Innholdsfortegnelse for December 19, 2025 i The Week Magazine

In the summer blockbuster F1, the racing-team owner, played by Javier Bardem, must choose between letting a friend face near-certain death on the track or selling out everything he believes in and cherishes. It’s not unlike the lose-lose feeling shared by many cinephiles, TV lovers, and news junkies as they see Warner Bros. Discovery—home to the Warner Bros. studio, HBO, and CNN—getting tugged on like a chew toy by two insatiable media pitbulls (see Best Columns: Business, p.34). On one side is Netflix, which has dominated the streaming wars so successfully that its $83 billion bid amounts to loose change for the tech firm. It’s not clear why Netflix wants Warner, other than to keep eyeballs off YouTube and populate future theme parks with characters from iconic properties like DC…

■ The State Department is denying visas to foreigners who have worked as fact-checkers. A directive leaked to Reuters instructs staff to “thoroughly explore” applicants’ employment histories, and rule “ineligible” anyone who has worked in content moderation, fact-checking, or identifying “misinformation.” A State Department official said the Trump administration does “not support aliens coming to the United States to work as censors muzzling Americans.” ■ A Texas woman is suing San Antonio’s school district, which reassigned her son to a disciplinary school after a child-safe knife was found in his lunchbox. Laura Becerra said Julian, 10, routinely packed the knife, designed for use by kids 3 and up, to cut his fruit at lunch. Upon its discovery, though, Julian was questioned for hours and then transferred to a disciplinary school,…

Springfield, Ill. ‘ICE out’: Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker this week signed a law that pushes back against the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown with a slate of measures, including barring federal agents from arresting people near state courthouses. This is a message to anyone “seeking to terrorize our people,” the Democrat said. “Your divisiveness and brutality are not welcome here.” Democratic lawmakers in the state pushed through the “ICE out” bill in October as federal officers deployed tear gas and helicopters in Chicagoland raids, arresting thousands of undocumented migrants in “Operation Midway Blitz.” The new law restricts hospitals, child-care centers, and universities from sharing personal information with federal agents, and makes it easier for people to sue over alleged civil-rights violations—letting them collect punitive damages if agents are wearing masks.…

Ken Burns is grateful to be an American, said Mishal Husain in Bloomberg. “I am incredibly patriotic,” says the documentary maker, “as my children and my grandchildren will tell you, probably with no small amount of discomfort.” Every July 4, before his family sits down to eat, Burns, 72, reads them the Declaration of Independence. “Each time, I get a little choked up.” He got to explore that document, and all its complexity, in his latest epic documentary for PBS, The American Revolution. But despite his pride in America, Burns has empathy for those colonists who remained loyal to the British crown and refused to join the patriots’ cause, a group he says includes one of his ancestors. While Burns hopes he would’ve stood with the likes of George Washington…

Molly Olmstead Slate The “groypers” are no longer on the fringe, said Molly Olmstead, and they’re successfully recruiting teenage boys. The term refers to very online young males who adopt the misogynistic, racist, and antisemitic worldview of far-right activist Nick Fuentes, who was recently respectfully interviewed by influential podcaster Tucker Carlson. Even before Carlson gave Fuentes a major platform, parents and teachers have seen this radical ideology gain a growing foothold. Groyperism appeals mostly to socially awkward young men who are searching for scapegoats for their frustrations. One 10th-grade teacher in Central Florida told me that more than 40% of the boys now mimic “Fuentes-style bigotry,” saying girls have no value other than for sex, claiming slavery wasn’t so bad, denigrating Jews, and making Nazi salutes. Fuentes has more than…

Leopoldo Santos Ramirez La Jornada Latin America’s silence about Donald Trump’s “criminal conduct” is incomprehensible, said Leopoldo Santos Ramirez. For months the U.S. has been bombing suspected Venezuelan drug boats, killing nearly 100 people with no legal justification. Now that Trump has warned planes from Venezuelan airspace, the “threat to the rest of Latin America” is impossible to ignore. Sure, a few countries “have raised their voices to condemn Trump’s savage violation of international law,” but they’ve done it one by one. To prevent a wider war that could ensnare much of the region, we have to unite against Trump. Latin America can tap into our “anti-imperialist consciousness,” a key part of our legacy as peoples who have triumphed over colonization. Perhaps Mexico can lead here, given that President Claudia…

In the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage, a submarine and its crew are shrunk down and injected into a human body. Now scientists in Switzerland have done something similar—without the microscopic crew—by using magnets to steer a drug-delivering robot the size of a grain of sand through blood vessels. The microrobot is designed to carry medicine directly to diseased tissue, avoiding side effects elsewhere in the body. Each bot is packed with medication, iron-oxide nanoparticles for magnetic control, and a bit of tantalum, a silvery metal that shows up on an X-ray, for tracking. Once the bot reaches its target—guided by a surgeon using a PlayStation-like controller for the magnets—a trigger dissolves a gelatin capsule to release the drug payload. The technology has been tested only in pigs and in lifelike…

(Atlantic Monthly, $28) “How can a novel about getting old, losing friends, and growing frail be anything but depressing?” asked Laurie Hertzel in The Boston Globe. This “little miracle” of a book, which traces half a year in the life of four elderly Pittsburgh women, somehow proves “buoyant and hopeful.” Susie, Kitzi, Emily, and Emily’s sister-in-law, Arlene, are the core members of a broader support group whose members look after one another, and as author Stewart O’Nan follows his main foursome, he proves again to be “a master at quotidian details, a master at human emotion.” The plot “rises no higher than a scone,” said Ron Charles in The Washington Post. “But done this well, with this level of fidelity and respect, that’s enough.” Newly divorced Susie tries dating. Kitzi…

Pride and Pleasure by Amanda Vaill (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $36) Thanks to the musical Hamilton, Eliza Schuyler and her two sisters already have many fans, said Jane Kamensky in The Atlantic. But Amanda Vaill’s brilliant book gives the trio center stage, and it “keeps us close to action” even as it “redefines what counts as action.” We meet the sisters before Eliza weds Alexander Hamilton, and “a combination of lusty letters and Vaill’s writerly gifts” enlivens the couple’s courtship tale. But stay tuned, because the sisters were doers, and Eliza lived to 97. Wreck by Catherine Newman (Harper, $27) Catherine Newman’s follow-up to last year’s best-selling Sandwich is a “bittersweet gem,” said Malcolm Forbes in The Boston Globe. Again, we’re dropped into the complicated life of Rocky, a 50-something…

(R) A dad turns to stand-up to fight off heartbreak. “There are far worse things that a gifted filmmaker could offer an audience these days than a feel-good divorce comedy,” said Owen Gleiberman in Variety. But it’s still slightly disappointing that screen star Bradley Cooper has followed up A Star Is Born and Maestro with this minor work, due Dec. 19, about a father of two who starts doing stand-up in New York City to cope with the likely end of his marriage. With Will Arnett and Laura Dern as its co-stars, Is This Thing On? is “an observant, bittersweet, and highly watchable movie,” but it’s also so eager to hide the agonies of divorce that it “can feel like it’s cutting corners.” The 124-minute film “doesn’t really get going…

■ Good Things by Samin Nosrat. Nosrat’s groundbreaking 2017 cookbook, Salt Fat Heat Acid, ensured that her follow-up would be a hit, said The Washington Post. Cook from it and you’ll see that its recipes for easy salad dressings, one-pot chicken dinners, and classic yellow cake with chocolate frosting are “well-tested and full of lessons in cooking and life.” ■ Boustany by Sami Tamimi. Tamimi’s voice on the page “feels like a dear friend inviting you over to a stunning sunbathed lunch,” said The New York Times. He’s an inspiring guide to meatless Palestinian cooking and the kind of chef who “knows that sometimes all you need is a pinch of sumac to let a dish sing.” ■ Salsa Daddy by Rick Martínez. “To Martínez, salsa is more than just…

The Federal Reserve this week delivered its third straight interest rate cut, said Jeff Cox in CNBC.com, bringing the target range for its key overnight borrowing rate to between 3.5% and 3.75%. However, the move “featured ‘no’ votes from three members,” two of whom said rates should hold steady due to persistent inflation. The third dissenter, Stephen Miran, “favored a steeper half-point reduction.” Chairman Jerome Powell said the quarter-point cut brings the rate “within a broad range of estimates of its neutral value,” indicating the central bank may “wait and see” how the economy fares in 2026. SpaceX: Plans to go public in 2026 SpaceX is pursuing what would be “the biggest listing of all time” next year, said Edward Ludlow and Eric Johnson in Bloomberg. The space-exploration company led…

■ Homebuying’s hidden risks Zillow is removing climate-risk scores from listings after agents complained they were hurting sales, said Tim De Chant in TechCrunch. The country’s largest homebuying platform first began publishing the ratings last year, which aimed to quantify a home’s risk from floods, wildfires, wind, extreme heat, and poor air quality, based on data from the risk-modeling company First Street. Zillow said that “more than 80% of buyers consider climate risks when purchasing a new home.” But the California Regional Multiple Listing Service has objected to the scores, questioning First Street’s projections, which vastly exceed certain government estimates. Art Carter, CRMLS’s chief executive, said that unrealistic climate scores have “a significant impact on the perceived desirability” of certain properties. ■ Founders pivot to video The pitch deck is…

Liam Denning Bloomberg Allowing Detroit-made vehicles to guzzle more gas won’t help “the cost-of-living crisis,” said Liam Denning. At a White House event last week, President Trump, surrounded by automotive executives, announced the rollback of fuel efficiency and tailpipe emissions rules that had been set by the Biden administration. Trump claims that Americans will save $109 billion now that new cars won’t have to hit the Biden-desired 50 miles-per-gallon mark, on average, by 2031. But that is “a gross figure.” The net benefit, accounting for higher fuel bills and thirstier vehicles, is about $24 billion, or $181 per family, spread over five years. Some bargain. This analysis also ignores “the realities of why vehicle prices are high in the first place.” Average car costs have surged to more than $50,000…

What happened The Supreme Court this week signaled that it was prepared to scrap a 90-year precedent and let President Trump fire the heads of independent federal agencies, a decision that would shift even more power from Congress to the presidency. In March, Trump fired Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission. That violated the 1935 Supreme Court ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which holds that a president can only fire an agency chief for cause, and Slaughter sued. But during oral arguments this week, the court’s conservatives assailed the 1935 decision, with Chief Justice John Roberts saying it had been winnowed by subsequent rulings into a “dried husk.” The court’s three liberals strongly disagreed. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that overturning Humphrey’s would “destroy…

Whiteness, after Pantone named Cloud Dancer, a gentle shade of white, its official Color of the Year for 2026. While some online commenters criticized the pick as tone-deaf—with one noting that “white supremacy is in the news everyday”—Pantone said the color expresses “our aspiration for a future free from toxicity and excess.” Escorts, after reports that FBI Director Kash Patel twice ordered the security detail assigned to his girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins, to drive home one of her inebriated friends after nights out in Nashville. “This is made up and did not happen,” an FBI spokesman said. Details, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered diplomats to return to using the Times New Roman font in communications, saying the decision by his predecessor Antony Blinken to switch to the…

Winona Ryder found fame playing moody but complex teenagers in Beetlejuice, Heathers, and Mermaids, said Tavi Gevinson in Interview. Now, at 54, she’s a Hollywood veteran who has learned to thrive in an industry that remains obsessed with youth. “I worry, just like anyone else, about continuing to work,” says Ryder. “I heard my whole life that women stop working once you become the mom”—a role that she’s now played for nearly a decade on Netflix’s Stranger Things. “I remember running into some of my favorite actresses when they were in their 40s who were like, ‘It’s pretty bleak. I’ve been offered a witch role’—before witches were cool.” As a former teen star, Ryder says she’s had to contend with the idea that “you’ll always be the age of your…

Nancy Armour USA Today President Trump better cherish the “made-up, not-to-be-taken-seriously-at-all” Peace Prize awarded to him last week by FIFA, said Nancy Armour, “because it’s the only one he’s going to get.” FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, will stage the 2026 World Cup mostly in the U.S., and FIFA President Gianni Infantino has been fawning over Trump to ensure federal subsidies, security measures, and other support. He “knows how badly Trump craves a Nobel Peace Prize,” so he created a bogus prize, telling a beaming Trump he earned it for “his exceptional and extraordinary actions to promote peace and unity around the world.” Peace? Unity? Trump “is the most divisive person on the planet,” who may have committed war crimes in bombing boats in the Caribbean, caused hundreds of thousands…

“Virtually everyone in the U.S. today knows someone, has hired someone, or works with someone who is an immigrant, or has someone in his or her family who is or was an immigrant, [including] President Trump’s mother and his first and third wives. Every day, ‘native-born’ Americans see that the majority of people who fill in potholes, do construction work, landscape, mow lawns, and paint houses tend to be immigrants. A glance at their work at 7 a.m. in the cold and the rain shows that they are hard workers. Daily observations and experiences like these explain why nearly 80% of Americans say immigration is ‘a good thing’ for America.” Thomas Dichter in The Dispatch…

Editorial The Telegraph We’re calling it “Snoopgate,” said The Telegraph. Last week, the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi ordered all smartphone makers to preload a state-run cybersecurity app, Sanchar Saathi, on new phones. The government said the app was for users’ own safety, with Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia assuring us that “snooping is neither possible nor will it happen.” But the opposition insisted that spying on Indians was precisely the point. “There’s a very fine line,” lawmaker Priyanka Gandhi of the Congress party said, “between reporting fraud and seeing what every citizen of India is doing on their phone.” After a huge outcry, the government has backed down. Yet we don’t expect the Indian state to “end its urgency to play Big Brother.” For years now, privacy has been…

Rouven Spindler Stuttgarter Zeitung It’s last call at the Porsche factory, said Rouven Spindler. The sports-car maker has informed its workers it plans to ban alcohol in its Stuttgart manufacturing hub. The company already had a “no working while intoxicated policy,” but moderate beer consumption during work breaks was traditionally permitted. Starting next April, though, there will be absolutely no drinking during work hours, and the firm says it will dismantle most of the beer-vending machines on site and relocate the remaining few to strictly monitored break areas far from the factory floor. There will be exceptions, of course. The policy doesn’t apply during breaks spent off the premises, “or work anniversaries or farewell parties” in the office. Yet even on occasions when raising a glass is permitted, there will…

“The nation is finally awakening to an ongoing scandal of massive proportions,” said National Review in an editorial. The Treasury Department and House Oversight and Government Reforms Committee last week launched investigations into Minnesota’s sprawling Covid fraud schemes, in which 86 people, mostly Somali-Americans, have been charged with stealing over $1 billion in public funds. To take advantage of the state’s robust public assistance programs and pandemic assistance, “concentric rings of welfare fraudsters” based around “Minneapolis’ tightly knit Somali diaspora” created fake programs purportedly aiding vulnerable groups like autistic children and the homeless. Nearly 60 people have already been convicted. When the U.S. opened its doors to refugees from the African nation’s civil war in the 1990s, we evidently “imported an element of Somalia’s culture of criminality,” so this scandal…

(Avid, $30) Olivia Nuzzi’s new memoir could have launched a career comeback, said Scaachi Koul in Slate. Instead, “historians will study how bad this book is.” It’s “illegible in ways you can’t imagine.” Nuzzi, 32, was a star political reporter until last year, when allegations arose that she’d had an affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after profiling the then 69-year-old politician during his campaign for president. But her much-hyped book turns out to be 300 pages of rambling that offer no insight on herself or Kennedy, who’s now the nation’s vaccine-killing secretary of health and human services. While Nuzzi does declare that an affair of a sort did occur, despite Kennedy’s denial, details are scant. In fact, American Canto is “mostly about how compelling Nuzzi thinks it is to…

Virginia Evans easily could have given up, said Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg in The Wall Street Journal. Before her novel The Correspondent became 2025’s word-of-mouth hit book of the year, the married mother of two wrote seven others without ever finding a publisher, even after she convinced her husband to sell their house and move the family to Ireland in 2019 so she could attend an MFA program at Trinity College Dublin. A year later, owing to a family emergency, the Evanses were back in Winston-Salem, N.C., for the pandemic lockdown and living in a small, rented townhouse when Virginia cleared out a closet so she’d have a place to write in peace from 5 to 7 a.m. each day. “What happened is that I hit rock bottom,” she says. “I…

Think of port as “the Cate Blanchett of your bar cart,” said Kathleen Willcox in Food & Wine. The fortified Portuguese wine “can perform any number of roles flawlessly,” because its $5,000-a-bottle expressions can be after-dinner sippers while its better $20 iterations can be “a fabulous cocktail ingredient.” It’s no wonder that bottles like these are receiving new attention. Van Zeller’s White Port ($20). This “creamy and delicate” white port is especially pleasing when “mixed with zesty tonic water and served over ice.” Cockburn’s ‘Tails of the Unexpected’ Tawny Eyes ($36). This “lively” port has notes of honey and vanilla and “lends itself to experimentation” and to cocktails such as a tawny and ginger. Graham’s 20-Year-Old Tawny Port ($60). Elegant and full of depth, this oak-cask-aged tawny “showcases port’s complexity.”…

■ The number of global billionaires rose to 2,919 in 2025, while their concentration of wealth hit a record $15.8 trillion at the end of the third quarter, a 13% increase from last year, according to a new UBS report. There were 287 newly minted billionaires among the group, the second-highest annual total since the UBS survey began in 2015. CNBC.com ■ China’s annual trade surplus has topped $1 trillion for the first time. Tariffs imposed by President Trump have caused Chinese exports to the U.S. to drop by nearly a fifth, but it still sells three times as much to the U.S. as it buys. China’s trade surplus in factory goods is now bigger as a share of its economy than the one the U.S. ran after World War…

“Dark tourism is a big business,” said The Economist. Perhaps tired of mainstays like the Eiffel Tower or Rockefeller Center, travelers are increasingly seeking out “battlefields, concentration camps, and disaster zones” in war-scarred countries like Syria, Iran, South Sudan, and Ukraine—helped by tour guides that cater to the curious. Since the civil war in Syria ended, Rita Badran has taken tourists to peek inside Saidnaya, the notorious prison known as the “Human Slaughterhouse,” for $100 per person, while “in Israel, dark tourists go to the sites where 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’ attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.” The term “dark tourism” was coined to describe people who visit Dallas to see where JFK was assassinated, and some say it’s an act of remembrance. What’s different today is “the role…

Since 2003, the nonprofit organization Maggie’s Wigs 4 Kids (wigs4kids.org) has created free, custom wigs for children in Michigan experiencing hair loss due to cancer, alopecia, trichotillomania, burns, and other disorders. Cosmetologist Maggie Varney founded the company after meeting a young girl who could not find a wig her size. Since then, she and her staff have helped nearly 6,000 kids between 3 and 18 years old, thanks mainly to collections from local salons, cut-a-thons, and even an annual “Pigs 4 Wigs” program involving Michigan police departments growing out and then cutting their hair after “No-shave November.” The organization also hosts classes and social groups at a new Wellness Center in St. Clair Shores, Mich., where kids can practice art, yoga, and music therapy, and where they can receive both…

Andrew Hill Financial Times “I am not alone in struggling to get my head around the idea of Elon Musk as the world’s first trillionaire,” said Andrew Hill. Such a figure seems “fabulously remote,” and it will require Musk’s Tesla to hit numerous astronomical sales milestones for him to reach it. “Yet dismissing Musk and his incentive plan as science fiction and moving on misses two important points.” One, there is a “long history” of supersize rewards “driving up executive pay” across the board. CEOs love to benchmark themselves “against the pay of their peers, based on the erroneous idea that everyone can earn above-average rewards.” This ensures that “the gravitational pull of Musk’s trillion dollars, whether or not he receives them, is bound to be felt by avaricious CEOs…

Supreme Court hears challenge to campaign finance rules The Supreme Court this week weighed further loosening campaign finance law, a decision that could upend fundraising for next year’s midterms. Justices heard arguments in a case brought by Republican groups seeking to lift limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates. Republicans argue those limits—$63,300 for most House nominees, and up to $3.9 million for Senate nominees—hinder parties’ free-speech rights and make them weaker than outside groups such as super PACs. Democratic groups warn that scrapping those limits could open the door to corruption, with wealthy donors able to skirt individual contribution limits of $3,500 to a candidate by donating through parties. Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh said he was concerned about such “negative effects,” but appeared sympathetic…

Francis Ford Coppola grew up hearing stories about his family’s ancestral home, said Hermione Eyre in The Telegraph (U.K.). In 1904, the Coppolas left the town of Bernalda, in southern Italy’s Basilicata region, for the U.S., never to return. Coppola, 86, says he was regaled with stories of “Bernalda bella” growing up in Queens, and “we had to eat all this Italian food. We were kids, we hated it. Do you know what lampascioni are? Fried hyacinth bulbs. You know what capuzzelle is? Half a lamb’s head. I used to eat the brains because I wanted to be smart.” In 1962, the then-22-year-old Coppola was working on a film in Yugoslavia when he realized Bernalda was just across the Adriatic. He hopped on a ferry to his family’s hometown, and…

■ Pop star Katy Perry and former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau hard-launched their relationship last week. The “Firework” singer posted photos and videos on Instagram of her and Trudeau, 53, eating sushi and snuggling cheek to cheek in Japan, where Perry, 41, is currently on tour. A few days earlier, Trudeau shared a photo of the pair in Tokyo with Fumio Kishida, Japan’s former prime minister, and his wife, Yuko, whom they joined for a lunchtime double date. “Katy and I were so glad to have the chance to sit down with you and Yuko,” Trudeau, 53, wrote to his old counterpart. Neither Perry nor Trudeau have publicly commented on their romance, which seemingly began this summer in Montreal, where the pair were seen enjoying a cozy dinner. “They…

Jonathan Chait The Atlantic “Why are leftists so pessimistic about school reform?” asked Jonathan Chait. Whenever a city or state “discovers a new and better way to educate poor children,” progressives and teachers unions insist that “even attempting to shrink the gap between rich and poor students is a fool’s errand.” This phenomenon was recently on display in Mississippi, where new teacher training, rigorous testing, and switching to phonics-based reading instruction produced startling improvements. Over a decade, the state’s fourth-grade reading scores rose from 49th to the top 20, and “Mississippi now does a far better job of teaching literacy than do many Northern states.” The education establishment responded—as it does with all such success stories—by falsely claiming Mississippi’s progress was caused by statistical manipulation. In progressive ideology, schools cannot…

Editorial El País African swine fever is back, said El País. Three decades after Spain eradicated this scourge from pig farms, nine wild boars have been found dead from the disease around Barcelona, all of them in the past two weeks. “This is not a health crisis.” The virus doesn’t affect humans, and pork consumption even from infected herds would be safe. Yet it could be an economic crisis if the outbreak spreads from the wild to our farms. “Just one case of swine fever” in a domestic pig herd could get Spain “placed on an international blacklist,” which would prevent us from exporting pork products. Since Spain is the EU’s leading pork exporter, with sales exceeding $9 billion a year, that would be a devastating blow. Already, in just…

President Trump is on a “pardon frenzy,” said Meryl Kornfield and Emily Davies in The Washington Post. In the space of a few days this month, he pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who helped drug cartels smuggle 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S.; commuted the sentence of David Gentile, a private equity exec who orchestrated a $1.7 billion Ponzi-like scheme; and pardoned Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat charged with bribery. In his first term, Trump issued 237 pardons and commutations. So far this year, he’s handed out more than 1,600, with the vast majority going to people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot. Trump’s newfound willingness to free and forgive felons “has given rise to a lucrative cottage industry,” with lobbyists spending more…

“Happy endings are just about a question of the place where you choose to stop the story.” Helen Fielding, quoted in The Paris Review “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: Now is the time of monsters.” Antonio Gramsci, quoted in The Bulwark “If I were the devil, I’d destroy the next generation not by terror or violence, but by distraction, disconnection, and slow erosion of meaning.” ChatGPT, quoted in The Free Press “The state is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too.” John Kenneth Galbraith, quoted in The Times (U.K.) “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.” Historian Howard Zinn, quoted in Common Dreams “Truth emerges more…

■ Magna Cum LLM Schools are racing to meet demand for AI as a college major, said Natasha Singer in The New York Times. “Over the last two years, dozens of U.S. universities and colleges have announced” various new “departments, majors, minors, courses, interdisciplinary concentrations, and other programs” focused on “understanding, using, and learning to build artificial intelligence.” At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “AI and decision-making” is now “the second-largest major,” while at the University of South Florida this semester, more than 3,000 students “enrolled in a new college of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.” Some students said they hoped “the AI branding would open up more job opportunities” after graduation. But it’s a risky bet. Computing majors have faced difficulties landing tech jobs this year, because AI has reduced…

A newly recognized form of dementia is reshaping how doctors diagnose cognitive decline, reports The New York Times. The condition, called LATE—short for limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy—affects an estimated one-third of people over 85 and about 10% of those over 65. Because its symptoms closely mimic Alzheimer’s, many older patients may have been misdiagnosed. “In about 1 out of every 5 people that come into our clinic, what was thought to be Alzheimer’s actually appears to be LATE,” says Greg Jicha from the University of Kentucky. LATE is generally less severe and progresses more slowly than Alzheimer’s, which could offer some reassurance to patients and their families. But the picture grows bleaker when the two conditions occur together. Roughly half of very elderly people with severe Alzheimer’s also have LATE,…

Robin Cook’s medical thrillers, starting with 1977’s Coma, have sold nearly 400 million copies worldwide. His new novel, Spasm, is the 15th about pathologists Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery and finds the couple probing a mysterious outbreak of Alzheimer’s-like cases. The Long Trains Roll by Stephen W. Meader (1944). As a young boy, I spent afternoons at my small-town library, where I discovered Stephen Meader, a writer of what I would call “boy stories” that were exciting, historical, and even literary. I was particularly fond of the first one I read, about a teenage boy who helps the FBI foil would-be saboteurs. Gods, Graves, and Scholars by C.W. Ceram (1949). My godfather gave me this book when I was 10. It introduced me to the world of archaeology, and I…

“Sometimes, to understand the machines reshaping the world, you have to watch one poop,” said Daniel Cassady in ArtNews. At last week’s Art Basel Miami Beach, the artist known as Beeple delighted fairgoers with an installation that featured robotic dogs wearing the lifelike heads of various artists and billionaires. Every once in a while, one of the wandering dogs would stop, tip backward, and eject a printed image from its backside. Some critics called the dogs a cheap stunt, and Beeple, who’s best known as the digital artist who made a $69 million killing when the short-lived NFT boom kicked off in 2021, does tend to make the symbolic “embarrassingly literal.” But the 44-year-old “has built a working model of our algorithmic present: machines that see the world through tiny…

(R) A born grifter chases his table tennis dreams. The Timothée Chalamet movie that’s arriving on Christmas Day is “a 150-minute-long heart attack of a film,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. In “a career-best turn” that’s “a feverish go-for-broke tour de force,” Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, an aspiring table tennis champ in 1950s New York City who’s ready to lie, cheat, and steal for the chance to become the best in the world. This first film from director Josh Safdie since 2019’s Uncut Gems turns out to be a character study that “doubles as a cracked American success story,” said David Fear in Rolling Stone. Marty is a scrawny kid with a pathetic mustache, but he’s also a fast-talking grifter with supreme self-confidence, and his game earns him…

The Holdovers This 2024 gem is not yet in the canon of contemporary holiday classics, but it should be. Stranded over Christmas break, the misfits at a New England boarding school, including Paul Giamatti as their resentful overseer, eventually generate holiday meaning and fun of their own. $4 on demand In Bruges If Die Hard can be a Christmas movie, then Martin McDonagh’s tale of two hitmen laying low in northwest Belgium’s festive provincial capital qualifies as well. It’s a dark tale, but Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson make great holiday company. $4 on demand The Apartment Billy Wilder’s 1960 romantic comedy is a perfect pivot from holiday classics of the same era. Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine play office mates with terrific chemistry who are pushed around and apart…

The Hoptimist LED Portable Lamp This rechargeable 6-inch desk lamp “brings extra joy and light wherever needed.” $100, store.moma.org Source: NYMag.com Nocs Provisions Zero Tube 10x25 Waterproof Monocular “Small enough to be truly pocketable,” this spyglass brings objects 10 times closer and is effective to 300 feet. $180, nocsprovisions.com Source: NYMag.com 54Celsius Octaevo Mini Paper Vase Any household glass becomes “a bold and beautiful flower vase” with this 6.5-inch waterproof paper sleeve. $39, 54celsius.com Source: Wirecutter Rabbit Wine-Shower Funnel With Sediment Strainer “Perfect for the aspiring sommelier,” Rabbit’s funnel and strainer set “aerates wine more efficiently and thoroughly than a crystal decanter.” $28, surlatable.com Source: NYMag.com SPI Art Glass Jellyfish Paperweight “If your flyaway-paper problem is out of control, a translucent jellyfish can help.” $33, amazon.com Source: The New Yorker…

Frank Gehry literally changed the shape of architecture. In a globe-spanning career spent in rebellion against the square strictures of modernism, he designed buildings with radically tilted angles and swooping curves like a cubist painting rendered in 3D. Gehry creations became instant landmarks everywhere, and in Bilbao, Spain, his Guggenheim art museum almost single-handedly revitalized a whole city. Not everyone loved Gehry’s style, whether it was his rough, industrial-style early work—which critic Mike Davis called “Dirty Harry architecture”—or the colossal, highly polished complexes that boldly imposed their “starchitect” creator’s will onto the landscape. But Gehry insisted that a building had to be more than just functional. “I want buildings that have passion in them,” he said in 2003, “that make people feel something, even if they get mad at them.”…