PFBNOW ADVENTURES!

  It’s said to be the most effective way to petition the government, but does it really make a difference? What Calling Congress Achieves. It’s said to be the most effective way to petition the government, but does it real.

 

  Last month, Donald Trump said in an online post that it was an “absolute necessity” for the United States to take ownership of Greenland. As often with Trump, the question arises of how serious he really is—but it may be a mistake to dismiss his statements entirely as bluster. As climate change lengthens the shipping season, Greenland occupies an important strategic location. Moreover, the island and its offshore territories are believed to contain large untapped stores of fossil fuels and rare minerals. “In the power game that is developing over Greenland, there is one big potential loser, and it’s the European Union,” the French political scientist Florian Vidal told John Cassidy. “It needs the resources for its energy transition. It’s heavily reliant on Greenland. And it faces the potential danger of being squeezed out.” Read Cassidy on Trump’s imperialist rhetoric and its implications.

  Lee Friedlander’s style of photography is usually cool, winking, and gamesman-like, but his pictures of his wife thrum with gentle affection. Lee Friedlander’s Intimate Portraits of His Wife, Through Sixty Years of Marriage.

  Rui Grann’s 2008 report on the French serial imposter Frédéric Bourdin, who assumed dozens of false identities, including those of missing persons.

  Perhaps what is most striking about the ascendant Trump Administration, which takes pains to cast itself as the champion of a forgotten working class, is its own oligarchic features, David Remnick writes. The Inauguration of Trump’s Oligarchy. Certain business titans have made Mar-a-Lago a scene of such flagrant self-abnegation, ring-kissing, and genuflection that it would embarrass a medieval Pope.

  How a network of politicians, church officials, and activists, all united by a conviction that the separation of church and state is illegitimate, strategized to dramatically expand private-school vouchers in Ohio.

  “A true friend sticks with you through thick and thin. But is any of that really possible or fair?” Weike Wang considers the challenges of friendship, and how they change over the years. The Trouble with Friend The wonder and the curse of friendship is choice.

  In an interview with Michael Schulman, Colman Domingo discusses the West Philly musicians that inspired his style; the rejection that nearly made him quit show business; and the experience of making “Sing Sing” with former members of a prison theatre troupe. The Liberated Life of Colman Domingo. The actor discusses the West Philly musicians that inspired his style.

  During the promotional tour for “It Ends with Us,” something was not right between Justin Baldoni, the director and star of the film, and Blake Lively, his co-lead. For one, Baldoni and Lively were virtually never seen together. Clearly, something had happened on set, and signs pointed toward most of the cast being Team Lively. But as fans watched videos of Lively promoting the film, public opinion started turning against her. The interviews were jocular, which seemed tactless, given that the film was about domestic violence. It was a bad look for Lively. And yet it didn’t fully account for the sheer amount of hatred directed toward her online. In late December, Megan Twohey, Mike McIntire, and Julie Tate published an article in the New York Times. The story revealed abuses Lively had allegedly experienced on the set from Baldoni and Jamey Heath, the film’s lead producer, and presented an intricate media campaign conducted to preëmptively “cancel” Lively in retaliation for her ac...

  In the New Yorker Humor, learn about some lesser-known Hollywood “nepo babies.” Nepotism Babies You Probably Don’t Know About. Jessica Simpson’s uncle is none other than the star of the small screen Bart Simpson.

  Terrence Malick has long shunned the spotlight, but his work conveys the force of a mighty personality. A new biography offers a rare look at the director’s life and work—and illuminates his two-decade hiatus as a time of hidden art but art nonetheless. “It’s a rapturously detailed, sensitively observed, critically insightful account,” Richard Brody writes.

  The Trump transition team has waged an intense, and in many ways unprecedented, behind-the-scenes campaign ahead of Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing to intimidate and silence potential witnesses, aimed at keeping Republican senators in line and in the dark. “I’m deeply concerned by an apparent pattern of intimidation and threats, whether it’s legal action or reputational harm,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which will be holding Hegseth’s hearing. “It’s been pretty unnerving” for his Republican Senate colleagues, Blumenthal continued, “because this nominee is so deeply unqualified and unprepared,” yet they fear political retaliation from Trump if they vote their consciences. The Trump team’s efforts to curb dissent stretch from public-media campaigns, paid for by unelected billionaires, that target vulnerable senators in conservative states, to more underhanded tactics to intimidate and discredit potentially hostil...

 

  Peter Hessler chronicles the political career of Lauren Boebert, who established a cartoonish national image after a series of controversies—and recently won a third term after abruptly switching districts. Lauren Boebert’s Survival Instincts. The Colorado congresswoman’s inflammatory rhetoric has made her a national.

  Caught between competing impulses, we praise living in the moment while obsessing about what’s to come. Why are we so tormented by the future?

  “Facebook launched its fact-checking program after Donald Trump was first elected. Now that resistance appears out of fashion, the company has decided to end it.” The head of our fact-checking department writes about Meta’s decision to stop checking facts.

  The author of “James” and “Erasure” is renowned for his satires of genre, identity, and America. But his great target may be language itself. Percival Everett Can’t Say What His Novels Mean.

  If Buddhist art is meant to guide us to enlightenment, it just as often reveals the blood, beauty, and mystery of earthly life. Jackson Arn reviews a new show at the Met that spotlights Buddhist mandalas. Every Mandala Tells a Secret. If the Buddhist art is meant to guide us to enlightenment, it just as often reveals the blood, beauty, and mystery of earthly life.

  Some of the optimism of the early Internet seems to live on in the whimsical videos of the YouTubers James Hobson and Colin Furze. But their diverging career paths offer a lesson in creativity and capitalism. A Lesson in Creativity and Capitalism from Two Zany YouTubers. Some of the optimism of the early Internet seems to live on in the whimsical videos of James Hobson and Colin Furze.

A writer is suing the author of the “Crave” series for copying her unpublished manuscript. Taken one by one, few examples in the case rise to the level of infringement. But the totality of how the beats are strung together is startling.  

  The sci-fi series “Severance” was hailed as a dark, timely satire of office life—but its return is bogged down by abstract ethical conundrums and rote emotional ones. The New Season of “Severance” Is All Work and No Play. The sci-fi series was hailed as a dark, timely satire of office life—but its return is bogged down by abstract ethical conundrums and rote emotional ones.

  In the 1920s, philosophers began applying the psychoanalytic concept of transference to the classroom. Anyone who has ever experienced a “bad class,” either as a student or as a teacher, will recognize the dynamics they described, Merve Emre writes. Are You My Mother? Transference and the contemporary classroom.

  On Mary Renault’s birthday, revisit Daniel Mendelsohn on his life-changing correspondence with the author, whose novels about love and the ancient Greeks elicited passionate mail from her readers.

  Mattel has amassed a long slate of projects. Some 45 films are in development, including Daniel Kaluuya’s movie about Barney, the purple dinosaur, and others revolving around characters like He-Man and Polly Pocket.

  “Ignatius J. Reilly—the godfather of the Internet troll, the Abraham of neckbeards, the 4chan edgelord to rule them all—was no anachronism,” Tom Bissell writes. “He was a prediction.” The Uneasy Afterlife of “A Confederacy of Dunces” The book has long been considered a classic. But, forty years after its publication, its virtues seem inextricable from its flaws.