When Joseph R. Biden Jr. dropped the Arabic phrase “inshallah” in the first presidential debate last month, Muslim Twitter lost it. Inshallah, which means “if god wills,” can be a double-edged sword, equal parts sincere and savage. I grew up with a Muslim Iranian mother, and having spent time in Iran, where Farsi speakers also…
A portrait of Chiuri, made by Mickalene Thomas for ELLE’s October issue. Mickalene Thomas Maria Grazia Chiuri, the creative director of Dior, is looking at me from the sand-gray couch where she is calmly perched in a giant, airy studio in Paris. She’s dressed in jeans, a white blouse, and sandals, with her platinum hair…
The chief executive of Pfizer said on Friday that the company would not apply for emergency authorization of its coronavirus vaccine before the third week of November, ruling out President Trump’s assertion that a vaccine would be ready before Election Day on Nov. 3. In a statement posted to the company website, the chief executive,…
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. Mean Girls Is Not Just a Movie I have a job I enjoy, and it’s going well. I’ve been getting more responsibility, and I get on well with…
Leaving the city for the suburbs is on the minds of many New Yorkers this year, as remote work has made it possible for some to live just about anywhere. But the bidding wars and spiking home prices that have resulted from the migration aren’t the only ways the suburbs are changing. According to June…
A potential therapy for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a fatal neurological disorder, may allow patients to live several months longer than they otherwise would have, according to a study published Friday. The two-drug combination, dreamed up by two college students, is one of several potential treatments raising the hopes of patients with A.L.S., also known as…
Emily Hecht takes her new role of “picnic designer” very seriously. Ms. Hecht arranges a picnic by layering neutral and blue-hued blankets incongruously and setting a low wooden table on top of them with a flowing white table runner. She lays down a place mat and then creates a setting of alternating dishes — white…
Haley Messner and Tanner Cemper do not disagree that 2020 has been a difficult year. But for them, it’s a tossup on whether 2019 might have been worse. Ms. Messner said she was “pretty homeless” for a while that year. Mr. Cemper, too, spent a solid part of it feeling he had skidded off the…
On a Friday evening in October 2015, Amol Somnath Naik wanted to head home for the day. He was working for Google at the time, and had spent the week accompanying an out-of-town executive to meetings in Atlanta. The final event of the week was a dinner to discuss diversity in the city’s tech industry.…
It took about 12 years for Elaine Stott and Tonya Thomas to give each other a shot. They worked together in the same Toyota plant in Kentucky, where a mutual friend would tell both of them how great the other was. Ms. Stott and Ms. Thomas wouldn’t hear it — at least early on. “We…