Mushrooms, the Last Survivors

The mushrooms sit on high, behind glass, above bottles of Armagnac and mezcal in a bar at the Standard hotel in Manhattan’s East Village. They are barely recognizable at first, just eerie silhouettes resembling coral growths in an aquarium, blooming in laboratory-teal light: tightly branched clusters of oyster mushrooms in hot pink, yolk yellow and…

Help! My Boss Is a Conspiracy Theorist

Send questions about the office, money, careers and work-life balance to workfriend@nytimes.com. Include your name and location, or a request to remain anonymous. Letters may be edited. QAnon bosses My pretty intelligent, chill, fun boss seems to be buying into the conspiracy theory nonsense ever since “antifa” showed up in the Seattle area. He mentioned…

C.D.C.’s Contentious Testing Guidance on Covid-19 Was Not Written by Its Scientists

Here’s what you need to know: ImageTesting at the Wyandotte County Health Department in Kansas last month.Credit…Christopher (KS) Smith for The New York Times A much-criticized testing recommendation on the C.D.C.’s website last month was not written by C.D.C. scientists. A heavily criticized recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month about…

Tale of a Classic SoHo Loft

Linda Sampson bought her loft in SoHo back in 1972 for $15,000. “That was a lot,” said Ms. Sampson, an artist, who had to borrow $10,000 from her father to close on the apartment. “I could have bought a co-op on the Bowery for $5,000, but I thought, ‘Who wants to live on the Bowery?’…