A brief history of the Christmas cookie

In November 1960, about a month before Christmas, The Los Angeles Times reported what was then described as a rising trend. “From coast to coast, cooks are trading cookies and recipes to make gift boxes for Christmas,” the article read. “It provides a glamorous array of cookies for gifting, plus a hatful of leisure hours to enjoy in the last mad holiday rush.”

The piece introduced readers to Mrs. Robert Blanch of Minneapolis, who at that point had been hosting baking swaps for her bridge club for three years. After a particularly successful party, in which eight guests each brought a dozen homemade cookies, “it was decided then to make the Christmas Cookie Swap an annual event.”

Unlike other 60s entertaining trends — such as conversation pits and aspics — the cookie swap party never died down. For many, it’s now a time-honored tradition shared with family and friends. For others, it’s a sort of competitive culinary sport that includes making spreadsheets and asking Google, “How do I impress at a cookie exchange?” (Answer: Try these sprinkled and spiked butter cookies.)

But how did the concept of ringing in the holidays with intricately decorated sweets come to be? Like most traditions now associated with Christmas, it’s partially borrowed from winter solstice festivals. During these celebrations, Ancient Germanic people would feast as a way of both celebrating the “Earth’s rebirth” and fortifying for the cold months ahead. To make the most of the darkest day of the year, celebrants would eat a hearty spread of roast meats — including a Yule pig, which likely gave rise to the now-traditional Christmas ham — and spiced wassail. Simple sweets like fried honey cakes were likely served, as well.

By the mid-15th century, however, religious Christmas celebrations increasingly began to dovetail with the solstice festivals. At the same time, spices became more readily available in Europe due to the spice trade and associated colonization. Ingredients like anise, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, mace, nutmeg and saffron were all prized as status symbols (so much so that the household of Humphrey Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham, reportedly went through two pounds of pepper and ginger per day). This led to families purchasing spices and storing them for use during the holiday season.

This was true, as well, for other pricy indulgences like butter, sugar and dried fruits, such as apricots and dates. From these ingredients, you start to see the general outline of cookies served in Christmas tins today, including tender butter cookies, cranberry-date bars and gingerbread. These traditions began to solidify through the ensuing centuries. The Germans developed weihnachtsplätzchen — an umbrella term for a variety of Christmas cookies, such as lebkuchen, zimtsterne, Schwarz-Weiß-Gebäck shortbreads and the intricate springerle.

In the early 17th century, European settlers brought Christmas cookies (or “koeptje,” as the Dutch would have said) to the New World. The cycle of have-and-have-nots started all over again when it came to affording spices, baking ingredients and dried fruit.

By the 1870s, the tide began to turn. According to author William Woys Weaver, who wrote the 1990 book “The Christmas Cook: Three Centuries of American Yuletide Sweets,” there was a flood of cheap imported wares from Germany between 1871 and 1906 when import laws were changed.

“[This] inundated our Christmas markets with cooking utensils . . . like cookie cutters,” he wrote. “Unlike homemade counterparts or local tinsmith’s wares, these tools depicted highly stylized images, often drawn from secular themes or with subject’s designed specifically to hang on the Christmas trees.”

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Soon, there was a rise in cookbooks that met the increased demand to actually make items using these tools.

“In a sense, with the advent of inexpensive tin cutters, new emphasis was placed on shape, where in the past, many homemade cookies simply had been square or round,” Weaver wrote. “Bells, Christmas trees, camels, crimped wares, lilies, Santa Clauses, turkeys, all of these elaborate shapes tended to deemphasize texture and flavor.”

It’s at this point in the history of the Christmas cookie that one begins to see the opportunity for the assortment present at modern day cookie swaps. There are the cookies that cut well and stand up to decoration (but aren’t necessarily the most flavorful), and then there are the varieties that are absolutely delectable but don’t belong anywhere near a cookie cutter.

Within these loose categories, there has been a lot of room for variety, ranging from regional delicacies like Baltimore Berger Cookies to New Mexican Biscochitos to recipes built from newer ingredients, such as M&Ms or peanut butter. It’s a culinary space that’s long been simultaneously defined by reverence for tradition and a desire for little innovations, meaning there’s still plenty of space for you to make your mark on this year’s cookie swap.

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Affogato is the greatest 2-ingredient dessert ever invented

My spouse calls any dessert topping “icing.” Whether it’s a dusting of powdered sugar, a drizzle of syrup, or a thick swirl of frosting, he has precisely one word for what’s sitting on that cupcake. “What’s the difference?” he’ll shrug. What, indeed.

In her funny, fascinating “What’s the Difference?” newsletter, Brette Warshaw explores the semantic distinctions between such tricky topics as lotion and moisturizer, and jealousy and envy. And in her new book, “What’s the Difference?: Recreational Culinary Reference for the Curious and Confused,” she goes all in on broth vs. stock, and yes, icing vs. frosting. It’s an undeniably fun read, but it’s also a genuinely useful resource for anyone who’s ever wondered if aioli is really just mayo. Some differences are purely regional, as the hoagie eaters of Philadelphia and sub fans of Boston know. Some things are just victims of misuse — “I think now knowing that what is in the grocery store labeled as a yam is actually a sweet potato makes me so bad,” she says. “I feel like we’ve all been lied to for so long. That’s definitely one.”

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Others can make or break a recipe. “Types of sugars,” she offers as an example. “Also the types of rice. Salt is another one of them. There’s so many different types. There are types that can really elevate a dish, like flaky sea salts. Or you could use types that have some additives or have a finer texture than what a recipe actually calls and end up with something that’s saltier than you’d like.”

My favorite type of “What’s the difference?” is the kind where the difference is real but also kind of doesn’t matter. Take, for instance, affogato.

Affogato means “drowned,” and “drowned,” right after “smothered,” is one of my favorite words to see in a recipe. Something that feels Continental and sophisticated but you can actually pull off with a Mr. Coffee and a tub of Breyer’s? I’m all in.

In Italy, your affogato al caffè might be made with fior di latte and a shot of espresso, but in your own home, you can mix it up and make it with ice cream or gelato — they’re different! You can even use strong coffee instead of espresso — they too are different! However you make your affogato, it’s quite possibly the best 2-ingredient treat anybody ever thought of — strong and sweet, hot and cold, perfect every time.

***

Affogato
Inspired by Eric Kim of The New York Times and Brette Warshaw’s “What’s the Difference?”
Makes 1

Ingredients:

1 double shot of hot espresso OR 2 ounces of strong hot coffee
2 scoops of vanilla ice cream OR gelato
Optional: Grated chocolate, orange zest, fresh mint leaves, or a shot of your favorite liqueur

Directions:

Scoop your ice cream into a shallow bowl.
Pour over your espresso and serve immediately. If you like, you can top with a little grated chocolate or otherwise zhush it up as you please. I find a little orange zest is a cool twist on the orange coffee soda that I am strangely obsessed with.

Pro tip: For the ultimate hot and cold combo, scoop your ice cream out into the bowl in advance, and put it back into the freezer until you’re absolutely ready to pour the espresso over it.

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How to decorate cookies like a pro baker

We should all have a solid command of the ABCs of baking. Thankfully, Food52’s Resident Baking BFF Erin McDowell — alongside photographer Sarah Stone, who both blog at The Shutter Oven — is here, with tips and tricks to help you master the most essential desserts and the simplest breads.

Today: Don’t suffer through holiday cookies that taste like cardboard. You (and Santa) deserve better.

What’s my number one holiday pet peeve? Cookies that taste like cardboard. Or worse, cardboard cookies with no decorations at all.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m a sucker for all things adorably decorated, and roll-out cookies are no exception. But just because they’re often used solely as a vessel for icing doesn’t mean that the cookie itself shouldn’t be delicious. Start with a stellar sugar cookie recipe and then go from there. My favorite way to decorate sugar cookies — especially for holidays and special occasions — is by using royal icing. The secret to getting precise lines, dots, and other details with royal icing is using a squeeze bottle. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Once you find a good recipe, the techniques for prepping and baking are quite simple. As far as decorations go, the sky is the limit, but I’ve got a few (simple) ideas that look good and taste great, too. Here’s how to make sugar cookies so good, you might forget about the icing:

How to bake sugar cookies

Before I talk about decorating tips, I want to share a few of my tried-and-true techniques for baking a batch of sugar cookies that you’ll actually want to eat, not just ice.

The butter

Cream, cream, cream, cream the butter. Sugar cookies contain so few ingredients that a surefire way to mess them up is during mixing. Some recipes for roll-out sugar cookies might tell you to use a different technique, but I like to use the creaming method for mine. Start by mixing the butter and sugar together. Every recipe in the world will tell you to mix “until light and fluffy,” but what does this mean? During the process of creaming, you’re incorporating air into the mixture, while also combining the butter and sugar. The whole process actually helps to “dissolve” the sugar into the butter, which makes for a properly mixed cookie. This process — done correctly — takes 4 to 5 minutes on medium-low speed.

Adding flavor

Don’t be afraid of over-mixing here — that doesn’t become a problem until the flour is added. If you’re adding flavors like citrus zest or vanilla bean, add those at this point, too; the process of creaming will help to release essential (flavorful) oils and combine those flavors more fully into the finished dough. You’ll add the eggs next, and with them, any liquid flavorings like extracts. Add your egg(s) one at a time, as soon as the creaming process is finished, mixing on medium speed to combine. Scrape down the bowl and the batter well after adding the eggs — they are a primary leavener and are also crucial for texture and moisture content — and make sure they are mixed in evenly. You want to make sure everything is properly combined before you add the flour, because that’s when things get trickier.

The dry ingredients

Careful with that flour: Once flour becomes involved, the process requires more precision. You want to take great care not to over-mix your dough; otherwise, your cookies will be unpleasantly crisp (rather than chewy) and tough (rather than soft and buttery). Sift or whisk together your dry ingredients (flour, chemical leavener, salt, and any powdered spices) to combine them. Combining these ingredients beforehand makes sure that they have the best chance of being properly incorporated, which can help to reduce mixing time overall.

Add the flour all at once (unless your mixer physically can’t handle that), and pulse the mixer a few times to avoid a floury cloud from poofing up out of the mixing bowl. Mix on low speed just until the flour is incorporated, scraping down the bowl as necessary. As with any kind of wheat flour-based baked good, the dough can begin to develop too much gluten if mixed for too long, which will make it tough (this also makes it harder to roll and can lead to cookie shrinkage in the oven).

Something sweeter

Like chocolate? Me too: Most sugar cookie recipes can be made into chocolate cookies by reducing the flour and subbing in cocoa powder. A good jumping off point is to reduce the flour by 1/4 cup and add 1/4 cup of cocoa powder. For a more intense cocoa flavor (or for a larger batch of cookies), consider increasing it to 1/3 or 1/2 cup. The fat in the cocoa powder has a delicious effect on the dough: It makes the cookies taste almost like thin, chewy brownies. Yum.

Chill out

Cookie dough needs to be cool when you roll it. Press it into a disc about one inch thick, wrap it in plastic wrap, and chill for at least one hour, and up to overnight. For one thing, this makes the dough easier to roll — room temperature butter just sticks to your work surface, which means you have to add more flour. This, in turn, makes the dough tougher, because that excess flour gets incorporated into the dough.

It also gives the dough time to relax. The protein strands that developed during mixing relax under refrigeration, which means that the dough is less likely to shrink when it is rolled, cut, and baked. Also, if you’re using a complicated cookie cutter shape (with lots of detailed nooks and crannies), the shape is more likely to hold up if the dough is cold. For this reason, I like to chill my cookies again after they have been cut. Just 5 to 10 minutes in the freezer (or 15 minutes in the refrigerator) is enough to prevent excess spreading.

Rolling out the dough

Don’t use too much flour: If you hadn’t guessed, it’s important not to use too much flour when you roll out the dough. A light dusting to your surface and your rolling pin should do the trick. Plus, if you’ve rolled your soft dough into a 1 inch-thick disk, you don’t have very far to go to roll out the dough to the proper thickness. Apply gentle, even pressure, working from the center outwards to roll the dough to about 1/2-inch thick.

You can reroll the scraps of dough, but if you do, I’d suggest just doing it once, as the process makes the dough tough very fast. (You can always bake off the scraps without rerolling on a parchment-lined baking sheet, then grind the resulting messy cookies into cookie crumbs for the pie or cheesecake of your choice). For maximum yield, you can always just use a pizza cutter/pastry wheelto cut your cookies into squares — you’ll have almost no leftover scraps!

Cutting the cookies

Cut careful, cut close: Flour your cookie cutter lightly before cutting shapes. It’s best to cut similar shapes out of each roll-out of dough, for the sake of maximum yield. Cut very close together to reduce scraps. For odd shapes and sizes, twisting the cookie cutter sideways and/or upside down will often help to get the most out of your roll-out.

Time to bake

Don’t bake until golden: So many recipes say to bake cookies until they are golden brown, but sugar cookies of this variety should still be very pale when you pull them from the oven. The best way to tell that they are done is that they are just beginning to brown around the edges — the top of the cookies will look pale, but they will be “set.”

How to decorate sugar cookies

It probably goes without saying, but don’t try to decorate a baking sheet of freshly baked sugar cookies when they are even a teensy bit warm, or all of your careful frosting will be for naught. The warmth from the cookies will cause the royal icing to melt, cause colored sprinkles to bleed a rainbow of red and green, and make it impossible to create the Pinterest designs of your dreams. Let them sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes so that they can fully chill. When the cookies feel cool to the touch . . .

. . . it’s time to decorate! I have some fast, easy favorites for decorating cookies. They’re nothing fancy, but I’m always glad to have a few quick techniques up my sleeve for last-minute holiday cookie baking (which always happens)! Here are a few of my favorite ways to decorate different types of cookies:

Sandwich cookies

Make a simple buttercream frosting (any flavor you like), and pipe it into the center of half of your cookies. You want to use enough frosting that it will fill the cookie, but not so much that it will ooze out when you press it. For a standard cookie size, I find leaving a 1/4-inch border around the cookie is perfect. Place another cookie on top and press gently until the frosting squishes out to the edges. Then, roll the edges of the cookie in crushed candy or sprinkles. I like to use chocolate sugar cookies and peppermint candies for this.

Pre-bake sprinkle time

Pour some sprinkles onto a plate and shake the plate gently to make an even layer. Place a piece of cut-out sugar cookie dough face-down into the sprinkles. Press gently with your hand to help the sprinkles adhere to the dough, then gently transfer the cookie to a baking sheet. The sprinkles may not stick super well prior to baking, but they’ll be nicely attached by the time the cookies come out of the oven.

Post-bake sprinkle time

Or you can dip the cookies in sprinkles after you bake: This is my favorite way to decorate cookies when I want to use something more flavorful than royal icing — and keep the effort minimal. For this, I usually make a simple icing out of powdered sugar, heavy cream, and vanilla (like what you might use to frost cinnamon rolls). It needs to be thick enough to adhere to the cookie without dripping off, but thin enough to be spreadable. A good ratio is 2 cups powdered sugar to about a 1/3 cup heavy cream.

Place the cookie face-down into the icing, then lift it out (you’re dipping here). Use a spatula to even out the icing a little if it’s wonky, then place the cookie face-down into a plate of sprinkles. The sprinkles will adhere easily, but you can press gently to make sure you get an even coating (if the sprinkles are in a plate rather than a bowl, the flat surface of the bottom will also help to even out the frosting). Let these cookies set for at least 15 minutes before serving — the icing will set up to be relatively firm.

All about royal icing

Royal icing is the key to perfectly iced cookies. The secret ingredients are powdered sugar and meringue powder (or whipped pasteurized egg whites). That’s it! You could add a small amount of lemon juice for flavor that won’t disrupt the pure white color of the icing, but that’s your call. If you’re thinking beyond white icing, add food coloring based on the holiday season (think pastels for Easter or a dark-as-the-night-sky hue for Halloween cookies). Meringue powder sounds like a specialty ingredient, but because it’s such a staple in this essential icing recipe, it’s easy enough to find in most grocery stores or craft stores.

Make a batch of firm royal icing (I usually use Martha Stewart’s recipe). When I say firm, I mean firm enough to pipe through a squeeze bottle or piping bag, but it shouldn’t be so firm that you struggle to squeeze it out of the pastry bag. If it’s too thin, add more powdered sugar; if it’s too thick, add more egg whites or lemon juice. You need it thick enough to pipe lines. I use this technique when I want a pretty royal icing cookie but don’t have any fancy cookie cutters handy. I just cut circles out of cookie dough, then pipe lines to look like snowflakes on each cookie’s surface. This is easier than it sounds — and since every snowflake is different, there’s no need to be precise. A sprinkling of candy or sprinkles at the end adds sparkle and can help to cover up any mistakes.

If you want to fill the cookie entirely with royal icing, pipe an outline around the perimeter of the cookie and then flood icing in the middle. Use a toothpick or cake tester to fill in any gaps or air pockets. If you decorate with royal icing, know that it tends to set fast so work as quickly as you can while still paying careful attention to precision.

White House officials stunned as Manchin ends Build Back Better talks with little warning

Sen. Joe Manchin gave precious little warning to President Joe Biden before saying publicly during an interview that he would not support his signature Build Back Better bill, according to a new report.

The conservative West Virginia Democrat dispatched aides to give word of his impending announcement to the White House and Congressional leadership — giving both parties just 30 minutes of notice before saying on “Fox News Sunday” he would not vote for the $1.7 trillion social safety plan championed by Biden.

White House officials were privately stunned at the way things went down, according to POLITICO, and tried to “head him off,” according to one unnamed source. He also “refused to take a call from White House staff” ahead of his appearance on Fox, the publication reported.

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Manchin also failed to tell fill-in host Bret Baier of the news he was about to break, catching the anchor by surprise when he said he “cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation.”

“I’ve tried everything humanly possible,” he added. “I can’t get there.”

To justify his decision, he cited a familiar list of opposition points:

Where I’m at right now, the inflation that I was concerned about, it’s not transitory. It’s real, and it’s harming every West Virginian. It’s making it almost difficult for them to continue, to go to their jobs. The cost of gasoline, the cost of groceries, the cost of utility bills, all of these things are hitting in every aspect of their life.

Then you have the debt that we’re carrying, $29 trillion. You have, also, the geopolitical unrest that we have. You have the Covid — the [Omicron] variant — and that is wreaking havoc again, people are concerned. I’ve been with my family, I know everyone is concerned.

Manchin’s colleagues blasted his decision to walk away from the negotiating table, citing his agreement to negotiate on a modified version of the bill in exchange for the passage of a $1.2 trillion physical infrastructure bill last month.

Let’s be clear: Manchin’s excuse is bullshit,” Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., wrote on Twitter Sunday. “The people of West Virginia would directly benefit from childcare, pre-Medicare expansion, and long term care, just like Minnesotans.”

“This is exactly what we warned would happen if we separated Build Back Better from infrastructure,” she added.

In an interview on CNN, fellow Sen. Bernie Sanders echoed those points, saying Manchin “doesn’t have the guts to stand up to powerful special interests.”

White House spokesperson Jen Psaki later addressed the Administration’s disappointment with Manchin for reneging on his promises to negotiate “in good faith.”

If his comments on FOX and written statement indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate.

In the meantime, Sen. Manchin will have to explain to those families paying $1,000 a month for insulin why they need to keep paying that, instead of $35 for that vital medicine. He will have to explain to the nearly two million women who would get the affordable day care they need to return to work why he opposes a plan to get them the help they need. Maybe Sen. Manchin can explain to the millions of children who have been lifted out of poverty, in part due to the Child Tax Credit, why he wants to end a program that is helping achieve this milestone — we cannot.

Despite the forcefully worded statement, White House officials apparently aren’t quite ready to declare negotiations dead yet — though it’s unclear what could convince the conservative Democrat to come back to the negotiating table.

“Look, with Manchin you never know,” another senior level official told POLITICO. “I’ve never seen anything like this … The guy shook hands with the president. He made us a written offer on Tuesday that had holes but was doable. If he flipped away from that so quickly, maybe he can flip back.”

“The Witcher” is back to give women a more equal share in its power

Opening episodes of the first season of “The Witcher” remind me of all the ways that high fantasy, comic books or, really, any type of speculative fiction fandom has long expected women to compromise. Parts of it were a mess of gratuitous nudity and swordplay. Others followed the worn-out script dictating that for women, true power must be earned through pain and trauma.

Netflix’s adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s tales followed these unspoken rules to the letter at first, as if to assure the franchise’s male fandom that Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill) and his huge swinging . . . sword . . . still reigned supreme in a TV adaptation steered by a woman.

But even within those introductory hours Lauren Schmidt Hissrich guided the show’s gaze away from the genre’s standard. Titillation gave way to depth, and the power balance between Geralt and his love Yennefer of Vengerberg (Anya Chalotra) achieved a heated, effective equilibrium thanks to Hissrich’s imbuing of Yennefer with ample tenderness and measure of messy humanity that Sapkowski left off his pages.

She never needed Geralt’s protection, and the young woman who ostensibly does, Princess Cirilla of Cintra (Freya Allan), meets him for the first time in the season’s final frame.

In hindsight this was a brilliant play. This time a woman set the terms of how the audience would enter this world and embrace its heroes, starting with the familiar centering of the hero’s might and virility before widening its lens to give Yennefer her due.

Yennefer’s initial arc may be marred by an irksome ableist plot twist, and unnecessary obsession with establishing her legacy through procreation, the one power mages cede in exchange for the ability to control chaos. Nevertheless, her story stands on its own as well as she does.

Season 2 gives Ciri that treatment by commencing her hero’s journey at Kaer Morhen, the stronghold where the remaining Witchers gather over the winter to recover from the year’s battles and reconnect with their elder Vesemir (Kim Bodnia).

It’s a dangerous place for a girl, but probably no more so than it is for a boy in that world. Every adult Witcher is a boy that lived through an array of assaults and mistreatment, before being injected with mutagens that might kill you anyway. For every 10 boys they used to take in, three would survive their initiation rituals.

That makes Geralt’s brethren disinclined to treat Ciri with genteel favor, something she never asks them to do. And while Geralt’s initial instinct is to shield his ward, he soon accepts that his role is to steer her towards realizing her full potential, both as a fighter and a force.

“The Witcher” books don’t come close to qualifying as feminist texts any more than the TV version of “Game of Thrones” does. But among the many things this show does right is defy the ancient sword-and-sorcery traditions of the white knight savior and the goodness of some kings countering other rulers’ evil. Ciri has immense power that’s only starting to emerge, and everyone wants to use it for their own ends, including Vesemir. Hissrich uses this aspect of “Witcher” lore to defy paternalistic fantasy traditions in the second season by highlighting the ways that Geralt isn’t simply an able guardian but a stalwart, morally upright ally.

Kristofer Hivju as Nivellen on “The Witcher” (Jay Maidment/Netflix

The season premiere reminds us of this when Geralt drops in on an old friend Nivellen (Kristofer Hivju, aka Tormund Giantsbane on “Game of Thrones”) who was cursed to live without love as a boar/bear hybrid by a priestess whose temple he destroyed in a drunken fit. Geralt determinedly breaks the curse, only to discover that he should have left the priestess’ sentence stand. A heartbroken Nivellen admits that he didn’t merely defile the temple, he assaulted the priestess – meaning he made the upstanding hero reverse a just punishment. And Ciri, who bears witness to this, learns her first hard lesson about the world of men: they can be monsters too. She tells Geralt to train her so she can kill them, just like he does.

At first he balks at her request for training, despite her being the granddaughter of a formidable warrior queen, Calanthe of Cintra (Jodhi May). But it’s her drive, not her lineage, that wins respect from other Witchers like Lambert (Paul Bullion). Besides, in the first season Cintra was conquered by the Southern empire of Nilfgaard.

Lambert derides her until she throws herself through the brutal obstacle course the Witchers use to train. But they keep pushing her to be less like she was – less of a girl. Geralt’s friend Triss Merigold (Anna Shaffer), reins them in once she arrives for a visit, discouraging the notion that a warrior can’t also be as feminine as she desires.

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Mages have an interesting part to play in this dialogue after their successful thwarting of Nilfgaard’s further incursion into the North in the Battle of Sodden. The kings and the Brotherhood of Sorcerers, which includes both men and women, have Yennefer to thank for their narrow victory. But as the price of turning back Nilfgaard she’s lost her powers, one of the few factors that gives her life purpose and value to the guild.

Through a turn of events Yennefer discovers she has a part in a prophecy alongside her enemy Fringilla (Mimî M. Khayisa) and an elven leader, Francesca Findabair (Mecia Simson). While the two of them form a partnership she’s left to fend for herself and figure out who she is without chaos at her command. Standard hero’s journey stuff, but worth considering more closely after Yennefer forges an alliance of convenience with a fellow fugitive, Cahir (Eamon Farren), the Black Knight hunting Ciri.

While Cahir’s on the run with Yennefer, she’s the one who leads, securing them hiding places, shelter and assistance. He could have learned from her example, but why? Eventually he’ll have a sword in his hand again. Meanwhile Fringilla and Francesca fall back to Cintra and raise a new society where elves and humans live in comity, revealing to Fringilla a power in noble purpose.

This is the same woman who commanded mages working under her to drain themselves into dust as she looked on. In this new place, she’s midwifing a future. That angers the Nilfgaardian men she once served.

“The Witcher” books, exciting as they may be, have an air of chauvinism about them Hissrich corrects even more vigorously through these characters, both by centering the story’s heroines in all their complexity and by inviting us to more closely study the men around them.

When Cahir returns to Fringilla his view of their mission, and of her as subservient to his command, falls right back into place. At the male mages’ school its rector Stregobor (Lars Mikkelsen) passes off an altered legend about a powerful woman that paints her as a source of great evil, but the fabled figure is meant to be a stand-in for Yennefer or her mentor Tissaia (MyAnna Buring).

Before Stregobor can go too far without being challenged, Yennefer’s confidant Istredd (Royce Pierreson) corrects his lie by citing historic text, a refutation Stregobor overwhelms with his air of arrogant uncertainty. But he’s an example of a someone pushing against a lie no matter how loud it’s brayed; if he doesn’t say something, nobody will know there’s another side to the story that’s kinder to lady at the heart of it.

The Continent is certainly a dangerous place. But here, at least, heroism isn’t the sole province of the masculine, and femininity isn’t equated with weakness.

Having said all that, it’s still Geralt’s exploits that bards like Jaskier (Joey Batey) sing about in taverns even though Yennefer saves him and others more than once without casting a single spell. Through her story, Ciri’s and others connected to them, this adaptation is squarely becoming the inspiration many of us wished that other fantasy series about kings, heroes and monsters could have been, one that doesn’t ask us to accept the unacceptable as the price in participating in its fantasy.

All episodes of “The Witcher” are currently streaming on Netflix.

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Gravel or green: What will become of Alaska’s coastal plain?

Life on the coastal plain of Alaska exists on a scale difficult to capture. It’s a wild place where herds of caribou move around wolves and bears in wide arcs, musk oxen graze among dwarf willows, and gyrfalcons search the terrain for waterbirds. The tundra ground cover — a thick mat of damp, stunted vegetation — has sat atop the permafrost that’s existed since at least the last ice age.

Conspicuous clusters of bright metal buildings also dot this landscape: oil wells, storage tanks, and generators — all linked by a sprawling system of roads and pipelines. Prudhoe Bay, at the center of the north Alaskan coastal plain, is one of the largest oil fields in North America. More than 800 wells stretch across more than 300 square miles, drawing oil from deep underground.

Caribou migrate here across the imposing mountains of the Brooks Range unimpeded by human-made obstruction, only to bow their heads under pipelines when they reach the plains. Brown bears meander across the tundra under the watchful eye of oil workers, like teenagers shadowed by mall security. And wolves sniff the air to disentangle the mingling scents of prey and diesel.

In some ways this arrangement works. The oil companies, perhaps reluctant to attract additional public scrutiny, have imposed on themselves rules about how to live and work in the oil fields. Most travel directly on the tundra is forbidden for workers, and any interactions with animals are prohibited. For a place with so many roads and so much wildlife, vehicle strikes are surprisingly rare. The heart of this industrial landscape is unexpectedly clean.

Yet despite these safeguards, the ecosystem is thrown off balance. Oil infrastructure provides artificial nesting places for previously uncommon predators such as ravens. Red foxes, likely lured by anthropogenic sources of food and warmth, have moved into Prudhoe Bay to kill and displace Arctic foxes. Dust blowing off a gravel road may collect on adjacent land and hasten snowmelt. These disruptions — perhaps more than oil industry executives and the people who regulate them initially understood — have a long half-life.

The pursuit of oil is inherently ephemeral. Individual wells eventually dry up or cease to be profitable; whole fields dwindle. Companies pull stakes to move their carnival of drills, steel, and actors elsewhere across the coastal plain. The buildings may disappear, but ghosts of the infrastructure often remain. In the absence of adequate restoration plans, the disturbed environments will continue to impact local species for decades to come. Unlike the tropics, where human disturbances can be quickly repaired by new green growth, the Arctic remains fragile and exposed.

Oil companies have worked for decades to rehabilitate these fields with varying degrees of success. They strip gravel from old roads and obsolete drill pads to facilitate recovery, often reseeding the stripped area to return the land to a more natural state. At first glance, such sites may be difficult to distinguish from the surrounding vegetation, but on closer inspection, most show clear signs of past disturbance and some appear to have not recovered at all.

Restoration ecologists have found tundra difficult to restore. Though rather uncommon, salt on gravel sourced from the Arctic coastal plain may leach into the soil and inhibit new growth even after the rocks are taken away. Road removal projects sometimes strip too much gravel, exposing permafrost, accelerating melt, and turning what was once solid ground into a lake. Even when a site is successfully seeded with grass, geese can swoop in to feast on the fresh shoots, grazing these sites back to bare patches of mud.

For disturbed tundra to have any chance of recovering to a more natural state, oil companies and land management officials will need to consider new treatments. Tundra sodding, an under-utilized approach consistent with Indigenous Iñupiaq methods, seems to be the most promising intervention: When new oil infrastructure is created on existing tundra, the sod from that site could be carefully removed and fit atop an old drill site in need of restoration, much like plugging divots on a golf green. In current practice, oil companies usually just build new drill pads directly atop the existing sod, killing the ancient tundra cover in the process.

Successful caretaking of the Alaskan coastal plain will depend on a multitude of factors and will likely require decades of monitoring and adjustment, and a long-term commitment from industry and regulators. Key to this success will be for oil companies and environmental stakeholders to determine, upfront, the true costs of rehabilitation — financial and otherwise — and the tangible outcomes of different treatments. Such clarity could catalyze rehabilitation efforts in Alaska and elsewhere. This is not merely a retrospective exercise, but a forward-looking one.

In fact, the state of Alaska continues to eye the 1002 Area, a 2,300-square-mile section of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, despite a temporary moratorium on exploration and drilling within the Refuge. As exploration plans accelerate into this pristine landscape on the eastern border of the existing oil fields and elsewhere across the coastal plain, we still do not have viable and scalable tundra rehabilitation plans in place to address past actions, never mind what developers are eyeing next.

Oil companies and regulators must bolster nascent efforts to repair the damage that has already been done, and to ensure clean-up actions are built into the planning and implementation processes when expanding to new areas. We need to decide now what we want the coastal plain to look like in a hundred or a thousand years, after we have turned our attentions elsewhere.

Jonathan C. Slaght works for the Arctic Beringia Program of WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society). He is the author of “Owls of the Eastern Ice,” which won the 2021 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2020, and was long-listed for the National Book Award in Nonfiction.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Mo Brooks releases text message from Jan. 6 organizer — claims his phone didn’t “recognize sender”

Alabama Republican Congressman Mo Brooks on Saturday released a text message he received from “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander in the run-up to Jan. 6, according to Politico reporter Kyle Cheney.

“Congressman, this is Ali Alexander,” the message stated. “I am the founder of Stop the Steal, the protests happening in all 50 states. We met years ago back in 2010, during the tea party when you were first elected. I texted the wrong number. I had intended to invite you to our giant Saturday prayer rally in DC, this past weekend. Also Gen. (Michael) Flynn should be giving you a ring. We stand ready to help. Jan 6th is a big moment in our republic.”

Brooks released the text message after Alexander revealed that he had been in communication with the congressman prior to Jan. 6 — both in testimony before a House committee investigating the Capitol insurrection, and in a lawsuit filed Friday seeking to keep his cell-phone records secret.

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Alexander has also said in a since-deleted video that he worked with Brooks, as well as Arizona GOP Reps. Paul Gosar and Rep. Andy Biggs, “to attempt to use Congress’ Jan. 6 session certifying Biden’s victory as a chance to pressure lawmakers to overturn the electoral results,” according to Politico.

In a lengthy statement released Saturday, Brooks’ office called the text message “100 percent benign,” and said the congressman’s cell phone “did not recognize the sender.” The statement also said that “to the best of Brooks’ knowledge,” the phone call from Flynn to which Alexander alluded “never happened.”

“Outside of this possible text message with someone who claimed to be ‘Ali Alexander,’ Congressman Brooks has no recollection of any other communications involving Congressman Brooks and someone claiming to be ‘Ali Alexander,’ and, after a search involving cell phone records and emails, Congressman Brooks has found no communications that purport to involve Congressman Brooks and anyone claiming to be ‘Ali Alexander,'” the statement read. “The insinuation that this single text to Congressman Brooks from an unknown number by someone claiming to be ‘Ali Alexander’ somehow suggests Congressman Brooks in any way helped plan the Capitol attack is absurd, outrageous and defamatory.”

Read Alexander’s text message and the statement from Brooks’ office below.

UPDATE: Mo BROOKS has released his text message from Ali Alexander. It references an anticipated phone call from Gen. Flynn: https://t.co/h2OMBPLZyd pic.twitter.com/ackCe2b9v4

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 19, 2021

Brooks' full response to the text:https://t.co/h2OMBPLZyd pic.twitter.com/HXlrWvNjdR

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 19, 2021

Where the depressed are not welcome

Back in 2012, when I was offered a faculty position at Cornell University, friends congratulated me — before adding, tentatively, “Isn’t that the place with all the suicides?”

That brought me up short. As someone who has survived thirty years with major unipolar depression, dating back to my own college days, I care a lot about making this a safer and more compassionate world for young people with mental health challenges.

What I witnessed during my eight years at the institution underscored just how far our society remains from that goal.

First, an important debunk: as I learned, the suicide rate at Cornell is no higher than at other universities of the same size. Cornell’s notoriety in this regard may stem from the sensational nature of some of the suicides: over the years, multiple students in despair have leapt into one of the dramatic gorges that line the campus, falling more than a hundred feet into the roaring waterfall below. Our media culture deems any such death more newsworthy than a quiet overdose in a dorm room, and Cornell’s image has suffered as a result.

In truth, the crisis of youth suicide is not local but national. Take your pick of gloomy statistics: suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students; the rate has tripled since the 1950s; one study reports that nearly one in ten students have attempted it. Overall, one in four students report being diagnosed with a mental illness. Such diseases may be invisible, but they are not uncommon.

The past decade has seen a broad movement among universities — Cornell included — to expand the resources for students in crisis: setting up hotlines, shortening the wait for counseling services, raising public awareness, et cetera. Such structural reforms are welcome, yet my experience at Cornell suggests that an equally necessary shift in community attitudes remains elusive.

Here’s one example. At Cornell, prospective student applications are reviewed jointly by an admissions counselor and a faculty member like me. During my assigned semester, I spent a couple hours each week sitting in the office of my colleague, Jill (name changed), where we sorted through a large stack and discussed the potential of each applicant. For the most part, we came to similar conclusions, even if she put more stock into standardized test scores than I did.

Then one day we considered an application from a student whom I will call Reggie. His essay dealt honestly and courageously with his struggles with depression, and the progress he had made. I was struck by his eloquence and insight, and said as much to Jill. She agreed, but then said: “Of course, we can’t admit him.”

I was puzzled, so she explained that the admissions department had an informal policy of rejecting any applicant who mentioned depression or other mental illnesses in their essay. “People with depression pose a significant burden on us as advising deans,” she explained — meaning, they might hit a crisis point after arriving on campus, and require time-consuming support from Jill and her colleagues. “We have discussed this many times in the department, and that’s our policy.” She was flatly unwilling to consider Reggie any further: a diagnosis of depression, in her view, was disqualifying.

This attitude troubled me deeply, and I brought my concerns to my department chair. He discussed it with the director of admissions, who replied with a paragraph justifying the rejection based on Reggie’s academic record (which Jill and I hadn’t even discussed). He denied the existence of any discriminatory policy, but contradicted himself two sentences later: “There are times when a disclosure of an existing psychological or emotional problem will be a factor in a decision.”

My department chair was satisfied by that reply, but I found it shocking. Would such a statement ever be made about an applicant with a physical disability, or a chronic condition? Depression like Reggie’s is not a “problem.” It is a diagnosed illness, long recognized by the medical community, and protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Reggie’s courageous essay should have been seen as a powerful statement about overcoming adversity, and helped to promote his candidacy; instead, it disqualified him.

Four years after this incident, I found myself on the receiving end of similar insensitivity. I had, for the first time in many years, missed a day of teaching — two in a row — because of my depression. In emailing my students to explain the canceled classes, I made no secret of my diagnosis. As I wrote to them, “Mental illness is often spoken of in whispers, but there is no need for a stigma, and we should all acknowledge how widespread it is in our society.”

Among the various responses I received, some were particularly heartening. A sophomore wrote to say, “Thank you for being transparent about your condition. Hearing about your situation actually gave me a sense of relief, knowing that professors and students alike can go through mental difficulties, and it’s not something to be ashamed about.” From a senior: “I personally appreciate your honesty and willingness to speak openly about mental health… it has helped me to be more honest with others and with myself about my own struggles with anxiety.” And one more: “Your recent email… helped me come to terms with my own situation. I just scheduled a therapy session and will hopefully be getting back on track soon!”

One week later, a message arrived from the dean, as filtered through my department chair: I was not to discuss my “personal issues” with students. Acknowledging my depression, the dean felt, could only add to the stress that students are feeling during this unusual pandemic year.

If my email did compound that stress, then I am truly regretful. But the messages I received from students suggested just the opposite: speaking openly about my illness was empowering to those who quietly battled demons of their own. Depression is not a ‘personal issue’, as the dean put it; it is a societal challenge that we should face openly, together.

Not long after that exchange, my depression hit a critical low, and I went on a medical leave which stretched out for several months. A few colleagues, students, and alums reached out with compassionate notes; their support during this dangerous period meant a great deal. Then one day I received an email from our new department chair. It was brief and businesslike. But on reflection, I was startled by what his message omitted. How can one write to a colleague of nearly a decade, for the first time since their departure for medical reasons, and not politely inquire after their health? Not even a pro forma “Wishing you a speedy recovery”?

Perhaps you don’t bother if you don’t believe their illness is real.

All too often these days, the phrase “mental health” is casually used to refer to emotional well-being — the feeling of being in a good place, managing stress well, getting life accomplished. People take “mental health days” to re-center themselves. A teacher might assign no homework as a “mental health break.” And so on.

Of course, our very nation was founded to further the pursuit of happiness, a goal we can all get behind. But make no mistake: health is not simply well-being, and the symptoms of poor mental health — ie, mental illness — are very different from the stressed days of a healthy person’s life. My depressed brain sets me wishing that the airplane I’m on will crash… and then feeling guilt on behalf of the other passengers. My depressed brain hears the news of someone’s cancer diagnosis, and responds first with envy. My depressed brain imagines, with relief, my head separated from my body. I have never feared death. Many times in my life, I have craved it.

If such thoughts strike you as crazy, they are. Depression is one manifestation of madness, the result of a diseased brain. Fortunately, my madness does not make me a danger to others: like many people with depression, I’ve managed to build a career and a family despite the gloom of my brain. My accomplishments are modest, but some — like the tennis star Naomi Osaka — climb to the very top of their profession while coping with the ongoing challenge of depression. And sadly, 50,000 Americans succumb to the disease each year.

Like any other person with a chronic condition or disability, depressed people still deserve a chance to participate in the world, and enrich the lives of others. They also deserve our compassion and understanding, which starts with trusting them about their diagnosis. No one should have to bring a doctor’s note, or share the details of their symptoms, for colleagues to believe their illness is serious.

I thought about my department chair’s omission, and couldn’t quite let it go — for in his new position, he will encounter plenty more colleagues and students who live with mental illness. So I wrote a note in reply, explaining as gently as I could how strange it feels when a colleague breezes past your life-threatening disease. If I’d been laid up with cancer, I asked, would you have written this email the same way? I hope that you’ll treat any future situations, I said, with equal compassion — regardless of whether the illness is physical or mental.

He didn’t bother to answer. I can only conclude that for my department chair, and the dean, and the admissions officers, people with depression do not merit compassion and support. They’re just people with problems, who should go away.

If you are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 (TALK), or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.

How to cook a ham like a champ, from oven temperature to glazing technique

Whether you’re hosting a gaggle of relatives for the holiday or planning a special night for you and your sweetie: Go ahead and bake a ham. As the late Marion Cunningham put it, “Baked ham is an ideal main dish for beginning cooks and the best answer for the harried cook.” Leftover ham freezes beautifully (hi, hello sandwiches, sautéed greens, fried rice). And what’s more festive than a honking roast? Cooking a beautiful bone-in ham with a Dijon mustard or maple syrup is easier than you may think (promise!). So today, we’re answering your most frequently asked questions, like *What is a ham, anyway? What types of hams are there to choose from in the grocery store? How many minutes per pound? Do I always have to cook my ham in the oven? What about a slow-cooker or Instant Pot?*

We generally think of baked ham as the centerpiece on an Easter or Christmas table. If you’ve never baked a ham before, start with our Super Simple Glazed Ham; a half ham is scored and covered in a combination of whole-grain mustard, honey, nutmeg, ground cloves, and brown sugar. And then something really cool happens. To keep the ham moist — and to give it even more flavor — use a spray bottle filled with bourbon (!!!) to mist the brown sugar-spice coating. It’s an innovative, mess-free technique that lends itself to so many other applications.

Ahead, here’s what to know about cooking this spectacular roast.

What is a ham, anyway?

Just like steak (ribeye! flank! bone-in! dry-aged!), the world of ham is full of terms. Let’s break down the important ones:

Ham is a pork cut from the animal’s hind leg that is often cured and/or smoked. You’ll find it sold as a bone-in or boneless cut.
Cured can refer to either dry-curing or wet-curing. The former means the meat gets covered in salt, sugar, sodium nitrate/nitrite, and other spices. The latter means the meat is soaked in a water-based solution (seasoned with those same ingredients); this solution might be injected into the ham for speedier curing.
Spiral ham refers to the way a ham is processed and pre-sliced. The overall shape stays the same, but you have a head-start on carving. You may even find it pre-glazed with the popular duo of brown sugar and honey, but we prefer it without these additives; that way, every home cook can make it their own. (Now, who is going to invent a spiral turkey?)

How big is a whole ham?

Big! Most boneless spiral hams weigh about five bones, but bone-in cuts will weigh even more, at least 10 to 15 pounds — note, this could serve 30 people or then some. (Estimate ⅓ to ⅔ pound per person.) If you’re a smaller group and don’t want to freeze that many leftovers, consider buying a partial ham.

Does ham always contain a bone?

Nope. You can find most hams — whether whole or partial — without a bone. That said, these boneless cuts are preferable for eating immediately (compared to glazing then baking), so they may be more processed. Be wary of added ingredients, such as water, on the label.

How long should I cook a ham in the oven?

First things first, ask your ham. As The Joy of Cooking notes, “Hams are usually labeled ‘partially cooked’ or ‘fully cooked.’ Whichever you buy, follow the instructions scrupulously.”

For partially cooked ham, you should cook it until the center reaches an internal temperature of 160°F. For fully cooked ham, which may be marked as ready to eat or something similar, you just want to warm it up to about 145°F.

Heat the oven anywhere from 300°F to 350°F. The ham will be very happy on a rack set in a roasting pan (but if you don’t have a rack, that’s OK too). There’s no need to cover it with foil, but you could if you want (some sources argue that this avoids any drying out). Just make sure you uncover before glazing.

Can I cook my ham in a slow cooker?

Yes! This method is fuss-free and hands-off. According to The Kitchn, you can cook an 8- to 10-pound fully-cooked ham in a slow cooker on low for 4 to 5 hours. On the other hand, AllRecipesrecommends that the same size ham cook for 8 hours. Which is to say, you do you! Since you’re starting with something that’s already cooked, it’s hard to go wrong.

With the oven at 325°F, The Joy of Cooking recommends the following cook times for three different cuts of ham:

Whole (10- to 15-pound) ham: 18 to 20 minutes per pound
Half (5- to 7-pound) ham: 20 minutes per pound
Shank or butt portion: 35 minutes per pound

How do I make a glaze for ham?

A glaze is a great way to make your ham your own. Maple-chipotle? Ginger-clove? Paprika-honey? You tell me! It also makes the roast super glossy and beautiful. Just keep these tips in mind when brushing glaze over the ham:

Add the glaze at the right time. Figure 30 minutes to one hour before the ham has reached its goal internal temperature. Score if you want (more on that below), then paint on your glaze (a pastry brush works well here).
Increase the temperature, or don’t. Some recipes will tell you to bump up the temperature to 375°F, 400°F, or higher. Some don’t. It all depends on how caramelized you want your glaze. Just be mindful that the higher the temperature, the quicker it will burn.
Score the ham for drama. While a crosshatch pattern isn’t necessary, it’s utterly classic, and it really lets your glaze shine (pun intended). Do this step right before you glaze the ham and use a super-sharp knife.
Don’t make the glaze too salty (or too sweet). Remember, the ham itself is already quite salty. The glaze is a great place to add contrast and intrigue (yes, intrigue!). Think sweeteners (brown sugar, maple syrup, honey, or orange juice), spices (cayenne, hot sauce, ground mustard, Old Bay), tang (cider vinegar, malt vinegar, or rice vinegar), and even booze (bourbon or rum).
Try this easy formula. Equal parts jam and Dijon mustard. That’s it! Use your favorite jam, from apricot to blueberry.
Steal glazes from not-ham recipes. Just because the glaze wasn’t created for a ham doesn’t mean it won’t get along with a ham. Check these out for some inspiration:

Recipes to try:

Documents show U.S. killed thousands of civilians in recent air wars, hid true toll: NYT

Thousands of previously hidden Pentagon documents show that the US air wars in the Middle East have been marked by “deeply flawed intelligence” and have killed thousands of civilians, many of them children, according to a shocking new report in the New York Times Saturday afternoon.

The 5-year Times investigation received more than 1,300 reports examining airstrikes in Iraq and Syria from September 2014 to January 2018, more than 5,400 pages in all. None of these records show any findings of wrongdoing on the actions of the US military.

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The Times reporting confirms many of the previous reports by whistleblowers Daniel Hale, Chelsea Manning and others. On July 27, 2021, whistleblower Hale was sentenced to 45 months in federal prison for exposing the true civilian toll of the US drone program. “I am here because I stole something that was never mine to take — precious human life,” Hale said at his sentencing.

From the Times report:

The trove of documents — the military’s own confidential assessments of more than 1,300 reports of civilian casualties, obtained by The New York Times — lays bare how the air war has been marked by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and often imprecise targeting and the deaths of thousands of civilians, many of them children, a sharp contrast to the American government’s image of war waged by all-seeing drones and precision bombs.

The documents show, too, that despite the Pentagon’s highly codified system for examining civilian casualties, pledges of transparency and accountability have given way to opacity and impunity. In only a handful of cases were the assessments made public. Not a single record provided includes a finding of wrongdoing or disciplinary action. Fewer than a dozen condolence payments were made, even though many survivors were left with disabilities requiring expensive medical care. Documented efforts to identify root causes or lessons learned are rare.

The air campaign represents a fundamental transformation of warfare that took shape in the final years of the Obama administration, amid the deepening unpopularity of the forever wars that had claimed more than 6,000 American service members. The United States traded many of its boots on the ground for an arsenal of aircraft directed by controllers sitting at computers, often thousands of miles away. President Barack Obama called it “the most precise air campaign in history.”

We are making public hundreds of the Pentagon’s confidential assessments of reports of civilian casualties resulting from airstrikes. The documents lay bare how flawed intelligence has killed thousands of innocent civilians, many of them children. https://t.co/D1vE9aEDYh

— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 18, 2021

Dr. Assal Rad, Senior Research Fellow at the National Iranian American Council reacted via Twitter:

“Daniel Hale, Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning have all been jailed for trying to reveal the same thing. We’ve known US airstrikes have been killing civilians all this time, but the war crimes go on bc we jail the whistleblowers instead of the war criminals.”

I’m grateful for the avalanche of reporting on civilian #drone deaths: https://t.co/bTUTfN2Cud & https://t.co/WWTankFaTR.

But the other casualties are the #whistleblowers who exposed it. #DanielHale is in jail. My 12 other clients battle PTSD, addiction, moral injury & suicide.

— unR̶A̶D̶A̶C̶K̶ted (@JesselynRadack) December 18, 2021

Still, it would be nice if the Times used its massive platform to say more about the campaign to #FreeDanielHale. After all, Hale was the first person to reveal how military intelligence results in airstrikes killing thousands of innocent civilians. https://t.co/imeED4mpBc

— CODEPINK (@codepink) December 18, 2021

I’m absolutely not gonna discourage any NYT reporting that exposes the Pentagon. Still it’s pretty gross that this framing acts like Daniel Hale didn’t expose the nature of airstrikes years ago, at great cost to his freedom. #FreeDanielHale https://t.co/z2KiQGIX46

— saminthecan.bsky.social (@saminthecan) December 18, 2021

But at least we won the wars… I mean, we, eh, we almost won? Right?
Hidden Pentagon Records Reveal Patterns of Failure in Deadly Airstrikes https://t.co/NkERjopS65

— Richard Garcia (@rrennelgarcia) December 18, 2021

Theocrats are coming for the school board — but parents are starting to fight back

“Masks are not healthy for most people. Just the bacteria that grows in them is causing more issues than any issues masks would prevent,” Nicole Konz claimed in a Facebook post last February. On Nov. 2, she was elected to the school board of Academy District 20, near Colorado Springs, a district serving more than 23,000 students. It wasn’t an accident. There was a lot of money and power behind her. And Konz wasn’t alone.

The district’s other new board member was Aaron Salt, already the board chair of a nearby charter academy, who said after his election, “We know that mask usage increases mental health problems and issues. … That’s not something that I’m willing to sacrifice.” They were just two of 28 school board candidates elected across Colorado with the backing of a Christian nationalist organization — the Truth and Liberty Coalition (TLC) — whose ambitions are “national, international and eternal,” as Frederick Clarkson wrote at Religion Dispatches.

Pandemic restrictions and the moral panic over “critical race theory” are the most recent hot-button recruiting tools integrated into a broader menu of carefully nurtured grievances reflected in TLC’s five-issue “Christian Voter Guides,” under the headings “Critical Race Theory,” “Parental Rights,” “Boys Playing Girl Sports” [sic], “Sex Education” and “Gender Identity Pronouns.” What’s missing is even the pretext of concern for academic content or achievement, budgeting or any other traditional responsibility of a school board.

Clarkson wrote that these school board races in Colorado “were the pilot project in a long-term campaign by the Truth and Liberty Coalition and its de facto training institute, nearby Charis Bible College, in Woodland Park, a suburb of Colorado Springs.”

Andrew Wommak, who founded the unaccredited Bible college in 2014, co-founded TLC in 2017 along with Lance Wallnau, preeminent promoter of the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” a manifesto for evangelical Christians to conquer and claim dominion over seven key facets of life: education, religion, family, business, government, entertainment and media. So while they claim to speak out as Christians and to express a broadly Christian worldview, they have something radically different in mind from anything America has ever known.

“The ‘biblical worldview’ is code for a theocratic or theonomic vision of society, in tension or at odds with secular institutions,” Clarkson told Salon. “It’s not the siloed issues. It’s the whole enchilada.”

Wallnau was also one of Donald Trump’s earliest and most prominent evangelical endorsers. His book “God’s Chaos Candidate” was published during the 2020 campaign, just a week before the “Access Hollywood” tape became public. One prominent TLC board member is the evangelical pseudo-historian David Barton, whose 2012 book “The Jefferson Lies,” which claimed to debunk claims by legitimate historians about Thomas Jefferson’s secular, pluralistic worldview, among other things, was recalled by its evangelical publisher for its numerous falsehoods. (The book was later republished by Glenn Beck, and sold very well to his far-right followers.)

TLC and its allies’ ability to turn out agitated and misinformed voters in low-turnout elections is yet another ominous sign about the electoral landscape Democrats face in the 2022 midterms. In El Paso County, home to Colorado Springs, Republican turnout was 47.3%, compared to 37.6% for Democrats and 28.9% for independent voters.

This was not an isolated phenomenon. Clarkson writes that as in “past waves of fresh political action, there are other organizations doing similar things for similar reasons, often in close collaboration. Their impact is undoubtedly greater than the sum of their parts in the movement.” He specifically cites a group called Church Voter Guides, launched earlier this year by Steve Holt, former pastor of a Colorado Springs megachurch, that targeted some of the same races. TLC issued a press release in early October promoting the voter guides of both groups, and casting the election as “a referendum on parental rights.”

On the national level, Business Insider noted the involvement of the 1776 Project PAC, which won all 11 of its targeted Colorado school board races, and a majority of the 55 races it targeted nationwide — in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, Ohio, Minnesota and Kansas — focusing on the bogeyman of critical race theory. Clarkson also noted the existence of similar groups in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Texas, primarily reacting to school closures.

Clarkson also mentioned the “School Board Boot Camp” run by FRC Action, the political action arm of the Family Research Council. “Calling these trainings ‘boot camps’ and illustrating them with military boots,” he said, “is consistent with the theme that they are in a war, and that it is more than metaphorical and is more than a little ominous, post-Jan. 6.“

In an earlier “boot camp,” held in June, FRC president Tony Perkins warned attendees, “We need to get worked up” about “what is happening across the nation, the indoctrination taking place.” He related his first experience of so-called indoctrination: “In elementary school I had encountered one of those newly-minted leftist teachers that was a part of the left’s long march through America’s institutions, and began teaching the theory of evolution as fact,” he recalled. “When I wouldn’t yield to it, I found myself punished.” He didn’t say what the alleged punishment was.

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This is how these people think: Teaching science that was revolutionary 160 years ago, but that undergirds all of biology today, is evidence of an organized leftist takeover of America’s institutions — all of which need to be “taken back for God” (as in the “Seven Mountains Mandate”). Of course this requires a specific version of God, since many millions of Americans — including many evangelicals — have no trouble reconciling religion and science. For those who refuse to do that, any scientific advance whatever can potentially be construed as sinister heresy, and the more firmly the science is established, the more vast and sinister the Satanic plot must be. That’s the basic conspiracy-theory logic that drives Perkins, his organization and a wide range of like-minded allies.

“The FRC boot camps reveal how the school board campaigns fit in the evolving coalition that constitutes the religious and business right in the age of Trump,” Clarkson told Salon via email. “The June boot camp has presentations from inside-the-Beltway conservative think tankers as well as ostensibly grassroots parents’ groups. While the Colorado campaigns appeared to focus on evangelicals, the June boot camp also features Mary Hasson, a conservative Catholic from the Ethics and Public Policy Center, underscoring the Catholic dimension of the historic and evolving coalition.”

A presentation by a Virginia parents’ group at a different post-election boot camp “mentioned an alliance with a Patriot group, Bedford County Patriots,” he said. “We saw a similar alliance in Colorado as well.”

That was a reference to another group, FEC United (“Faith, Education, and Commerce”) that drew significant local media attention, particularly from the Colorado Springs Independent, where Heidi Beedle reported that “FEC United has organized protests against masks, vaccines and critical race theory at school board meetings across the Front Range. [Founder Joe] Oltmann has stated on his podcast, Conservative Daily, that teachers are ‘recruiting kids to be gay’ and that LGBTQ teachers should be ‘dragged behind a car until their limbs fall off.'”

Beedle also reported that FEC United’s board of directors included John Tiegen, “a Marine veteran and Benghazi survivor who was at a sniper position during a speech given by UCCS professor Stephany Rose Spaulding in June 2020. Tiegen is also the head of FEC United’s armed wing, United American Defense Force.”

Then there’s the dark money. In late October, NBC affiliate KOAA reported the influx of $130,000 in dark money from Colorado Springs Forward to the Springs Opportunity Fund, which spent massively in all three districts targeted by TLC. But final figures from the Colorado secretary of state went much higher. Slate advertising in support of Konz, Salt, and incumbent board member Thomas LaValley eventually totaled $132,411, while spending in all districts exceeded $350,000.

“They had robocalls, Google ads, text messaging ads, YouTube ads, and even Hulu and Discovery+ ads for conservative candidates throughout El Paso County,” Rob Rogers, a core organizer with BIG FA$HION, a playfully-named parent’s group active in Academy District 20, told Salon.

Even with this unprecedented level of outside influence, the situation on the ground was more fluid than the turnout numbers suggest. “If we would have had another month, I think that we would have seen some different results,” said Bernadette Guthrie, another BIG FA$HION parent organizer. “What a passionate group of parents can do in a short amount of time was just awesome,” said Lara Matisek, another core organizer.

“We went from going to parent-teacher conferences to jumping into the mix of starting a political expenditure committee and learning a lot like in the process,” Rogers added.

TLC targeted 17 school districts across the state, with its success heavily concentrated in the Colorado Springs area (nine seats in three districts) and nearby Woodland Park (four seats in one district), which is home to Wommak’s church and college, plus three seats each in the town of Elizabeth and the western Colorado city of Grand Junction.

Elsewhere its results were mixed, but in this case, “success elsewhere cannot be measured entirely by the score,” Clarkson noted, pointing specifically to how TLC;s voter guides and candidate framed the races around a set of five culture-war issues and away from “the traditional wonkery of school budgets, curricula, and test scores.”

This aligns with a decades-old agenda of attacking public education, according to Katherine Stewart, author of “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism,” and “The Good News Club,” an examination of the religious right’s efforts to infiltrate and undermine public education. It also makes sense of the prominent role played by anti-mask and anti-vaccine hysteria.

The “division and chaos” this kind of political activity “provokes in public schools and at school board meetings is not an unintended consequence,” Stewart told Salon. “It is precisely the point, and it is of a piece with the movement’s longstanding hostility to public education. The Rev. Jerry Falwell made the agenda clear in 1979 when he wrote, ‘I hope to see the day when there are no more public schools. Churches will have taken them over and Christians will be running them.'” That aptly describes the Truth and Liberty Coalition’s agenda today.

But it’s only one facet of that agenda. “The religious right’s animosity toward public education is just one part of a general assault on the foundations of modern liberal democracy,” Stewart said. “Undermining confidence in our public institutions, in science and critical thinking, and in the social compact that public schools represent is a way of delegitimizing the process of rational policymaking. The growth of irrationalism and anti-intellectualism in education and in society lets powerful religious and economic leaders, along with their political allies, pretend that they represent the will of the people even as they advance their own interests.”

That “concerted and organized effort to tear down public education” was a shocking discovery, the Colorado Springs organizer Rob Rogers said. Stewart observed that it may be shocking but is nothing new:

In certain conservative circles, the phrase “government schools” has become as ubiquitous as it is contemptuous. It is characteristic of a movement with longstanding hostility to public education, a hostility with deep roots. The Reconstructionist theologian Rousas J. Rushdoony, whose ideas influenced a number of movement leaders, took an attack on modern democratic government right to the schoolhouse door. His 1963 book, “The Messianic Character of American Education,” argued that the “government school” represented “primitivism” and “chaos.” Public education, he said, “basically trains women to be men” and “has leveled its guns at God and family.”

The Colorado Springs school board races provide a microcosm of how this is playing out today. “The word ‘unprecedented’ is used a lot. I don’t think this is anything compared to what we’ve seen in the past,” organizer Guthrie said. “Instead of hearing about real issues, in terms of testing scores and mental health in schools, violence in schools and teacher shortages, instead of hearing about real issues that plague our district, the local news cycle was masks and critical race theory. There was no real talk of any real issues by the seven self-proclaimed conservative candidates. To try to overcome that and consistently change the conversation and reroute it to the real issues was something we struggled with throughout the entire process.”

The church voters guide in Colorado Springs “was heavily, heavily an influencer” in the school board races, Rogers said. Its influence “was really hard for us to overcome,” Guthrie agreed. “It was heavily distributed through all the church communities, targeted at an older, conservative, retiree population who don’t even have kids in the schools…. It was really difficult for us overcome.”

To explain the depth of dishonesty, BIG FA$HION organizers put me in touch with Brian Coram, a Colorado Springs real estate agent and former counselor who ran for school board in the recent election. The guide’s five issues were labeled, as mentioned above, as “Critical Race Theory,” “Parental Rights,” “Boys Playing Girl Sports,” “Sex Education” and “Gender Identity Pronouns,” with each candidate’s position described simply as “agree,” “disagree” or “refused.” But those simplistic terms had little relationship to the actual questions asked, as Coram explained.

The issue of “Critical Race Theory” was defined in the Church Voter Guide in relation to a declarative statement: “The United States is systemically and fundamentally racist, and students should be educated on white privilege and the unfair benefits that it generates.” But that wasn’t what Coram, who is Black, was asked in an early phone interview.

“The first question they asked was, ‘Is America systematically racist?’ he recalled. “My response to that was, ‘Yes, absolutely, 100%. And here’s why. I work in real estate. There’s a thing called redlining. We know what that is. We know how the process works. We also know that even if we’re not doing it today America builds on that foundation and therefore, as a system, it started as a racist system. Does that mean that we are still there? No, it doesn’t. Do I still think we have issues? Of course. That’s not the important part. You asked the question, I answered the question.” His answer was summarized in the guide as “Does endorse CRT,” although that was never discussed.

Equally problematic was the issue of “Parental rights,” which functioned as de facto code for objecting to mask mandates, but not of course for parents’ rights to protect their children from COVID. But the specific wording contained other trapdoors.

“I remember one of the questions being, ‘Should parents always be informed of any medical decisions that the school makes for the children?'” Coram recalled. “I answered that question with, ‘OK, so hold on, I have a background in social work. So you’re telling me that if a kid comes into school with a bunch of bruises and whatnot and all that stuff, you’re going to call the parent, who could in fact be the abuser, and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to do this,’ and they’ll go, ‘Oh no, don’t do that, I’ll come get him,’ and then they end up murdering that kid. Because that’s what happens. I worked in social work. I’ve seen that before.”

The interviewer objected, saying that wasn’t what they were asking. But “any medical decisions” was in the original question, and Coram’s response was labeled “refused.” Regarding sex education, “What they asked was, ‘Should sex education be abstinence-only?'” Coram recalled. “They did not say age-appropriate.” The voter guide language added another layer of deception, framing the issue as “Sex education should be age appropriate, emphasizing the abstinence-based model.”

In sharp contrast to TLC, BIG FA$HION’s voter guides were completely unedited and transparent. (See Coram’s here.) “We invited all candidates to participate and we told them their responses would be unedited, unaltered, submitted with screenshots of what was said so they didn’t have any worries about us editing things out or putting things in,” said Lara Matisek. None of the seven self-described conservative candidates responded. “It was very telling that they did not want to participate,” she said. “Hundreds of parents wanted these questions answered that were never answered with the church voter guide.”

The voter guides weren’t the only resource TLC provided. They also had a whole webpage of links to voter tools, including “Worldview Resources” from My Faith Votes, which includes a series of short videos purporting to explain what the Bible has to say about a series of questions, such as border control and immigration, abortion and gun control.

Given that guns weren’t invented until at least a thousand years later, you might conclude that the Bible doesn’t have much to say about them, and you’d be correct. The Bible is also silent on abortion, although practiced and skillful cherry-picking is at work. On the subject of immigration, you might expect to find the famous passages from Exodus 22:21: “You shall not oppress a stranger nor torment him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” or Leviticus 19:34: “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself” or, for that matter, Matthew 25:35: “I was a stranger and you invited me in.”

Nope, there’s none of that. Instead we get, “Romans chapter 13 verses one through seven says there that the laws that have been given to us as a nation have been given to us by God and that those who are called to enforce those laws are actually ministers of God’s righteousness. So we are to obey the laws that exist.”

That’s pretty much it: Exactly the same logic used to defend slavery — which, to be fair, has considerably more biblical support than do bans on abortion or restrictions on immigration. In short, the worldview here has very little to do with what’s in the Bible. It’s a charade, at best, or as Clarkson said, it’s “code for a theocratic or theonomic vision of society in tension or at odds with secular institutions.”

If secular liberals and progressives are to successfully fight back, they need to understand what they’re up against. But they also need to understand their own strengths, which brings us back to BIG FA$HION and how they got their name.

“The one thing that has kept us going and helped us to sustain momentum is that we find humor in pretty much everything we do,” Matisek said. “When all the ‘Unmask our kids’ stuff was going on, we had partaken in some commentary on social media: ‘Yeah, you know, we don’t want to mask the kids. We shouldn’t even be pantsing them! Unpants Colorado, while we’re at it! Who needs pants in school?’ So BIG FA$HION kind of got its name from some commentary we were doing.”

Their opponents frequently claimed that Big Pharma was behind COVID restrictions and vaccine mandates, Guthrie explained, “So the joke that got legs and ran off was that Big Fashion was trying to keep us all wearing pants.”

This spontaneous playfulness in response to right-wing manufactured outrage reminded me of Dannagal Goldthwaite Young’s book “Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States” (Salon interviews here and here). As she explains, the left can never realistically hope to match the right’s capacity to generate outrage, even in response to blatant efforts to steal elections and overthrow democracy. What can help empower progressives to save themselves is a shared capacity to laugh at the absurd rather than be imprisoned by it — a capacity to mock those who would make a mockery of democracy. We will need as much of that ability to laugh as we can manage.

“This is a no”: Joe Manchin effectively kills Build Back Better during Fox News appearance

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., announced on Sunday that he will not vote for President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill, bringing months of negotiations over the $1.7 trillion social safety net bill to a screeching halt.

He made the comments on “Fox News Sunday” in its first week without longtime host Chris Wallace, telling fill-in anchor Bret Baier that he “cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation.”

“I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there,” he added.

Manchin’s announcement comes following a heated week of wrangling in which the Democratic Party made a number of last-minute changes in an attempt to appease the conservative West Virginia Democrat. Tempers flared at one point over his opposition to the inclusion of a permanent child tax credit — something insiders suggested he wanted to “zero out,” according to CNN.

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“I’ve always been for child tax credits. We voted for it many times,” Manchin said when asked about his opposition to Build Back Better on Wednesday, before unloading a series of expletives at reporters.

“This is bull—-. You’re bull—-,” Manchin reportedly said to HuffPost political reporter Arthur Delaney.

Unless Manchin changes his mind, it appears the Build Back Better bill is effectively dead.

The Democrats have some time to plead their case as they push the measure to the backburner, however — party insiders suggested to NBC this week that they would reconsider the legislation as late as March of next year.

In the meantime, they plan to focus on a voting rights bill that looks equally futile in the face of Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s continuing refusal to alter Senate filibuster rules to pass the legislation.

Watch Manchin’s interview below:

“I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation.” — Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) says President Biden’s Build Back Better plan “is a no.”

“I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there.” pic.twitter.com/HsgXgYms3e

— The Recount (@therecount) December 19, 2021

Chicken wings with a side of human flesh: A look at the meaty food cravings on “Yellowjackets”

Have you ever seen a human shish-kabobbed from head to toe?

The girls on Showtime’s thriller “Yellowjackets” sure have. They’ve even indulged in the luxuries of devouring fresh human flesh — draining out the blood of their victims before searing the butchered meat on a fire pit. Cannibalism becomes the ultimate way of life for the remaining members of the Yellowjackets girls’ soccer team when they live through a harrowing plane crash in 1996. After losing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compete in nationals, they’re left to fend for themselves in the forested boonies of Canada. Over the course of 19 months, the team’s once prevailing sisterhood soon descends into pure savagery as former teammates are hunted as prey and sustenance.

While consuming one’s peers could be rationalized as a desperate, last-ditch effort to stay alive, it’s enough to put one off meat afterward. Or so you’d think.

Fast-forward 25 years later, and a few surviving Yellowjackets still crave the taste of meat, undeterred by their traumatic past diet. In fact, for some, there’s still the satisfaction in consuming what one has caught and butchered personally. We see this in the second episode, when an adult Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) targets a rabbit from her garden and then skins, guts and minces it before preparing the critter in homemade chili. The sounds of skin ripping against flesh and a cleaver piercing through bone ricochet against the walls of her quaint kitchen.

This isn’t Shauna’s first time slaughtering an animal. After the plane crash, a young Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) painstakingly slits open the throat of a dead deer before cooking it for dinner. Blood oozes out from the animal’s neck as its wound grows larger and wider. But Shauna continues her task unfazed — a little too unfazed if you ask us. Just moments before, she had opted out of a team gun practice for hunting, presumably out of squeamishness for killing. But once her pals brought back the deer, she was quick to get her hands on a knife and start slicing.

In the present, Shauna’s unsuspecting husband and daughter savor every spoonful of chili and marvel at how goddamn good her new recipe is. “Callie forgot to take the meat out of the freezer, so I killed a rabbit in the garden,” Shauna says drily. “Skinned it chin to anus . . .” She’s dead serious, but of course her family dismiss what they assume is dark humor because she’s “in a mood.” They continue relishing in what they believe is beef. But joke’s on them. They’re actually eating spicy rabbit.

What does this scene actually tell us? Decades later, Shauna’s butchery skills still prove sharp and handy. But perhaps, they also came in handy when the team started hunting for a different kind of meat, the two-legged kind.

A flashback scene from “Yellowjackets” (Showtime

In the flashback scenes we watch a teammate (unidentified except for a signature heart necklace) fleeing in the snowy forest, falling into a trap and then later being consumed by the others. The resulting dinner tableau is disturbing, almost ritualistic. Everyone’s head is covered by some sort of animal fur or pelt or scrap of clothing. While this is no doubt necessary to protect their faces from the harsh winter weather, it also serves to make them anonymous to the viewers, to each other and maybe even from the innocent selves they once knew.

One survivor with a fur mask arrives with the chunks of cooked flesh on a tray, serving one particular teammate who appears to be exalted; they’re seated higher than the others and is adorned with an antler headdress, perhaps indicating leadership. But what could this hierarchy mean? Did this person select the victim to be hunted? Are they cold-blooded enough to have devised a society that determines who lives and who becomes barbecue? Just how deep did these teens go into their heart of darkness? This psychological speculation is just one of the many intriguing mysteries in the series.

Meanwhile Shauna’s former Yellowjackets companion, Misty (Christina Ricci), also shares a hankering for red meat in adulthood as we see her gnaw on a pack of jerky from a small-town gas station. Then, when she and ex-teammate Natalie (Juliette Lewis) arrive at the abandoned home of a friend, Misty suggests they go out for a spontaneous meal of chicken wings: “We can go back in town, check it out, get some wings, come back later.”

Really Misty, chicken wings? If you think about it, consuming chicken wings is pretty darn gnarly. The entire eating experience involves ripping chicken meat off of its bones with your teeth and nibbling on pieces of cartilage.

How can one do this and not be reminded of ripping your teammate’s flesh from their bones? How can one know the exact taste, smell and feel of human flesh and still crave meat or even look at it without feeling queasy? And on top of that, how can one live with the knowledge of eating their teammates, friends and lovers and still regard meat as palatable? Beats us.

Christina Ricci in “Yellowjackets” (Paul Sarkis/Showtime)It’s almost as if Misty misses those wilderness days and yearns to relive them. Maybe gnawing on meat is less about enjoying the actual taste or texture and more about satisfying the sadistic pleasures she left behind in the woods. After all, from the first moment she emerges from the wreckage of the plane, she tackles the most gruesome tasks with an undisguised glee and baffling lack of nausea – from hacking off her soccer coach’s leg (to save him of course) to volunteering to butcher the team’s kills.

Furthermore, of the masked survivors who consume their teammate’s flesh in flashback, we learn that it’s Misty who wears the fur pelt mask and serves the antlered leader. After dinner, Misty pulls off the mask, dons her glasses and smiles, satisfied. It’s good to be needed. And better yet, others value her for these very skills. Let Misty do the dirty work.

No wonder teenage Misty is thrilled about being stranded. She even selfishly goes out of her way to destroy the plane’s flight recorder shortly after crashing so that rescuers wouldn’t be able to find them quickly. This rather ruthless drive to get her own way and feel needed prevails in her adult years when she tampers with Natalie’s car in order to offer to carpool for a forced girls’ roadtrip. Also, as an elder care assistant, Misty is only sympathetic to her charges to a point, but withholds painkillers at the first sign of disrespect.

Her deranged enthusiasm, which seesaws between charming and frightening, hinges on being appreciated, no matter what the cost. It’s clear that she had no qualms – back as a teen or now as an adult – about eating a cohort as long as it meant that the rest of them accepted her.

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That’s not necessarily the case with another surviving Yellowjacket, Taissa (Tawny Cypress). She’s the only known teammate who has a strong aversion to meat — whether it’s ground up into bits or as a whole carcass. During her senate campaign party, Taissa promptly spits out a meat-filled hors d’oeuvre into her napkin once she determines its contents. And the sight of a whole roast pig – displayed proudly snout to tail on an elaborate tray – immediately conjures up memories of the wild-caught venison she once feasted on. Her wife Simone (Rukiye Bernard) catches Taissa’s expression and correctly surmises that she didn’t eat before the party – a strategy that many people with dietary restrictions resort to in public spaces when they can’t control what they’re served.

While we never specifically hear the word “vegetarian” uttered by or about her, it’s clear that her diet preference is plant-based (or at least animal-free!). In their home, Taissa and Simone prominently display bowls of expensive fruit – such as dragonfruit – in their kitchen. These ladies like their fancy produce.

Tawny Cypress as Taissa and Rukiye Bernard as Simone in “Yellowjackets” (Kailey Schwerman/SHOWTIME

What’s curious is that Taissa seems to be hiding her non-carnivorous ways from the public. She could have easily mentioned her dietary needs at the party or even beforehand. It’s not unheard of to have vegetarian options at big events, even in New Jersey. Is there not one dinner roll anywhere to sop up pork jus?

But if we’re to take our psychological musings further, maybe announcing she’s off meat feels like an admission of guilt . . . and cannibalism. Young Taissa apparently survived her ordeal in the wilderness, and that probably means she had to partake of human flesh. But she didn’t have to like doing so. Of all the ways to adjust to life after eating your teammates, swearing off meat seems to be the most understandable. But running for public office also comes with a certain set of expectations to fit in and not give any indication that you may have chomped on roasted leg of Mia Hamm once upon a time.

RELATED: An America that eats its young

While resorting to cannibalism is too horrifying for most viewers to conceive of actually partaking in, that’s precisely why it’s such a fun subject to chew on (so to speak). It’s a far-off fantasy that allows us to delve into our dark side, and it’s clear that the show knows the visceral power it holds as well.

“Yellowjackets” gets its food scenes right by appealing to the five senses. There’s special attention paid to the salivary sounds of young women hungrily eating their roast. There’s close-ups on the dribbles of fat that encase the team members’ fingers and coat their lips. This is not the pristine presentations of “Chef’s Table” or even the ASMR-touting joys of mukbang on TikTok.

It’s also a complementary approach to the gorgeous yet cheeky cannibalistic preparations seen on NBC’s dear-departed “Hannibal.” The darkly humorous thriller glamorized eating human flesh with elaborate spreads and captivating entrees concocted by a deranged gourmand (and in real life designed by none other than acclaimed humanitarian Chef José Andrés). It was mainly a feast for the eyes and for our funnybones.

But here, we’re meant to feel like we’re right there with the teenagers, consuming flesh with gusto. It’s supposed to be gross and disturbing. “Yellowjackets” takes food to the next level and beckons us to also join in on the gory fun. And while we’re at it, we can ponder how our diets and psyches would evolve if we were lucky enough to survive such extremes.

“Yellowjackets” airs new episodes Sundays at 10 p.m. on Showtime.

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Climate change is driving supply chain shortages — and your supermarkets are not prepared

Before the days of antiseptic supermarkets, with their fluorescent lights and linoleum floors, food was sold in very different types of markets, most of which would not pass muster to a modern health inspector. Take Medieval Europe: Even the sturdiest contemporary carnivore might have felt a bit queasy at the sight of animals being slaughtered, which would happen not far from where the cuts of meat were ultimately sold (if they were cut up at all). Farmers would wheel in their produce from plots of land within walking distance of their homes, or at most a short horse ride away. By contrast, citizens of the early 21st century are used to their food coming to them in the same way as their cars, their clothes and their household appliances — through sprawling international supply chains.

Unfortunately, just like a chain is only as strong as its weakest leak, a supply chain can become inefficient or fall apart if there is even a slight hiccup. This is especially so when the supply chains overlap in so many ways that it’s more of a “supply labyrinth” or “supply knot” than a supply chain.

Consumers may already be starting to feel that the more disparaging terms are more appropriate. Retailers are reporting rising costs for holiday-returns, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an inquiry into a number of supermarket chains, retailers and food corporations to get to the bottom of the seemingly endless product shortages.

Based on this reporter’s own journey to a pair of local retail outlets, including Walmart and Target, it was noted that customer complaints seemed to fall into three major categories: Electronics (like video game consoles or VR headsets), frozen food items (like chicken wings and pizzas) and sanitary products like (you guessed it) toilet paper. Each of those items has a series of interconnected supply chains, from the foods themselves to the added ingredients and the packaging, not to mention (in the case of frozen items) extra care taken for transportation and storage.

It is literally impossible to map the origin of every single item used in every single one, much less plug all of that data into one central database for reference. This means that, when a major disruptive event occurs across the planet, this delicate and interconnected web of chains can be easily disrupted in countless untraceable ways.

The COVID-19 pandemic was just such a worldwide disruptive event.

“The global economy is a complex system of national and local economies,” Christa Court, an assistant professor of regional economics at the University of Florida, told Salon by email. The pandemic brought about an abrupt halt to major economic sectors across the planet, which in and of itself had ripple effects on countless smaller business transactions. Not all of these could simply wind back up once the lockdowns were reversed. Even then, those reversals often did not immediately allow a full restoration of economic activity, and many times were applied so erratically that they wound up being integrated into the business environment.

“By now, we are all familiar with the term ‘pandemic-induced supply chain disruptions,’ whereby the evolution of the pandemic itself (trends in cases and deaths) as well as the policy responses to the pandemic (‘shutdowns,’ stay-at-home orders, vaccine or mask mandates, etc.) have resulted in massive shifts in supply and/or demand for many products and sectors,” Court pointed out.

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When it comes to food-based supply chains, climate change is another major culprit, albeit one that is very difficult to quantify. Unlike other economic sectors, where there can disruptions from the demand end as well as the supply end, people never decide they have had enough of food. (They may, of course, alter their dietary preferences.) When there are supply chain issues, it is usually because some unwanted outside variable has made it more difficult for those who produce food to do their job. Climate change causes many of those unwanted outside variables: Warming temperatures harmed American corn yields in 2010 and 2012, as well as $220 million in losses for Michigan cherries in 2012. As weather continues to warm, crops that depend on precise temperatures at specific times will be thrown off kilter or possibly wiped out. While moderate warming and carbon dioxide increases will help some plants grow faster, even they will ultimately be harmed by the droughts and floods that will harm so many other crops.

“A major drought in California or freezing temperatures in Florida can throw a wrench into this market,” Dr. Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, an associate professor of applied economics at Cornell University, told Salon in August. “Those events can drastically reduce the supply of oranges from those regions. While oranges can be produced in other areas (e.g. Brazil), acquiring them is much more expensive especially if the supply chains are not already established and prepared to larger volumes.”

In addition to climate change, there is also the built-in structural problem of capitalism itself: Concentration of power, and the fact that supply chain disruptions also exist because the global economic system is built around what individual powerful corporations have decided will maximize their profits. A system that prioritizes profitability over everything else will make choices about who gets what first based on how they can make the most money, not on who needs it most or what will be most efficient. That means that supply chain disruptions, though not ideal, are also not viewed as a company’s absolute worst case scenario.

“To analyze supply chain disruptions as if they were exceptional is a mistake,” Dr. Richard Wolff, emeritus professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told Salon by email. “They are regularly recurring products of capitalist decision-making. It is only because of capitalists’ buck-passing that their media focus us on the conditions (forever changing) and away from the profit-maximizing strategies of capitalists’ responses to those changing conditions.”

If there is one silver lining to the supply chain crises, it is that an increasing number of those companies are deciding that it makes more sense to “re-shore” jobs than it does to have sprawling, worldwide supply chains. The term “re-shore” is a play on “offshore,” which refers to moving jobs overseas. “Reshoring” means those jobs would be brought back to the United States.

But until reshoring happens, the supply chain in the United States will remain as fickle as the pandemic has proven it to be. Recently, an image of a plastic container of pears went viral for its packaging: “Grown in Argentina, packaged in Thailand,” read the package, which was sold in the United States. Of course, there are plenty of pears grown in the United States; these pears’ three-continent trip was not only wasteful, but fragile in the face of disruption — and the mere existence of three-continent pears speaks to the greater problem.

Post-pandemic, what’s a phone call from your physician worth?

Maybe this has happened to you recently: Your doctor telephoned to check in with you, chatting for 11 to 20 minutes, perhaps answering a question you contacted her office with, or asking how you’re responding to a medication change.

For that, your doctor got paid about $27 if you are on Medicare — maybe a bit more if you have private insurance.

Behind those calls is a four-digit “virtual check-in” billing code created during the pandemic, for phone conversations lasting just within that range, which has drawn outsize interest from physician groups.

It’s part of a much bigger, increasingly heated debate: Should insurers pay for “audio-only” visits? And, if they do, should they pay the same reimbursement rate as when a patient is sitting in a doctor’s office, as has been allowed during the pandemic?

Cutting off or reducing audio-only payments could lead providers to sharply curtail telehealth services, warn some physician groups and other experts. Other stakeholders, including employers who pay for health coverage, fear payment parity for audio-only telehealth visits could lead to overbilling. Will it lead, for example, to a flood of unneeded follow-up calls?

Robert Berenson, an Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute, who has spent much of his career studying payment methods, said if insurers pay too little, doctors — now accustomed to the reimbursement — might no longer make the follow-up calls they might have made for free pre-pandemic.

But, he added, “if you pay what they want, parity with in-person, you’ll have a run on the treasury. The right policy is somewhere in between.”

Medicare billing codes, while a dull and arcane topic, draw keen interest from doctors, hospitals, therapists and others because they are the basis for health care charges in the United States. Medicare’s verdict serves as a benchmark and guide for private insurers in setting their own payment policies.

Thousands of codes exist, describing every possible type of treatment. Without a code, there can be no payment. The creation of codes and Medicare’s determination of a reimbursement amount, designed to reflect the amount of work involved, prompt ferocious lobbying by the business interests involved. The American Medical Association derives a chunk of revenue from owning the rights to a specific set of physician billing codes. Other codes are developed by dental groups, as well as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services or state Medicaid agencies.

The idea of a “virtual check-in” code began before the pandemic, in 2019, when Medicare included it to cover five- to 10-minute telephone calls for doctors to respond to established patients. It pays about $14.

When the pandemic hit, Congress and the Trump administration opened the door wider to telehealth, temporarily lifting restrictions — mainly those limiting such services to rural areas.

Meanwhile, CMS this year added a billing code for longer “virtual check-ins” — 11- to 20-minute calls — with payment set at about $27 a pop, with the patient contributing 20% in copayment. Such calls are meant to determine whether a patient needs to come in or otherwise have a longer evaluation visit, or if their health concern can simply be handled over the phone.

And physicians argue that allowing payments for audio-only care is a positive step for them and for their patients.

“I take care of patients who drive from two or three hours away and live in places without broadband access,” said Dr. Jack Resneck Jr., a dermatologist and president-elect of the American Medical Association. “For these patients, it’s important to have a backup when the video option doesn’t’ work.”

Still, the focus on telephone-only care has raised concerns.

“Here’s an invitation to convert every five-minute call into an 11- to 20-minute call,” said Berenson.

The Medicare code allows “other qualified health professionals,” such as physician assistants or nurse practitioners, to bill for such calls. Private insurers would set their own rules about whether non-physicians can bill for follow-up calls. It’s not clear how much of a revenue stream dedicating such staff members to make these short, telephone check-ins would create for a medical practice.

To avoid overuse, CMS did set rules: The code can’t be used if the call takes place within seven days of an evaluation visit, either in person or through telemedicine. Nor can a doctor bill for the call if he or she determines the patient needs to come in right away.

When the health emergency ends, however, so do most audio-only payments. The emergency is expected to last at least through the end of the year. Congress or, possibly, CMS could change the rules on audio-only payments, and much more lobbying is expected.

While the virtual check-in codes have been made permanent, physician groups are lobbying for Medicare to retain a host of other telephone-only-visit codes created during the pandemic, including several that allow physicians to bill for telephone-only visits in which the doctor potentially diagnoses a patient’s condition and sets up a treatment plan.

For those, considered “evaluation and management” audio visits, Medicare during the public health emergency has paid about $55 for a five- to 10-minute call and $89 for one that runs 11 to 20 minutes — the same as for an in-office visit.

“Whether we see patients in house, by video or by phone, we need the same coding” and the same payments, because a similar amount of work is involved, said Dr. Ada Stewart, the board chair for the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Many patients like the concept of telehealth, according to Suzanne Delbanco, executive director of Catalyst for Payment Reform, a group representing employers who want payment methods for health care to be overhauled. And, for some patients, it’s the easiest way to see a doctor, especially for those who live far from urban areas or are unable to take time off work or away from home.

But, she said, employers “don’t want to get locked into paying more for it than they have in past, or as much as other [in-person] visits when it’s not truly the same value to the patient.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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Hollywood, please stop adapting K-dramas. It’s not just unnecessary, it’s racist

By now, most people understand that “cultural appropriation” usually refers to the exploitive consumption of ethnic and marginalized cultures by others. We’ve seen non-Black personalities wearing cornrows. Or celebs like Olivia Rodrigo and Awkwafina use what they think is AAVE – accents and dialects of Black cultures, like Jamaican accents – as a way to show they’re hip within their own cliques and with Black people.

The term could apply to specific foods, a style of dance or the celebration of a religious holiday. Whatever it is, the common factor that shifts the adoption of a cultural artifact from mere appreciation to appropriation is not honoring and even erasing its origins – all while celebrating its “new” form as desirable. Just look at how Black people are still mocked and stigmatized for our hairstyles, but then Bo Derek or a Kardashian is praised for sporting those same styles.

But what does all of this have to do with Korean dramas?

As fashions and musical styles like Afrobeats can be appropriated, so too can television and movies. How does the phrase “cultural media appropriation” sound? I think it can be used to describe how American studios and networks have been acquiring South Korean and other content from East Asia to adapt for audiences in the United States.

But wait . . . isn’t that just adaptation? Countries around the globe have been adapting each other’s films and television shows for years. There are British adaptations of American shows (“Law & Order: UK”), American adaptations of British shows (“The Office”), South Korean adaptations of American shows, Japanese adaptations of South Korean shows, Taiwanese adaptations of Japanese shows, etc. But what I’m speaking about isn’t the fair cultural exchange of media like the aforementioned examples.

Instead, I’m referring specifically to how Hollywood seems to be making a concerted effort to focus on South Korean – as well Japanese – content, for the sole purpose of remaking the stories to appeal to American audiences, i.e. white audiences. I say “white audiences” because it can’t be denied that from the casting and dialogue to the stories and even costuming, the experiences of white people take precedence onscreen in Hollywood.

American filmmakers look East

Martin Scorsese, winner for best director for his work on “The Departed,” poses with his Oscar at the 79th Academy Awards in Hollywood February 25, 2007 (ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)This trend is something that I’ve been paying attention to for years, starting with “Infernal Affairs,” the 2002 Hong Kong crime drama directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak about a cop (Tony Leung) who goes deep undercover in an infamous Hong Kong triad led by a ruthless gangster (Lau), who in turn infiltrates the police. The film became a sensation, earning nearly $9 million worldwide, drawing universal critical acclaim for its nuanced character work and even spawning two more films to become a trilogy.

Its global popularity didn’t end there. Martin Scorsese’s award-winning 2006 film “The Departed” is a remake of “Infernal Affairs” starring Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio as the undercover moles. Despite its clear roots, there was no mention of “Infernal Affairs” or the efforts of its creators during the multiple “Departed” Oscar acceptance speeches. To me, this is a sign of white people being unwilling to acknowledge the people of color whose work they use as “inspiration” to create adaptations for other white people to consume.

Normally I have no issue with adaptations when they’re done right, when the fundamental characteristics that make the originals entertaining and cherished by fans aren’t changed in such a drastic way that they’re almost unrecognizable. Among the many adaptations of East Asian properties that work is Robert Rodriguez bringing “Alita: Battle Angel,” based on Yukito Kishiro’s cyberpunk manga series, to the big screen in 2019. Despite some critiques, the film was praised for staying faithful to its source material, the multicultural casting and visual effects. Earning $404 million worldwide, it’s Rodriguez’s highest-grossing film to date.

Unfortunately, this seems to be one of the few exceptions to the rule of whitewashed adaptations.

One only has to look at the track record. To date there has been a plethora of American studio adaptations of anime, Japanese manga and animated shows and films, and every single one of them have been whitewashed, stripped of the cultural markers that speak to the countries and people who made them. Iconic properties like “The Power Rangers,” all “Godzilla” films and yes, “Ghost in the Shell,” which has become infamous for its whitewashing, particularly of the main character Motoko Kusanagi, who was given an Anglo name and played by . . . Scarlett Johansson, a white woman. “Death Note” and the notoriously bad “Dragonball: Evolution” are other examples of not only whitewashing, but also audience backlash that should serve as glaring caution signs to the powers that be, that viewers don’t want stories about people of color to be rewritten and told through the white gaze.

There’s also the odious film adaptation of “Avatar: The Last Airbender” by M. Night Shyamalan. Though the original animated series is an American production, it featured many characters of color who were whitewashed for the film with all but one of the main characters played by a person of color. Zuko (Dev Patel) just happens to be the villain and therefore reinforces negative stereotypes of Asians being portrayed as evil and untrustworthy, with ill intent toward white people. Because of this, such selective whitewashing perpetuates negative perceptions of people of color, while erasing positive representation of them from their own narratives.

For the love of Hallyu

Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock arrive at the premiere of Warner Bros. Pictures’ “The Lake House” at the Cinerama Dome on June 13, 2006 in Los Angeles (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

South Korean content is also targeted. As far back as 2000, Lee Heun-sung’s film “Il Mare,” about two star-crossed lovers communicating across time, was remade into “The Lake House” starring Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves (who, while of partial Asian descent, mostly plays white characters). In 2013, Spike Lee’s remake of Park Chan-wook’s famous action-thriller “Oldboy” received a very lukewarm reception.

But now there are plans to remake Bong Joon-ho’s class-war thriller “Parasite,” which won the best picture Oscar last year, and Yeon Sang-ho’s acclaimed zombie apocalypse film “Train to Busan.” While “The Last Train to New York” has yet to begin production, the mere announcement has already created an uproar on social media with fans (me included) crying out their displeasure at just the thought of a remake being done.

Meanwhile, over on TV, networks have set their sights on adapting Korean dramas like the mega-popular “Crash Landing on You,” “Trap” and “Hotel del Luna.” Will they be as culturally respectful as Rodriguez was to his source material?

I have zero faith that this won’t be the case. Harsh, but true.

As a Black woman, cultural appropriation is behavior I’m all too familiar with, so when I noticed companies like Netflix and the CW announcing their intent to “adapt” Asian content, I saw a very troubling pattern emerging.

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Why after all of these years are studios now paying attention to K-dramas? Why are they adapting already well-established and popular content, instead of developing original scripts by American creatives of color, by Asian American creatives in fact? There are Korean-American writers like Kayla Lewis and Luke Salin – who wrote and directed “Parked in America,” a dramatic series that debuted its pilot at this year’s SXSW Film Festival – who are waiting for the chance to share their stories with the world. But instead of giving them the much-needed opportunity for representation, networks like the CW want to remake the rom-com thriller, “W: Two Worlds,” in which the real world clashes with an alternate reality inside of a webtoon.

And then in a baffling move, Netflix – the same company that began streaming “Crash Landing on Your” two years ago to great success – is planning an American remake. Frankly I find this news to be not only absurd, but proof of a problem that is indicative of Hollywood’s obsession with trying to remake art by people of color, into their own white image.

This also highlights another fact – that Korean dramas are already accessible on multiple platforms for millions of viewers internationally, including in North America. Since the Korean wave of pop culture known as Hallyu in the mid-2000s, sites like Viki, WeTv, and Kocowa and the dear-departed DramaFever, have been providing streaming access for Asian screen content, not to mention Netflix getting in the game more recently. Furthermore, North Americans with international cable packages and smart devices like the Roku can find South Korean channels for dramas, news, sports and food. It’s all there, ready for viewing.

Why one cannot simply adapt Korean dramas

Son Ye-jin as Yoon Se-ri and Hyun Bin as Captain Ri Jeong-hyeok in “Crash Landing on You” (Lim Hyo-seon/Netflix

To say that what makes Korean – and other Asian – dramas unique in comparison to American shows is that they’re about Koreans and the Korean experience, would be obvious. And for some consumers that may seem like the best reason for American remakes and adaptations, to capitalize on that.

But on the contrary, that’s precisely the reason to avoid doing so.

Take the aforementioned “Crash Landing on You.” While K-dramas give romantic storylines that fans of the genre love, they also provide important historical and cultural references and context that international audiences are able to learn from. In this series, Yoon Se-ri (Son Ye-jin) is a spoiled heiress of a Chaebol family, who while paragliding is swept across the DMZ by a freak tornado (a fun tribute to “The Wizard of Oz”) into the North where she meets Ri Jeong-hyeok (Hyun Bin), an officer in the North Korean military.

As the two gradually fall in love, Se-ri and the audience are given a crash course on what life is like in the North, which has developed into a vastly different country since the Korean War armistice in 1953. Se-ri realizes just how privileged her life has been living south of the 38th parallel. For example, as someone accustomed to eating meat three times a day, she’s shocked to learn her new friends in the North keep meat as a delicacy to be enjoyed only on special occasions. She also grows to understand and appreciate the danger her presence poses because Ri Jeong-seok and his soldiers could lose their jobs and be imprisoned for harboring a South Korean national and suspected spy.

An American remake of “Crash Landing on You” would erase the context of Korea being a nation split into two because of a war that literally tore families apart, forever changing the genetic and cultural footprint of the country, preventing it and the people from progressing together as a whole.

Similarly, in trying to adapt “Train to Busan,” the idea of a bullet train as the setting for a horrific event is one that realistically doesn’t apply to North America because the film isn’t just about zombies set on a train. Instead, writer and director Yeon Sang-ho plays with South Korean tropes and subverts them to show that who we perceive people to be has no bearing on who they are morally. This can be seen with the character of father-to-be Yoon Sang-hwa played by Ma Dong-seok (Don Lee in “The Eternals”), best known for playing a tough guy.

Squid Game (YOUNGKYU PARK/Netflix

And, despite the cultural specificity of these stories, many people living in North America are still be able to relate. In the case of “Crash Landing on You,” immigrants and refugees know what it’s like to suddenly find yourself in a strange land where everyone around you does things differently. Also, many refugees and undocumented fleeing dangerous situations live in fear that one day they could be arrested and sent back to the countries they fled. In regards to “Train to Busan,” many have felt trapped in the lives and identities we’ve built ourselves, and must find the courage to break free.

Therefore, the argument to adapt these properties to make them more relatable for American audiences doesn’t hold up. We like them already in their original form. So when you really dig, the only reason to remake them is for profit.

And in doing so, this removes the important facets that make these shows and every other K-drama special, loved and meaningful not only for viewers within and outside of America.

It’s cultural appropriation of their media.

As with all cultural appropriation, the practice is racist and xenophobic because what these remakes tell us is that for content to be “palatable” to Americans, the stories must be from an American perspective and portrayed by Americans who speak English. It’s telling me that Americans have the perception that listening to people speak in another language and reading subtitles are still considered too much of a hassle for American audiences.This is not only insulting to Koreans and anyone who speaks a language that isn’t English, it does a huge disservice to the audience as well, because it demonstrates that studio executives believe American audiences either don’t have the capacity or willingness to grow and learn, and appreciate anyone who isn’t them.

It’s also patently false. All of those reasons have been disproven yet again with the breakout hit “Squid Game” this year. The thrilling series about desperate and impoverished people competing in death games for the chance at millions is fully rooted in the state of South Korean today, while also critiquing the fallout from splitting the country. As Netflix’s No. 1 show worldwide, it proves that such a specific story can still be relatable to multiple cultures all over the world.

And this success was achieved through a foreign-language TV show.

The push for an adapted “Crash Landing on You” is particularly ironic for Netflix because of the mega popularity of “Squid Game” and Spain’s series “Money Heist,” two successful non-English shows the company boasts about. Viewers of “Squid Game” didn’t just embrace the show with its subtitles and all, but many have even been inspired to take up Korean language lessons to better understand that and other series along with all the other joys – such as K-pop – that Hallyu brings.

By pushing for remakes, what these studios are doing is proving that despite the claims of increased diversity and inclusion, Hollywood is still very much interested in maintaining the status quo that white is right.

Read more about Korean dramas:

Kamala Harris: Most powerful vice president since Richard Nixon. Yes, really

In a literal sense, Kamala Harris looks to become the most powerful vice president of all time — at least, if you go by the constitutional assignment given to that office by the founding fathers.

Let’s be honest: The Constitution shortchanges the vice president, consigning him (or, right now, her) to “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.” Those were the words of John Adams, America’s first vice president, who spent eight years in that powerless role under George Washington before his own memorable presidency. The vice president is mostly on hand in case the president dies or becomes incapacitated, and has almost nothing else to do. Nothing about the job’s official (and extremely limited) constitutional responsibilities has changed since Adams held the post, even though several amendments have addressed presidential elections, lines of succession, transition periods and various other logistical matters. Under certain vice presidents (e.g., Dick Cheney), the office’s scope has been broadened to a legally questionable degree, but the actual responsibility of the position is summed up in one sentence: “The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.”

That rarely happens. It has only happened on exactly 283 occasions since Adams was sworn in. But in her first year in office, Vice President Harris has wielded the only weapon given to her by the founding fathers on more occasions — far more occasions — than any other vice president has done in his first year. (You probably noticed this fact, but her predecessors have all been men.)

The record for most tie-breaking votes overall is still held by the execrable John C. Calhoun with 31, but he didn’t cast any of them until nearly a year into his vice presidency. (Calhoun is a strange case in various ways: He served seven years as veep under two presidents — John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson — and resigned the office before his second term was complete in favor of a Senate seat.)

Harris has cast 15 tie-breaking votes in less than 11 months, with the most recent coming on Dec. 8, more than twice as many as any previous first-year vice president. Second place, in fact, belongs to Mike Pence, who cast six tie-breaking votes in his first year; so the conclusion that this phenomenon is related to the stark political polarization of our era seems irresistible.

Harris claiming Pence’s trophy resulted in a minor media moment and she was a good sport about it, joking, “Every time I vote, we win.” Yet the actual votes are somewhat surprising: Twelve of Harris’ 15 tie-breakers were on nominations, two involved budgetary matters and one was on President Biden’s emergency COVID-19 stimulus bill. With that last exception, these were all mundane matters of governance, not major policy decisions.

This was the inevitable by-product of two random political events colliding with each other: The Senate is split down the middle between the two parties (yes, there are two independents, but both are functionally Democrats), something that has only happened three times before in American history. On this occasion, one of the two party leaders in the Senate has embraced a strategy of ruthless obstructionism: If Democrats proposed a bill declaring that the day after Monday is called Tuesday, it’s not clear that Mitch McConnell would let his members vote for it.

In that context, it’s inevitable that the vice president will cast tie-breaking votes on a regular basis. What conclusions can we draw, if any, about this particular vice president?

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Perhaps not many — but Harris’ unique status is no secret. No woman has ever previously held national elected office, nor has any person of Asian ancestry. Harris is also the first Black vice president, a fact which obviously leaves her somewhat in the shadow of Barack Obama. As a recent Daily Beast article points out, Harris is held to a double standard, and her sinking poll numbers and hostile press coverage seem to reflect that.

The symbolic significance of a Black woman with multiethnic heritage presiding over a 50-50 Senate still largely comprised of white men is impossible to miss. Harris has literally tilted the balance of power toward the Democrats with her tie-breaking votes, and vice-presidential history suggests she could also do so in a more profound way. That’s where Richard Nixon comes in.

Yes, that Nixon. Long before he became infamous as the only president forced to resign in disgrace, Nixon was an unpopular, polarizing figure as vice president under Dwight Eisenhower. There are rough parallels to Harris’ situation: Eisenhower was widely regarded as a genial old guy without much of an ideological orientation, perhaps with a few screws loose. (It later turned out that Ike deliberately played up this image so his adversaries would underestimate him, something Biden’s foes should keep in mind.) In both cases, the president was seen as generally likable and the vice president as a controversial attack-dog type. Nixon even presided over an evenly-split Senate for part of 1954, although he never cast a tie-breaking vote.

But at least to this point in the Biden presidency, Harris has had virtually no opportunity to turn her role to political advantage, which was something Nixon excelled at. In Nixon’s memoir “Six Crises” (written after his two terms as vice president), we learn how he maximized what he could do with his office. Nixon was already associated in the popular mind with the infamous anti-Communist Joe McCarthy, mostly through his work uncovering government official Alger Hiss’ alleged role as a Soviet spy.

Eisenhower picked Nixon as his running mate in 1952 because he had broad support among the conservative base and was from California (then a crucial swing state). Nixon nearly lost his spot on the ticket due to a financial scandal, but cannily used a televised appeal to his supporters to pressure Eisenhower into keeping him, which established his reputation as a staunch right-winger who could battle the hostile “liberal media.” (That was a narrative he and other Republicans would continue for decades to come.) Once elected, Nixon positioned himself as Eisenhower’s second in command and heir apparent, although the two men never had a warm relationship and Ike would haver preferred someone else as his GOP successor.

Nixon demonstrated that he had a flair for the dramatic, which made him increasingly popular on the right. Sometimes these opportunities were thrust upon him, as when he managed Eisenhower’s medical crises (including a serious heart attack) with appropriate dignity and firmness. Other events made the kinds of headlines that vice presidents don’t normally provoke. In 1958, during a diplomatic trip through Latin America, Nixon was twice attacked by angry mobs, first in Lima, Peru, and then in Caracas, Venezuela. On both occasions, he could plausibly have been seriously injured or even killed. While being pelted with stones in Lima, Nixon shouted back (with the help of a Spanish interpreter), “You are cowards, you are afraid of the truth! You are the worst kind of cowards.”

Then, during the so-called Kitchen Debate in 1959, when Nixon was already seen as a likely presidential candidate the following year, he exchanged heated words about the Cold War with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in front of news cameras — and at one point in front of a model kitchen (which Khrushchev admitted was impressive).

Whether or not these moments arose organically or were created and manipulated by Nixon, he embraced them to gain attention and heighten his reputation. He plunged gleefully into partisan politics, stumping for Eisenhower and other Republicans and saying all of the things about Ike’s foes that the beloved war hero would never have said himself. He whipped up the Republican base, even at risk of being associated with midterm election defeats. He put countless Republican politicians in his direct personal debt, adding to the stockpile of political capital he had accumulated through his use of the vice presidency’s symbolic power. By the time Nixon ran for president in 1960, everyone knew who he was and viewed him as the unapologetic ideological force behind the Eisenhower administration.

How did that turn out for Nixon? Pretty well, although it took a while. He won the 1960 Republican nomination fairly easily, but then lost to John F. Kennedy in one of the closest elections in American history. Two years after that he ran for governor of California and lost that race too, and his political career appeared to be over. Six years later, of course, he completed one of the biggest political comebacks in history with his successful presidential campaign in the tumultuous year of 1968.

During his eight years as vice president, Nixon was seen as a hatchet man with real-world toughness who went to town on the Republican Party’s opponents — even though he had no real power. (Except for the tie-breaking vote: He cast just eight of them.) Kamala Harris is well on her way to becoming the most influential vice president of all time — at least in narrow constitutional terms. Whether or not she can use her inconsequential office the way Nixon did — to build a forceful reputation, accumulate political power and position herself as president-in-waiting behind an elderly incumbent — remains to be seen.

More from Matthew Rozsa on the puzzles and contradictions of American political history:

WATCH: Profanity-spewing anti-vaxxer denied service at Trump Grill for not showing vaccine card

An anti-vaxxer reportedly was denied service at Trump Grill inside Trump Tower in New York City for failing to show proof of vaccination.

“Let’s try this out. I’m out here at Trump Tower. I have not been inside since before COVID,” the unidentified person says in a video posted to Twitter on Friday by PatriotTakes, a site dedicated to exposing right-wing extremism.

“Let’s see what’s going to happen, if they will let me eat at the grill,” the person says in the video, which was apparently shot with their cell phone.

Once inside, the mask-less anti-vaxxer shows viewers a sign outside the grill stating that New York City requires indoor restaurant patrons to be vaccinated.

As the person wanders the lobby, a Trump Tower employee appears to ask them to put on a mask, warning that they could face a $1,000 fine from the city.

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The person points out that there is a police officer nearby who’s not wearing a mask.

“I’m talking to you,” the Trump Tower employees responds. “Just put your mask on, that’s all you have to do.”

“I’m so pissed,” the person says into the camera after putting on their mask.

When the person approaches the restaurant, another employee asks them for proof of vaccination. “You need to be vaccinated. It’s the law,” the employee says.

“It’s a mandate; it’s not a law,” the person responds. “So I’m not allowed to sit if I choose not to take an experimental drug? … There you have it, everyone, proof that at Trump Tower, at Trump Grill … unfortunately I cannot sit in here.”

While heading for the exit, the person takes off their mask and says, “They’re choosing to comply, when you have businesses in New York City … that are not complying … not asking for masks, not asking for vaccination.”

“But here at Trump Tower, they do,” the person says. “I’m so f*ckin’ pissed.”

As the person is walking out, a Trump Tower employee can be heard saying, “You got a mask with you?”

“I’m leaving,” the person responds. “Unbelievable.”

Watch it in five parts below.

Donald Trump is enforcing mask and vaccine mandates at Trump Tower in NYC.

Watch as an antivaxxer enters Trump Tower to test the vaccine mandate policy at Trump Grill. pic.twitter.com/yhqDANFcWl

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) December 17, 2021

Part 2: The protester spots a Trump Tower sign asking for vaccine proof at Trump’s Presidential themed “45” bar before proceeding to Trump Grill. pic.twitter.com/QbmPElhvxT

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) December 17, 2021

Part 3: “You need one of these.”

An employee at Trump Tower demands the protester put on a mask or face a $1,000 fine. The protester is told to “just put your mask on.” pic.twitter.com/9qh83C6Vht

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) December 17, 2021

Part 4: “No. You can’t. You need to be vaccinated.”

Trump Grill, located inside Trump Tower, denied service to an antivaxxer for not having a vaccination card. pic.twitter.com/61vftXjsCy

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) December 17, 2021

Part 5: While heading for the exit, the protester removes her mask and is asked by a Trump Tower employee, “You got a mask with you?” pic.twitter.com/NgubORtnFX

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) December 17, 2021

Jan. 6 investigators eye role of “foreign adversaries” in Capitol riot: report

A House committee investigating the Capitol insurrection may soon hire new staff members to examine the possible role of foreign adversaries in former president Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The committee, which already has about 40 staff members, is also considering whether to hire additional investigators to help analyze “the vast amount of information that Mr. Trump’s supporters posted on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Parler and YouTube in the weeks before and after the attack,” the New York Times reported Friday.

“These digital footprints could help congressional investigators connect players and events, or bring to light details that witnesses might not know or remember,” the NYT reported.

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In addition to further scrutinizing the social media information, the committee reportedly wants “to understand whether foreign governments were able to exploit and deepen social divisions created by Mr. Trump’s refusal to concede his election loss.”

“Foreign adversaries have long tried to damage America’s national security interests by exacerbating social unrest and polarization,” the newspaper reported. “The committee has also discussed examining whether foreign adversaries had any other connections to the assault on Congress, according to a person briefed on that part of the inquiry.”

Read the full story.

More news from the Jan. 6 committee:

Who gets help after a hurricane or flood? FEMA will start tracking it by race

In the wake of hurricanes, floods, and other disaster events, most Americans know that you can apply for aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known as FEMA. What they don’t know is that since 2002, nearly half of those applicants were turned down.

Since that year, some 15 million households applied for support through the agency’s Individual Assistance Division; roughly 7.5 million households were denied help, according to an E&E news analysis. Journalists and watchdog groups have been offered little insight into why. Demographic information, such as race, ethnicity, sex, tribal membership, marital status, and education level, has been nonexistent, making it impossible to track the federal agency’s equity priorities and to screen for discrimination.

That could change.

Recently, the agency made the move to request authority from the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, to begin asking people to provide such demographic information as they’re applying for FEMA aid, as first reported by E&E News and confirmed to Grist by a FEMA official. The move will allow government watchdogs and the federal agency to determine if there is discrimination in how the group distributes such funds. FEMA has distributed roughly $26 billion through its Individual Assistance Division since 2002.

However, the demographic details will not be used to determine if an applicant is eligible for disaster aid, the FEMA official said.

Historically, the official said, the agency was barred from collecting demographic data because it was not used to determine eligibility, which is why the agency requires approval first from the OMB to update the application process.

The move, which comes on the heels of years of organizing by disaster recovery and housing nonprofits, comes as the agency’s aid distribution amounts are expected to rise with climate change continuing to fuel more severe weather events and climate-induced displacement. In 2021, there were at least 18 disasters with more than $1 billion in damages, up 300 percent from the early 2000s. The data will help to confirm any inequities in whom disasters affect and which demographics are more likely to face disasters.

“Systematic barriers can make disaster recovery more difficult for historically disadvantaged or underserved people,” the FEMA spokesperson told Grist. “Collecting this information during the application process will allow FEMA to better evaluate, identify and remedy inequity-related issues within disaster assistance programs.”

Using broad demographic data from the census, advocacy groups have found patterns of discrimination, but household level data would definitively prove it. In a national poll released this week by the nonprofit political organizing group Black to the Future Action Fund, 46 percent of Black respondents experienced severe weather events this summer. In comparison, an analysis by the Washington Post found that 32 percent of all Americans experienced weather disasters this summer.

Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition is expected to testify about inequalities in disaster recovery to the United States Commission on Civil Rights on December 10, the first time in U.S. history that the commission has probed FEMA or the results of a disaster recovery plan.

Yentel shared her testimony in advance with Grist, including “Black and brown communities are often located in areas at higher risk of disaster and have less resilient infrastructure to protect residents from harm. Long-term recovery resources tend to go to white communities that face lower risks.”

She is expected to testify that rather than dismantling racial segregation, FEMA’s aid and other federal rebuilding efforts “tend to entrench racial disparities.”

FEMA contends that an applicant’s demographic data is never a reason for rejection. Typically, FEMA says, the biggest reasons for rejections are that people can’t prove their residency or that applicants’ homes faced pre-existing damage not caused by a disaster. Yentel and other advocates contend rejections disproportionately affect renters, people facing housing insecurity, undocumented immigrants, and people with disabilities.

While natural disasters may uproot families and their homes, landlords have used hurricanes, floods, and other wild weather events as an opportunity to kick renters out. After Hurricane Katrina, for example, thousands of low-income renters in Louisiana and Mississippi faced mass evictions and illegal price gouging, which dwindled their chances of receiving FEMA aid.

FEMA’s criteria for receiving aid, Yentel says, leaves many low-income survivors, who tend to be people of color, “at increased risk of displacement, eviction, and, in worst cases, homelessness.” A 2018 study by Rice University found that white people who live in counties that faced disaster damage and FEMA support actually saw their personal wealth rise following the disaster while Black residents lost wealth.

So while the disparities are more than apparent, more centralized data collection might move the needle in addressing them. The next step, advocates contend, is making sure FEMA makes the data publicly available. FEMA has not said if the demographic information will be publicly available or when data collection protocols might be approved.

As climate disasters become a regular component of American life, Yentel said, “Our country must develop a new disaster housing recovery system that centers the housing needs of the lowest-income and most marginalized survivors.”

Weird Al on why Paul McCartney said no to his “Live and Let Die” parody

Famed musician, producer and actor “Weird Al” Yankovic joined host Kenneth Womack to talk about his songwriting process, Beatles parodies, new tour and more on “Everything Fab Four,” a podcast co-produced by me and Womack (a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon) and distributed by Salon.

Yankovic, who has played the accordion since childhood, did not grow up in a very musical household. His father is not “polka king” Frank Yankovic, despite what many have mistakenly believed. As he tells Womack, he was “vaguely aware” of the Beatles when he was young, but when a fellow student brought in a 7-inch vinyl of the “Hey Jude” single into elementary school, he asked his mother if he could buy one. She laughed, saying songs were free on the radio, and that’s when Al decided that “someday, when I’m super-rich, I’m going to own EVERY Beatles album!”

Yankovic started his career by recording comedy songs in his bedroom as a teenager in the ’70s, and getting cassette tapes of them into the hands of broadcaster Dr. Demento, who ended up bringing them to national attention on his show. “Nobody else would have given me that exposure,” says Al.

Since he knew the chord structure of pop songs, Yankovic would spend hours listening to the radio for ideas, latching onto tunes with strong hooks then coming up with funny twists on them to record. Having parodied hundreds of artists over the years, the Beatles have remained his favorite band, and he has stories about being “rejected” by Paul McCartney for his take on “Live and Let Die” (it’s not what people think!) and by George Harrison’s lawyer for “Pac-Man,” his parody of the Beatles’ “Taxman” (which the Harrison family later approved for release on Al’s 2017 compilation album). Hear those stories, and more, in the full conversation:

Subscribe today through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, RadioPublic, Breaker, Player.FM, Pocket Casts or wherever you get your podcasts.

And since those days, Yankovic has worked on a video project with Paul McCartney (“one of the few people I still get starstruck around”), performed “What is Life” at George Fest in 2014, and also has a role in the brand-new video released for Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord.”

As Yankovic prepares to head out on tour, he says his comedy has never been “mean-spirited” and that he hopes, like the Beatles, to be a “super-spreader of joy.” As each generation discovers them, he truly believes that “pound for pound you won’t ever find a better pop band.”

Listen to the entire conversation with Weird Al on “Everything Fab Four” and subscribe via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.

“Everything Fab Four” is distributed by Salon. Host Kenneth Womack is the author of a two-volume biography on Beatles producer George Martin, the bestselling book “Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles” and “John Lennon, 1980: The Last Days in the Life.”

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More “Everything Fab Four” conversations:

From milkshakes to cheesecakes, how to make the most of leftover eggnog

Each holiday has an associated set of flavors. Halloween has pumpkin (and pumpkin spice), Thanksgiving has turkey and the fixings. Now Christmas is fast-approaching and eggnog is ready to shine.

As Salon’s Ashlie Stevens wrote in 2020, “eggnog is a dairy-based drink made by beating egg yolks and whites with sugar, milk, cream, warm spices — and often alcohol.” It’s rich, creamy and gently spiced. This makes it great for drinking, but, if there’s any leftover, it also makes it a solid addition to baked goods and sweet treats.

These range from milkshakes to cheesecakes. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Eggnog Milkshake

You can’t miss out on this 3-ingredient festive drink. Add one cup of vanilla ice cream, half cup of eggnog and a light sprinkling of cinnamon in a blender and mix them well. Serve it in your favorite cup and top it with whipped cream and a chocolate drizzle, if you like.

Eggnog Ice Cream

Yes, ice cream is good in the winter, too! Just imagine, sitting on the couch in front of the fire with your loved ones and having a scoop of eggnog ice cream (or using said eggnog ice cream to make the aforementioned eggnog milkshake!).

Using a mixer to beat 2 cups of heavy cream until stiff peaks form. Add 2 cups of eggnog, 1 can of sweetened condensed milk and 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract to the cream. Blend them until they’re fully combined. Pour the mixture into a container, cover the surface with plastic wrap and freeze it for at least 3 hours.

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Eggnog French Toast

Bring eggnog to the breakfast table with this simple eggnog French toast. Beat 2 eggs very well along with ½ cup of eggnog until the mixture is smooth and fully combined. Soak 12 bread slices in the mixture until they are fully saturated.

It’s a sweet holiday breakfast choice that’s gonna cheer you up. Beat 2 eggs very well. Mix eggs and 1 ½ cups of eggnog well until they combine smoothly. Soak the bread slices in it until they are fully saturated. In a large nonstick pan over medium heat, cook the French toast a few slices at a time, turning when the toast is a little crisp, about four minutes each side.

Eggnog Dessert Dip
Inspired by Let’s Dish Recipe’s Eggnog Dessert Dip

This dip is easy and delicious — making it the perfect last-minute addition to a holiday party. All you need is 1 packet of instant vanilla pudding mix, 1 cup of eggnog , a pinch of nutmeg and 1 cup of heavy cream and 2 tablespoons of sugar.

Whisk the pudding mix, eggnog and nutmeg together into a bowl and stir until thickened. Using an electric mixer, beat the cream and sugar until stiff peaks form. Fold the whipped cream into the pudding mixture and refrigerate until ready to serve alongside cookies and fruit for dipping.

Eggnog Brownies

Salon’s Ashlie Stevens is partial to a really (really) fudgy brownie, which, she writes, is attainable if you manage your flour to fat ratio when using boxed brownie mix. These mixes usually call for oil, eggs and water to be added.

“The more fat you can pack into your batter, the better, in this case. That’s why eggnog — which is rich in fatty cream, milk and egg yolks — is an ideal swap for the water,” she wrote. “It also adds a gentle, warm wave of seasonal spice.”

Read the full recipe here.

Eggnog Cheesecake
Inspired by Bill Sinclair’s AllRecipes Eggnog Cheesecake

Eggnog and cheesecake are a great combination to satisfy your sweet cravings. Ingredients in this recipe include the basics — graham cracker crumbs, sugar, butter, cream cheese and flour. But it also includes delicious add-ins like rum, ground nutmeg and eggnog.

The result is an extra luxurious cheesecake with a spiked and spiced kick.

Read more from our recipe box:

Win this year’s holiday cookie swap with THC-infused chewy gingersnaps

With a sugary exterior and slightly chewy center, these cannabis-infused cookies will become one of your must-have treats!

Recipe: Chewy Gingersnap Cookies
Makes 20 cookies; 10 milligrams THC per cookie

Ingredients

11/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
5 tablespoons butter, divided
200 milligrams THC concentrate, or preferred dose
3 tablespoons molasses
2/3 cup sugar, plus 1/4 cup for rolling the cookies
1 egg
1/3 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger

Directions

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Set aside. In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and salt. Set aside.

Melt 2 1/2 tablespoons butter, then add the concentrate and mix until completely incorporated. Soften the remaining 2 1/2 tablespoons butter and cream together in a stand mixer with the melted infused butter, molasses, and 2/3 cup sugar on medium speed until smooth and fluffy, about 10 minutes. Note:The mixture should double in volume. You may need to beat on high speed for the last 1 to 2 minutes to achieve that volume.

Add the egg and continue to cream on medium speed until combined well. Add the dry ingredients in batches and continue to mix on low speed until about 50 percent incorporated. While the mixer is running, slowly add the crystallized ginger and continue to mix until all the ingredients are fully incorporated. Do not overmix.

Place the remaining 1/4 cup of the sugar in a shallow dish. Divide the dough into 20 cookies; about 1 1/2 tablespoons of dough weighing 11/4 ounce each. Using your hands, roll the cookies into individual balls; then gently roll each cookie around in the dish with the sugar. Place on the prepared cookie sheets about 2 inches apart.

Bake until the tops of the cookies start to crack, about 12–14 minutes. Repeat with the remaining cookies.

Transfer to wire racks to cool.

If you like this recipe as much as we do, consider purchasing “The Art of Cooking with Cannabis: CBD and THC-Infused Recipes from Across America” by Tracey Medeiros (Skyhorse Publishing, May 2021).

This low-ABV Basque wine deserves a place on your holiday table

If you’re looking to switch up your usual Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Grigio, there’s a lesser-known, super versatile white varietal that belongs on your table: Txakoli. Pronounced “cha-ko-lee” (and sometimes called “chacoli” or “txakolina”), this Basque wine is light on alcohol, delicate in flavor, and can be enjoyed before, during, and after a meal.

My first encounter with Txakoli was in the Spanish seaside town of San Sebastian, where my husband and I found ourselves on our first pintxos crawl. We asked the bartender for a recommendation to go with the array of small bites we had chosen, and without hesitation, he pulled out a slender green bottle from a bucket of ice, held it high overhead, and poured the wine into two glass tumblers with a flourish. Bright, with plenty of acidity, and slightly effervescent on the tongue, it was a perfect accompaniment to nearly every dish, from garlicky shrimp to jamon iberico. Because of its versatility (and the great memories it brings of these bars in San Sebastian), Txakoli has been in regular rotation at my house ever since.

Hailing from the Basque Country in the northeast of Spain, Txakoli is made primarily from the grape Hondarrabi Zuri, a variety that thrives in the cool maritime climate of the region. When someone mentions Txakoli, you can almost always assume they’re referring to the white version of this wine, but it is also made as a red (using the grape Hondarrabi Beltza), as well as a rosé, which uses both red and white grapes. There are three main areas that make Txakoli — Getaria, Bizkaia, and Alava — each considered a Denominación de Origen Protegida (or DOP, an area bound by specific rules on the production of food and wine), and each have their own characteristics. Wine made from vineyards located closer to the sea might have an element of cool salinity, while vineyards in a warmer area typically create wines that are less acidic with a higher alcohol content.

Regardless of which DOP your Txakoli comes from, the result is a dry, refreshing wine with lots of acidity and minerality. Its flavor profile often includes notes of citrus and green fruits, sometimes with notes of peach, pineapple, fresh herbs, and a zesty mineral finish. One special characteristic is the barely perceptible effervescence that emerges when it is poured in the traditional Basque way, by holding the bottle high — at least shoulder height — and letting the wine stream into a flat-bottomed glass with tall sides. This helps to aerate the wine and encourage the bubbles, bringing out the wine’s youthful, slightly fizzy character. (Note: this technique takes some practice!)

So what to eat with this? Seafood and light poultry dishes will definitely go well with Txakoli, but so will salty items like cured meats, aged cheeses, and briny olives (try it with gildas, one of the most emblematic pintxos of the Basque country). If you want to sip it on its own, it is an excellent aperitif, and thanks to its low alcohol content (anywhere from 9.5 to 11.5% ABV), can be enjoyed well past your meal without getting you overly inebriated.

While Txakoli remains a lesser-known wine on this side of the Atlantic, it has found its way onto restaurant wine lists and a selection of specialty retailers. Some of my personal favorites include Txomin Etxaniz, Ameztoi, and Urionda. You can expect to pay between $18 and $25 a bottle, making it a fairly affordable choice to serve this season during any food-centered activity or holiday gathering.