Designing a Super Bowl halftime performance is, in many ways, an exercise in sacrificial concision: Artists must whittle decades of songs into a crowd-friendly, roughly 13-minute reprieve from athletics and multimillion-dollar commercials. It’s no wonder that many sets end up feeling like lackluster interruptions of the main events.
But during tonight’s Super Bowl LVIII halftime show, the veteran R&B singer Usher breathed life into the annual musical diversion.

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Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Katherine J.

Thirty minutes into Godzilla Minus One, the 33rd film in Japan’s most famous movie series and the first to be nominated for an Oscar, the writer-director Takashi Yamazaki throws the equivalent of a historical-revisionist curveball.

“Divisive,” “corrupt,” and “messy.” That’s how Americans described the state of our politics when asked to do so by Pew last year. Other popular answers included “polarized” and “dysfunctional.”
Those of us who feel that way may be tempted to tune out this election year. To participate in politics is to encounter many otherwise lovely people at their most upset, angry, and uncharitable.

Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States and the presumptive Republican nominee, said earlier today that he would side with Russia against NATO and encourage Russian President Vladimir Putin to brutalize our allies. Not so long ago, many Americans—and especially most Republicans—would have considered anyone supporting such a view to be little more than a deranged and hateful anti-American fanatic.

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The Supreme Court is set to play a pivotal role in the 2024 presidential election, as it weighs former President Donald Trump’s appeal to appear on Colorado’s Republican presidential-primary ballot.

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“Productivity is a sore subject for a lot of people,” my colleague Amanda Mull wrote last fall—and I’ll admit that just reading that line makes me feel a little stressed.

This article was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
The stories have become horribly familiar: houses so overrun by bedbugs that the bloodsucking insects pile an inch deep on the floor. An airport shutting down gates for deep cleaning after the parasites were spotted. Fear and loathing during Fashion Week 2023 in Paris, with bedbug-detection dogs working overtime when the insects turned up in movie theaters and trains.

The early 2000s were an excellent time for romance. J. Lo married Marc Anthony. Vanessa Carlton vowed to walk a thousand miles for love. Ryan Gosling kissed Rachel McAdams in the pouring rain. And in Front Royal, Virginia, Chris Crowe flapped his arms to woo Walnut, a five-foot-tall white-naped crane.
Walnut was a graceful, strong-willed bird, if a tad antisocial.