Independent Greens slogan goes beyond such criticism—indeed, it’s eerily similar to the far-right Stram Kurs party’s crusade to “liberate Denmark” from Islam. Zionism and Judaism are “not synonymous.” But the party message blurs the line, evoking the old…

Move over ICE, said Gregory Royal Pratt and Laura Rodríguez Presa in the Chicago Tribune, President Trump has a new favorite immigration agency. Frustrated that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has failed to hit a target of 3,000 daily arrests, the administration last week ordered a shake-up of the agency, replacing many of its regional leaders with Border Patrol officials. Trump has been impressed by the agency’s “strong-arm tactics” in Chicago. While ICE’s operations tend to be focused on migrants with criminal records, Border Patrol has roamed through the city with the “mission of arresting as many undocumented immigrants as possible.” Agents who once patrolled the dangerous southern border now “stop mostly brown people at random” and demand to know “Where were you born?” Cellphone videos have shown officers blocking residential…

“Are we losing our democracy?” asked The New York Times in an editorial. “The United States is not an autocracy today,” but President Trump and his administration have raised this “chilling question” with a series of major steps toward one-man rule. Most modern authoritarians like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan have not seized power in an overnight military coup, but instead by using the power of elected office to steadily erode freedom and the rule of law, intimidate citizens and the national legislature into compliance, defy courts, prosecute enemies and punish free speech, and “make political opposition more difficult, if not impossible.” Trump has checked all those boxes. Like many autocrats, he’s engaged in blatant corruption, adding billions to his net worth, while promoting a bizarre “cult…

Nike’s “robot” shoes aim to put a motorized pep in your step, said Michael Calore in Wired. The athletic apparel giant last recently unveiled “an early design of a powered footwear system” that boasts its own battery-operated motor within a mechanical arm stretching up the wearer’s calf. “At the end of each step, the motor pulls up on the heel of the shoe,” giving “an extra push.” Nike says the robot shoes are intended to help “middle-of-the-road” runners with their training as well as “people who are on their feet for long stretches” and want the “ability to stay mobile longer and with more comfort.” The system is still in development, Nike adds, with the goal of a commercial release in 2028.…

The world record for biggest pumpkin has been smashed yet again, reports Smithsonian. Twin brothers Ian and Stuart Paton of the U.K. harvested an orange beast this year that weighs 2,819 pounds. Thirty years ago, no one had passed the 1,000-pound mark, but these days the record is broken every two or three years. That’s because obsessive growers are using advances in selective breeding, precision feeding, and soil science to generate ever larger fruits of the Atlantic Giant variety, Cucurbita maxima. The growers regulate micronutrients in the soil such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, and they pollinate the flowers by hand to prevent any unwanted cross-pollination. Scientists say the record-breaking trend can’t continue forever, but with new highs continually being set—and now edging toward the 3,000-pound milestone—no one knows where…

(Atlantic Monthly, $30) “Are dictionaries going the way of dodos, pocket calculators, and civil discourse?” asked Chris Hewitt in The Minnesota Star Tribune. Sure, dictionaries are still printed. But the information they specialize in has largely moved online, and Stefan Fatsis’ lively new history of the once-ubiquitous reference books includes an insider account of the collapse of Merriam-Webster’s most recent bid to print an updated unabridged volume. While Word Freak, Fatsis’ previous book, proved gripping because it built to a Scrabble championship showdown, “Unabridged does not have that kind of narrative spine.” It’s instead the kind of book “enjoyed by dipping in and out of its discrete chapters,” whether Fatsis is focused on how social media is changing English or forecasting how AI may change how we view dictionaries. The…

“Gish Jen is finally ready to talk about her mother,” said Anson Tong in the Washington Independent Review of Books. The celebrated author’s autobiographical new novel, Bad Bad Girl, revisits the pair’s fraught bond, characterized by a barrage of parental scoldings and belittling that ended only when Agnes Jen died at 96 in 2020. “You were a mystery Ma,” Jen writes. “Why, why, why were you the way you were?” But Jen didn’t write the book to expose her mother’s abuse. “I was not writing from anger,” she says. “This is not some act of revenge.” She wrote to understand why the woman who raised her treated her from the start as her least favorite of five children. And she chose to publish what she’d written because she believes the…

Nine months after President Trump seized control of the Kennedy Center, ticket sales are “the worst they’ve been in years,” said Travis M. Andrews in The Washington Post. A Post analysis of ticket sales since the fall season began shows that 43% of seats at the main performance spaces at the national arts center have gone unsold, up from 7% a year ago. And the downturn could be even worse because the figures don’t account for comped tickets or for shows that were canceled or moved to smaller venues owing to poor presales. Back in February, when Trump pushed out the center’s board members and appointed himself chair, he claimed that programming was too woke and unpopular, but fall box office revenue through mid-October was less than half what it…

(PG-13) A common logger helps tame the Pacific Northwest. Train Dreams, a film making a brief appearance in theaters before moving to Netflix later this month, tells the story of an ordinary life in “an extraordinary way,” said Brian Tallerico in RogerEbert.com. Joel Edgerton, doing “the best work of his remarkable career,” stars as a logger and railroad worker in the early-20th-century Pacific Northwest, and the world the character moves in “can be both magnificent and soul-crushing at the same time.” We are witness to this taciturn man’s witnessing of the sometimes violent march of human progress, and Train Dreams emerges as one of the year’s best movies because of the way it “threads the needle between brutal reality and wistful poetry.” William H. Macy shines as an eccentric older…

While crisp white wines are “usually best unadorned,” said Ray Isle in Food & Wine, “many of the top albariños from Spain’s coastal Rías Baixas region are aged on their lees before bottling.” Lees are the spent yeasts that settle as sediment once they’ve converted sugar to alcohol during fermentation. Leaving albariño in contact with the lees works magic, adding “umami depth” without obscuring the wine’s brightness and salty minerality. 2024 Pazo das Bruxas ($25). This entry-level Rías Baixas albariño is “grapefruity, melony,” and “ideal for raw seafood of any kind.” 2024 Granbazán ‘Etiqueta Ámbar’ ($27). This “elegant, lemon-blossom-scented” albariño sources its grapes from vineyards that are at least 40 years old. NV Paco & Lola ‘Lola’ Sparkling Albariño ($42). “Anyone looking for a cool Champagne alternative should check this…

■ Clean out the vegetable patch. Remove the plants and all crop debris because by season’s end, they’re loaded with disease spores that can survive the winter. ■ Go easier on flower gardens. You can cut back perennials whose leaves are susceptible to disease, but delay pruning any woody shrubs, such as hydrangea, until spring. Leaving them intact protects the crown and buds from cold. ■ Do a soil test. If you had problems this season, use a testing kit or send a soil sample to a cooperative extension service, such as a state university. “Results will indicate what you need to add.” ■ Add a 2-inch compost layer. No need to mix it in; the nutrients will leach down. ■ Add a 3-inch mulch layer. Organic mulch such as…

A bizarre conclusion to a corporate earnings call highlighted the strange world of “mention betting” markets, said Emily Nicolle and Justina Lee in Bloomberg. Mention bets on prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket are wagers on what politicians or CEOs might say “in a public forum.” But what happens if a CEO is himself watching that mention market? At the end of his company’s third-quarter earnings call, Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, blurted out a seemingly random list: “Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain, staking, and Web3.” The words weren’t random. Weeks earlier, Kalshi and Polymarket users had placed wagers “on which words would be spoken during the call.” The amount of money involved wasn’t great—“in total, about $84,000 had been bet on whether a Coinbase executive would say certain words.”…

Warming waters in the Atlantic Ocean brought about the devastating and unprecedented Hurricane Melissa, killing more than 60 people across the Caribbean. Record-breaking wind and rain destroyed entire communities, and in Jamaica, as much as 77% of the population was cut off from electricity. The New Orleans–based nonprofit Footprint Project (footprintproject.org) is urgently working with organizations on the ground to send Jamaican families and first responders portable solar and battery power stations, as well as backup microgrid equipment, since electric poles across the country remain toppled and damaged. The organization also actively supported Louisiana residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida four years ago. As global warming accelerates, Jamaica is increasingly at risk, and introducing renewable energy sources is essential to prepare locals for future natural disasters. Each charity we…

Steven Rattner The New York Times “Another Federal Reserve meeting, another loss for President Trump,” said Steven Rattner. Last week, the Fed’s rate-setting committee voted 10 to 2 to reduce interest rates by just 0.25%. It was the second consecutive quarter-point cut assigned by the committee. There’s nothing to suggest that the central bank is cowed by the president’s frequent demands for drastic rate cuts. One dissenting vote was cast by Stephen Miran, who argued for a 0.5% cut. “That’s to be expected, given that Trump hastily appointed Miran, one of his former advisers, to the Fed just in time for last month’s vote.” But another dissenter was Jeffrey Schmid, president of the Kansas City Fed, for the complete opposite reason: He wanted the Fed to hold interest rates steady…

■ A pair of used socks helped lure back Norm Feigenbaum’s yellow lab Sunny after she escaped from his backyard. The 93-year-old enlisted animal rescue volunteers, who tracked the dog to a 1,325-acre nature preserve in Los Angeles. They planted a pair of Feigenbaum’s socks to locate Sunny. But it took an offering of meatballs, kielbasa, and rotisserie chicken to bring her out. Sunny “had a huge smile on her face” when she saw Feigenbaum, said volunteer Jennifer Justice. “It was obvious that he was her person.” ■ After Nick Mondek learned in 2022 he was dying of acute myeloid leukemia, a bone marrow cancer, his brother donated stem cells that briefly sent the disease into remission. But his cancer returned last April, and he couldn’t find a genetic match…

Trump asserts sweeping war powers over boat strikes The Justice Department told Congress last week that the Trump administration will continue its attacks on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean, and that it is not bound by a Vietnam War–era law requiring lawmakers to approve any hostilities. Under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, a president who unilaterally orders the use of military force is supposed to terminate the operation after 60 days if it is not approved by Congress. But T. Elliot Gaiser, head of the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, told a small group of lawmakers that Congress’ approval is not needed because the strikes do not put American troops in danger and so don’t rise to the level of “hostilities.” The boat attacks, which have killed dozens…

In the days after 9/11, Mo Amer experienced blatant Islamophobia for the first time in his life, said Andrew Marantz in The New Yorker. The stand-up comic, born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents, was 9 when his family moved to the U.S. He grew up in Texas and was 20 and working in a Houston flag shop when al Qaida terrorists attacked America. “All of these angry Texans were showing up [at the store], and we sold out everything within 24 hours,” says Amer, 44. The customer who snagged the last flag was three hours late to pick it up. When he finally arrived, he eyed a prayer written in Arabic above Amer’s office. “And he goes, ‘This place is owned by a sand n-----.’ I was so jarred. I…

■ Actress Millie Bobby Brown accused her Stranger Things co-star David Harbour of bullying and harassment before they began shooting the final season of the hit Netflix show, the Mail on Sunday (U.K.) reported last week. “There were pages and pages of accusations,” said a source, adding that Netflix spent months investigating the allegations. Harbour, 50—who plays Brown’s adoptive father in the show—was not accused of any sexual impropriety. The inquiry’s outcome is not known, but Brown, 21, was accompanied by a personal representative on set while filming the final season, which will air later this month. Harbour is also facing allegations that he cheated repeatedly on his estranged wife, singer Lily Allen. A source told the Mail that Allen—whose new album is a scathing attack on Harbour—supported him during…

Dave Levitan MSNBC.com Jamaica has become the latest casualty of climate change, said Dave Levitan. Hurricane Melissa devastated the island last week after rapidly intensifying to a Category 5 storm while sucking heat from warm Caribbean waters, with winds that surpassed 185 mph flattening entire communities, leaving most of the island without electricity, and killing dozens of people. Such incredibly powerful storms have become “a grim hallmark of a warming world.” The number of hurricanes that rapidly grow from Category 1 to 3 has more than doubled over the past two decades, because warmer ocean waters serve as energetic fuel for these storms. Caribbean nations now face a high risk of such devastating hurricanes for the foreseeable future—“and the U.S. is not immune.” In 1992, Hurricane Andrew made landfall in…

Leo Fischer Frankfurter Rundschau The right-wing language police have come to the defense of meat, says Leo Fischer. Having slain “gender-inclusive terms,” they’re now waging a campaign to ban “misleading names” for plant-based foods, like “veggie burgers” and “soy steaks.” Governor Markus Söder of Bavaria is at the helm, as the leading conservative “meatfluencer.” His social media constantly shows him eating “colossal mountains of meat,” as proud as if “he killed those spareribs himself.” Having failed “to torpedo the meat substitute industry” in 2020, he and his fellow meat cultists are trying again at the EU Parliament. If they prevail, anyone who labels a nonmeat product a “burger” could “potentially be committing a crime—or at least would face legal challenges under European law.” Manufacturers are already changing the names of…

When describing what it was like to discover how much her Affordable Care Act plan would cost next year, Stacy Cox “used one word repeatedly,” said Justin Gomez in ABCNews.com: “devastating.” The Utah-based photographer’s monthly health insurance premium will leap from $495 to $2,168, an unmeetable cost she says will force her and her husband to go without insurance. Cox, 48, is one of an estimated 22 million ACA enrollees who will see their premiums spike in 2026—by an average of 114%, according to health policy group KFF. That rise is largely due to the Dec. 31 expiration of pandemic-era “enhanced” premium subsidies, which are at the heart of the government shutdown, with Democrats insisting any funding bill must also extend the tax credits. If those subsidies disappear, “the impact…

“The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks or people look at reality, then you can change it.” James Baldwin, quoted in The Atlantic “The most successful people I know believe in themselves almost to the point of delusion.” Sam Altman, quoted in The Knowledge “The sleep of reason produces monsters.” Francisco Goya, quoted in The New Yorker “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Yogi Berra, quoted in the Santa Cruz, Calif., Good Times “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” Arundhati Roy, quoted in Good Housekeeping “Most of us spend too much time on the last 24 hours…

■ Banning teens from role-playing bots The artificial intelligence startup Character.ai became the first big AI firm to enact age restrictions on its products, said Cristina Criddle in the Financial Times. The company announced last week that it will bar users under age 18 from talking to chatbots beginning on Nov. 25. Until then, teen users will have a “gradually reducing time limit before stopping them completely.” Character.ai, whose bots can assume different personas like “Egyptian pharaoh,” “an HR manager,” or “toxic girlfriend,” will still let teens create videos and stories while using text prompts. The new policy comes “amid growing public and regulatory scrutiny over the safety of AI technology for young users.” Character.ai is facing multiple lawsuits, including one case in Florida “that claims the platform played a…

Veterinarians are reporting a troubling new trend: rising vaccine hesitancy among pet owners, reports The New York Times. In a shift that mirrors the rise of the human anti-vaxxer movement, formerly routine inoculations for dogs, cats, and other pets have become increasingly contentious. Some people now refuse to get their animals the shots, accusing vets of profiteering. “I actually had someone scream and storm out because we required rabies vaccines for her cats,” says Kelly McGuire, a vet in Colorado. There is no solid data on vaccination rates for pets, so it is unclear beyond anecdotal evidence whether they are actually falling. But a 2023 survey found that more than half of owners expressed doubts about the safety of or need for vaccines, and a poll the following year suggested…

Bryan Washington’s newly published third novel, Palaver, is a National Book Award finalist that chronicles a mother’s surprise two-week visit with her gay American son living in Tokyo. Below, the prize-winning author of Lot names six favorite books of the past decade. The Membranes by Chi Ta-wei (2021). An entire world of a book. This novel fits an epic narrative beautifully into a relatively compact text, with room to play—incorporating science fiction, history, and humor in a deeply speculative but approachable universe. The characters have many layers, and Ari Larissa Heinrich’s translation from the Chinese delivers them seamlessly. Walking Practice by Dolki Min (2023). At its heart, this novel’s narrative is about difference and isolation and connection, presented through intertwined windows of queerness and gender, highlighting the (delightful, irreparable) horror…

Legion of Honor, San Francisco, through March 1 Although Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot were “extraordinarily close,” said Mary Tompkins Lewis in The Wall Street Journal, art historians have tended to misjudge the two painters’ relationship. In many accounts, Manet, the “dashing, witty” so-called father of modern painting, has come across as the master artist while the younger Morisot is portrayed as more a student and muse than a peer. But the duo’s work is now hanging together in their first-ever major joint exhibition, and “everything here argues otherwise.” Yes, Morisot, at 27 or 28, cut a striking figure in Manet’s The Balcony, a realist work from 1868–69. But at roughly the same time, she painted The Harbor at Lorient, an impressionist seascape that announced her “bold determination to paint…

(R) A new mother goes off the deep end. “You haven’t lived” until you’ve seen Jennifer Lawrence’s performance in Die My Love, said Ryan Lattanzio in IndieWire. Playing a new mother who’s sinking into psychosis, the 35-year-old Oscar winner becomes a woman beyond help, and “she’s never been better.” Directed by the Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay, Die My Love “can be languorous in its vision of a person coming undone,” but “Lawrence is game and fearless, stripping herself in all senses to lean into a woman’s debilitating emotional crisis.” The movie “takes a shotgun to certain postpartum clichés,” said Jia Tolentino in The New Yorker. We first see Lawrence’s Grace and Robert Pattinson’s Jackson as wildly lustful for each other after moving to an isolated Montana home. Following their baby’s…

The Memory of Darkness, Light, and Ice This beautifully shot, at times haunting documentary immerses viewers in the geologic mysteries of the Greenland ice sheet and shows scientists seizing on the discovery of sediment samples taken during the Cold War to predict what’s to come for coastal communities around the globe. $6 on demand Last Lands ABC News’ Bob Woodruff leads this expedition series that visits the front lines in the battles to protect the world’s most threatened ecosystems. In the new episodes, Woodruff visits a Guatemalan rainforest and a Panamanian island that sits aside a humpback whale superhighway. Disney+ Tribe With Bruce Parry Two decades after launching this groundbreaking BBC series, the host, a former British commando, embeds again with remote Indigenous tribes to share how they live and…

■ Gemini and other generative AI tools have made “vibe coding” possible, meaning you can create websites, mini apps, and other digital tools without knowing how to code. You simply talk through what you want with a chatbot and let AI do the work. To create an October events calendar for friends, for example, I told Gemini what information sources I wanted to cull and how interaction with the calendar should work. Gemini’s first effort “nailed what I’d asked it to do but also highlighted what I hadn’t.” Next, I specified that I wanted only 2025 events linked to live web pages. After a third request, I was done. ■ Claude “worked wonders” with the same prompt, displaying events as a categorizable list with a search function. But I had…

When Ruth Lawrence became one of the first female residents at Yale School of Medicine in 1950, the medical community considered breastfeeding an afterthought. Lawrence, who gave birth to the first of her nine children—all breastfed—a year into her residency, trained in a maternity ward and saw women struggle to nurse their infants. Formula feeding was becoming the norm, but she fought that trend, establishing herself as the leading expert in lactation. As word spread of her expertise, mothers and doctors alike sought her out for advice. She published the first book on the subject, Breastfeeding: A Guide for the Medical Profession in 1980. “People trusted me because they knew I’d nursed my babies,” she said. “I thought, ‘You know, if I wrote a book, people could stop calling me…