Day 2: Your Ugly Christmas Sweater Is Beautiful in Its Own Way
The Times’s fashion director casts a discerning eye on this peculiar holiday tradition.
China Has an Extraordinary Covid-19 Dilemma
Is it thinkable now? This week, my colleague Paul Krugman wrote that the protests were a sign that “China lost the Covid war,” emphasizing that, despite appearances early in the pandemic, democracies now seem to have definitely outperformed autocracies, and calling on Chinese leaders to recognize the error of their ways and change course. In…
Elon Musk Hopes to Test a Brain Implant in Humans Next Year
In a presentation showcasing the Neuralink implant that Elon Musk hopes will someday connect the human brain to a computer, two monkeys were reportedly moving computer cursors with their brains. The feat was first documented by others in a human in 2006 in the pre-YouTube era and with technology that is far more cumbersome, mooring…
Poem: (Intuitions. She)
In Coral Bracho’s poem, translated by Forrest Gander from the Spanish, we are witnesses to the thoughts of the poet’s mother, who died from complications of Alzheimer’s. The mother vividly depicts the terror of losing yourself within a formerly capable and operating mind and body. Initially, she answers her own questions rapidly with both confusion…
How I Hold It Together: Phone Lockboxes and More
The deputy editor of Well shares tips for staying happy, healthy and balanced.
FDA Considering New Approach to Blood Donation by Gay and Bisexual Men
The researchers, who enrolled about 1,600 gay and bisexual men in eight metropolitan areas, are hoping to identify a set of screening questions that can differentiate men who are more likely to have recently acquired H.I.V. from those who are less likely to have recently contracted the virus. Participants in the project, known as the…
Deaths From Substance Abuse Rose Sharply Among Older Americans in 2020
Deaths due to substance abuse, particularly of alcohol and opioids, rose sharply among older Americans in 2020, the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, as lockdowns disrupted routines and isolation and fear spread, federal health researchers reported on Wednesday. Alcohol and opioid deaths remained far less common among older people than among those middled-aged and…
Is Spreading Medical Misinformation a Doctor’s Free Speech Right?
When Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill that would punish California doctors for spreading false information about Covid-19 vaccines and treatments, he pledged that it would apply only in the most “egregious instances” of misleading patients. It may never have the chance. Even before the law, the nation’s first of its kind, takes…
Is It Toxic to Tell Everyone to Get Therapy?
About 30 minutes into “Stutz,” a new Netflix documentary from Jonah Hill, the movie’s slick veneer cracks open to expose a deeper artifice. We see Hill and his therapist, the 70-something Phil Stutz, shot in crisp black and white, sitting side by side in what appears to be Stutz’s Los Angeles office. Hill has long…
When He Stood Up Quickly, He Sometimes Fainted. What Was It?
Years before, the patient had fallen in the bathtub, broken his ribs and punctured a lung. Blood filled his chest and collapsed the lung. He had to be rushed to the hospital. Patients who are stuck in bed while in the hospital are at risk of developing blood clots in the veins of their legs…