American Rituals

Abiquiú, New Mexico Photography by Justin Kaneps At the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, a remote abbey beside the Chama River in northern New Mexico, some two dozen Benedictine monks begin their days in darkness. At 3:30 a.m. one Sunday this past winter, a bell summoned the monks to vigils, the night prayer. Under…

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Happy Birthday, Omicron

A single subvariant is not gaining all of the new mutations, however. Ben Murrell, a computational biologist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and his colleagues are tracking more than 180 Omicron subvariants that have independently gained mutations causing them to grow faster than BA.5. These subvariants are going through a process that Charles Darwin…

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Anything but Turkey

The headline says it all: We are entering a turkey-free zone. (Unless you have turkey leftovers, in which case I recommend this pho.) The flavors below are a departure from archetypal Thanksgiving dishes. But first, I want to hear about your holiday meal. Were there any culinary triumphs? Disasters? Did you finally nail that pie?…

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