If we’re lucky, it will be a while before a new pandemic arises to rival the death and disruption of Covid. But the hantavirus outbreak that began several weeks ago on a cruise ship traveling the Atlantic Ocean shows, I think, we are terribly unprepared for even a lesser public health threat.
This does not appear to be the superbug of your nightmares, capable of spreading rapidly across the world and killing far more efficiently than that pandemic ever did. But hantavirus infection does have a terrifyingly high mortality rate. It is spreading from human to human. And health officials around the world have proved terribly inept at even properly describing the risk of transmission, let alone containing it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/
Even on the best of days, the FDA commissioner — a Senate-confirmed position — must wander a pitiless wilderness of excruciating judgement calls, whether the record-speed approval of Covid-19 vaccines or the minefield of mail-order birth control pills, all while fending off powerful companies expecting VIP treatment.
Doing the job well, or even at all, is not a friend-building exercise.
One spring afternoon in 2022, Leslie was home alone in Park Slope with her 15-year-old son, Hunter. She asked him to clean his room, or take a shower, or something innocuous — she can’t remember exactly. He viewed her request as too demanding and flew into a violent rage. As he lunged for her, she sprinted into the bathroom and locked the door. He tried to kick it down while she sat on the closed toilet lid and stared at her phone, debating whether to call 911.
Cruelty has become commonplace in the West Bank, where extremist Israeli settlers beat and shoot Palestinians, steal their sheep, uproot their olive groves and torch cars and homes. The settlers, outlaws in a multitude of ways, seldom face consequences for their actions.
But even for Palestinians living under the constant threat of being attacked, some violence retains the capacity to shock.
That was the case when a video went viral that showed a settler menacing a year-and-a-half-old dog with a club in each fist — and swinging hard, beating her over the head.
The two of them traveled widely in recent weeks across Somalia, and what they found—well, you need to read the whole thing. But climate change and war are making life there almost impossible, and now that the U.S. has shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development the “almost” is disappearing. https://billmckibben.
For nine days, they trudged across the parched soil of southern Somalia, taking turns carrying their 3-year-old daughter on their shoulders. Abdullahi Abdi Abdirahman, his wife and their seven children sought escape from a landscape drained of life.
Another drought had killed their goats and sheep, turning their life savings to dust. So they pressed on for 140 miles toward Dollow, a dusty outpost on the Ethiopian border. They were drawn by the same things that had already attracted more than 100,000 other people: International relief organizations were clustered there, offering food, water and health care.
Yet when they arrived in late January at a camp on the fringes of town, they were horrified to learn that aid groups had abandoned the area. President Trump had dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, or U.S.A.I.D., eliminating Somalia’s primary source of assistance. From London to Berlin, governments had reduced funding for humanitarian aid. Relief organizations had been forced to choose where to focus their remaining money.
Every time Donald Trump has run for president, he has vowed to drain the swamp in Washington. But ever since he returned to the White House, not only has he not even tried to drain the swamp, he has pushed to gild it. Trump has used all the gold and glitz he can to cover up an increasingly putrid swamp – a morass filled with million-dollar donors scrambling for access, criminals seeking to buy pardons, corporate executives appointed to high-level government jobs and billionaire sycophants sucking up to Trump.
Making the swamp smell even worse, the president and his sons have somehow managed, through crypto and other means, to increase their wealth by an estimated $4bn since Trump won a second term. At this point, we should probably call Trump’s Washington not a swamp, but a colossal cesspool. https://www.theguardian.com/
Multiply this a thousand times or more and you get a sense of the demonic forces that entered Israel on October 7, 2023. The new report is here. I could only read so much. But try. What makes this world-historically evil is that these monsters didn’t just do these things; they taped them, broadcast them, live-streamed them to their parents as they set about mutilating, raping, and massacring other human beings just because they were Jews. They were as proud of this as Hitler’s willing executioners. This, after all, is what would get them to paradise. https://andrewsullivan.
I’m sure this isn’t the intended takeaway from The Boroughs, a supernatural murder-mystery set in a New Mexico retirement community, but I am transfixed by what is on offer to the ageing demographic across the pond. It’s like watching an episode of The White Lotus and vowing in your next life to come back as an affluent white American, but more realistic. God willing, we’ll all get old – and with a bit of careful planning, maybe we could stretch to a berth in one of the villages that a country with the space to house them provides for a reasonable sum?
Beware the beautiful camboy. And never trust Murray Bartlett. These seem to be the main life lessons to take from Apple TV’s new 10-part series Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed and, the deeper we go into the tense and twisty mass of plot shot through with black comedy, the greater the wisdom becomes.
The beautiful camboy is called Trevor (Brandon Flynn), which I guess explains why he is trying to make it on looks alone. He is the therapist-with-benefits, used by newly divorced mother-of-one Paula (Tatiana Maslany) when she is alone in her apartment because her husband has main custody of their daughter, Hazel (Nola Wallace). There are suggestions of previous instability and erratic behaviour. These are not about to serve Paula well.
Brimming with indelible images, Charlotte Zhang’s brilliant debut locates the roots of a dystopian future in the here and now. Set around the 2028 Summer Olympics, the film imagines a Los Angeles gripped by paranoia and conspiracies; and a livestock disease has led to a ban on all meat production, leaving the main source of protein distribution – powdered insects – in the control of a megacorporation called Ootheca Inc. Ironically enough, a cockroach infestation has taken over several local neighbourhoods, making Ootheca’s monopolising greed even more insidious.
He is shown several possibilities that range from $250 to $500 in price -- the sheerer, the higher the price.
Naturally, he opts for the sheerest item, pays the $500, and takes it home.
He presents it to his wife and asks her to go upstairs, put it on, and model it for him.
Upstairs the wife thinks (she's no dummy), 'I have an idea. It's so sheer that it might as well be nothing.
I won't put it on, but I'll do the modeling naked, return it tomorrow, and keep the $500 refund for myself.'
She appears naked on the balcony and strikes a pose.
The husband says, 'Good Grief! You'd think for $500, they'd at least iron it!'
He never heard the shot.
Funeral on Thursday at Noon.
Closed coffin.
An old, blind cowboy wanders into an all-girl biker bar by mistake, finds his way to a bar stool and orders a shot of Jack Daniels.After sitting there for a while, he yells to the bartender, “Hey, you wanna hear a blond joke?The bar immediately falls absolutely silent.In a very deep, husky voice, the woman next to the old blind cowboy says, “Before you tell that joke, Cowboy, I think it is only fair, given that you are blind, that you should know five important things.
- The bartender is a blond girl who’s holding a baseball bat.
- The bouncer is a blond girl with a billy-club.
- I’m a 6-foot tall, 175-pound blond woman with a black belt in karate.
- The woman sitting next to me is blond and a professional weightlifter.
- The lady to your right is blond and a professional wrestler.
Now, think about it seriously, Cowboy. Do you still wanna tell that blond joke?”The blind cowboy thinks for a second, shakes his head and mutters, “Well heck no, not if I’m gonna have to explain it five times.”
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