Author: Michelle Korhonen
Sharing the books I read in February and if I’d recommend adding them to your list. Hi hi! How are you doing? I hope you had a wonderful weekend. We spent a lot of it ripping out baseboards and moving furniture downstairs, but I caught a yoga class at Session and we had a lovely family dinner. Today, I have a couple of calls and am going to sneak away to work since the house is under construction. For today’s post, I wanted to share the books I read in February! I made it through four books last month, and…
On March 18, Foer will discuss the cover story at Sixth & I, in Washington, D.C.; the conversation will also be streamed onlineMarch 4, 2024, 7:44 AM ETFor The Atlantic’s April cover story, “The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending,” staff writer Franklin Foer reports on how the rise of anti-Semitism on both the right and the left threatens to end an era of unprecedented safety and prosperity for Jewish Americans, one that spanned the latter part of the 20th century. Foer argues that, with the first decades of the 21st century marked by conspiracy, reckless hyperbole, and political…
With more than 100,000 people casting a vote against the incumbent president in the Democratic primary last week in Michigan, a swing state essential to his reelection, the wisdom of Joe Biden’s decision to face voters in November is again under intense scrutiny. Historically speaking, it isn’t too late for President Joe Biden to voluntarily drop his reelection bid. And he must know it: Two other Democratic presidents in his lifetime surprised the nation by announcing in March of an election year that they would not seek a new term.The enormous challenges that confronted Harry Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson—wars…
Opill is the first birth control pill available over the counter in the United States. Perrigo Company plc hide caption toggle caption Perrigo Company plc Opill is the first birth control pill available over the counter in the United States. Perrigo Company plc Opill, the first oral contraceptive pill to be available without a prescription in the U.S., has shipped to retailers nationwide. It will be sold online and in the family planning aisle of drugstores, convenience stores and supermarkets later this month, the manufacturer announced Monday. The drug itself has been around for decades, but manufacturers have been working…
You got a new credit card, maybe, or signed up for a food-delivery service. Let the emailing begin. First there’s one to verify your new account, then a message to confirm that you’ve verified your new account, then an offer for an upgrade or a discount. A service I recently started using sent four emails for a single activity, counting log-in notices, confirmations, receipts, and confirmations of the confirmations. Workday, the software that manages HR and payroll for my office, emailed me an alert to approve the hours I had already approved. Online retailers seem to send at least three…
1Stacey Zolt Hara was in her office in downtown San Francisco when a text from her 16-year-old daughter arrived: “I’m scared,” she wrote. Her classmates at Berkeley High School were preparing to leave their desks and file into the halls, part of a planned “walkout” to protest Israel. Like many Jewish students, she didn’t want to participate. It was October 18, 11 days after the Hamas invasion of southern Israel.Zolt Hara told her daughter to wait in her classroom. She was trying to project calm. A public-relations executive, Zolt Hara had moved her family from Chicago to Berkeley six years…
People stand in line waiting to enter Trader Joe’s to buy groceries in Pembroke Pines, Fla., on March 24, 2020. More than 61,000 pounds of steamed chicken soup dumplings sold at Trader Joe’s are being recalled for possibly containing hard plastic, U.S. regulators announced Saturday, March 2, 2024. Brynn Anderson/AP hide caption toggle caption Brynn Anderson/AP People stand in line waiting to enter Trader Joe’s to buy groceries in Pembroke Pines, Fla., on March 24, 2020. More than 61,000 pounds of steamed chicken soup dumplings sold at Trader Joe’s are being recalled for possibly containing hard plastic, U.S. regulators announced…
The smallest hint of frustration had crept into John Kerry’s voice. We were talking about international climate diplomacy, which for the past two years has been Kerry’s job as the U.S. special presidential envoy on climate, a role President Joe Biden created to signal his commitment to the issue. Kerry’s last day is Wednesday, and when we spoke a couple of weeks ago, I asked him why the United States—historically the largest emitter of greenhouse gases—had pledged a paltry $17.5 million to a new fund for countries suffering the worst effects of climate change.“Our politics are embarrassing,” he said. “Congress…
Getty Images/Getty Images Getty Images/Getty Images One of the first recorded mentions of cancer appears in an ancient Egyptian text from around 3000 B.C. And although we now know much more about how cancer begins–as a series of mutations in someone’s DNA–it’s a disease people are still struggling to cure today. Centuries of treatments Over the centuries, people have using a wide range of things to try to cure cancer — everything from pastes, salts, teas to cauterization and more. One milestone came in the 1700s when British surgeon Percivall Pott connected cancer to a clear environmental cause. He noticed…
Oleg Orlov began his career by protesting against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. At about the same time, he joined Memorial, Russia’s first and most important historical and human-rights organization—in Russia, the two subjects are organically connected—while it was still an underground, dissident operation. In the 1990s, Memorial emerged into the open and began publishing books detailing the mass arrests and murders committed by the Soviet Union. During the decade I spent researching the history of the Soviet Gulag, I ran into Memorial historians and activists all over Russia, including in their one-person “office” in Syktyvkar and…