Excellent gluten-free sourdough bread is possible — in just 5 easy steps

Just as appetites are growing for ancient wheat flours like spelt, Kamut, and einkorn, so too is consumer demand for naturally gluten-free flours like buckwheat, sorghum, and teff—albeit a bit more slowly. Little by little, whether they have gluten intolerances or not, bakers are beginning to appreciate the unique flavors presented by gluten-free alternatives. The result? Tastier loaves of gluten-free bread.

1. Stock Up On “Short” & “Long” Flours

“Gluten-free isn’t a fad diet, and it isn’t a diet that lacks,” said Naomi Devlin, the U.K.-based author of River Cottage Gluten Free. “It potentially could be a diet that has a lot more flavor and diversity in it.” Despite being seemingly everywhere, gluten is found only in three cereals: barley, wheat, and rye (plus hybrids like triticale). On the other hand, gluten-free grains and cereals are far more numerous: buckwheat, teff, millet, corn, sorghum, rice, lentil, chickpea, almond, quinoa, amaranth—the list goes on.

Unlike the more standardized bleached all-purpose wheat flours available en masse at grocery stores, gluten-free flours each have their own flavor profiles, capabilities, and limitations. “The way I break flours down is into long and short flours. I think of them as a kind of spectrum, with short flours like corn and rice being crumbly and dry; and long flours like oat and buckwheat being stretchy, binding, and capable of holding a shape. Teff is somewhere toward the long end. In the middle, you have things like quinoa, millet, and chestnut,” said Devlin. “[For gluten-free breads], you’re often looking at combining a long flour with a short flour in order to get the benefits of both. You want the short flour to dry out the crumb of the bread, and you want the long flour to provide stretch and chew.” Most gluten-free recipes will call for a blend of different flours to achieve the desired texture and flavor.

In addition to providing structure and elasticity to doughs, gluten helps retain moisture in wheat-based sourdough loaves. Without it, gluten-free breads tend to go stale much more quickly. To counteract that, Ian Lowe, a Tasmania-based artisan baker and the owner of Apiece, incorporates freshly milled chickpea flour into his final mix. “The inclusion of legume flours slows staling associated with gluten-free breads due to the resistant starch content of legumes,” said Lowe. “Five to 15 percent of the total flour blend yields the best results.”

Of course, within the world of gluten-free flours, there also tends to be more variation. “There’s huge inconsistency among brands. I feel like 75 percent of the time when I’m helping people troubleshoot their bread, it has to do with milling,” said Aran Goyoaga, the author of Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple. All of Goyoaga’s recipes call for superfine flours, which hydrate better than the more commercially available stone-ground flours, thus preventing the gumminess and crumbliness often associated with gluten-free baking. Superfine flours can be purchased online (Goyoaga recommends Anthony’s Goods, Authentic Foods, and Terrasoul Superfoods; Devlin is a fan of Shipton Mill in the U.K.), but if all you can find is stone-ground, Goyoaga suggests holding back around 10 percent of the water in her recipes.

When measuring your flours (and other ingredients), use a kitchen scale. “In gluten-free baking, weighing is the number one priority,” said Goyoaga. “If you’re using stone-ground instead of superfine, the densities are going to be slightly different. If you’re using volume measures, you’ll end up with different amounts of flour.”

2. Use A Strong (Gluten-Free) Sourdough Starter

The starting point in every gluten-free sourdough journey is cultivating a starter, a fermented dough brimming with wild yeast and bacteria that acts as a natural leavener. Goyoaga uses superfine brown rice flour in her gluten-free sourdough starter—compared to other gluten-free flours, rice is more economical, more mild-flavored, and creates an environment that most closely mimics a wheat-based starter.

“Wheat starters typically have 100 bacterial cells for every yeast cell; natural rice starters support approximately the same ratio,” said Lowe. “Millet does as well.” Teff, quinoa, or buckwheat flours will also do the trick.

Recipe: Gluten-Free Sourdough Starter

Regardless of the recipe you use, the process is generally the same: Mix (gluten-free) flour and water repetitively at room temperature over several days. As the mixture ferments, it will bubble into a reliable colony of yeast and bacteria.

Once your starter is consistently rising and falling after each feeding, you can experiment with subbing in other gluten-free grains—even cocoa—to match your personal flavor and sourness preferences. Teff will contribute a more sour note evocative of wheat sourdough. Alternatively, “you don’t have to embrace the sourness,” said Devlin. “The method of overfeeding, or making sure that the starter is really fresh and lively, tends to make a sweeter, more flavorsome bread.”

Owing to the higher starch and water content, gluten-free sourdough starters tend to be more volatile than their wheat-based counterparts. Because they rise and fall more quickly, you’ll have a shorter window in which to use them. “I always tell people to only ferment their starter until it’s mousse-like. If you let it go too far, your bread is just going to collapse in the oven,” said Goyoaga. “You’re just going to waste a bunch of ingredients.” If you store your starter in a glass jar, mark the top of the starter with a rubber band just after mixing. This allows you to track progress throughout the day: how much it expands, how long it takes, and what it looks like once it begins to fall. Try to use your starter just before it peaks.

3. Learn Which Ingredients Provide Additional Structure

“With gluten flour, you’re either activating the gluten or avoiding gluten development,” said Devlin. For example, when making chewy bread, you want gluten development, whereas with crumbly cookies, you want to avoid it. “With gluten-free baking, you’re thinking, how can I support the flour to get the result that I want?” Gluten-free baking requires a few extra ingredients to provide additional structure—namely hydrocolloids, starches, binders, and fats.

Hydrocolloids

A hydrocolloid refers to something that can be combined with water to form a gel. In gluten-free breads, hydrocolloids perform similarly to gluten by binding water in a matrix, thus helping the bread expand and rise. Goyoaga, Devlin, and Lowe all rely on psyllium husk powder. “Psyllium husk does not negatively impact crumb texture in the same way all other hydrocolloids do,” said Lowe.

Unlike wheat-based sourdoughs, gluten-free doughs made with psyllium husk powder are not extensible—they cannot stretch. In other words, gluten-free breads have a harder time expanding around large air bubbles formed during fermentation. As a result, fermentation tends to be shorter and the dough is much more delicate. For best results, seek out a high-quality, finely ground psyllium husk powder. Goyoaga recommends purchasing from Terrasoul Superfoods.

Starches

In addition to hydrocolloids, most gluten-free sourdough recipes will call for a blend of starches to lighten up the heavier whole grain flours. “When I think about a boule, I want some open crumb,” said Goyoaga, referring to loaves with a light interior featuring regular, consistently dispersed air pockets. “For that, you need to have whole grain and starch.” Goyoaga’s gluten-free sourdough boule recipe in Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple relies on tapioca starch, which is binding and chewy, and potato starch, which is tender and light.

“Starch, although not essential, helps final loaf volume and texture,” said Lowe. “Generally, optimal amounts are between 20 to 33 percent of the total flour blend, with my favorite, in order, being corn, potato, and tapioca.”

Binders & Fats

Due to higher hydration and the lack of gluten, gluten-free doughs will often require further binding. This may come in the form of ground flaxseed or eggs, which help thicken, provide structure, and make it easier for dough to expand. Dough strength may also come from the addition of fats: “Fats like oil help stabilize gas bubbles during proofing and baking,” said Lowe. “Fats that are liquid at room temperature work best, at levels between 1 and 10 percent of flour weight.” In wheat-based breads, fats (like eggs, milk, and oil) are typically reserved for enriched breads like brioche, challah, focaccia, and babka.

4. Shape & Bake Those Loaves Like A Pro

Rye- and wheat-based sourdoughs often require a pre-shaping step before being placed in tins or bannetons, but gluten-free breads are primarily shaped by the container in which they’re proofed. For boules, gently form a smooth dough ball and place it in your proofing basket.

Because gluten-free doughs are weaker, choosing narrower proofing baskets and baking tins that contain the dough will help with achieving desired height. “You want tins that have a tall, narrow profile. This ensures good volume, with an excellent cross-section when sliced,” said Lowe. “Having more surface area relative to the interior ensures adequate heat transfer. This is essential since gluten-free breads contain such high water amounts.” Goyoaga recommends King Arthur Flour’s specialty gluten-free bread tins or pullman loaf tins.

When you’re ready to bake, boules will need to be inverted and lowered into the Dutch oven. Scoring—the decorative slashing on the top of bread—helps direct expansion, and must be done quickly right before baking. “I love to do faces on loaves,” said Devlin. “But [with gluten-free sourdough] you have to go fast. You have to be confident.”

Once your loaf is in the oven, get comfortable—it’s going to take a while. Goyoaga’s sourdough boule recipe clocks in at 120 percent hydration and takes over an hour and a half to bake. (For reference, most wheat sourdough recipes are in the 70 to 90 percent hydration range.) Once fully baked to an internal temperature of 210ºF, you’ll want to let your loaves completely cool to set the crumb and avoid a gummy texture.

5. Remember: Experimenting > Perfection

The foremost piece of advice that Lowe, Devlin, and Goyoaga agreed on is that gluten-free sourdough should not be an ersatz version of wheat sourdough. The flavors and textures are completely their own, with their own distinct capabilities and limitations. Goyoaga’s recipe is flavorful and earthy, with a slight but lingering bitterness.

“It’s not that it’s dense, but it has that kind of light, close crumb that you can get from a really great rye bread. Which is actually a joy to eat!” said Devlin. “They’re deeply flavorsome. You get this great caramelization on the crust with gluten-free, because the sugars are more free.”

The final piece of advice is to experiment. Goyoaga’s boule recipe took over a year to develop, and continues to evolve as she works with new ingredients and techniques. The same is true, I’m sure, for Devlin and Lowe.

“We’re real bread-heads, you know,” said Devlin of her fellow gluten-free bakers. “Everyone’s always excited about the other baking we do, but actually it’s the bread that makes me delighted. It’s life changing.”

Susie’s struggle in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”

Last October, Susie stole my Halloween thunder.

My partner and I had planned to dress as Roy and Keeley from “Ted Lasso,” but when internet-ordered wigs proved less than satisfactory, looking more like Muppets than hair, we made a last-minute pivot, scanning our closet for clothes we already had.

We could do “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” I decided. I had dresses, heels, even a vintage pink car coat I had bought at a thrift store the winter I was pregnant; it was the only coat I could find to button around my waist. I could be Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan), the wealthy housewife turned standup comic in the Amazon Prime show. And my partner could be Joel, Midge’s ex-husband.

No, my partner said. He was going to be a much better character: Susie.

Susie Myerson (Alex Borstein) is Midge’s manager on the show, now in its fourth season. A heavy smoker and drinker, sarcastic and foul-mouthed but loyal and hopeful, she wears newsboy caps, suspenders, striped shirts and her keys on a chain. A frequent gag on the show is that she’s mistaken for a small boy. In my favorite episodes of the second season, Susie follows Midge’s family to the Catskills, where they’re on vacation, and poses as a plumber. Her only real prop to convince everyone? A plunger.

You try showing up to an outdoor Halloween party full of strangers with a plunger over your shoulder.

Needless to say, my partner made friends.

In this house we believe Susie is queer, asexual if not the butch lesbian that many fans (including this one) wish the show would explicitly give a real storyline to, instead of a years-long is she or isn’t she dance that feels like queer-baiting. Played by the wonderful Borstein, Susie is brash, unforgettable and one of the best characters on TV. She’s also one of the only ones living in poverty.

Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, co-creators of “Mrs. Maisel,” have not always been the best at writing about or even addressing inequality. Their single mom, Lorelai, on “Gilmore Girls,” though lovable, is one of a long line of unbelievable solo mom characters who never really have to worry about money. The Palladino and Sherman-Palladino heroine of “Bunheads,” a down on her luck showgirl, inherits an estate.

In many regards, “Mrs. Maisel” follows the same line of (not) thinking about money. Midge’s problems, even a philandering husband, aren’t real problems because her parents smooth them over. For much of the show, Midge’s father is a Columbia University professor and her mother has significant inherited wealth. Continuing the single mom fantasy, Midge’s rich ex is financially if not emotionally supportive. If the whole comedy thing doesn’t work out, Midge is not going to end up on the street. At worst, she’ll end up in Astoria.

Even though Midge’s drive to be taken seriously in a sexist, male-dominated field is urgent, her wealth can make the whole enterprise feel a little low-stakes. But Susie is different. Everything for Susie is high stakes.

She has much more worldly experience than Midge — and the world didn’t treat her so great. Her mother was alcoholic, and her family life dysfunctional and difficult. Susie’s relationship with her sister (Emily Bergl) and how they both can’t stand the sister’s alcoholic husband is one of the more real threads of the show.

Susie works at the Gaslight, the seedy club in the Village (based on a real one) where Midge performs, but her dream is to be a manager. And it takes a long time to come true, really true, longer than Midge’s wish. Because of the way she looks, Susie has to fight constantly — and literally — to be allowed entry. When the butler of a future client asks to see “some form of identification,” Susie calmly extends her middle finger.

She lives in a basement studio apartment that horrifies Midge when the wealthier woman finally sees it, telling Susie she needs to move out now. Just moving out is not something most people can afford to do, and even though Susie’s situation improves somewhat as Midge starts to get gigs, some of them even paying, she stays in the same crappy place with a Murphy bed. She sublets the apartment, and, as is the way of folks with less money, maybe especially queer friends, ends up living there with two other people.

Like Kimberly being slipped the credit card of her wealthy roommate for an expensive dinner with the parents on “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” Susie is often at the mercy of her rich friend. Midge doesn’t understand the degree of her own comfort, even after repeatedly being exposed to Susie’s lack of it. Susie calls Midge’s apartment Versailles, asking: “Who has cutlery for 30? . . . Where’s your airplane? In the bathroom?”

Susie doesn’t have a suitcase but packs her clothes in a grocery bag. Getting a phone is a big deal for her. So is getting business cards. She can only afford to print a few and when a potential colleague takes one, she asks for it back. Her car — her mother’s old one — keeps breaking down.

Susie introduces Midge to aspects of the real world that her parents have sheltered her from, like long road trips with undependable transportation (“She’s got, like, 40,000 hats, but no car,” Susie says of Midge), sketchy hotel rooms and diner food. Midge, in turn, counsels Susie through her first plane ride.

But despite her lack of experience in the world of the rich, Susie has hidden depths. She can play the piano really well (and tunes the baby grand at Midge’s parents’ apartment). She loves the flute. What could she have been, given the opportunities of Midge?

The true child of an alcoholic, Susie is a peacemaker, spending much of her time as a manager smoothing over the feathers Midge has carelessly and often needlessly ruffled. She endears herself to others as a way of self-protection. Her plumber ruse in the Catskills soon turns into Susie being the most loved employee on staff (even though she’s not actually on staff).

When she’s kidnapped by some goons because she owes money, her kidnappers become her good friends by the end of the evening — and they’re still, happily, in her life. “This is the best abduction I’ve ever had,” Susie tells them. “I’m serious here.” Everyone eventually falls in love with Susie, although Susie has yet to love anyone except Midge.

And that, of course, is unrequited.

Susie has trouble trusting, but once you’re in with her, you’re in — and she’ll do anything for her friends, including pretending to have had an affair with Joel in order for Midge to be granted a divorce. That giving all you have, even if or until you have nothing, may be a consequence of how much she’s struggled.

Experiencing poverty, which is a kind of trauma, rewires the brain in different ways. (My way is that I have trouble buying basic things for myself, agonizing over even minor expenses for a very long time.) Another way may be Susie’s way, where she loses money as fast as she has it. Midge isn’t good with money, either, because it’s always been around her whole life; she’s never had to worry about what things cost or how to make income. Susie has only had to worry about money, and the start of season 4 finds her struggling to keep what she has, confused by it and scarily careless.

Midge is desperately trying to hold on to her upper class lifestyle. Susie is desperately trying to hold onto Midge — and just trying to survive.

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The tension in the show about Midge’s life in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” is, all things considered, pretty low. And her determination to prove herself as a female artist is wearing a little thin, after she basically outed a gay Black man on stage at the end of season 3 — an incident for which she has only expressed remorse as it pertains to her own career, not potentially ending someone’s life in the closeted 1960s.

One hopes that the coming season addresses why this action was so wrong. Otherwise, Midge’s clueless rich white woman act is getting grating.

But even though Midge is the one on stage, Susie has always been the star. Early in the show, she pushes away Midge’s comedy journal, mistaking it for the wealthy woman’s diary, saying, “I don’t want to read the word ponies over and over.”

Neither do we, and luckily the show seems to know that. Never mind the spotlight. The struggles of the show, and its true appeal, come from the back of the house, where Susie is watching in the darkness, in a cloud of smoke, waiting her turn.

The first two episodes of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” season 4 are now streaming on Prime Video, with new episodes released on Fridays. Watch a trailer for it below, via YouTube.

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10 cool facts about curling

To the uninitiated, curling might seem like an unusual sport, with its weird brooms and constant sweeping on ice. But if you get to know the basics of the winter sport, you can see why so many people from all around the world are fascinated by its strategies and the endurance required to win. Here are 10 cool facts about curling that might just turn you into a superfan.

1. CURLING ORIGINATED IN 16TH-CENTURY SCOTLAND.

The winter sport of curling originated in Scotland and dates as far back as 1511. Early games were played on frozen ponds and lochs with primitive curling stones made from different types of materials and rocks from the regions of Stirling and Perth.

The Grand Caledonian Curling Club, established in 1838, was the first modern curling club in Scotland. Its club members and committee were responsible for properly organizing the game and writing its first official rule book with standardized equipment and curling stones. The club later changed its name to the Royal Caledonian Curling Club when Queen Victoria granted it a royal charter in 1843, as the sport was becoming more and more popular in Europe and Canada in the late 19th century.

2. CURLING STONES ARE MADE FROM RARE GRANITE.

Each curling stone has a circumference of 36 inches and a height of 4.5 inches. The weight of a stone varies between 38 and 44 pounds, depending on the level of competition. The stones are made from a rare granite that is polished and shaped. The granite used to make most curling stones comes from just two quarries in the world: the Scottish island of Ailsa Craig and the Trefor Granite Quarry in Wales. All the curling stones used in World Curling Federation competitions are made with granite from the Ailsa Craig quarry. Since the granite is so rare, there’s a possibility the quarries might run out of materials to make new curling stones in the future.

3. CURLING MADE ITS OLYMPIC DEBUT 74 YEARS BEFORE IT BECAME AN OFFICIAL SPORT.

Curling made its debut during the inaugural Winter Olympic Games in Chamonix, France, in 1924 before being dropped for the following Olympics in 1928. Then, between 1932 and 1992, curling was intermittently held solely as a demonstration sport, meaning it was presented just to raise awareness of it, and none of the medals won actually counted toward a country’s final tally.

After being relegated to demonstration status at the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid Games in 1932, the Calgary Games in 1988, and the Albertville Games in 1992, both men’s and women’s curling officially joined the program in Nagano in 1998. In 2006, however, the International Olympic Committee decided to retroactively upgrade the curling medals from that first Olympics in 1924 from demonstration to official medals.

In addition, a new mixed doubles curling event debuted at the 2018 year’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

4. CURLING HAS ITS OWN LANGUAGE.

Like many sports, curling has its own distinct terminology and rules that make it unique. The object of the game is to score the most points as you “deliver” (slide) stones in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction down a 150-foot-long by 15-foot-wide stretch of rough ice — called the sheet — to the button (center) of a 12-foot house (or target). Stones usually curl to either the left or right after they are delivered, which is why the sport is called curling.

Two teams with four players take turns scoring eight stones each (16 in total) in a time period called an end (think of this as an inning in baseball). Teams with the closest stone to the button get rewarded a point. Moreover, if that team has multiple stones near the button, those also get a point. The team with the most points after 10 ends wins the game.

Each player takes turns delivering stones from the hack (a starting block made of rubber) and must release it before they reach the hog line (a line 37 feet away from the hack) for it to be in play. The skip (or captain) then yells out instructions to the sweepers, who brush away and melt ice with brooms to guide and prolong the curling stone’s delivery point.

During gameplay, teams can also take out their opponent’s stones from the house to get them out of play to score more points or prevent them from scoring.

5. CURLING IS NICKNAMED “THE ROARING GAME.”

Curling earned the nickname “The Roaring Game” because of the rumbling sound a curling stone makes when it’s delivered and how it glides across rough ice. It’s also a reference to the sound of brooms frantically sweeping away and melting ice to guide the stone to the button of the house.

In addition, the sport is also considered “Chess on Ice,” because it involves a lot of strategy and patience to defeat your opponent.

6. CURLING PLAYERS WEAR TWO DIFFERENT TYPES OF SHOES.

All curlers must wear two different types of shoes while playing the game. One shoe is called the slider, which is made with a Teflon sole. It’s worn on the slide foot and used for sliding out of the hack to deliver a curling stone down the sheet.

The other shoe is called the gripper, which is worn on the hack foot (for pushing out of the hack) when delivering a stone. Sweepers use the gripper shoe to get more traction down on the ice, so they can sweep faster and cleaner.

7. CURLING HAS HAD AT LEAST ONE NOTABLE BADASS.

After winning the World Junior Championships in 1976 and 1978, Calgary’s Paul Gowsell was dubbed the “rebel of the curling world” for his long hair and penchant for wearing plaid pants during games. During a tournament at the Regina Curling Club in 1980, he ordered a pizza in the middle of play and proceeded to eat slices on the ice with his teammates while his opponents were curling. That incident earned Gowsell yet another moniker: “Pizza Paul.”

“We get off the ice, we’re hungry, and everyone in the stands—there might’ve been 1500 people there to watch—is also lined up at the cafeteria, ordering food,” Gowsell told the Calgary Herald. “Difference is, we’ve got to be back on the ice right away. So we just ordered a pizza. The guy in the little paper hat comes out there and I pay him for a couple extra-large Specials, deluxe with everything on ’em. Except anchovies. If people were upset, I can’t understand why. I mean, we were hungry.”

8. CURLING HAS A LOT OF CELEBRITY FANS.

There are a number of famous actors, musicians, and professional athletes who are big fans of curling. George Clooney became a fan when he was filming “The Perfect Storm” (2000) in Canada. “It was on every channel and I was like, ‘What the hell? My God, have something more on,'” Clooney recalled to the Daily Record. “But by the third month, they couldn’t get me out of the hotel room. I was like, ‘Hang on! That’s proper technique, they’ve got a different shoe.'”

There are other celebrities who are fans of curling, such as Bruce Springsteen, Toby Keith, British race car driver Dario Franchitti, and NFL tight end Vernon Davis, who was named an honorary captain of the Men’s U.S. Olympic Curling Team because of his passion for the sport. Davis even traveled to Vancouver and Sochi during the Winter Olympics to support his team in action.

9. POLITENESS IS REQUIRED.

Good sportsmanship and politeness are a very important part of the winter sport; this is known as the “Spirit of Curling.” Teams often congratulate opponents for good shots and smart strategy, while players are discouraged from taunting and trash-talking each other. Furthermore, conceding is an acceptable part of the game. If a team believes there is no chance of catching up or winning, they can concede any time after the sixth end. It’s considered an honorable act of sportsmanship instead of a sign of weakness. Winning teams are also known for buying the losing team a round of drinks after games, especially at the highest levels of competition.

10. CURLING HAS SEEN ITS FAIR SHARE OF SCANDALS.

Now that the politeness is out of the way, let’s talk about controversy. Despite the respectful nature of the game, the curling world is no stranger to scandals, with one of the most high-profile being the predictably named “Broomgate.”

This was brought upon by new broom technology that, in the eyes of some, allowed the sweepers too much control over a match. In its purest form, those throwing the stone need a high level of technique for it to land in its designated home. But the high-end icePad broom was so efficient, it could sand down the icy surface of the stretch to manipulate the stone much easier.

For purists, this reliance on equipment over technique hurt the sanctity of the sport. The icePad broom was banned by the World Curling Federation for the 2015/2016 season, and new guidelines for brushes were introduced soon after.

That’s far from the only scandal to rock the world of curling: The sport was also hit with two doping scandals during the 2010 Paralympics, and created another “-gate” scandal with 2009’s “Dumpgate.”

An unsent text gives insight into final moments of a California family’s annihilation

New information has been made available by investigators relating to the mysterious deaths of Jonathan Gerrish, Ellen Chung, their one-year-old daughter, Miju, and their family dog, Oski, while hiking in California’s Sierra National Forest last year.

The Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office revealed in a press conference this week that, with the help of the FBI, they were able to pull data from Gerrish’s phone that included attempted calls, family photos and nature selfies from the hike, as well as several text messages that went unsent due to lack of service. This newfound evidence paints a clearer picture of the last moments of the family’s lives before they died from what was previously suspected as being exposure to toxic algae from a nearby stream. Police believe this new evidence to point towards hyperthermia and possible dehydration as being the actual cause of death.

One of the unsent text messages recovered from the father’s phone reads “can you help us . . . on savage lundy trail heading back to Hites cove trail. No water or ver (over) heating with baby.” The intended recipient of the message was redacted to protect their privacy.

Devastating:

In their final moments, Jonathan Gerrish and Ellen Chung attempted calling and texting for help from the remote trail, but there was no cell service.

"can you help us…no water…overheating with baby.”

By @mgafni https://t.co/od196VOVdy

— Demian Bulwa (@demianbulwa) February 18, 2022

According to investigators there were five attempted phone calls made after noon on the day of the family’s deaths. The calls were made to multiple numbers within a span of 25 minutes, but no calls were made to 911. Investigators were also able to use GPS data from the recovered phone to map out the path and timeline of the family’s hike, putting an end to a long-running mystery.

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“The cellphone data results were the last thing both the family and detectives were waiting on,” Mariposa County Sheriff Jeremy Briese said in a statement. “The extracted information confirms our initial findings. I am very proud of my team and our partner agencies for all the work they put in. Their dedication has allowed us to close this case and answer lingering questions the family had, bringing them a little peace.”

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Why can’t Hollywood sci-fi and fantasy imagine alternatives to capitalism or feudalism?

Whether it’s through fire-breathing dragons, time travel, psychic powers, or spaceships that sail effortlessly between distant stars, there’s never been a shortage of tropes in fantasy or science fiction stories that challenge our belief of what’s possible. Yet while these genres are great at imagining new forms of magic and technology, the most popular sci-fi and fantasy works tend to be politically unimaginative. Indeed, a survey of best-sellers and Hollywood-produced works in the genre reveals a tendency to fall back on the same old political or economic systems: for fantasy, we have our usual monarchies and empires, kings and queens, nobles and commoners. For sci-fi, the future is often bleak, dominated by hyper-capitalist corporate galactic warfare or techno-bureaucratic empires clinging to power on their newly-annexed planets.

As a fantasy author myself, I’m intrigued as to how writers’ imagination hit a wall when imagining political alternatives. I am reminded of the oft-quoted remark from literary theorist Frederic Jameson, who quipped that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. Accordingly, the authors who are adept at imagining the end of capitalism are, more often than not, at the fringes.

In my first novel, an epic fantasy story entitled “The Spirit of a Rising Sun,” I tried to challenge this myopia around political and economic systems in fantasy; in doing so, I spent a lot of time pondering the politics and economics that feature so heavily in some of our most cherished stories, and trying to understand why it’s so hard for writers to think outside the political box.

Certainly, there are key works in science fiction that push us to consider non-capitalist futures. Ursula K. LeGuin’s 1974 book, “The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia,” is exemplary in this regard. In the book, we travel alongside our hero and physicist Shevek, who hails from a planet governed by anarcho-syndicalist principles: political and economic equality, working-class self-management, equality between genders, and a voluntarist orientation toward social life. Although his is a planet of relative material poverty, we nonetheless see how these principles inform his own worldview, including his disdain for inequality in all its guises. Shevek travels to rival system Urras, where inhabitants practice a form of state capitalism that is rife with the usual inequities.

Class conflict, income inequality, and the recurring question of how society ought to be organized are at the heart of not only “The Dispossessed,” but much of LeGuin’s corpus.

LeGuin’s work is far from the only example: one might include (most of) Star Trek or the speculative works of Kim Stanley Robinson or China Miéville. Other more recent works abound.

Unfortunately, this tradition is neglected in much of our most recent and beloved popular films and TV shows, which fail to fulfill the promise set out by fantasy and science fiction to imagine different worlds.

More recently, the popular sci-fi novel series turned Amazon show “The Expanse” pushes the politics of sci-fi in critical directions. In the not so distant future, the solar system is divided into three opposed camps: Earth, Mars, and the Belters. The Belters are those who are confined to mining asteroids in the Asteroid Belt for precious resources that support the populations of Earth and Mars. While the Belters in recent seasons pursue their own freedom through extraordinarily violent means aimed at destroying countless civilian lives on Earth, their inclusion in the story nevertheless points towards the willingness in science fiction to explicitly represent the working classes. It’s an interesting contrast to, say, “Star Wars,” where the question of what is produced, by whom, and how it is distributed is not discussed at all. Where did Luke and Leia get their food from? Whose labor-time was expended while mining the minerals for not one but two Death Stars? How did the Rebel Alliance obtain the energy to power their X-wings? Though such questions are often addressed in the deeper roots of lore, I typically find myself asking these sorts of questions at the outset.

While the futuristic orientation of science fiction lends the genre an easy ability to reimagine the politics and economics of tomorrow, major works in recent popular fantasy shows rarely seem to challenge the social systems of the path. “Game of Thrones,” for example, only ever flirts with alternative forms of political organization — notably, with the Brotherhood without Banners, whom we see only in glimpses.

The Brotherhood was essentially a guerrilla group that opposed kings on all sides of the ongoing conflict, claiming to fight instead for the common people. Elsewhere, a poor religious leader called the High Sparrow challenges Olenna Tyrell, the matriarch of the rich and powerful House Tyrell that rules over Highgarden, by insisting the law applies equally to both low and high-born alike. He then pointedly asks her if she has ever performed manual labor before, before then posing to her the question of what should happen if the many cease to fear the few. This was a rare moment for “Game of Thrones,” in that this bit of dialogue hinted at deeply-buried class divisions between manual laborers and aristocrats in the GoT universe.

Likewise, in one humorous scene of “Game of Thrones,” the poor wildling woman Osha, whose home was with the Free Folk, or who recognize none of the kings or kingdoms of Westeros, challenges and annoys the noble-born Theon Greyjoy when he demands she address him with honorifics. Her brief moment of questioning threatens the ideological foundations of the entire feudal order, something the show did not take up in more depth.

Yet the heroes of this universe show time and time again that they are incapable of fully imagining an alternative world to their feudal order. In perhaps the story’s gravest misfire, even our hero-turned-villain Daenerys Targaryen, for all her efforts in breaking the chains of the old world to usher in the new, can still only ever envision a world in she is installed atop the Iron Throne, rather than a world without monarchs at all. In the show’s final episode, as those who survived Dany’s burning of King’s Landing aim to rebuild society, Sam’s meek suggestion of extending democracy to everyone regardless of noble birth is laughed out of consideration.

Given that so much of our recent popular fantasy and science fiction shows (but certainly not all—I can’t read and watch everything!) rarely seem to introduce new political or economic systems, I wanted in my own story to showcase a different sort of arrangement. The story’s hero, a young woman named Oyza Serazar, is indeed drawn to the possibility of such a world. Captured when she was young after her city is attacked by gun-wielding overseas invaders from a place called Hafrir, she was forced into a life of servitude before being thrown indefinitely into prison. But there, she reads a forbidden book she managed to smuggle in, one that calls into the question the divine authority of monarchs and the power the nobility, claiming the commoners ought to instead collectively manage society’s productive tools in their own interests. At the same time, she’s heard rumors of a mysterious new collectivity calling themselves Ungoverned, deep in the swamps outside the ruins of her old city. Trapped in prison, Oyza can thus only ponder if the Ungoverned are real, if they practice the teachings of the book she loves, and if she might one day break free to find them.

Whether I succeeded or not remains an open question, but I do think there is much more room for fantasy and science fiction to conjure up worlds that defy the politics and economics of our own world. Socialist writers, anarchist writers, and communist writers are well-positioned to think differently about some of the most basic and everyday practices of life under capitalism. Why, in the science fictional future, is there always banking, money, markets, finance, wage-labor, corporations, inequality? Why, in the fantastical past, can we not see beyond monarchs, emperors, and kingdoms? Is it possible, furthermore, to not just imagine fictional worlds differently, but the very world we ourselves live in?

If there is anything that fantasy and science fiction writers can contribute to popular discussions about how to remedy the ills of our present historical conjuncture, it ought to be through the constant reminder that the new problems we face may never find their solutions within the confines of the old. Does capitalism, for example, provide us with the tools to solve a complex problem like climate change? If the history of capitalism is any indication about its future, the answer is resoundingly no. I thus recently find myself thinking more and more about an old slogan on the left that nonetheless remains powerful to this day: “another world is possible.”

Read more on sci-fi and fantasy politics:

How to cook filet mignon to absolute perfection

With high demand and only about eight cuts per cow, filet mignon often fetches the highest price in the butcher’s case. When you’re paying upwards of $20 per pound, cooking these precious tidbits can feel a little like a tightrope walk, especially since they’re often prepared for a special occasion meal like Valentine’s Day or a weekend date night at home. Don’t be intimidated by cooking steaks. I promise. Take a breath, have a sip of Cabernet, and by paying attention to a few important details, learning how to cook a filet mignon like you’ve been doing it your whole life is actually quite easy.

What Is Filet Mignon?

Filet mignon is a choice steak, indeed. To form it, the butcher makes a cross-sectional cut from the small end of the tenderloin, a long muscle with one narrow, pointed end which runs along the lower part of the cow’s spine. The flesh there doesn’t do much work, and is, therefore, very, very tender. Unlike other cuts like a strip steak or ribeye, a filet has non-existent marbeling. What this means is that it will lack some of the fatty flavor other cuts are prized for, but the trade-off is that you gain a super tender, “cuts like butter” cut of steak.

How To Prep A Filet Mignon

Prepping a filet is simple. First, remove the steak from the refrigerator at least 30 minutes before cooking to bring the meat up to room temperature. This small but crucial step will result in a much more even cook. If you place a cold piece of meat in a hot skillet (this goes for any protein), the meat will get tough and chewy out of pure shock. And when you’re paying the high premium for tender filets, you might as well go the extra step to preserve its texture. Don’t worry about bacteria growth at this stage: 30 minutes isn’t nearly enough time for any harmful foodborne pathogens to grow and spread.

Next, pat the steak all over with a dry paper towel. Removing extra surface moisture will enable a nice, aggressive sear with plenty of delicious Maillard reaction for a flavorful crust. Finally, season the meat generously on all sides with coarse Kosher salt (which melts more slowly) and freshly ground black pepper.

That’s all you really need. However, since filet mignon is a mild-flavored cut, some people like to go beyond salt and pepper with an extra-flavorful crust of herbs or other spices. If that sounds delicious, go for it, but it’s not necessary.

Next, prepare to cook. If you plan to use your oven (more on that later), preheat it now. And if you have an instant-read meat thermometer, keep it handy.

Searing A Filet Mignon

To develop a phenomenal crust on filet mignon, sear it in a very hot, heavy pan, preferably of cast iron or oven-safe stainless steel pan. Set the pan over high heat and let it heat up before adding a small amount of neutral, high heat cooking oil such as grapeseed or canola oil. Don’t use olive oil, due to its smoke point, which means it will burn too quickly as the meat cooks. When the oil shimmers, just before it starts to smoke, place the steak in the pan gently so as to not let the oil splatter. An eight-ounce filet will need to cook for at least three minutes per side. Do not move the meat for a few minutes, then use tongs to lift up the steak from the bottom and take a peek. If the filet sports a deep brown sear on the bottom, it’s time to flip it. If the meat sticks at all, it’s not quite done searing. Leave it alone for another minute and it will self-release (trust the process!).

Repeat and sear on the other side. When a nice crust has formed, the steak is nearly done, but not quite. At this point, you have two choices: finish the filet in the pan, or transfer it to the pre-heated oven.

Finishing In The Pan

To finish your filet mignon in the pan, try a technique I call the “baste and roll.” When the top and bottom of your steak are nicely seared, turn the filet on its side and proceed to roll it slowly around the pan. When the meat has browned on all sides, it’s time to baste.

Add a couple of tablespoons of butter, a clove or two of garlic, and a sprig of woody herbs like thyme and rosemary to the pan. Sizzle the aromatics in the butter for a few seconds, then tilt the pan towards you slightly, causing the butter to pool at the lower end. Using a spoon, baste the steak with the sizzling butter. Scoop up a spoonful, drench the meat, and repeat. Do this for about one minute, then use your thermometer to check the temperature in the center of the filet. For a perfect medium rare, aim for between 125 and 130℉. If you’re not there yet, keep basting and rolling until you are.

Finishing In The Oven

The baste and roll takes a little effort, but finishing steak in the oven is super-easy. To take this route, preheat the oven to about 450. After flipping the filet, put the steak—pan and all—into the hot oven. Five minutes later, check the temperature at the center of the meat.

How Long to Cook Steak

As a rule of thumb, there’s about a ten degrees difference between each steak temperature. And always, always let steak rest for a few minutes before slicing it on a cutting board. To cook a rare filet mignon, let it come to 115℉ before resting. For medium-rare steak, let it come to 120℉ to 130℉ before resting. Medium steak = 140℉. For medium-well steak, cook it to 150℉ and a well-done steak should reach 155℉ to 160℉ before resting.

Resting and Serving

When your filet reaches an internal temperature of 125-130 F, remove it from the heat. If you have a wire rack, set the steak on it to rest. The air flow around the steak will prevent the bottom crust from steaming, preserving the seared crust that you worked so hard to achieve. Rest the filet for about 10 minutes. The juices will redistribute, and the internal temperature will continue to rise, bringing the meat to a perfect, juicy medium rare.

Since filet mignon has a mild flavor, it goes with pretty much anything you’d like to serve it with. It’s often served with herb butter and sauce, such as an easy bearnaise, soy-mustard, or our homemade A1 steak sauce. To slice the steak for serving, cut the meat across the grain.

Filet Mignon Recipes, Your Way

Filet Mignon With Perfect Roasted Potatoes

Pepper-Crusted Filets with Ricotta Gnocchi, Shiitakes & Brown Butter-Sage Sauce

Mustard-Crusted Pepper Steak

LGBT+ history: The story of camp, from Little Richard to Lil Nas X

Although camp is difficult to define, it probably doesn’t need much description.

Ever since 1956 — when former teenage drag queen Little Richard began performing his tribute to anal sex, “Tutti Frutti,” while wearing a six-inch pompadour, plucked eyebrows, and eyeliner — camp has increasingly been accommodated into social acceptance and understanding. It has been adopted and adapted by celebrities including Dolly Parton, Prince, Elton John, Ru Paul, Lady Gaga, and Lil Nas X. It was the theme of the 2019 Met Gala, prompting widespread commentary about what camp is.

Susan Sontag, whose work inspired the Met Gala Ball’s theme, wrote in Notes on Camp (1964) that camp is about “artifice and the unnatural,” a “way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon.” Camp, Sontag continues, is “the spirit of extravagance,” as well as “a kind of love, a love for human nature,” which “relishes, rather than judges.”

Sontag also writes, however, that the camp sensibility is “disengaged, depoliticized,” and that it emphasises the “decorative . . . at the expense of content.” But camp is intricately enmeshed with queerness, and is anything but disengaged and merely decorative. Rather, in subverting social norms and rejecting easy categorisation, it has a long and radical history.

Camp’s political beginnings

For many working class queer men in urban centres such as New York around the turn of the 20th century, camp was a tactic for the communication and affirmation of non-normative sexualities and genders. This was enacted at Coney Island male beauty contests, Harlem and Midtown drag balls, and in the streets and saloons of downtown Manhattan.

As historian George Chauncey established in his book Gay New York, the so-called “fairy resorts” (nightclubs whose attraction was the presence of effeminate men), which sprang up downtown, established the dominant public image of queer male sexuality. This was defined by a cultivated or performed effeminacy, including make-up, falsetto, and the use of “camp names” and female pronouns.

These men questioned gender categories, and did so by behaving “camply.” In this way, camp evolved as a visible queer signifier. It has helped some queer people, both then and since, “make sense of, respond to, and undermine,” in Chauncey’s words, “the social categories of gender and sexuality that serve to marginalise them.”

Decades later, in late June 1969, not far from New York’s former “fairy resorts,” a group of queer and trans teenagers used camp to dramatically shift the outcome of the Stonewall uprising. A series of demonstrations against the closure of a popular gay bar, these protests are often credited with launching the gay rights movement.

Facing an elite unit of armed police, the youths marshalled their campest street repertoire, joining arms, kicking their legs in the air like a precision dance troupe. They sang “We are the Stonewall Girls / We wear our hair in curls,” and called the police “Lily Law” and “the girls in blue.” Once again, camp accomplished a powerful subversion, this time of the presumed machismo and authority of the police.

Liking camp

Camp offers a critical stance that derives from the experience of being labelled deviant, highlighting the artificiality of social conventions. For the writer Christopher Isherwood, whose 1939 novel “Goodbye to Berlin” became the darkly camp musical “Cabaret” (1966), camp was underpinned by “seriousness”. To deploy it was to express “what’s basically serious to you in terms of fun and artifice and elegance.”

Two of the 20th century’s campest artists, Andy Warhol and Joe Brainard, took Isherwood’s stance on camp seriously, and based much of their careers on the belief that “liking” was a valuable aesthetic. Both are famous for the camp excess of their imagery, producing work that featured multiple iterations of camp images.

For Warhol, it was Marilyn Monroes and Jackie Kennedys. For Brainard, pansies and Madonnas. Even, in Brainard’s case, a transgressive, dramatic account of how much he liked Warhol, featuring the words “I like Andy Warhol” repeated 14 times. Warhol also embraced camp as a personal style, performing a theatrical effeminacy that equated to a strategic queerness designed to discomfit those among his contemporaries who held him to be “too swish.”

Warhol’s use of camp finds an echo, in the 21st century, in the work of Lil Nas X, a musical artist who similarly deploys Sontag’s iteration of camp as “a mode of seduction — one which employs flamboyant mannerisms susceptible of a double interpretation.”

His smash hit “Old Town Road” (2019) is a queer country/hip-hop cross-over, whose music video is replete with sequins, tassels, chaps and choreographed dancing. Much of this was ignored by some fans who only appeared to notice Lil Nas X’s commitment to camp on the release of the video for “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” (2021).

Montero features the biblical Adam making out with the serpent in the Garden of Eden, before gleefully riding down a stripper pole to hell where he performs a lapdance for Satan (all characters played by Lil Nas X). Like Warhol, Lil Nas X uses a camp style to put visuals to repressive narratives and double standards.

In particular, he claims camp transgression for black queerness, enacting, once again, a critical stance on the contradictions and condemnations that serve to marginalise those who don’t, or can’t, conform. His work confirms, in other words, that camp is much more than a quirky outfit. That it is a strategy, as much as a style.

Rona Cran, Associate Professor in Twentieth-Century American Literature, University of Birmingham

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Privatize this! How we lost control of America’s public goods — and how we can get it back

“The Privatization of Everything” is a book that sneaks up on you. Or at least it snuck up on me. Donald Cohen and Allen Mikaelian’s subtitle should have prepared me: “How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back.” I already knew some of the story. But I’ve never seen it told this way before, spanning such a vast range of examples and offering a compelling alternative vision based in the notion of public good.

The authors do this explicitly by organizing the book’s chapters into sections that deal with broad categories of public goods, each with its distinctive pragmatic logic. For example, the section “Public Goods for Life” addresses the dangers of privatizing water, food safety and public health. There are also key thematic perspectives that make sense of the story, starting with the argument that the definition of public goods should belong to, well, the public, rather than being dictated by textbook neoclassical economics, or the simple observation that private companies have interests and incentives that don’t necessarily align well with public needs, and can sometimes be entirely at odds.

Slowly but surely, it dawned on me that the authors had articulated a sound, sensible and compelling vision about how realize the promise embedded in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution: “to promote the general welfare.” That vision holds the promise of a pathway to rebuilding civic trust and a sense of common national purpose. That might seem to be wishful thinking, especially at this historical moment. But public goods are highly popular across the board, with Republicans as well as Democrats and independents, as demonstrated by the recent 342-92 vote for Postal Service reform in the House, with 120 Republicans voting yes. (All 92 no votes, mind you, were also from Republicans.)

I recently interviewed the book’s lead author, Donald Cohen, asking him first about the broad principles mentioned above, and then about the specific public goods addressed in different sections of the book.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Let’s start with some of the basic, broad principles or perspectives in your book, starting with the idea that what’s been privatized is the entire notion of public goods. You argue that they shouldn’t be understood in terms that economists have used, as “non-excludable non-rival goods,” but rather should be defined by the public itself. Why is that important?

The way I describe the classical textbook definition is simple. I use the example of the streetlight. You can’t exclude someone from using it. The light’s on the street, and if someone’s using it to read a map another person can walk up and read it too. Under that definition, health care is a private good. you can exclude people, and we do, and of course there are only so many doctors and nurses and hospital beds. So if it’s a private good, the market drives and the market rules. But if it’s a public good, then we get to say that everyone should have it. We should be able to do that democratically and not let the neoclassical market definition of public goods define what we can do.

You repeatedly make the point that privatization is more expensive, even when it appears cheaper upfront. This is glaringly obvious in one way, since private investors routinely expect double-digit returns while public bonds typically return around 4% a year. So can you talk about what to learn from that perspective?

Absolutely. Businesses have legitimate business expenses, as well as pretty high executive compensation packages, in the millions, depending on the corporations. They have returns to investors, profit. They have political expenses, lobbying, and they also have debt, because they’re involved in mergers and acquisitions, buying up other businesses. All of those are business expenses, none of which, fundamentally, is being spent on the service. If that’s the case, then you have to look at the service or the thing being provided, and say, “OK, they say they can do it cheaper. But they’re taking a bunch of money out.” I ask one question all the time: “What are you going to spend less on?”

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They say they’re efficient, but efficiency is just spending less to get more. There’s a finite list of things you can spend less on. You can have fewer workers, which they do. It happens in private prisons, they have higher ratios of prisoners to corrections officers. You could pay them less, lower wages and fewer benefits, which they do. You can use lower-quality equipment or supplies, that happens as well. And ultimately, you can give less service. When they privatized Medicaid in Iowa and Kansas, know what happened? Simple math. You got less care. So it’s it’s really a fallacy when they say “more efficient.” There may be things you can do to make services more efficient, we should always strive to do that. But when they say “more efficient,” really what they mean is they’re going to spend less, and quite often that’s very much counter to our interests.

My next question is about the basic logic of who’s being served with public versus private financing, where interests and incentives aren’t well-aligned. That’s perhaps clearest in your discussion of public-private partnerships, or P3s.

Yes, particularly involving infrastructure. The way you build stuff is design, build, finance, operate and maintain. That’s how infrastructure is built. So, design/build is often private. When you bring in private finance capital, which is more expensive than public finance — often a lot more expensive — then the private financiers, usually along with the consortium, want to take control of the asset, do the operations and maintain it for decades.

So several things are true there. One of which is they’re paying more for capital. The second thing is, they say they’ll do it cheaper and faster, and they often say “with no new taxes,” when they’re advocating for public-private partnership. But there’s a real simple truth: Things cost money and there’s only one place to get money. From us. If it’s not a tax it’s a toll, if it’s not a tax it’s a rate hike. There’s no free lunch. There’s no free money out there. So that’s the first thing you have to put aside. It’s going to cost money. The question is who’s going to get it.

I use the example of Chicago parking meters as the example on P3s. [Private investors, led by Morgan Stanley, paid the city of Chicago $1.16 billion for a 75-year operating contract in 2008. That had realized a $500 million profit as of 2019, with 64 years to go.] There are two things wrong with the deal. It was an incredibly stupid way to borrow money on your future revenues. But even if that was the only option, they got taken. They sold $1 billion too cheap.

But here’s the real problem with P3s. If the city wants to eliminate parking spots, to get people out of cars with rapid transit or dedicated bus lanes or pedestrian street malls or by changing housing patterns — the responsibilities of a city — they have to buy the parking spots back. That’s the core of what the problem is, because when [private entities] get control of the asset, they get control of the decisions that we ought to have. The city of Chicago’s elected leaders — the city council, the mayor — their hands are tied if they want to expand transit.

You anticipated my next question, which is about the issue of future flexibility, the loss of public capacity to respond to new challenges and opportunities.

The problem with these contracts is that they’re incredibly rigid and inflexible. Whether it’s a 75-year deal for parking meters, or a three-year deal for prisons that often gets renewed, they’re rigid. Why is there so much contract litigation in America? Because contracts are hard to do. It’s hard to anticipate everything that could happen. There’s always ambiguity in the terms, or people on different sides have different interpretations. So there’s a rigidity that works against us, because the world is a changing place and we get locked into bad arrangements, as in the Chicago case.

Another theme that recurs in your book is how public goals and private incentives are routinely at odds. Private prisons are a prime example. How should we understand this problem, with that example and then more generally?

Private prison companies make money when there are people in prison. They’re paid by per diems. Now, many of the state-level contracts that we looked at had guarantees in them — 80% or 90% guarantees, in Arizona it was 100%. Basically, keep the beds filled or pay for them anyway. So what’s the product the private prison companies are selling? They sell heads in beds. So they’re going to try to expand the market and expand their market share, and they have spent decades doing that. Things have changed a little bit because the politics have shifted, but they were a huge influence on strong crime legislation, three-strikes legislation here in California, and higher immigrant detention as well. SB 1070 in Arizona has their fingerprints all over it.

As to the larger point, it’s actually pretty simple. Businesses do one thing, they sell stuff. What do they care about? They care about how much they sell, the volume. They care about how much it costs to make. They care about returns, the difference between costs and revenue. And they care about market share. Those are their metrics, period.

So, objectively, prison companies want people incarcerated. We don’t. Water companies want to sell more water. If you look at the water companies filing statements to the SEC, they see conservation as a risk to their bottom line. For-profit colleges sell butts in seats. They want to sell as much as possible, spend as little as possible, and still provide the service. Again, they cut corners, and that is often not in our interest. Their incentives are just different. It’s important to understand we have different interests, and they’re not always aligned. Sometimes they’re completely misaligned and counterproductive to what we want to do. It’s crucially important to understand that.

You go back repeatedly to American history, showing the deep roots of recognized public goods as well as the lessons we can learn from examples of privatization. What are the big lessons there?

I think the first point is how things that we all need come to be. When the private sector built the railroads in Iowa, they were thinking about the market that existed at the time. They wanted to get the agricultural product to the coasts, so their interests determined that Iowa had east-west lines and no north-south lines. Had the public been in charge in deciding on an economic development strategy, they might have a grid so that there were more options later on. So the first is how it starts, and who has control.

The other is: Do they invest in something that we need, but where they can’t see a profit? There was the example of the New York water system, where at first, it was like, “OK, we don’t see that we can make money. We the public realized, “We want everyone to have access to clean water.” We think ahead about the economy and the society in a different way. The market does one thing: It looks to sell stuff. That prevents us from looking ahead comprehensively, because the market only sells to people and institutions with money to buy. The public’s role is to make sure that everybody has the things they need, and we develop as a country together.

After the introductory section, you write first about “public goods for life,” the dangers of privatizing public health, water and food safety. Why are these public goods, and what harm results from failing to recognize them as such?

Well, today you have to start with COVID, because it’s all we think and talk about. It’s consumed our last two years. Trump’s first conservative, and probably corrupt, reaction was: Leave it to the market. States will go on the market and find the protective equipment and testing equipment, and that’s how things should work. It was a miserable failure. We all recognized quickly — even that administration, when it created Operation Warp Speed — that you need government coordination. If there’s one lesson for me from COVID, it should be clear that the health of all of us depends on the health of each of us. Again, the market only gets things to people who have the resources to buy them.

That’s true of clean water: We need everyone to have access to clean water because it is in our interest. People need to be healthy. If you pay for it as a commodity, in a community like Flint or elsewhere, they simply can’t afford to maintain and upgrade a system like that. So it’s in our economic interest, in our social interest, it’s in our political interest for everybody to be healthy. That’s the important thing about public health, it’s really got to be all. That’s the only way.

The next section is titled, “The Public Gets Us There,” and is mostly about transportation and communication. Talk about the basic argument and the historical examples you use to illustrate it.

I always think about this: What’s the public good? I say it’s mobility. We need to be able to move around. We need everyone to be able to move around for all sorts of reasons. That includes private enterprise and market actors who are making stuff, it includes all sort of things, airplanes — where they go, where they land. You can think of all sorts of reasons you want that mobility to be universalized in some fashion, and shared fairly and equitably. The market doesn’t do that. So that’s No. 1.

The other thing is that things cost money. We cite the example of the the Indiana toll road. The private companies said, “We’ll be able to run this road because we’ll get cars on the road and we’ll make the money back.” It turned out that wasn’t true, they went bankrupt. We don’t get to not have the road, so we have to step in. For reasons I still can’t comprehend, Mike Pence, who was governor at the time, decided to resell the road rather than take control of it. I can’t put my head around that one.

Then, on the flip side, we talk about Kansas City deciding to offer free transit. There’s a recognition that mobility is something we all need. It’s a good because we get people out of cars, we save the planet. We’ve made a decision on how to pay for that. We don’t pay to use the road to get in our car and go to the grocery store. We’ve decided to pay that through taxes, and you could decide to do the same thing for transit. We decided to pay for it as a commodity, but there’s no reason for that. It’s down to this: Things cost money, it’s always a question of where you get the money, and when you get the money.

In your next section you describe privatization’s as a “slow coup” that is undermining democracy and justice. You cover various different examples, such as prison privatization and forced arbitration. What’s the “public good” at stake in this section?

Well, it’s democracy. Meaning not just who votes, but who has control over the things that we ought to be able to have control over in our society. There’s a few core ideas in that section. One can be stated as “skin in the game,” and here’s what I mean by that. Prison companies sell heads in beds. As a public company, they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. So if a government — a state government or local government or the federal government — does something that could influence their revenues, they have to be involved at some level. And what’s their interest? To sell more. Once we embed their interests, through contracts and other schemes, they’re in. We pay them and they use the money we pay them for the service to increase their political power.

The other thing, as I mentioned with Chicago, is that we’re losing our ability to make decisions about things that matter. Forced arbitration — which we’re seeing in our cell phone contracts and our employment contracts, because we all check the box, or because we want the job — that power is used to get workers and consumers to give away their rights in the legal system. And it’s increasing.

Your next section is about shredding the social safety net, and how that generates and worsens inequality. How do you define the public good in that context?

I would say it’s economic security. There’s some level of economic security we should aspire to create for everyone. Because if people have some level of security, they’ll do better in life and we’ll do better. So we do that through the safety net. It gets to be a conversation about freedom. You’re on your own to make it or not make it — and if you don’t make it, it’s your fault, too bad, right? But when I think about freedom, I don’t know anybody who feels free if they’re burdened by tens of thousands of dollars of student debt, or by no health care. So when we don’t provide the safety net, we’re basically saying people are on their own, and health care is expensive, college is expensive, child care — which I consider a fully privatized public good — is crazy expensive. So we’re basically saying, “You’re on your own,” and then we know what happens. When the jobs don’t pay well that feeds inequality, when people don’t have access to these things.

Government has the power to change that, just through its own spending: $2 trillion is spent every year by governments in America on procuring contracts and goods and supplies. We can make sure those are good jobs, but often they’re not. We’re actually using our tax dollars to drive inequality, and we can flip that around. President Biden finally signed the executive order requiring a $15 minimum wage for federal contractors and there are living wage policies in Los Angeles and all across the country that require higher wages for subcontractors, That’s a recognition that the government has a role in creating inequality or resolving it.

The next section of your book seems to have a broader concept in mind: How privatization erodes community. Explain what you mean by that and what the core concern is.

It’s about democracy. We are consumers of public services, and there’s an ethic and a value structure that we’re citizens also — we have an obligation to do our part, to not do harm to others. If people don’t interact, if there are no public places, then you don’t have an opportunity to understand each other’s perspective. So parks, schools and libraries — those are the places we interact and they’re critically important. That sense of community is critically important, to develop the trust, appreciation and understanding that are essential for democracy. For me, it’s the most important part of the book. We include the example of Social Security because it’s an example of the community of the whole: We’re all in it and therefore we protect it and we see our interests tied together. What we have to do is lift up and recognize that we actually are interdependent, we need each other to get through the world.

Then we get to a section about what you call the “corruption of public education.” What’s the central concern here?

First of all, when something goes from public to private, you lose access to information. Things go dark, and there are trade secrets and proprietary information. They say it’s none of your business, that’s how the private sector operates. The example I like to use that’s illustrative is charter schools. The original idea of charter schools was a good one: Let’s create laboratories of innovation, come up with new ways to teach kids, new methods and all that, but then share it open-source. It has become a market product now. Charter schools compete against public district schools for students and the money that comes with them. So in terms of the transparency piece here, the sharing part, charter companies don’t share either. If they’re competing, they don’t want to share their secret sauce, their ideas, with others. So teachers hired in charter schools, in lots of cases, have to sign NDAs as a condition of employment, prohibiting them from sharing the school’s “trade secrets.” OK, what are the trade secrets? Lesson plans, curriculum, teaching methods — the very stuff that we need to share to benefit all students, because we need all students to be educated. And, by the way, we’re paying for it all.

Your next section is about the privatization of public science and research.

So knowledge is the public thing here. We should be sharing knowledge. We all need it. COVID is a good way to start, because part of what the Trump administration did was not just to leave it to the market. We paid for the vaccines: Moderna got a grant, Pfizer got a pre-buy guarantee, we paid for it. A lot of public science went into creating those vaccines — public basic science and public applied science, public scientists and public knowledge. And then, third, it’s a public health crisis. We need everybody to get the vaccine.

Now, patents are important. When somebody invents something, they should be able to make their money back. But it’s a contract between us and them: They make the money back, and then share the knowledge. We gave them the money in a public health crisis, but we also gave them the intellectual property. What’s the impact of that? They’re making a lot of money, but more importantly, we can have manufacturers around the world creating generics to get more shots in arms quicker. This is global, obviously — omicron came from South Africa. That’s sort of a no-brainer. So giving a private company, the right of intellectual property and control of those vaccines is a crime.

Another example is weather. All the data that is used for weather apps on your phone or Google or whatever, all of that is public, it comes from the National Weather Service. Private companies can take it and process it, package it in different ways. Some of it is useful, some is just bells and whistles, with no value. But the example in the book is about Accuweather, who sold their services to the Union Pacific Railroad. A tornado hits, and the trains do just fine because they had access, they were warned earlier than the National Weather Service could manage because of lack of resources. So the CEO says, “Our product worked! The trains stopped! Oh, sorry, the tornado went into a town and a number of people died — but the trains were fine, our product was fine. Our client was fine because they had the money to afford extra tracking and warning services.”

As you point out in the book, Accuweather was responsible for preventing the National Weather Service from creating a public app.

Exactly. They don’t want the competition. That happens in other sectors as well. They use their political power and influence to prevent the National Weather Service from making an app that we could all use. The same thing is true with public banking. The banking industry has prevented public banking, and the tax prep industry, Intuit and Turbotax and others, prevented the federal government from providing a free, easy-to-fill online alternative for millions of people, because they want people to buy Turbotax. They don’t want the competition.

Your last part is called “Becoming Pro-Public: What to Do in Response.” So what can we do about all this?

The first thing is on the level of ideas. Conservatives have been on a drumbeat for the last 40 years, attacking the idea of government, attacking the institution of government, exalting the free market: competition, the profit motive, private sector efficiency. I think we need to have a pro-public drumbeat that does two things. One of which is to debunk the idea that the private sector is always more efficient. That’s not always true. Sometimes it is, sometimes not. But it’s always about spending less money when it comes to public goods. And the profit motive has done some good things, but it also created the opioid crisis. I think we really have to push back on those ideas. And when they say competition is what solves problems way. Well, we saw what competition does with charter schools and public education, and it’s not a good thing.

The other idea we have to push is about the public things that are all around us and the public purpose around them. The paint on our walls used to have lead in it. It doesn’t anymore, because of public action, and laws and regulations that got passed. When you turn on the tap, water comes out. There are public things all around us. So we’re not in an environment where everything is negative. Negative attitudes toward government are pervasive in all of us. But it’s not all bad. What conservatives have done is say, “Oh we’re the reformers. We’ve got an idea, let’s just give it to the private sector.” Our idea has to be, “No. The public purpose of these things is that everybody should have them. Let’s improve it.”

At a more practical level, we have to assert control over our public goods. Water systems that were privatized are being in-sourced and re-municipalized around the country. That’s an action that should be taken in lots more places. We should allow the Weather Service to create an app. We should allow public banking. We should allow the IRS to create easy tax forms. We should unshackle the public sector.

The government contracts for all sorts of things. Where it goes wrong is because hard questions aren’t asked in advance before the decision is made to do it, before a contract is signed. And that’s the crucial part: We need to demand of elected officials and administrators in the bureaucracy to ask those hard questions for today and for tomorrow. The parking meters in Chicago: There should have been a process to ask, “Will this in any way limit our ability to do to expand transit? How much will they make? And is that money we could use for other needs?” That’s the most important thing: People demanding that we ask all those questions about those contracts.

Finally, what’s the most important question I didn’t ask? And what’s the answer?

I don’t know if it’s the most important or not, but what you didn’t ask is, “Where did this come from?” So I’ll give you my answer. It comes from three places. It’s mostly a who, not a what.

First, it comes from the true believers, the libertarian conservative ideologues who really have a different view of what government should be. I like to use this Milton Friedman quote, and it wasn’t from the 1950s, but more like the aughts: “In my ideal world, government would not be responsible for providing education any more than it is for providing food and clothing.” That’s what they believe. I was reading an article this morning about a legislator in Alabama who wants to basically dismantle the public education system, put it all in vouchers and the market. That’s what they believe.

Second, for corporations it’s a pot of gold. There’s $7 trillion to $9 trillion spent every year by governments in America. It’s a pot of gold. When you’re a big company and you see three quarters of a trillion dollars spent on education, or $150 billion spent on water or whatever it is, you go for it. So you fund the ideologues to create that pro-market, anti-government environment, and then you spend your political dollars, lobbying dollars and marketing dollars to get those contracts. It’s happening all over. In the last 20 to 30 years, companies have gotten much better at doing that at the local and state level.

And then finally there are the conservative politicos, political folks that want to destroy unions and downsize government, who see advantage in anti-government rhetoric and politics. They want to eliminate their opposition and perhaps help their friends. They may be true believers as well. But, you know Grover Norquist, he’s a strategist. He’s not going to make money from contracting. But he’s a strategist who says “We need to get government small enough that we can drown it in the bathtub.” So those are the three forces that have driven this since the 1970s.

Forget Bruno. “Dos Oruguitas” is the “Encanto” song we really need

Forget Bruno. “Dos Oruguitas,” recently nominated for an Oscar, is the “Encanto” song we need the most right now.

It is a song of farewell for the things that can never be again — and a hymn of hope that beauty will emerge in the newly broken world, anyway. What better anthem is there for these years of our pandemic metamorphoses?

The folkloric ballad about two caterpillars accompanies the film’s apocalypse, in the original meaning of the term: the unveiling of a family’s deepest trauma. The film’s heroine Mirabel and her abuela, Alma Madrigal, sit by the place where Alma once forded a river with her babies in her arms — then lost her husband as he bravely stood against the armed men pursuing them, and was cut down by their swords.

“I thought we would have a different life,” Abuela Alma tells her granddaughter. “I thought I would be a different woman.”

To the strains of the song, Mirabel sees the full story unfolding. She witnesses Alma’s love for Abuelo Pedro blossom and grow. She sees the flames in their village and the wail of Alma’s grief when he dies. The encanto – the miracle or gift of magic that runs in the family – came at a terrible price.

Until that moment, Alma never told anyone about the depth of the pain. She spoke only of the miracle that came afterwards.

Since 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has left much of the globe physically and mentally traumatized. It’s not the first, nor will it be the last, collective trauma of this century. What we do with that trauma is what matters now. In the words of the song’s English version, which plays over the end credits: “What happens after the rearranging?”

The caterpillars live in a world “que cambia y sigue cambiando”— that changes and keeps changing. Last week, after the song’s Oscar nomination, composer Lin-Manuel Miranda told the New York Times that to write it, he drew on “moments in your life when you were so scared of change, and you just have to trust that there’s a reason it’s happening.”

Not everything happens for a reason. I think, though, that Miranda is talking more about the omnipresence of change, and our need to interpret that change, than he is about theodicy. Whatever our personal theology, the second law of thermodynamics is coming for all of us, someday. To stardust we will all return. The question, to paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien, is: what do we do with the changes we are given?

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“Dos Oruguitas” gives us a new way to interpret what the pandemic has wrought. The inside of a chrysalis is messy. Caterpillars release digestive enzymes that tear apart their larval existence. In other words, after eating everything in sight, caterpillars ultimately digest themselves. We can’t see inside the cocoon until the transformation is almost complete. To get there requires a hidden unmaking.

It’s been messy inside of our human cocoons these last two years. The first time I watched “Encanto,” I thought, man, the lockdowns would have been much easier if I lived in the Madrigals’ capacious, sentient Casita. Instead, most of our houses — if we were lucky and they were safe from abuse, hunger, tornadoes — were a site of not-so-enchanted chaos. We spilled things. Our pets vomited on the carpet. A cacophony of Zoom noise or Netflix flowed forth from every corner.

It was also messy emotionally. Our affective enzymes tried to digest the existential distress prompted by the seeming omnipresence of death. We had to face the parts of ourselves and our relationships that we had been able to brush away by escaping — to the store, to work, to Disney World — when physical escape was no longer a viable option.

We all thought we would be different people than who we are now.

The globe is still in that reckoning. There will never be a total return to “before,” even as mask mandates fall and cases plummet. There are other times we have tip-toed back out into the world before only to grab our KN95s when another wave hits. Our sense of our porous bodies in space has been altered forever.

“Rompiendo crisálidas!” the song commands us. Break out of your chrysalis!

What happens to the butterflies after their escape? Christian theology focuses on the miracle of their emergence — a symbol of resurrection. In recent Jewish history, the poem “The Butterfly,” written by Pavel Friedman in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, has led many people to associate butterflies with the children who were murdered in the Holocaust. The “butterfly effect” is a popularized way of talking about chaos theory.

Those are three very different notions — but they all evince a lack of personal control. Whether it’s hope for life renewed, mourning for lives lost, or the sense that all lives are intricately interwoven, those three faces of the butterfly all remind us no one is alone.

Butterflies don’t fly for long. They live for just a few weeks. This is one of many reasons why “Dos Oruguitas” had to begin as a lullaby. Lullabies are the songs that brush us closest to death. They are born of love drenched in the fear of loss. It is what my daughter means when she grabs me tight and asks for an extra hug at bedtime. Sometimes she says the fear out loud. “What about our ancestors who were gone so long ago that no one remembers them?” she asked one night.

Alma’s farewell to Pedro at the river’s edge is a wrenching one. Yet we are always saying farewell to the people we love the most, a little bit more every moment, until the final separation. “Encanto” shows us how to live with that fear, and what comes after.

When the pandemic began, we wondered what kind of art it would give us. The Disney animators and Lin-Manuel Miranda — who writes grandmas like no one else writes grandmas — gifted us with the image of a grandmother and granddaughter hugging amid swirls of butterflies.

“Encanto” took us inside: inside our casitas, our families, our cocoons. Maybe it will help us integrate the trauma of the last two years as we learn to live with all the things that can go wrong inside of our bodies — and inside of our body politic.

“Aye, mariposas! Rompiendo crisálidas!” Spring is coming.

Just don’t forget the winter.

“Encanto” – which has received Academy Award nominations for best animated feature, score and song (for “Dos Oruguitas”) – is streaming on Disney+.

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The 8 biggest Beijing 2022 Olympics controversies, from doping to disqualifications

When China first hosted the Summer Games in 2008, the country sought to celebrate its national pride on an international stage and hopefully, establish itself as an “emerging global superpower.” From the opening festivities to the closing rituals, the energy inside the Bird’s Nest was both infectious and energizing.

But 14 years later, at the Winter Games held in Beijing, the atmosphere has become more dismal with an ever-growing list controversies and scandals drawing focus from the athletic excellence and spirit of international amity that’s supposed to be fostered.

From banned baggy outfits to questionable penalties and a hush-hush snowboarding scandal, here are the biggest controversies of this year’s Winter Games:

1. An alpine skiing suspension

Although Hossein Saveh-Shemshaki didn’t garner widespread media attention, the Iranian skier became the first confirmed doping case in Beijing 2022. A few days into the Games, Saveh-Shemshaki tested positive for a banned yet undisclosed anabolic androgenic steroid and was promptly barred from competing, training and participating in the Games. The skier previously competed in the slalom events at the 2014 Sochi Olympics and the 2010 Vancouver Olympics alongside his brother, Pouria Saveh-Shemshaki.

2. A Uyghur athlete put on display at the opening ceremony

Political tensions and human rights abuses have plagued the Olympic stage from the start. In the months leading up the Games, various human rights groups have accused the Beijing government of torturing and abusing the Uyghur Muslim population in the northwest province of Xinjiang. The revelations prompted the U.S., U.K. and Canada to announce a diplomatic boycott — athletes from each country were allowed to compete but government officials were not in attendance. India, Australia, Lithuania, Kosovo, Belgium, Denmark and Estonia also followed suit.

So it came as an international surprise when China boldly showcased a Uyghur athlete as a final torchbearer during the opening ceremony. Cross-country skier Dinigeer Yilamujiang became the face of her nation in a brief display that many deemed was “calculated” and dismissive of minority struggles. Chinese media were also quick to laud Yilamujiang, saying she “showed the world a beautiful and progressive Xinjiang,” before abandoning her. On Saturday, Yilamujiang was reportedly dropped from the women’s 4×5 km relay team, which placed 10th in the finals.

3. Chinese-American athletes competing for China sparked mixed reactions

Freestyle skier Eileen Gu and figure skater Zhu Yi — two U.S.-born athletes — received nationalist backlash on social media after announcing their decisions to compete for China in the Games. Fox News host Will Cain called Gu an “ungrateful traitor” while others told her to “Get out!” A Slate article, which is part of a long-running feature called “Olympics Jerk Watch,” criticized her allegiance and assigned her a “jerk score” of 6.5 points out of 10.

Along with the backlash, Gu and Yi garnered wildly different comments from local spectators on the Chinese social media platform Weibo — the former was praised as a national treasure after her stellar debut performance while the latter was regarded as a disgrace. Gu, who won gold in the women’s big air and silver in the women’s slopestyle, received special shoutouts from Chinese authorities and the current editor-in-chief of Vogue China, Margaret Zhang. But Zhu, who fell during competition, was accused of benefitting from nepotism (according to a now-deleted theory) and slammed for her inability to speak Mandarin. The hashtags #ZhuYiMistake, #ShameOnZhuYi and #ZhuYiFellDown also began trending on Weibo.

4. The mass disqualification of women ski jumpers

Baggy clothes caused quite the uproar after five top women ski jumpers — Austria’s Daniela Iraschko-Stolz, Japan’s Sara Takanashi, Norway’s Anna Odine Strøm and Silje Opseth, and Germany’s Katharina Althaus — were all disqualified over loose-fitting suits. Apparently, baggy attire helps skiers glide further in the air — giving them a leg up in competition — which violates official protocols. Athletes and coaches were frustrated with the news and pointed out that the same outfits were allowed in previous events.

“This is a parody, but I am not laughing,” Horst Hüttel, Germany’s head of Nordic events, told The Guardian. “It is outrageous that this happens with the four biggest ski-jump nations.”

5. Multiple penalties called in short-track speed-skating accused of Chinese bias

Several short-track-speed-skaters accused officials of bias after suspicious penalties were made to allegedly help Chinese athletes secure medals. During the men’s mixed team relay finals, China won the gold medal after the Russian Olympic Committee and the U.S. — two top ranking teams prior to the semifinals — were disqualified. The ROC was penalized for “causing obstruction” while the U.S. was eliminated for “blocking.”

Two days later, during the men’s 1,000-meter finals, Hungary’s Shaolin Sandor Liu and China’s Ren Ziwei were in a tight race for gold before the former fell and slid off course. Liu Shaolin managed to get back up and finish second but was disqualified for a lane violation and using his left hand to block Ren on the final turn. Although Ren was also caught using both hands to grab and shove his competitor to the ground, he wasn’t penalized and eventually won the gold.

6. Scoring controversies in men’s snowboarding

A scoring decision made in the men’s snowboard halfpipe final shocked snowboarding enthusiasts on social media and NBC analyst Todd Richards. After completing his second run, Japanese snowboarder Ayumu Hirano became the first competitor to land a triple cork — a difficult trick with three in-air rotations — but was surprisingly docked points by the judges. Hirano earned a score of 91.75, which placed him in second and right behind Australian snowboarder Scotty James. Richards, who hailed Hirano’s run as “the best that’s ever been done in the halfpipe,” was quick to call the judges out. During his third and final run, Hirano landed the trick again and rightfully won his gold medal.

The same judges were also involved in another scoring controversy, this time in the men’s slopestyle final. The judges did not remove any points from Canadian snowboarder Max Parrot’s score after he grabbed his knee, instead of the board, during one of his jumps. Parrot won gold while China’s Su Yiming won silver.

7. A former Olympian alleges sexual misconduct and racism in snowboarding

Snowboarder Callan Chythlook-Sifsof, who competed in the 2010 and 2014 Games, accused U.S. Olympic Snowboarding Coach, Peter Foley, of sexual misconduct and snowboarder Hagen Kearney of racism. In an Instagram post, which was taken down multiple times for “bullying” and “nudity and sexual behavior,” Chythlook-Sifsof alleged that Foley made inappropriate and vulgar comments to female team members. She added that there are more serious stories surrounding Foley but refrained from disclosing them because they “are not my story but should come to light . . . ” In a statement to Newsweek, Foley “vehemently” denied the allegations.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CZ1buHgLVrl/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Chythlook-Sifsof also claimed that former teammate Hagen Kearney had “routinely and continuously” used the N-word to pester her. In one moment, Kearney physically intimidated Chythlook-Sifsof after she called out his behavior. In a separate statement to Newsweek, Kearney admitted to using the racial slur and said he is “still ashamed about using that word to this day.”

“It was an act of utter stupidity and disgusting behavior on my part,” the athlete wrote in an Instagram post. “I immediately regretted what I had done.”

8. A doping scandal that tore through the figure skating community

Probably the most discussed controversy of the Olympics needs no introduction since it centered on what is arguably the most popular event of the Winter Games. Tension rocked the figure skating world shortly after the team events, when news broke out that Russian skater Kamila Valieva had tested positive for the banned substance trimetazidine and two additional yet unbanned metabolic enhancers.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS) ruled that 15-year-old Valieva could continue competing in the individual events, a decision that was met with outrage. But then CAS added a caveat that was even more frustrating: If Valieva were to finish in the top three, there would be no medal ceremony. Several veteran figure skaters expressed their displeasure with the ruling, including commentators Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski, who were supportive of Valieva’s talent but called out the unfairness shown to other skaters.

In the end, while Valieva excelled in the short program, she fell multiple times in the free skate, a performance that caused her to tumble to fourth position. The medal ceremony was held, and the young teen at the center of the furor is now worse off than she was at the beginning.

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This is what would happen to Earth if a nuclear war broke out between the West and Russia

Suddenly, the threat of nuclear war feels closer than it has in decades. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists updated their Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to midnight, and President Joe Biden has issued increasingly ominous statements reflecting how the looming conflict over the Ukraine that could ensnare both Russia and the west into conventional war.

And, some fear, war with nuclear weapons. It is a prospect that has haunted human beings since the dawn of the Cold War. Politicians who were perceived as too open to the idea of nuclear war would pay for their hawkishness at the polls. Motion pictures from “Dr. Strangelove” to “The Day After” have depicted an uninhabitable world, filled with lethal amounts of radiation and short on necessities like food and water. As our electrical infrastructure collapsed around us, people would resort to looting and other violent methods to survive. The seeming deterioration of civilization during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic would be nothing compared to the anarchy and destruction that would follow nuclear war.

Yet decades of living with nuclear weapons have produced a broad body of knowledge as to what a nuclear war might do to the planet, and to humanity. If even a “small” nuclear war were to break out, tens of millions of people would die after the initial blasts. A blanket of soot would wrap the rays of the Sun and cause a nuclear winter, destroying crops all over the planet and plunging billions into famine. In the northern hemisphere, there would be such severe ozone depletion from the nuclear smoke that organisms would suffer from increased exposure to damaging ultraviolet light. While things would not be as bad in the southern hemisphere, even well-positioned countries like Australia would face the ripple effects from a small nuclear war in the northern hemisphere by sheer virtue of its interconnectedness with the global community.

“The worst-case scenario is that US and Russian central strategic forces would be launched with the detonation of several thousand warheads,” Hans M. Kristensen, Director, Nuclear Information Project and Associate Senior Fellow to SIPRI, Federation of American Scientists, told Salon by email. “A large nuclear exchange would not only kill millions of people and contaminate vast areas with radioactive fallout but potentially also have longer-term climatic effects.”

Yet Kristensen said he does not believe the current Ukraine conflict is likely to become a nuclear war. He is not the only nuclear weapons expert who feels that way.

“First, there is little chance of that happening barring some massive miscalculation, accident or escalation of any conflict there,” Geoff Wilson, the political director of Council for a Livable World, a non-profit dedicated to eliminating nuclear weapons from America’s arsenal, told Salon by email. Ukraine is not part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and, as such, the United States has not committed to use its military if Ukraine’s sovereignty is encroached. While American policymakers can provide material aid and punish Russia through sanctions, it is unlikely that they will risk open warfare.

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That said, the world’s nuclear powers (which, in addition to the United States and Russia, also includes China, India, Israel, France, North Korea, Pakistan and the United Kingdom) still have vast arsenals at their disposal. In addition, President Donald Trump has overseen the development of new weapons like the W76-2 low-yield nuclear warheads. As such, the possibility of nuclear war always remains — not likely in this scenario, perhaps, but never entirely out of the question.

“The fact that the United States has started to develop these weapons again is crazy, and it sends a very poor message to the rest of the world when we have been pushing nations to end nuclear proliferation and reduce the size and scope of nuclear arsenals for so long,” Wilson explained. “What’s more, it sends a dangerous signal to our adversaries that we think that tactical nuclear weapons are important again, and will likely signal to them that they should follow suit.”

Like Kristensen, Wilson made it clear that if conventional war with nuclear weapons ever did break out, it would end disastrously.

“Researchers have estimated that a ‘regional nuclear war,’ say, a couple hundred low-yield weapons exchanged between India and Pakistan, could lead to the deaths of billions people worldwide, due to the effects on global food production,” Wilson explained. “So, yeah, it would not be good.”

Since the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshoma in 1945, intellectuals from a number of disciplines have advocated for world government as an alternative to a possible nuclear holocaust. Andreas Bummel, co-founder and director of the international campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly and of Democracy Without Borders, has made that argument as well, telling Salon that there are no national policies which can entirely eliminate the threat.

“The only way is institutional and structural by creating a workable international system of collective security which is not only based on total elimination of WMD but also radical conventional disarmament, setting up UN capacities for rapid intervention and democratic decision-making bodies and procedures,” Bummel explained by email. He added that it is “doubtful” whether this can happen in a meaningful way “while major nuclear powers are autocratic and one-party dictatorships.”

Kristensen offered some less sweeping alternatives.

“Arms control agreements to reduce the numbers and role of nuclear weapons,” Kristensen told Salon. “Crisis management agreements to reduce the chances for and risks of misunderstandings and overreactions. And changes in national policies so countries refrain from taking aggressive action. All of this requires political will to change.”

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Jeffrey Epstein’s associate, Jean-Luc Brunel, found hanged in Paris prison cell

Jean-Luc Brunel, a former modeling agent and associate of Jeffrey Epstein, was found hanged in his prison cell in La Santé prison in Paris on Saturday morning.

Brunel was being held in remand at La Santé after being detained at Charles de Gaulle airport while attempting to board a plane for Dakar in December 2020. Brunel was accused of the alleged rape and sexual harassment of minors, and was also under investigation for ties to an alleged sex-trafficking ring that was thought to have supplied Epstein and his cohorts with “underage girls for sexual exploitation,” according to The Guardian.

Jean-Luc Brunel, 75 at the time of his death, was vocal in denying the accusations poised against him, although several models had stepped forward accusing him of rape and sexual assault, and French police were said to have interviewed hundreds of witnesses speaking against Brunel’s behavior.

A long history of similar accusations is indicative of Brunel’s most recent investigations against him. In 1999 Brunel had been banned from the Karin Models agency, which he ran and scouted for, after a BBC investigative report unveiled reports of abuse. After that point he relocated to the United States and started the MC2 Model Management using funding from Jeffrey Epstein. During his career, Brunel took credit for the discovery of many models such as Christy Turlington and Milla Jovovich, who both went on to have fantastic careers despite his association.

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The French prosecutors’ office has opened an investigation into Brunel’s death this morning, and more information will be revealed pending its conclusion.

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Why Putin will invade: War is the place where logic and reason go to die

The big news on Thursday morning was that President Biden had sent a letter to President Putin and was awaiting his reply. Then the big news changed: They had received Putin’s reply and were waiting while it was “analyzed.” All of this followed the big news from Wednesday, shooting down the Russian claim that they had moved forces back from the border with Ukraine when, according to Western sources, they had moved 7,000 more troops into position to attack.

It’s never a good sign — in fact, I’ll coin an acronym for it: INAGS — when national leaders stop talking to each other face-to-face or on the phone and start communicating by letter. It’s never a good sign when a country’s spokesman or its national leader starts telling lies that can be easily disproved. In fact, it’s never a good sign when anyone, especially the leader of a nuclear power, decides to go with that old chestnut, who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? because it means that logic and reason and facts have once again disappeared into the black hole all authoritarians dig for themselves in the end: the war against reality itself.

Vladimir Putin is conducting what amounts to an object lesson for authoritarians everywhere. Over a period of months, he has moved 60 percent of all Russian combat land forces into threatening positions around Ukraine, and then announced he has “no intention” of attacking. The Russian “reason” for deploying such a massive display of military might around the entire border of Ukraine, including its southern coast is so blatant a lie, it leaves you breathless.

The mistake I made from the beginning of this crisis was to assume there is a logic to what Putin is doing. There is no logic. It makes no sense at all for him to move 150,000 soldiers (perhaps now 190,000) hundreds of miles across Russia and park them in the boonies around Ukraine for no reason, especially when they are equipped with tanks and combat helicopters and cannons and rocket launchers and backed up by support units like field hospitals and food and ammunition supplies. It only makes sense if he intends to use all those forces — but using them doesn’t make sense, either.

See what I mean? War is a black hole that kills logic and reason just as surely as it kills human beings. Diplomacy makes sense. Nobody dies when countries talk to each other. Talking saves lives because it is not war, which costs lives the minute the shooting starts.

But you cannot think this way with Vladimir Putin, because it’s all personal to him. His claim that the breakup of the Soviet Union “was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century” wasn’t about the end of the Soviet empire. It was about him. It was a tragedy for him, not for Russia. The country of Russia is better off today than it was before 1990 or 1991. The shelves of its stores are full of food and clothing and even luxury items. Its people in the cities and far-flung rural areas are not starving. Russians can make money and save it. They can travel to other countries. They are not walled in from the rest of the world.

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But it’s not about Russia, and it’s not about the Russian people. It’s about him.

Everything with Putin is about how he looks. Does he look “strong” and “powerful,” or does he look “weak?” You know you’re dealing with an authoritarian personality when you hear those words again and again. Anything weak is bad. Anything strong is good. If that reminds you of someone else who used the same words to describe himself, you are correct. If the enormity of Putin’s lies about Ukraine remind you of someone else’s numerous and gigantic lies, bingo again! It’s like a certain political party denying that a violent assault was a violent assault and calling it “legitimate political discourse.” Putin is aiming a gun at Ukraine and saying, “Gun? What gun? I don’t see a gun.”

Putin’s rationale, if it can be called that, for massing his forces around Ukraine is that he is protecting Russia from threats by NATO forces. There is no threat by NATO to Russia of course, and it was pathetic on Thursday to watch Secretary of State Antony Blinken when he addressed the UN Security Council and felt the need to reassure everyone that he was “not here to start a war but to prevent one.” It was an obvious reference to the last time a nation had amassed huge combat forces on the border of another country and its secretary of state addressed the same Security Council. That time, which was less than 20 years ago, it was Colin Powell, and he wasn’t trying to prevent a war, he was providing “evidence” intended to start one. We were the Russians in 2003, and Iraq was Ukraine, and that fact hung above Blinken’s head on Thursday like a dark cloud. When he listed all the justifications U.S. intelligence agencies believe Putin might use to attack Ukraine, even though he was probably using facts on the ground and real intelligence, not half-baked guesses and wishful thinking dreamed up by a gaggle of rep-tie sportin’ neocons with itchy trigger fingers, every word he said was suspect.

Despite indications that the U.S. isn’t having any problem rallying allies around the use of sanctions against Putin and Russia if they attack, the plain fact is that sanctions won’t work — even sanctions designed to hurt Putin and his close allies and Russian oligarchs personally. He doesn’t care if sanctions against Russian banks will mean that Moscow dwellers won’t be able to withdraw cash from their local ATM as long as he looks tough, as long as he looks strong, as long as he looks like he’s getting his way. Putin’s power in Russia doesn’t depend on votes. It depends on his ability to invent enemies and intimidate them. He exists at the top of Russia’s political system and government as a faded memory of a Russia that he’s trying to bring back to life with images of tanks and missiles and warships and bombers and attack helicopters. He’s trying to force an inconvenient fact down the memory hole: that the last time Russia deployed its military might it got its ass spanked by a ragtag bunch of AK-47 wielding guerillas wearing tattered shalwar kameez and flip-flops. He wasn’t in charge when Russia was defeated in Afghanistan, but that doesn’t matter to him, nor does the recent defeat of his imagined enemy, the U.S., by the same country. He’s not a “loser,” and Russia didn’t lose that war, and when the Soviet Union collapsed, it wasn’t his fault because the empire was stolen from him. In fact, his entire adventure with Ukraine can be seen as his own personal “stop the steal” moment. Russia won’t be humiliated any longer and neither will he. He’s going to overturn Russia’s loss of the Cold War.

Joe Biden and Antony Blinken are doing their best to give diplomacy every chance. On Thursday, Blinken offered to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov next week in Europe. But the problem with diplomacy is that it’s not tough. Nobody dies. You don’t get to take a country’s capital, the way we took Baghdad, with diplomacy. You take a capital with guns and tanks and cannons and attack helicopters and jet bombers and missiles. You take what isn’t yours by going to war.

The decision on Friday by Russia’s puppet rebel “leader” in the Donbas region to begin evacuating civilians from the breakaway eastern edge of Ukraine into Russia indicates that is where Putin will go to reclaim Russia’s honor. It’s pretty clear he intends to “take” the ethnically Russian slice of eastern Ukraine, but it remains to be seen what other parts of that nation he will attack and how much of its territory he will attempt to dominate. His problem is the same one we had in Iraq, even if we didn’t know it at the time. The forces he has arrayed on Ukraine’s border are almost exactly the same size and are of the same make-up we used in 2003. We had enough troops to “take” Baghdad, but then what? We learned over the next seven or eight years just how huge were our delusions about our own power, and now we’re dealing with the same lesson in Afghanistan.

President Biden announced on Friday evening that U.S. intelligence believes Putin has made the decision to invade Ukraine. When his forces cross the border with Ukraine, he will start the first land war on the European continent in more than 80 years. He’s doing it to look tough and strong. He’s doing it to Make Russia Great Again.

We dodged a bullet enduring the four-year rule of our own unhinged egomaniacal lunatic. But this time, another grievously damaged man will try to fill the hole in his soul with thousands of dead, the rubble of cities and the broken dreams and bodies of children. It won’t work. His war won’t fill holes, it will make them.

Read more on the Ukraine crisis:

How the tiny-home movement is providing more than just a roof to homeless people

MADISON, Wis. — Tucked inside a residential neighborhood, and surrounded by a wooden fence and greenery, are nine little houses. With multicolored siding and roofs, they look like people-sized birdhouses. And they fit right in.

So does Gene Cox, 48. He hasn’t been homeless in more than seven years. That’s the point of this little development.

“This is the longest time I’ve stayed in one place,” said Cox, nursing coffee and a cigarette outside his tiny home after working second shift as a benefits administrator. “I’m very nomadic. I’ve moved around Wisconsin a lot over the last 22 years.”

After Cox got divorced in 2009, he bounced around rentals before living in his van for a year. He tried a local men’s shelter. He lasted only two nights.

Then in 2014, he heard about this community being planned by Occupy Madison, a spinoff of the national movement against income inequality. Cox started helping with gardening, one of his passions. A few months later, he moved into one of its 99-square-foot houses (echoing the “99%” of the population that Occupy aimed to represent).

With housing costs rising, tiny homes are spreading as a solution to homelessness in California, Indiana, Missouri, Oregon, and beyond. Arnold Schwarzenegger garnered considerable publicity in December when he donated money for 25 tiny houses for homeless veterans in Los Angeles. It reflects a growing interest in outside-the-box ideas to get unhoused people off the streets, especially during winter in cold climates and amid the covid-19 pandemic.

“Anything that increases the supply of affordable housing is a good thing,” said Nan Roman, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “We have a huge shortage of housing — around 7 million fewer affordable housing units than there are households that need them.”

Housing and health are inextricably linked. In a 2019 study of 64,000 homeless people, individuals living on the streets were more likely to report chronic health conditions, trauma, substance misuse, and mental health issues than those who were temporarily sheltered.

But not all tiny homes are created equal. They range from cabins with a cot and a heater to miniature houses with kitchens and bathrooms.

The communities themselves differ, too. Some are just “agency-managed shelters that use pods instead of the traditional gymnasium full of bunk beds,” said Victory LaFara, a program specialist with Dignity Village, a tiny-home encampment since 2000, in Portland, Oregon. Some are self-governing, like Dignity Village and Occupy Madison, and a few offer a path to tiny home ownership.

Many are in remote parts of town, though — far from jobs, grocery stores, and social services. “There’s a balance between the benefits you get from the improved structure and the bad factors you could get from being in a worse location,” said Luis Quintero, a housing researcher at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School.

Donald Whitehead Jr., executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said he thinks tiny homes are a good emergency option, to protect people from the elements and violence, but are not long-term solutions, like increasing the number of living-wage jobs, the housing stock, and funding for housing vouchers.

“There’s been this theme since the ’70s that there are some people in society that are less deserving,” he said. “And the tiny home kind of fits within that mindset.”

Zoning regulations and building codes have prevented tiny homes from being built in some cities, as have concerned neighbors. That opposition often fades once the communities are up and running, according to village organizers. “Since we moved into Community First! Village six years ago, there have been no documented crimes from anyone on this property in any of the adjacent neighborhoods,” said Amber Fogarty, president of Mobile Loaves & Fishes, a homeless outreach group in Austin, Texas, that operates the nation’s largest tiny-home project.

Madison, which has about 270,000 residents and is home to Wisconsin’s Capitol and flagship university, has three different types of tiny homes showcased in three locations.

Occupy Madison’s newest village opened in late 2020 about a mile north of its original site. Next to a shuttered bar, 26 Conestoga huts, resembling covered wagons from the old West, line a fenced parking lot. The 60-square-foot temporary structures will eventually be replaced by tiny houses, which occupants are expected to help build.

On the outskirts of town, in an industrial development near an interstate, the city’s new tiny-home project features parallel rows of 8-by-8-foot white prefabricated shelters that look like ice fishing shanties. Unlike the two Occupy settlements, this one has a full-time staff, including a social worker and an addiction counselor; on a recent day, residents streamed in and out of its cramped office, either to use the phone or grab a muffin or some cookies. People walked their dogs outside.

The 30 residents had previously been living in tents in Madison’s busy Reindahl Park.

“The city was solving a political problem, first and foremost,” said Brenda Konkel, president of Occupy Madison and executive director of Madison Area Care for the Homeless OneHealth. The so-called sheltered encampment cost about $1 million to set up and will run about $800,000 to $900,000 a year to operate.

City Community Development Director Jim O’Keefe said housing people in a traditional shelter would be significantly cheaper in the short term. But tiny-home villages can often serve those who are either unwilling or unable to stay in a congregate setting, because they have pets or partners, have severe emotional or psychological issues, or are banned from the shelter system.

“Anybody that spent any time at Reindahl understood how unsafe and untenable it was for people who were staying there,” O’Keefe said.

Sara Allee-Jatta, clinical director of Kabba Recovery Services, said residents’ substance use had increased since they arrived at the city-run site, perhaps because they finally had warmth and didn’t have to worry about keeping their belongings safe. She hopes their newfound quietude will also give them the space to recover when they’re ready.

For Jay Gonstead, a lifelong Madisonian who moved into the camp after it opened in November, the place has been a godsend. After a divorce, he lived in the tent city for seven months.

“Toward the end, it got really bad. I never thought in my lifetime I’d have to shoot Narcan into somebody, but I did,” he said, referring to the treatment that reverses opioid overdoses. “I witnessed a man be shot. I witnessed stabbings. That was not a good place.”

The 54-year-old sets out on his bike regularly to look for work. “I have a criminal history. I’m an alcoholic,” he said. “It makes it tough.”

But he’s noticed smiles on his neighbors’ faces for the first time he can remember. Electricity and hot showers — along with a sense of community — tend to have that effect, he said.

“When you’ve got a roof and a door that locks, that’s home,” he said, fighting back tears. “We’re not homeless.”

Trump’s action committee spent $375,000 on an unused office

Donald Trump’s political action committee spent $375,000 to rent office space in Trump Tower — even though the committee have no presence in New York, HuffPost reported Friday.

“It’s a huge scam,” said one former aide. “I can’t believe his base lets him get away with it.”

In 2021, Trump’s Make America Great Again PAC spent $37,541.67 a month for ten months renting space in the Trump Organization building in Manhattan, according to a HuffPost analysis of campaign finance filings.

“The ex-aide’s assertion was confirmed by a Trump Tower employee who screens traffic to offices above the floors that are open to visitors,” HuffPost reported. “When asked for permission to visit Trump’s political office recently, the employee told HuffPost that Save America and its related entities did not have offices there. ‘It’s all being run out of Florida,’ he said, declining to give his name.”

Trump’s campaign itself also rented unused space in Trump Tower.

“That was the same monthly amount his campaign had spent there from mid-2017 through the end of 2020, when his reelection campaign was actually based in northern Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington,” HuffPost reported. “In all those months, there was at most one person who periodically visited the 7,000-square-foot office in Trump Tower, the former aide said. But Trump insisted on having the campaign continue renting there ― as it had during the 2016 election ― because the building was having trouble finding tenants, he said.”

In 2016, Trump reportedly increased the rent his campaign was paying at Trump Tower by five times after donors began footing the bill.

HuffPost noted “the $375,417 Trump spent for the unused office space is more than the $350,500 that his Save America committee donated last year to Republican candidates running for office, which is ostensibly Trump’s purpose for raising money for his committees.”

Read the full report.

Queen Elizabeth II has a speech prepared if World War III happens

Back in 1983 during the height of the Cold War, a speech was drafted for Queen Elizabeth II to deliver to the citizens of the United Kingdom in the event of a nuclear conflict between the United States and Russia breaking out. Kept secret for 30 years, the address was released to the public in 2013, per Great Britain’s National Archives policy.

Today, with Europe holding its collective breath as Russia postures itself to invade Ukraine, memories of teetering on the brink of World War 3 have begun to ripple throughout the UK and beyond. This has garnered renewed attention to the haunting soliloquy that Her Majesty hoped would never have to be spoken.

Read the full speech below, courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation:

When I spoke to you less than three months ago we were all enjoying the warmth and fellowship of a family Christmas. Our thoughts were concentrated on the strong links that bind each generation to the ones that came before and those that will follow. The horrors of war could not have seemed more remote as my family and I shared our Christmas joy with the growing family of the Commonwealth.

Now, this madness of war is once more spreading through the world and our brave country must again prepare itself to survive against great odds.

I have never forgotten the sorrow and the pride I felt as my sister and I huddled around the nursery wireless set listening to my father’s inspiring words on that fateful day in 1939. Not for a single moment did I imagine that this solemn and awful duty would one day fall to me.

We all know that the dangers facing us today are greater by far than at any time in our long history. The enemy is not the soldier with his rifle nor even the airman prowling the skies above our cities and towns but the deadly power of abused technology.

But whatever terrors lie in wait for us all the qualities that have helped to keep our freedom intact twice already during this sad century will once more be our strength. My husband and I share with families up and down the land the fear we feel for sons and daughters, husbands and brothers who have left our side to serve their country. My beloved son Andrew is at this moment in action with his unit and we pray continually for his safety and for the safety of all servicemen and women at home and overseas.

It is this close bond of family life that must be our greatest defense against the unknown. If families remain united and resolute, giving shelter to those living alone and unprotected, our country’s will to survive cannot be broken.

My message to you, therefore, is simple. Help those who cannot help themselves, give comfort to the lonely and the homeless and let your family become the focus of hope and life to those who need it.

As we strive together to fight off the new evil let us pray for our country and men of goodwill wherever they may be. God bless you all.

Biden’s biggest enemy: Trump judges

While hundreds of Donald Trump officials were swiftly ousted from the executive branch following President Joe Biden’s presidential victory in 2020, vestiges of the former president still remain in America’s judicial system, wreaking havoc on would-be Democratic policy items that may never come to pass. Trump-appointed judges across the nation, of which there are 245, have in recent years stonewalled vital executive directives on numerous political fronts, severely limiting Biden’s ability to circumvent Congress, which is likely to remain gridlocked until the end of the midterm elections.

Conflicts between the judicial and executive branch have played out particularly fiercely within immigration reform, an area in which Trump-appointees have effectively stamped out at least three Democratic attempts to reverse draconian Trump-era policies.

Notably, back in August of last year, Texas District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk blocked the rescission of Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forces migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. to wait in Mexico until the date of their asylum hearing. The policy was formally reinstated a week later by the Supreme Court via “shadow docket” – a legal maneuver, generally used in emergencies, that allows the court to fast-track its rulings by opting out of oral arguments.

Because Kacsmaryk’s ruling requires cooperation from the Mexican government, Vox’s Ian Millhiser noted, it stands to reason that an unelected district judge single-handedly “ordered the United States to change its diplomatic stance toward Mexico.” (Traditionally, foreign affairs lie far outside of the ambit of the judiciary.)

A similar blow to Biden’s immigration agenda came months earlier, when Texas District Judge Drew Tipton unilaterally blocked Biden’s 100-day moratorium on all deportations. The moratorium, announced just hours after Biden’s inauguration, was designed to exclude immigrants “suspected of terrorism or espionage, or otherwise poses a danger to the national security of the United States.” Still, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called Biden’s policy a “seditious left-wing insurrection,” with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton later filing a lawsuit to challenge it in court. By May 2021, Paxton agreed to drop the suit because the 100-day freeze had expired. But Biden has indicated no interest in attempting to revive the program.

Elliot Mincberg, a senior fellow at the People For the American Way, told Salon that he didn’t find it surprising that Trump-appointed judges are making party-line rulings across the board because of all of the work that went into choosing them.

“Trump and the Federalist Society did a particularly good job, unfortunately, of selecting judges at all levels from the Supreme Court on down who very much toe the party line,” Mincberg said in an interview. “He picked judges that are partisan, that have a very strong ideology that reflects the Republican Party position on a range of issues.”

Mincberg specifically referred to the Supreme Court’s decision last year to end the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) eviction moratorium, first implemented in October 2020 to support millions of Americans struggling under the financial weight of pandemic. The decision, handed down via shadow docket, was widely rebuked because it put roughly 15 million renters at risk of eviction. Furthermore, the ruling was seen as highly partisan because the eviction ban had originally been issued under Trump.

“You had … at least one judge, who himself had upheld the eviction ban under Trump by the CDC,” Mincberg said. “But then, once Biden essentially we reissued it … the same judge, and in some instances, other judges, ruled that it was improper. A blatant example of partisanship in a lot of ways.”

Last year, the Supreme Court again flouted the guidance of public health experts by striking down President Biden’s vaccine mandate, which would have required employees of companies with at least 100 or more workers to get the jab or wear a mask and undergo routine testing.

In its ruling, again delivered via shadow docket, the Supreme Court hung its hat on a semantic distinction between occupational hazards and the “day-to-day dangers that all face,” with COVID, they claimed, falling into the latter category. But as Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern noted, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the agency tasked with enforcing the mandate, was well within its rights to enforce the rule because COVID is particularly infectious amongst people in close proximity with one another (i.e., workers).

“The agency has long regulated risks ‘beyond the workplace walls,’ including fires, excessive noise, unsafe drinking water, and faulty electrical installations,” Stern wrote. “And if the vaccinate-or-test policy is unprecedented, that is because it is in response to an unprecedented event: the deadliest pandemic in American history.”

Kenneth Manning, Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, echoed to Salon that “when the law is conflicting and when precedent is unclear, judges have more discretion in their decision making.”

“Vaccine mandates posed by the president of the United States united in the private sector, that’s a…very unusual situation,” Manning added in an interview.

While Biden’s COVID-19 policies were undermined by the highest court in the land, he has also faced resistance from a number conservative judges in lower courts.

Back in November, a Trump-appointed federal judge in St. Louis blocked the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for the majority of healthcare workers in Kansas and Missouri. The next month, a Trump judge in Georgia imposed a nationwide injunction against Biden’s mandate for federal contractors after numerous states and trade groups claimed it would cause “irreparable injury” to government employees who might be let go if they opted out of the vaccine. More recently, in Texas, a Trump appointee prevented the White House from mandating that all federal employees get the jab. Similar rulings have been made in Kentucky, Louisiana, and Massachusetts.

At the same time, some mandate rulings have also been more granular, targeting specific companies, agencies, or military branches.

For example, last summer, United Airlines imposed its own vaccine mandate for all employees. But that mandate is now being challenged by a federal appeals court, which this week ordered a lower court reconsider its decision to let the mandate stand. The case originally stems from a lawsuit brought by two United Airlines employees who reportedly alleged that they qualified for religious exemptions “out of concern that aborted fetal tissue was used in making the COVID-19 vaccines.”

(It is true that fetal cell lines were used in the development of the mRNA technology behind the vaccines. But in all fairness, fetal cell lines were also used in the production of commonly-used drugs like aspirin, ibuprofen, Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, Tums, Lipitor, Benadryl, Sudafed, Claritin, Prilosec, Zoloft, and more.)

In Georgia, a federal judge is likewise preventing the Air Force from firing employees who refuse to get vaccinated for religious reasons. And last month, a judge barred the Navy from reprimanding 35 Navy Seals who filed a lawsuit against the branch after they were denied a religious exemption from its vaccine mandate. The seals, who have also condemned the use of fetal cell lines, called the vaccine an “affront to their Creator.”

Public health and immigration have no doubt become the chief battlegrounds on which Trump appointees have waged their conservative war on the letter of the law. However, the judiciary has also ventured into the realm of climate action, particularly in oil-rich states, where fossil fuel companies hold immense sway over municipal and state governments.

Last summer, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana ordered the resumption oil and gas drill leasing on public lands and waters after Biden issued a freeze on new drilling auctions. The Justice Department shortly vowed to shortly appeal the ruling, but since then, drilling approvals have reportedly reached record highs.

More recently, a Trump-appointee from Louisiana dealt another blow to Biden’s climate agenda last Friday, when he prohibited the administration from using a key climate metric used to approve drilling contracts. The metric, also known as the “social cost of carbon,” would have accounted for climate-induced disasters like hurricanes, wildfires and flooding.

While the White House can theoretically appeal decisions that flout executive authority, such maneuvers are hardly foolproof. After all, Trump appointed 54 out of the 179 appellate judges currently serving the U.S., meaning that even the appeals process is sometimes liable bias.

“If appellate courts aren’t inclined to intervene and the appellate courts agree with the trial court judge, then obviously, the judges can work together and shift the partisan policy discourse,” Manning said. “And I think that’s happening.”

Biden thinks that Putin has decided to invade Ukraine

President Biden made it clear during a press conference held on Friday afternoon that he believes Putin has already made up his mind about Russia invading Ukraine.

When asked directly, “Do you have any indication about whether Pres. Putin has made a decision on whether to invade?” Biden didn’t hesitate to answer “As of this moment I’m convinced he’s made the decision. We have reason to believe that.”

Watch the ask and answer:

"Do you have any indication about whether Pres. Putin has made a decision on whether to invade?"

Pres. Biden: "As of this moment I'm convinced he's made the decision. We have reason to believe that." https://t.co/Su59PbbRAG pic.twitter.com/H2R0BWZ4zq

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) February 18, 2022

“We have reason to believe the Russian forces are planning to, intend to, attack Ukraine in the coming week, in the coming days,” said Biden during the press conference held in the Roosevelt Room at the White House. “We believe that they will target Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million innocent people.”

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In The New York Times coverage of the press conference they point out that Biden was the most direct this afternoon in terms of how close he believes we are to seeing a war between Russia and Ukraine. Although the threat of this seems realer than ever, Biden believes there’s still hope for de-escalation.

“It is not too late to de escalate and return to the negotiating table,” Mr. Biden said, referring to planned talks between Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Russia’s foreign minister have agreed to talks next Wednesday. “If Russia takes military action before that day, it will be clear that they have slammed the door shut on diplomacy.”

Read more:

Forget the final girl, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” We’re ready for the final woman

I’m not sure I can explain how much the final girl means to me.

At 22, in my first semester of graduate school and feeling way over my head with classmates who were older and smarter, I first read Carol J. Clover’s “Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.” I had loved horror movies since I was way too young to be watching them, without realizing there was a name for my favorite kind of character.

The final girl.

There were characteristics. The one who survives a horror film, often of the slasher variety, sometimes killing the killer herself, is virginal, tomboyish. She has short hair and a name that doesn’t immediately identify her as female: Jess, Sid — the kind of breezy, cool name I always dreamed of having.

Not only was there an identity for this character, there was a final girl industry. Fan clubs. T-shirts. Novels. Movies about the idea of the final girl. A graffiti artist.

“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” the 1974 horror film that advertised itself as being based on true events (not exactly) has one such girl, Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns), the only one of her friends to survive after they trespass onto the land of a terrible Texas farmhouse.

To escape, she jumps through a glass window. She runs, she runs, screaming the whole time, being chased. A semi truck driver tries to save her but is chased himself. Covered in blood, she flags down a pickup truck and manages to get into the bed (despite her obvious injuries, the driver doesn’t help her in). “Go, go!” she screams to the driver. Sitting in the back, in the nauseating reverse position like my sister and me in our parents’ 1980s station wagon, she watches her attacker, Leatherface, and his chainsaw finally fade into the distance. Her screams turn to hysterical laughter.

Burns was known as one of the original scream queens, a title that never quite felt right to me, because it seems to have less agency than simply final girl. Though Burns was excellent at screaming, her character Sally also escaped after — as critics at the time pointed out — much more torture was done to her and to the other female character than to the men, who die quickly in the film.

I watch a ton of horror — it’s what I do for fun, to relax — and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” remains one of the few movies to be actually terrifying, in part because the violence feels so inexplicable. The story is never explained, at least not in that movie.

A series of films followed, both direct sequels and stories set in different timelines. Netflix’s 2022 film “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” is billed as a direct sequel, set in the same small Texas town and featuring a few key main characters, later in life.

When I saw a certain name and face in a faux TV news program early in the film — narrated by John Larroquette — I screamed myself.

Because Sally Hardesty is back. And she’s grown.

In the Netflix film, Sally is played by Olwen Fouéré, the legendary Galway-born actor who was spellbinding in “Mandy” (my favorite film — I won’t be taking questions). In this movie’s timeline, sole survivor Sally became a ranger and did not leave Texas, looking for her would-be killer, Leatherface, “that maniac for more than 30, 40 years,” a gas station proprietor (Sam Douglas) tells new-in-town Lila (“Eighth Grade” star Elsie Fisher).

“She found him,” Lila says. It’s not a question, the surety of final girls to find revenge.

But Sally didn’t. Not yet. She has to grow into her role. “I fear no evil, I fear no evil,” Sally repeats to herself in the new movie when she finds the aftermath of evil in a sunflower field. Her voice shakes but her flashlight doesn’t. She keeps the Polaroid picture of herself and her friends, taken by a tricksy hitchhiker in the 1974 film, on her dashboard visor. She looks at it for strength, her ice-blue eyes steeling over.

“We need an officer in Harlow,” the emergency dispatch says, crackling through the radio of a smashed sheriff van. “You’re the only guys I have in a 50-mile radius.”

But it will not be a guy who comes back to Harlow.

The decision to turn Sally into a Texas Ranger is inspired, and no one can inhabit the role like Fouéré. Physically, she looks like Burns (who died in 2014) with her piercing light eyes and long wild hair, now a glowing white. You can’t look away from her, and every scene she’s in, she pulls focus like a flame. But emotionally, she is Sally: an older woman who has endured great violence. Surviving has steadied the woman, not derailed her as in so many horror movies from the past.

Sally Hardesty is the final woman.

One attribute of the final girl is that the character resists sex. As mansplained in “Scream,” having sex in a horror film is a one-way ticket to death via slasher. But the so-called sexual purity of the final girl may be more of a rumor than demonstrated fact; many horror movies, including 1974’s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” don’t get into the sexual history of their girl survivor at all.

So too it’s a stereotype of the older woman to be sexless, undesirable. The strangest part of growing old, one of my female relatives told me, is that you become invisible. When men no longer think of you as a sexual being, many of them don’t think of you at all, don’t register you.

All the better time to destroy them.

In Kirsten Miller’s forthcoming novel “The Change,” a group of middle-aged women realize that age comes with powers too, powers of supernatural vengeance. And if there’s ever a time when an ordinary woman could kill the killer, it’s after her children are grown and out of the house, or in retirement when one might finally have some freaking free time. (Sally spends her leisure hours butchering hogs, so she’s not rusty with the slaughtering.)

The final woman has nothing to lose — much less than the final girl, with her boyfriend and her good grades and her whole life ahead of her. The final woman has been preparing for revenge her whole life — not simply the first 60 minutes of the movie, but through eons of other movies and their sequels. The final woman has had decades to get pumped.

There is the trauma of the moment. And then there is the trauma of something that happened a long time ago that you were never able to shake, that bleeds into everything that has happened since: toxic relationships, poor decisions, careers derailed, opportunities lost.

Part of the success of Showtime’s “Yellowjackets” is the mirroring of the cast, showing young girls right as trauma happened and the girls as adult women still dealing with that violence, as fresh as if it occurred only yesterday. Because it feels like it did.

Trauma doesn’t leave you. The scar just changes and fades — it doesn’t disappear, though it might make the spot stronger. It certainly makes it different.

Put it this way. Do you prefer Taylor Swift’s 2012 rendition of “All Too Well” — or the searing 2021 “Taylor’s Version” of the song, re-recorded with a decade more reflection?

Although I have long loved the final girl, whose power comes from her innocence, I’m ready for a final woman, whose power comes from experience. A lot of final women. And I think movie viewers are too, based on fan reactions to Laurie Strode returning as a grandmother in the “Halloween” films, a character whose strength is not from only the moment but from a whole, difficult life spent reliving it, dealing with the fallout of having survived the unsurvivable.

Much was said early in the pandemic about how trauma survivors were strangely calm amid the chaos. We always expected something terrible. If not exactly this, then something else equally awful. Or, as my mom whispered to my dad when she opened a closet in my house in March 2020 to find it fully stocked with disinfectant wipes, hand sanitizer, bottled water and masks: “I knew she’d be prepared.”

Something terrible is always around the corner, after all. Because once something was.

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Although “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” offers some nice homages to the original film, including Larroquette’s narration and a bloody girl the spitting image of 1974 Sally, it feels empty. Because the story that matters is not complete. The horror circle of Leatherface remains broken. Fouéré deserves more screen time — all the screen time, frankly — and the great character of Sally is vastly underused, as are Fouéré’s massive talents.

We don’t want the baton — or in this case, the shotgun — to be passed to another young girl. We want the final woman, the original scream queen, her face lined and her hair white, her eyes determined, the only one left of her friends forever, to have her day. The only showdown that matters is the final woman and that hulking killer who once nearly ended her. Nearly, but didn’t.

Burn it all down, Sally.

Though diminutive in comparison to the chainsaw murderer, in her boots and cowboy hat, Sally casts a long shadow. So does the past. “If you run, he’ll never stop haunting you,” Sally says.

We are the descendants of the witches you couldn’t burn, goes the popular saying found on fridge magnets and T-shirts. A better saying, more true, might be: We are the final women who lived.

“Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is available to stream on Netflix. Watch a trailer for it below, via YouTube.

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“Daredevil,” “Jessica Jones” and other Marvel shows leaving Netflix

Long before Disney+ was even a blip on the radar, Marvel shows lived on Netflix. Beginning with the first season of “Daredevil” in 2015, a parallel team of heroes began building on the platform, with “Jessica Jones,” “Luke Cage” and “Iron Fist” all leading into the crossover limited series “The Defenders.” Throw “The Punisher” into the mix, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that the largest stable of superhero shows out there for quite a while was on Netflix. What’s more, they were highly acclaimed and popular with fans, especially “Daredevil” and “Jessica Jones.”

So it came as a shock when the Marvel shows on Netflix started getting cancelled in 2019. A shock . . . but perhaps not a total surprise. This was just before we started hearing about Disney+. Even if no one was outright saying it to the press, it made sense that Marvel’s parent company Disney would rather have Marvel superheroes on their own streaming platform. (And in fact, “Daredevil” star Vincent D’Onofrio has since chalked the cancellations up to Disney+.)

Since then, there have been signs that we should expect another shift. “Daredevil” stars D’Onofrio (Kingpin) and Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock/Daredevil) just crossed over into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in “Hawkeye” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home“ respectively. Marvel hasn’t announced any plans for the rest of the Defenders, but with Daredevil and Kingpin already brought in it opens the door for the other characters, as well.

Of course, the “Daredevil” show itself is currently still on Netflix, and it saw a huge bump in viewership when D’Onofrio and Cox turned up in the MCU. Disney could not have been happy that it was giving its competitor Netflix a boost.

The whole family of Marvel’s Defenders shows are leaving Netflix

It was only a matter of time until we got some kind of announcement that the Defenders family of shows would be leaving Netflix, and now it seems that announcement is here. Per What’s-On-Netflix, all of the Marvel shows currently on Netflix are showing removal notices that state they’ll be leaving the service on March 1, 2022. It should be noted that these notices only show up under specific circumstances, like when you first begin watching one of these series but not on rewatch, so there’s still some room for skepticism. But whether this is a coding error or a sign that Netflix is still in the process of officially announcing the removal of the shows, it’s still a legit information grab from the platform itself.

Here are all the shows slated to leave Netflix on March 1:

“Daredevil” (Seasons 1-3)
“Jessica Jones” (Seasons 1-3)
“Luke Cage” (Seasons 1-2)
“Iron Fist” (Seasons 1-2)
“The Defenders” (Limited Series)
“The Punisher” (Seasons 1-2)

That’s over 160 episodes worth of content, which is a lot to be leaving Netflix all at once. March 1 is just under a month away, which means that if you want to rewatch those shows before they’re gone from Netflix, the clock is ticking.

Where will you be able to watch the Defenders shows after March 1?

As of now, nothing has been announced regarding where you’ll be able to watch “Daredevil,” “Jessica Jones” and the rest after they leave Netflix on March 1. The obvious assumption is that they’ll be moving to Disney+, but without any solid confirmation or a date, we can’t say for certain when or even if that’s happening.

We’ll be on the lookout for any new information about when these shows will be making their reappearance. With Daredevil and Kingpin already in the MCU, there’s plenty of reason to be optimistic.

For now, “Daredevil,” “Jessica Jones,” “Luke Cage,” “Iron Fist,” “The Punisher,” and “The Defenders” are available on Netflix for a little longer. If you start now, you might even be able to watch them all before then.

Melania’s donation to a computer science school was rejected, so now she feels cancelled

Melania Trump posted a statement to her website on Friday expressing that she was “disappointed but not surprised” when an Oklahoma school specializing in advanced computer science skills rejected her donation. The donation was made on behalf of the former first lady’s foundation, Fostering the Future, a Be Best Initiative, which she started shortly after her time in the White House.

Melania gives background on the donation attempt in the intro to her statement:

Recently, a computer science school founded in Silicon Valley with a campus in Oklahoma agreed to work with Fostering the Future. Multiple scholarships were going to be granted through the school’s preferred designated fund, based in Tulsa, with the first class of students enrolling in Fall 2022. I had signed the Designated Fund Agreement and was waiting for the countersignature when the school informed me it would no longer participate. They would not accept scholarship dollars for deserving students—even as an anonymous gift. It was made clear to me that the school’s Board of Directors organized a politically-motivated decision.

Mrs. Trump goes on to say that this is not the first time her charitable donations have been rejected, and that’s a fact. In 2017 Melania tried to donate a selection of Dr Seuss books to the Cambridgeport elementary school library in Massachusetts and the school’s librarian, Liz Phipps Soeiro, turned them away. Soeiro doubled-down on her rejection of the books saying “you may not be aware of this, but Dr Seuss is a bit of a cliche, a tired and worn ambassador for children’s literature … “another fact that many people are unaware of is that Dr Seuss’s illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes.”

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In Melania’s statement on Friday addressing her most recent charitable rejection, she also mentions what would be a third rejection that took place in the past where “a prospective corporate partner refused an opportunity to further our shared philanthropic goals surrounding my visit to Africa.”

“Those who attack my initiatives and create the appearance of impropriety are quite literally dream killers,” Melania says in the closing of her statement. “They have canceled the hopes and dreams of children by trying to cancel me.”

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Confirmed: National Archives tells Congress Trump took classified documents from White House

The National Archives has confirmed that former President Donald Trump took classified national security documents with him to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House in January 2021.

The New York Times reports that the National Archives sent a letter to Congress in which it confirmed that it has “identified items marked as classified national security information within the boxes” that were removed from Mar-a-Lago earlier this year after the Supreme Court ruled that Trump could not shield January 6th-related documents from the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riots.

“Because NARA identified classified information in the boxes, NARA staff has been in communication with the Department of Justice,” the letter, which was written by National Archivist David Ferriero, added.

While there have been reports for weeks that the National Archives found classified documents in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago records, this is the first time that the agency has publicly confirmed these reports.

Revelations about Trump removing classified documents from the White House weren’t the only intriguing part of the letter, as Ferriero also revealed that “some White House staff conducted official business using non-official electronic messaging accounts that were not copied or forwarded into their official electronic messaging accounts.”

The actual cost of a car can be as high as $1 million — and society pays for much of that

Cars are one of the most quintessential global status symbols. Vast industries exist to manufacture, maintain, repair, study, race and fetishize the innumerable automotive vehicles that a human being can use. Wars are fought over maintaining access to cheap oil.

Yet this obsession with cars has come with a heavy cost. The most obvious one, of course, is the role played by fossil fuel emissions in creating and exacerbating man-made climate change. But beyond that, it turns out that cars are incredibly expensive, too — and not merely for the owner. A huge share of the burden of automobiles, hundreds of thousands of dollars per vehicle, are paid for by society.

Moreover, as a new study published in the journal Ecological Economics shows, the main burden for the cost of the automobile falls on poor people — and anyone who does not own a car, but must pay for the infrastructure of those who do. The economic analysis considered not merely the initial price tag of a car, but also the maintenance, the cost of the buildings that must house it, and the costs of the roads that must carry it. Ultimately, society pays a steep cost for our fixation on cars.

To assess both the private and social costs of car ownership in Germany, the authors analyzed information from the German Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil Club (ADAC), a road assistance and automobile lobby organization, according to categories involving private cost (operating cost, value depreciation, repairs, fixed cost, maintenance, and other cost) and social cost (infrastructure, health, and environment). In the process, they found that car owners generally underestimate the overall cost of owning their vehicles, and therefore do not appreciate how the resulting transportation system may not be in their best interest. For instance, they calculated that the lifetime cost of a Mercedes is over $1 million; for the much smaller Opel Corsa it is roughly $689,000, with society shouldering $275,000 of that.

“To be efficient and fair, a transportation system must reflect certain principles including consumer sovereignty (the system offers users diverse travel options, so users can choose the combination that best serves their demands) and cost-based pricing (users pay directly for the costs they impose unless a subsidy is specifically justified),” the authors write. “This analysis indicates that the German transportation system, and the transportation systems in most other countries, are inefficient and unfair; they favor expensive modes over cheaper modes, and impose large external costs.”

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As the authors explained, the policies that exist as a result of prevalent car ownership cause people to feel compelled to buy more vehicles than they can actually afford. The benefits that exist to offset the expenses of car ownership — low fuel taxes, company car benefits, electric vehicle subsides and road and parking subsidies — primarily benefit wealthy individuals.

“As a result, people who drive less than average essentially subsidize the automobile travel of others who drive more than average, by subsidizing their road and parking facility costs, and bearing congestion delays, crash risk and pollution damages,” the authors write.

Speaking to Carlton Reid of Forbes, lead author Stefan Gössling explained that societies would benefit from moving away from widespread car ownership, but politicians are reluctant to broach that subject because “it’s a transport taboo; you can’t touch it politically because you’ll get burnt.”

He later told Reid, “In our research, we’re not saying you should start taking away cars from people, we’re just saying it’s probably more prudent, economically, to invest in those infrastructures that are less costly — such as for active mobility — and where people will make a switch voluntarily.”

He argued that “change can come quickly” if people become more educated on the benefits to them personally and for society of traveling through other methods.

“It wasn’t forced on people, it’s what people want,” Gössling said when discussing the rise of cycling in Germany. “People want to be healthier. Many studies show how active travel is not just physically healthy; it’s also beneficial for mental health. And cycling is ideal for cities; it’s often much faster than driving.”

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I’m a pro baker — but my mom’s biscuit recipe will always be my favorite

Bake It Up a Notch is a column by Resident Baking BFF Erin Jeanne McDowell. Each month, she’ll help take our baking game to the next level, teaching us all the need-to-know tips and techniques and showing us all the mistakes we might make along the way.

When your mother bakes like mine did, childhood is filled with no shortage of sweet memories: I grew up with warm loaves of bread, customized birthday cakes, and cookies so good they had a real reputation at school bake sales. But as soon as I moved away from home, I found that above all else, there was one of my mother’s specialties I was missing most: Her famous scones.

Now, my mom called these delights “scones,” but they might not look exactly like the scones you’re thinking of. They remind me more of drop biscuits, which is how I’ve referred to them since I first requested the recipe from her. The dough is simple to make, and not too sweet; when baked, the biscuits are lightly crisp on the outside, and undeniably fluffy inside.

When my mom would make them, she would always do it in batches: Some would be baked plain to be enjoyed with jam; some would be studded with toasted nuts or dried fruit; and some would be speckled with mini chocolate chips for us kiddos. The biscuits always filled the house with the most delicious baked buttermilk aroma—and honestly, that smell alone is half the reason why I still love to bake them.

No matter where I am, this dough has an incredible quality of making me feel at home. I’ve baked these biscuits so many times and for so many people over the years. I baked them on my first days living on Block Island, a tiny pork-chop shaped island off the coast of Rhode Island where I did my pastry internship after my first year of school. I rented a room in a house that I shared with a sweet family from Peru. One weekend day, I heard the whole family leave early in the morning, and I snuck down to the kitchen to bake the biscuits while I had the house to myself. I left them on a plate in the center of the kitchen table for them to find when they returned home. Turns out, they had gone fishing; when they got back, they devoured the biscuits while they cleaned their catches, then invited me to the most delicious ceviche dinner at sunset.

Back at school, I baked them in the dorm kitchen on a rainy day and left them—still-warm and foil-wrapped—hanging from my friends’ doorknobs. I baked them on vacation all the time, because they really only needed one bowl. I baked them for friends who moved into a new house, got a promotion, or lost a loved one. And I baked them for myself whenever I felt homesick (which, turns out, was a lot).

After graduation, I received an email from the Food52 editorial team for an opportunity to come in and help in the kitchen for a shoot. This meant a lot to me; I loved that Food52 celebrated home cooks, because home cooking is how I fell in love with food, too. The night before the shoot, I was so nervous—and there was nothing to do to cure it but bake. A personal recipe was just the ticket, not only to calm my own nerves but to bring in as a shoot-day treat; I felt the staff would appreciate that it was special, even without telling them of its role in my baking life. I kept the biscuits plain, but made homemade molasses butter to serve alongside.

The editors took turns photographing the biscuits from their desk, then tore into them, swiping soft butter over the airy crumb. I think at some level I was convinced that if these biscuits were good enough, they’d invite me back for another shoot. And they did—though I fully credit the biscuits for that, and the biscuits alone.

Not long after, I started tweaking the recipe and making it my own, adding more liquid to produce a cakier result, or leaving some out to create a crumbly streusel-like topping. One summer, when I was invited to a potluck, I pressed the dough into a sheet pan and turned it into an easy-to-slice slab shortcake. And when I signed my first book contract, I reinvented it into a towering three-layer cake I affectionately nicknamed a “not-so-shortcake.” I’ve baked this recipe more than any other, and I’m still not tired of it. It still provides comfort, and it still makes me feel as close as possible to hugging my mom, even though she’s miles and miles away.

After a few of the craziest years possible, I think there’s no better time to make this recipe—it’s so easy, but still so special. Whether you make these biscuits just once, or hundreds of times as I have, it I know they will bring you warmth and make your house smell amazing without fail. And who knows? 20 years from now, they might even be the recipe that your kids will call you, begging to learn—because they, too, are homesick, and nothing else will cure it the same way.