Religious texts such as the Bible, the Torah, and the Quran don’t say anything about vaccines—of course, all three texts predate them by hundreds of years. So when faith leaders face questions about immunizations, they generally offer their own interpretations of the scriptures. Such questions, particularly about the applicability of religious exemptions, have become more urgent during the pandemic, forcing clergy to take hard stances for or against excusals.

With tax season upon us, the IRS is pushing individuals to submit to facial recognition in exchange for being able to complete a range of basic tax-related activities online. The IRS has retained a private firm—ID.me (formerly known as TroopSwap)—that claims to provide “secure identity proofing, authentication, and group affiliation verification for government and businesses across sectors.” The IRS is not the only government agency working with ID.me.

For the second year in a row, the Sundance Film Festival had to go completely virtual, but that didn’t stop the annual celebration from giving a robust preview of the most exciting emerging artists in Hollywood. Much of this year’s slate defied the pandemic’s limitations: Twisty horror films didn’t need Park City’s frigid climate to deliver chills.

Pour one out for Delta, the SARS-CoV-2 variant that Season 3 of the pandemic seems intent on killing off. After holding star billing through the summer and fall of 2021, Delta’s spent the past several weeks getting absolutely walloped by its feistier cousin Omicron—a virus that’s adept at both blitzing in and out of airways and dodging the antibodies that vaccines and other variants raise.

The Gilded Age made its debut on HBO on January 24, which is also the writer Edith Wharton’s birthday—a detail that’s hard to ascribe to coincidence. Not only does the drama borrow Wharton’s milieu of 1880s New York City, but the show’s creator is also a self-proclaimed Whartonite.