Perhaps Spotlight’s win shouldn’t have been surprising—it was a diffuse Oscar season, with a lot of favorite films but no consensus pick, and that’s the kind of year in which a film that almost everybody liked can rise to the top. Mad Max: Fury Road, The Revenant, Room, and The Big Short all had their passionate fans, but weren’t generally popular enough to be marked as consistent favorites. Spotlight, a sober tale of journalism done right, was less sweeping or cinematic than many of the other nominated pictures, but it was still an important tale powerfully told: enough for it to win Oscar’s biggest prize. Trivia: The last film to win Best Picture and just one other Oscar (Spotlight took Best Original Screenplay) was Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth in 1953.
Chris Rock was laser-focused on the #OscarsSoWhite controversy from beginning to end—his entire opening monologue swung at it, and he interspersed several strong bits through the show, returning to the interviews with real-life cinemagoers of color that worked so well in his first hosting gig. It was an acidic night on that front, but it had to be, and the Academy’s President, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, made an impassioned plea to members to accept the changes geared towards expanding voter diversity, as if to say, let’s stop this publicity disaster from ever happening again.
The big winners were Spotlight, Mad Max: Fury Road (six wins), and The Revenant (three wins), but voters spread the wealth among the Best Picture nominees. Room took home Best Actress, Bridge of Spies won Best Supporting Actor, and The Big Short won Best Adapted Screenplay—only Brooklyn and The Martian went home empty-handed. For the third time in four years, Best Picture and Best Director were split between different films, a historical rarity that is now becoming voters’ favorite tactic to honor a film they technically respected (like Life of Pi, Gravity, and The Revenant) alongside the expected Best Picture movie. Now, the Academy looks firmly towards its future—and its effort to drastically expand its members of color in the coming years. —David Sims
The biggest upset of the night came at the very end. Many critics had expressed a hope that the sobering and methodical Spotlight would win, while acknowledging the likeliness that The Revenant would snag the award (the film took Best Actor and Best Director earlier). But it was Spotlight—a film that reaffirmed the power of investigative journalism to challenge powerful institutions, a film that perhaps more importantly gave voice to countless survivors of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church—that walked away with the honor.
Leonardo DiCaprio Wins Best Actor for The Revenant
AP
Everyone saw it coming, and he waged a furious campaign for the award, but there was still a strange sense of satisfaction to Leonardo DiCaprio’s Best Actor win for The Revenant. It puts an end to the tiresome narrative that accompanies any over-nominated movie star who’s never won—this was his sixth nod—and perhaps it’ll free him up to take riskier projects in the future, since he no longer has to hunt for a trophy. The narrative around DiCaprio’s campaign was heavily focused on the grueling physical toil of the film’s outdoor shoot, and DiCaprio noted in his speech that production had to relocate to the southern tip of Argentina to find snow, urging the audience to acknowledge the damage of climate change, one of his long-standing causes. “We need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating,” he said.
In an evening with few surprises … another non-surprise! Larson, along with her co-star Jacob Tremblay, were the soul of Room, a film about a young mother trying to protect and nurture her son in the most unbearable circumstances. The 26-year-old, who swept the best-actress field for the major precursor awards (Golden Globes, SAG Awards, BAFTA Awards), thanked her director, Lenny Abrahmson, Room’s novelist and screenwriter, Emma Donoghue, and Tremblay.
Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu wins Best Director for The Revenant
Mad Max: Fury Road’s technical sweep seemed to presage an insurgent win for George Miller, its revered director, but in the end, the favorite took the prize—Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, for The Revenant, which will almost certainly end up taking Best Picture as well. Iñárritu won last year for Birdman, making him the first director to win back-to-back Oscars since Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who won in 1949 and 1950 for A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve. John Ford also accomplished the feat in 1940 and 1941 for The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley.
The sincere and unapologetic theater kid known as Lady Gaga may not actually be made for these times, given that cool, controlled social-media image projection is now the preferred mode for pop stars. But though her twitching and gesturing behind a white piano on a dark stage while performing “Till It Happens to You” tonight caused some snickers on Twitter, the truth is that she vested a so-so rock ballad with energy and specificity that nearly made for an iconic moment. At some points, her gaze followed the camera as it panned while she sang: a confrontation. In other moments, she seemed totally lost to emotion.
Joe Biden introduced her, calling on all viewers to join a pledge to “intervene in situations where consent has not or cannot be given.” Toward the end of the song, women and men identified as victims of sexual abuse came forward, with messages written on their arms: “NOT YOUR FAULT,” “UNBREAKABLE.” The song had been written with Diane Warren for The Hunting Ground, a documentary about campus rape.
In an upset, Sam Smith and Jimmy Napes won for their theme to the Bond movie Spectre, edging out The Hunting Ground anthem “Till It Happens to You,” by Lady Gaga and Dianne Warren (the latter has had her songs nominated eight times for an Oscar, though she’s never won). In his acceptance speech. Smith dedicated the win to the LGBT community around the world, saying “I stand here tonight as a proud gay man, and I hope we can all stand together as equals one day.” This Oscar also means Smith is halfway to an EGOT.
The Genius of Live Music for the “In Memoriam” Segment
AP
The “In Memoriam” tribute is usually one of the most predictable elements of an Oscar show—a montage scored with treacly music whose swings and swells are meant to pull at the heartstrings of the audience. There’s another predictable aspect of all that, though: Audiences, wanting to applaud the lives and accomplishments of those being remembered, end up giving extra applause to the actors and directors they’re most familiar with. It’s understandable. It’s also a little bit awkward.
This year, though, the montage’s musical accompaniment was performed live. Dave Grohl, with an acoustic guitar, sang The Beatles’ “Blackbird.” It was a lovely rendition of a lovely song, but it had another effect, too: The live performance kept the audience from applauding during the tributes on the screen. David Bowie got the same treatment as writers and producers. Everyone was remembered equally—and paid, together, the tribute of silence.
He’s one of the most legendary composers in the history of film, and he won an Honorary Oscar in 2007 (Clint Eastwood sweetly translated his speech from the Italian onstage). But Ennio Morricone, who has been scoring films since 1959, had never won for Best Original Score until tonight, when he won for The Hateful Eight. The 87-year-old flew to Hollywood for the ceremony, and it was apparently worth the trip—the Dolby Theater audience rose in a standing ovation before he even got to the podium.
Best Foreign Film was one of the Oscars’ strongest categories this year, but Son of Saul was always a runaway favorite to win. The movie won rave reviews for its unique visual take on a grueling Holocaust narrative, following two days in the life of a Jewish prisoner assigned to a work unit in Auschwitz. The movie’s director, Laszlo Nemes, accepted the award, Hungary’s second Oscar (its first was for Mephisto in 1981).
Benjamin Cleary and Serena Armitage won for their film Stutterer, a sweet comedy about a man with a speech impediment who looks for love online. Armitage thanked the Academy for taking the time to honor shorts, which still haven’t made it into the mainstream. They are, however, a hotbed for creativity—a topic I wrote about this week—and the reboot-riddled film industry needs them more than ever.
Chris Rock has been going pretty hard, as expected, with his criticism of the whiteness of this year’s Oscar nominees. In one of his best bits, he interviewed black cinema-goers in Los Angeles, asking them what they thought about the lack of black people at the Oscars. One of the gentlemen he interviewed pointed out that Asians and Hispanic actors were also being ignored by the Academy—the first time, as many noted on Twitter, that people of color who aren’t black had been explicitly acknowledged during the ceremony. (So far this evening, a few of winners of Asian and Latino descent have been onstage, including Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, a Pakistani filmmaker; Emmanuel Lubezki; and the creators behind the Chilean short film Bear Story.)
Even among advocates for greater representation in Hollywood, it’s a complicated issue, as I wrote earlier this week. No hashtag or host or group can be responsible for changing the dynamics of Hollywood, or the mainstream media, or the racial politics of the entire country.
Amy Winehouse’s extraordinary and tragic life led to Amy, which has turned out to be extraordinary in its genre. It was the rare bona fide documentary hit, making more money than any other British non-fiction movie ever. It also drew a mix of acclaim and controversy for the way it collaged home footage of Winehouse with paparazzi videos that the producers paid to use, arguably rewarding the same media outlets that hounded the singer in life. Accepting the Oscar for best documentary film, the director Asif Kapadia said the movie was “about showing the world who she really was, not a tabloid persona: the beautiful girl with an amazing soul, funny, intelligent, witty, someone special, someone who needed looking after.”
“This is what happens what determined women get together,” said Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy after she accepted the award for Best Documentary Short for her film A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness. The movie is about honor killing in Obaid-Chinoy’s home country of Pakistan; in her speech, she paid tribute to “the brave men out there who want a more just society for women,” and revealed that after watching her film, the Pakistani prime minister decided to change the nation’s laws on honor killing.
Mark Rylance Wins Best Supporting Actor for Bridge of Spies
Mad Max’s technical domination wasn’t expected to be total and Ex Machina’s visual effects win was surprising, but the first huge shock of the night was Mark Rylance defeating the heavily favored Sylvester Stallone for Best Supporting Actor. Rylance had collected the lion’s share of critics awards for his work as the mild-mannered Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, but prognosticators thought Stallone’s work as an aged Rocky Balboa would be a sentimental favorite. Rylance’s speech was as classy as ever (check out some of his Tony wins on YouTube when you have the chance), praising his director Steven Spielberg (“Unlike some other leaders we’re being presented with these days, he leads with such love”) and his co-star Tom Hanks.
No surprise that a film directed by the man who helmed Up and Monsters, Inc. won for being a deeply heartfelt yet funny story that appealed to kids and adults alike. In his acceptance speech, Pete Docter offered a message to children who might be watching: that even though they couldn’t necessarily control the feelings of anger or fear they sometimes experienced, they “can make stuff. Make films, draw, write. It’ll make a world of difference.”
Best Animated Short goes to Bear Story, a sad but beautiful film about a lonely bear who makes an animatronic diorama in order to remember his family after he was taken by the circus. After accepting the award, the first for their home country of Chile, the director Gabriel Osorio and the producer Pato Escala honored Osorio’s grandfather, who inspired the film, and “all the people like him who have suffered in exile.”
Predictably, Hollywood has been the target of lots of #OscarsSoWhite jokes tonight. Less predictably, so have been Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, who are boycotting the ceremony. In his opening monologue, Chris Rock said Jada refusing the Oscars would be like Rock refusing Rihanna’s panties: There was no invitation in the first place. He also said that while it might be unfair that Will didn’t get nominated for Concussion, it also wasn’t fair how much money he made from Wild Wild West. Later, in a video purporting to pay tribute to Black History Month, Angela Bassett shouted out works like Enemy of the State and mentioned a “fresh” talent … and then revealed that she’d been honoring Jack Black. The gag, of course, was about Hollywood’s tendency to pass over black actors for white ones. But it was also about trolling Will Smith.
I’m not one to seriously partake in the year Oscars prognostication, but ... I didn’t see that one coming! Sure, it didn’t have the spectacle of Star Wars or The Martian, but it’s nice to see a film as special—and frankly under-appreciated—as Ex Machina score such a win. (Who could forget all the horrifying android-skin peeling scenes?)
About That ‘Let’s Make the Acceptance Speeches More Substantial’ Experiment…
You know that whole experiment they’re doing at this year’s Oscars, the one in which the show’s producers asked nominees to submit lists of the people they wanted to thank before the show? The idea was that, if the names of the thankees could scroll on the screen while the winner delivers his or her speech, that would free up the winner to give a more substantial speech. Think Viola Davis at the Emmys.
Well … old habits die hard. This evening’s speeches thus far have been extremely conventional. They have been chock-full of the same thing they have been in years past: thank-yous delivered to the winners’ family and friends and fellow nominees and “teams.”
In her acceptance of her Best Supporting Actress Oscar, Alicia Vikander spent her speech thanking “Working Title and Focus.” And “my dream team.” She sought out “Tom—where are you?—my director” in the audience. She sought out Eddie Redmayne, her co-star, to thank him and tell him that “you raised my game.” She thanked her “mom and dad” for “giving me the belief that anything can happen.”
Conventional stuff, right? The list of Vikander’s thankees scrolled so quickly as to be almost illegible … but it didn’t seem to change Vikander’s speech. People want to express gratitude. And even when they try to use their time on the Oscars stage to make larger points—as Mad Max’s costume designer, Jenny Beavan, did—they are reminded of how limited that time actually is. “It could happen to us, Mad Max, if we’re not kinder to each other and we don’t stop polluting our atmosphere.”
Beavan’s speech was interrupted by another time-honored Oscar tradition: the play-off. The music, in this case, was a particularly passive-aggressive selection on the part of an Oscars aiming for efficiency: “Flight of the Valkyries.”
Mad Max: Fury Road Wins Best Sound Editing and Sound Mixing
George Miller’s action epic continues to sweep the technical categories—it now has six awards, making it pretty much mathematically certain that it will be the biggest winner of the night. Its mostly Australian crew are making for some energetic winners, too—one of the Sound Editing honorees got bleeped out for a foul-mouthed cheer as he took the trophy, and another was wearing a skull and crossbones necklace with his black tie. Mad Max’s technical sweep could presage a surprise Best Director or Picture win, but more likely it was just the voters’ visual favorite. The Revenant was expected to take a few of these, though, and the fact that it hasn’t won outside of cinematography may signal a lack of enthusiasm for the film among the many voting branches.
Margaret Sixel wins Mad Max: Fury Road’s fourth Oscar of the night for Film Editing. It’s not only her first Oscar but her first nomination. Sixel praised the “creative courage and guts” it took to get the movie made.
Good job, Chivo. Emmanuel Lubezki won his third consecutive Oscar, after winning for Birdman and Gravity the last two years (it was his eighth Oscar nomination, and he’s now one of only seven people ever to have kept up an Oscar streak for three years). For all the focus on the lack of diversity at the Oscars, it’s at least heartening to see a Latino cinematographer, working on a film by Latino director, be honored for his impeccable work.
Mad Max: Fury Road wins its third straight award, this time for Makeup and Hairstyling (the movie is up for 10 Oscars overall). Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega, and Damian Martin thanked the film’s director, George Miller, who’s also nominated for Best Director.
Mad Max: Fury Road just won its second Oscar of the night—this time for best production design. In accepting the award alongside Lisa Wilson, the production designer Colin Gibson joked that the award could be considered the first award for diversity, after quipping that the film was about “a man with mental health issues, an Amazon amputee, and five runaway sex slaves.”
“You’re not allowed to ask women what they’re wearing anymore,” Chris Rock said at the end of his Oscars monologue. And, indeed: On the red carpet this evening, the perennial question—not what, but “who are you wearing?”—was relatively rare. Instead of asking women on the red carpet to describe their outfits, journalists instead made do with other kinds of banter. (Mostly: “I’ve been doing this for like 72 hours,” Mindy Kaling joked to E! of her Oscars-primping routine.)
That amounted to a success for the #AskHerMore campaign, started in February 2014 by the Representation Project and objecting to the fact that women on the red carpet are so often asked about fashion while men are asked about … basically anything else. Rock offered an explanation for that maybe-changing fact in his monologue: “They ask the men more,” Rock said, “because the men are all wearing the exact same outfits.”
Alicia Vikander Wins Best Supporting Actress for The Danish Girl
No surprise in the Best Supporting Actress category—Alicia Vikander picked up her first Oscar (on her first nomination) for her role in The Danish Girl, beating out Jennifer Jason Leigh, Rooney Mara, Rachel McAdams, and Kate Winslet. Still, many critics have wondered whether she better deserved to win for her work in a different 2015 film—her performance as the mysterious A.I. Ava in Ex Machina.
When it was released, I wrote that Sam Smith’s “Writing’s on the Wall” made for an unusually vulnerable, morose James Bond theme, and that some people would see it as complicating—or betraying—the 007 franchise’s traditional macho mystique. Now, we get Sarah Silverman introducing the song by delivering an acidicanti-Bond routine where she said she hadn’t seen Spectre and reported that Bond has an inadequate manhood. Smith wobbled a bit, both in pitch and in posture, as he sang.
Chris Rock walked onto the Oscar stage a man with a mission, and he largely delivered, with an incisive monologue that focused on the Academy’s all-white slate of actors this year and pulled no punches. One of his first bits focused on how vocal the protests were in 2016 compared to decades prior, despite Hollywood’s long legacy of systemic racism. “We had real things to protest at the time,” Rock joked. “When your grandma’s swinging from a tree, it’s really hard to care about Best Foreign Documentary Short.”
It was an intense joke, and one of many that seemed to land harder for viewers at home than the audience at the Dolby Theater. The camera cut, repeatedly and painfully, to (mostly white) actors and directors in the audience, often smiling thinly and clapping at jokes about the structural racism of their industry. “It’s not burning cross racist … Hollywood is sorority racist,” Rock said. “It’s like, ‘We like you, Wanda, but you’re not a Kappa.’” At one point, he noted how easy it was for actors like Leonardo DiCaprio to get varied roles compared to A-list black actors like Jamie Foxx; the camera switched right to DiCaprio, grinning and bearing it.
Not all of Rock’s jokes landed, and he made some strange digressions—at one point, he mocked Jada Pinkett Smith for boycotting the ceremony, saying she wasn’t invited. To close his speech out, he made fun of the growing trend to ask actresses on the red carpet about more than the dresses they’re wearing, a slightly thudding topic to wrap such a hard-hitting monologue. But in general, the opening was just what the ceremony needed.
Charles Randolph and Adam McKay won Best Adapted Screenplay for their work on The Big Short, based on Michael Lewis's book about the 2008 financial crisis. McKay, who commented on the pervasive influence of big money in government in his acceptance speech, is also nominated for Best Director.
The first Oscar of the night goes to Spotlight for best original screenplay. In their acceptance speech, the screenwriters Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer dedicated the film to “all the journalists who hold the powerful accountable.”
The ceremony has been defined by questions about racial inclusion, but there’s another social-issue sub-theme: sexual assault. Joe Biden will introduce a performance from Lady Gaga, whose nominated song “Till It Happens to You” was recorded for The Hunting Ground, a documentary about rape on college campuses. Speaking on the red carpet, Gaga mentioned her own sexual assault as well as the statistics saying that one in five women will be raped in college. A number of other nominated films, like Spotlight and Room, also revolve around sexual predation.
Oh, no. This tweet—since deleted—is really not a good way to begin the Oscars ceremony. It is, however, a really good reminder of the ways #OscarsSoWhite extends beyond the Oscars themselves. —Megan Garber
People who refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine will have higher health-care costs. The rest of us will foot the bill.
Imagine it’s 2026. A man shows up in an emergency room, wheezing. He’s got pneumonia, and it’s hitting him hard. He tells one of the doctors that he had COVID-19 a few years earlier, in late 2021. He had refused to get vaccinated, and ended up contracting the coronavirus months after most people got their shots. Why did he refuse? Something about politics, or pushing back on government control, or a post he saw on Facebook. He doesn’t really remember. His lungs do, though: By the end of the day, he’s on a ventilator.
You’ll pay for that man’s decisions. So will I. We all will—in insurance premiums, if he has a plan with your provider, or in tax dollars, if the emergency room he goes to is in a public hospital. The vaccine refusers could cost us billions. Maybe more, over the next few decades, with all the complications they could develop. And we can’t do anything about it except hope that more people get their shots than those who say they will right now.
And now my husband wants to move halfway across the country for his job.
Dear Therapist,
I’ve been married for 25 years to a man who went from having many sexual issues and hang-ups to being impotent, and I am now in a totally sexless marriage. He can’t be helped, and frankly, I am not attracted to him at all anyway. We’re good partners and parents, and our family works well.
At the suggestion of a therapist, I sought out and found a wonderful man in a similar situation. We became friends and then lovers. The sex is the best of my entire life. It has given me so much joy and made me feel alive again. It’s also one of the best relationships I’ve ever had. No games, lots of laughs and connecting on many levels. The whole affair has made me a happier person and less resentful of my husband and marriage.
When Michaeleen Doucleff met parents from around the world, she encountered millennia-old methods of raising good kids that made American parenting seem bizarre and ineffective.
At one point in her new book, the NPR journalist Michaeleen Doucleff suggests that parents consider throwing out most of the toys they’ve bought for their kids. It’s an extreme piece of advice, but the way Doucleff frames it, it seems entirely sensible: “Kids spent two hundred thousand years without these items,” she writes.
Doucleff arrives at this conclusion while traveling, with her then-3-year-old daughter, to meet and learn from parents in a Maya village on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico; in an Inuit town in a northern Canadian territory; and in a community of hunter-gatherers in Tanzania. During her outings, she witnesses well-adjusted, drama-free kids share generously with their siblings and do chores without being asked.
If your social life is leaving you unfulfilled, you might have too many deal friends, and not enough real friends.
“How to Build a Life” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness.
Arthur C. Brooks will discuss the science of happiness live at 11 a.m. ET on May 20. Register for In Pursuit of Happiness here.
Think for a minute about your friendships. Some friends you would text with any silly thought; others you only call a couple of times a year. Some are people you look up to; others you like, but do not especially admire. You fit into these categories for others as well—maybe you are helpful to one person, and a confidant to another. We get different things out of different relationships, which is all well and good.
There is one type of friend almost everyone has: the buddy who can help you get ahead in life, the friend from whom you need or want something. You don’t necessarily use this person—the benefit might be mutual—but the friendship’s core benefit is more than camaraderie.
By the early 2040s, Trump-appointed chief judges will simultaneously sit atop nearly every appeals court in the country.
The Trump presidency may be over, but the Trump era has only just begun—at least when it comes to influence over the nation’s courts. Measured solely by the number of judges he appointed, Donald Trump’s impact is staggering: 234 judges, including 54 powerful appellate judges, almost one out of every three. By comparison, President Barack Obama appointed 172 judges (30 of them appellate) in his first term, while George W. Bush managed 204 (35 appellate). But Trump will have an even greater influence than this measurement suggests. That is because his judges won’t reach the apogee of their power until the early 2040s, when Trump-appointed chief judges are on track to simultaneously sit atop nearly every appeals court in the country.
The U.S. stumbled early in the pandemic, but the vaccine rollout could reboot the country’s image.
Every so often, an emerging technology changes the global balance of power, alters alliances, and shifts the relationships among nations. After World War II, nuclear weapons overthrew all of the existing geopolitical paradigms. The countries that got the bomb were considered global powers; countries that did not have it sought it, so that they could be considered powerful too.
Now a different technology is shifting global politics: the coronavirus vaccines—or, quite possibly, vaccines more broadly. Unlike nuclear weapons, vaccines don’t have the potential to end life on Earth, and their production and distribution will never require rigid rules to limit who gets them. Indeed, the international institutions being created to govern vaccine distribution are designed to promote proliferation, not restrict it. Nevertheless, global politics will be shaped by the vaccines, as will domestic politics in some countries, and in ways that might outlast this particular pandemic.
When articles about pandemic risk come with images of beachgoers, readers draw incorrect conclusions about how the virus spreads.
During a pandemic, public-health messaging is essential to saving lives. Media organizations have played a major role in that messaging over the past year, and not always for the better.
Across the English-speaking world, many news stories about the spread of COVID-19 have been accompanied by photographs of people in outdoor settings, particularly beaches. “Many news organizations have seized upon beaches, and scenes of beachgoers, as a sign of why things are so bad in the United States,” Zeynep Tufekci wrote in The Atlantic last summer. She has compiled many examples of the phenomenon in an ongoing Twitter thread.
Why publications keep using these photos is hard to pinpoint. In a health crisis, many people may feel provoked by the sight of others cavorting in the sun—even though one of the best ways to avoid COVID-19, which spreads easiest when individuals inhale particles exhaled by others, is to avoid public indoor spaces in favor of outdoor spaces. Or perhaps beach pictures, which have a somewhat aspirational quality and typically feature attractive people wearing bathing suits, just draw lots of readers.
Across the world, leaders withhold property rights to cement their control even as they impoverish their own people.
Development economists typically tell a compelling story about land reform: Countries can supercharge their development by leveling inequality and radically reallocating assets. In East Asia, nations that followed this simple formula transformed themselves into economic powerhouses.
So why haven’t more countries adopted this well-established blueprint? The governments that have the will and capacity to adopt major land reforms are typically authoritarian. Most authoritarian governments seek first and foremost to entrench their power. These governments would rather control their rural populations than see them thrive and become autonomous. For authoritarians, land reform is a convenient tool to destroy rival elites in the countryside while entangling rural workers in the tentacles of authoritarian influence.
A deadlier and more transmissible variant has taken root, but now we have the tools to stop it if we want.
Across the United States, cases have started rising again. In a few cities, even hospitalizations are ticking up. The twists and turns of a pandemic can be hard to predict, but this most recent increase was almost inevitable: A more transmissible and more deadly variant called B.1.1.7 has established itself at the precise moment when many regions are opening up rapidly by lifting mask mandates, indoor-gathering restrictions, and occupancy limits on gyms and restaurants.
We appear to be entering our fourth surge.
The good news is that this one is different. We now have an unparalleled supply of astonishingly efficacious vaccines being administered at an incredible clip. If we act quickly, this surge could be merely a blip for the United States. But if we move too slowly, more people will become infected by this terrible new variant, which is acutely dangerous to those who are not yet vaccinated.
A hint of warmth from our sun helped reveal a mysterious comet’s secrets.
In 2019, Gennady Borisov, an amateur astronomer in Crimea, discovered his seventh comet. This icy object wasn’t like the others Borisov had found, or like any of the other comets in the solar system. This one wasn’t orbiting the sun.
Instead, it had been drifting alone in interstellar space, following its own path, until one day, it entered our solar system and grazed past the sun. Warmed by the heat of a star, for the first time in who knows how long, the icy comet thawed just a little bit.
Some of Earth’s most powerful telescopes captured the cosmic interloper as it went by. Astronomers could see the comet enveloped in a fuzzy glow of once-frozen dust particles loosed by the sun.
By analyzing these particles from afar, researchers have managed to learn about the comet’s composition, its origins, and its long journey here. One recent finding demonstrates something rather melancholy.