The first thing you need is a voice.
One someone can fall asleep to.
Can sleep through. Words
twinkling in faint starbursts
of static. Your timbre must sotto
the way a library book smells
like the mausoleum of Erato.
You must bring a thermos—
an old metal one, dinged.
Fill it with quote-unquote
coffee but drink
slowly. Before 3, you’ll have to
say Saint-Saens without slurring.
Oh, and you’ll need to know Italian,
of course.
Over the past few decades, American parents have been pressured into making a costly wager: If they sacrifice their hobbies, interests, and friendships to devote as much time and as many resources as possible to parenting, they might be able to launch their children into a stable adulthood. While this gamble sometimes pays off, parents who give themselves over to this intensive form of child-rearing may find themselves at a loss when their children are grown and don’t need them as much.
We Mourn for All We Do Not KnowThe Federal Writers’ Project slave narratives provide a rare window into Black American heritage, Clint Smith wrote in March.I am a 63-year-old white woman. Having read some of the Federal Writers’ Project slave narratives in college, I have known about them my entire adult life.
Aviation deaths once looked like an intractable problem. Then the federal government began probing every plane crash with an eye toward preventing future loss of life. Our skies got much safer as a result. A similar approach could reduce police killings. A federal agency should investigate every single killing and significant injury caused by American police officers, who have long killed people at higher rates than cops in many other wealthy democracies.
Imaginary sex, shark liver, and pretend airplane food kept me going.
No one is quite sure which denim our legs will want once our arms have been jabbed.
If the financial and crypto markets are going to be so dumb, count me in.
Just impressively terrible.
Weighing the evidence in a late-pandemic mystery.
Relocation incentives get lots of buzz.
A year of trying everything to survive the pandemic.
“It’s been a steep learning curve” for Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, said one senior administration official.
Fetal tissue research has been used in the development of numerous vaccines and treatments, including for Parkinson’s, HIV and Covid-19.
One billion dollars of the $1.7 billion will be used directly to expand genomic sequencing over the long-term.
The city faces a challenge in reaching people who couldn’t dedicate time and resources to getting the vaccine.
Parenting advice on college choices, autism concerns, and body-conscious shopping.
The numbers signal the U.S. is well on its way toward a revival, one that’s widely expected to reach record levels of growth later this year.
The president’s team is preparing a $3 trillion spending proposal to power through Congress. They’re betting markets and the economy will cooperate long enough to pass it.
Structural inequities in the U.S. labor market that have affected Black and Hispanic workers’ ability to advance out of low-paying jobs, as well as discrimination in hiring practices, are also likely having an effect.
The United States has imposed new sanctions on Russia and expelled 10 Russian diplomats after the Biden administration accused Moscow of being involved in major cyberattacks. The Treasury Department claimed Russia interfered in the 2020 election and was behind the SolarWinds hack, which compromised the computer systems of nine U.S. government agencies and scores of private companies. The sanctions target 32 Russian entities and individuals and bar U.S.
In the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, a key witness for the defense was the former Maryland chief medical examiner, Dr. David Fowler, who contradicted most other expert witnesses in the trial and suggested heart trouble and other issues, not the police restraint, caused George Floyd’s death.
Protesters in Chicago took to the streets to condemn the police killing of Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old Latinx boy, after bodycam video released by the Chicago police showed Toledo had his hands up in the air when a police officer shot him dead on March 29. Police initially described the incident as an “armed confrontation,” but the video shows Toledo raised his hands after being ordered to do so.
U.S. health officials have delayed a decision on whether to resume the use of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine after reports of blood clots in six women who received doses. Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease physician and professor of medicine at the UCSF/San Francisco General Hospital, says it’s “prudent” to investigate reports of blood clots but notes the issue “is very rare” and unlikely to cause more than a temporary delay.
Journalist E. Jean Carroll’s attorneys argue that’s both “wrong and dangerous.
When I went to the dentist last week, I didn’t plan to bring up racism and entrenched systemic abuse of Black people in the U.S. Dodging conflict was a survival skill I learned in childhood, but I pushed past my aversion and took a risk. It was a tiny risk in a situation that wasn’t dire, but the results illustrate that facing difficult issues instead of skimming over the surface can help us break old patterns.
During last year’s second presidential debate, Donald Trump made certain to note how horribly things were going on his watch:
“We have to open our country,” the big, dumb adobe mud hut brayed. “We’re not going to have a country. You can’t do this, we can’t keep this country closed. It is a massive country with a massive economy. People are losing their jobs, they’re committing suicide.
The Trump administration—the malignant milieu of racism, bad ideas, and bad, racist ideas—had, for the past two-plus years, limited the use of consent decrees in holding police departments accountable for abusive (read: racist) behavior. Now, Attorney General Merrick Garland is reversing that Trump-era policy.
But the conservative Republican member of Congress still vows to push Donald Trump’s “America First agenda with my congressional colleagues.
