James' World 2

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“Exactly one year ago, we had that big beautiful victory, exactly one year,” Mr. Trump said on Wednesday at a breakfast with Republican senators at the White House. “And last night it was not expected to be a victory — it was very Democrat areas — but I don’t think it was good for Republicans.”

Mr. Trump’s own meandering focus on the economy has given plenty of fodder to Democrats. He tore down the East Wing for a new ballroom, lavishly remodeled the Lincoln bathroom, paved over the Rose Garden for a patio like the one at Mar-a-Lago, and threw a “Great Gatsby”-esque Halloween party with the theme “a little party never killed nobody” during a government shutdown and on the eve of cuts to food assistance.

“Trump is indifferent to the pain American families are feeling,” said Representative Suzan DelBene of Washington, who is leading the campaign arm of House Democrats headed into the 2026 midterms.

Only 30 percent of voters believe Mr. Trump has lived up to their expectations for tackling inflation and the cost of living, according to a recent NBC News poll, his lowest mark for any issue asked. And a meager 27 percent of voters in a CNN poll in late October said Mr. Trump’s policies had improved the country’s economic conditions — less than half of those who thought he had made matters worse.

“Trump promised to lower costs on Day 1,” Ms. DelBene said. “It’s a big broken promise from the Republican Party.”

Abigail Spanberger, a Democratic former congresswoman, flipped the governorship of Virginia with a campaign highlighting the fallout for the state’s economy from Mr. Trump’s efforts to dismantle parts of the federal government. Mikie Sherrill, a four-term congresswoman, won with a platform that prominently included a Day 1 promise to declare a state of emergency on utility costs and freeze rates.

Both won by double digits.

The New Jersey race was especially revealing because the Republican nominee, Jack Ciattarelli, had tried to tap into the same frustration that voters have about the economic status quo — and direct that rage at Democrats who control the state government. But ads that had attacked Ms. Sherrill as “more of the same but worse” ultimately fell flat.

Kiersten Pels, a Republican National Committee spokeswoman, said that “these off-year races in deep-blue states aren’t predictors of 2026.” She insisted that voters still trusted Mr. Trump and that Democrats had gone “far left.”

Mr. Mamdani’s rise from obscurity to national stardom showed the mobilizing power of affordability for Democrats. He used a campaign centered on specific and sweeping promises to defeat a once-powerful former governor, Andrew M. Cuomo.

And Mr. Mamdani contrasted his own economic focus with the president’s wandering eye on the topic, at times saying that Mr. Trump had won on three promises in 2024 — to punish his enemies, do mass deportations and ease the cost of living — but only followed through on the first two.

Robert Blizzard, a Republican pollster, warned his party not to dismiss Mr. Mamdani and his “laserlike focus on” affordability, even as Republican strategists were eager to make the 34-year-old democratic socialist the next face of the Democratic Party.

“Don’t just chalk up a Mamdani win to a woke candidate winning a woke city,” Mr. Blizzard said. “This is the wake-up call for policymakers on both sides of the aisle about the importance of focusing your campaigns on cost and affordability.”

In Washington, congressional Democrats have opened a front in the affordability wars through a government shutdown that is now the longest in American history. Senate Democrats are so far refusing to vote to reopen the government unless Republicans and Mr. Trump agree to address health care costs that are rising as federal subsidies lapse.

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President Trump was a central character in this week’s elections, even though he never held rallies in Virginia or New Jersey, where key elections for governor unfolded. Credit…Anna Rose Layden for The New York Times

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In many parts of the country, home prices are still climbing, and inventory remains historically low. But the Federal Reserve has cut rates twice this year, and with more cuts expected, home sales and mortgage refinancing could soon pick up. That also means sellers will need to up their game in a more competitive market.

Fixing that leaky shower or replacing an aging roof could make all the difference. We’ve rounded up the top 13 features today’s buyers want most, according to a National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) survey. Some updates are quick and inexpensive DIY projects, while others require more time, money, and professional help, a challenge in the midst of ongoing labor and material shortages.

Overall, buyers are opting for smaller homes with design touches important to them, like a master bath on the main floor or a front porch. Buyers want to have plenty of comfortable, well-lit outdoor space. They also value nearby parks and walkability.

Want a higher sale price? Invest in the right upgrades

As the housing market continues to rebound, would-be sellers should think twice before skipping out on areas of their homes in need of serious upgrades. Home buyers are willing to spend more on homes with higher-quality finishes in sought-after neighborhoods. Ensure your home is in top condition to get the most attention and the highest possible price.

With a few exceptions, you’re unlikely to recoup all your remodeling costs when you sell. According to Remodeling magazine’s 2025 Cost vs. Value report, sellers were estimated to recoup 18% to 268% of the cost of the 23 projects considered in the report. For example, the average cost of a mid-range bathroom remodel is $26,138 (up from $24,424 in 2021). You’d recoup about $18,613 (74%) of that amount within a year.

The cost of doing nothing to your home can be far greater than the small loss you’ll incur on any home improvement project. “Getting stuck in time with your home isn’t a smart move and is rarely rewarded financially at sale time,” said Compass broker Brian K. Lewis. “In fact, it may cause your house to linger longer on the market longer. As a result, you’ll likely have to pay ongoing mortgage, maintenance, and staging costs.”

If you want to get the most bang for your buck, focus on features that most home buyers really want to see and that you’ll enjoy for as long as you live in the home. Home improvements can be expensive, but the right upgrades could help you command a higher sale price when it’s time to move.

If you’ve built up equity, consider using a home equity line of credit (HELOC) or a cash-out refinance to reinvest in your property and boost its long-term value.

Use the tool below to explore and compare today’s top home equity loan and HELOC offers to see how much you could borrow from your home’s value, powered by Bankrate:

Selling your home? Here are the 13 home features buyers want most.

1. Laundry room

 

• Cost of laundry room addition: $8,000 to $30,000
• Minimum cost of a laundry room renovation: $1,300

More than anything else, homeowners want a dedicated laundry room where they can hide the dirty clothes and stack the clean ones until they get put away. A separate laundry room tops the National Association of Home Builders’ (NAHB) list of most-wanted home features by buyers.

If you don’t have an existing laundry room and want to add one, the basement is usually the easiest (and cheapest) place to put it. The utility lines are already there, and in many cases, the basement is unfinished, so you won’t have to demolish anything first.

If you’re investing in a new washer and dryer, look for Energy Star-certified models that will save you energy and money. Add good lighting and a utility sink, where you can wash out or presoak heavily stained or dirty items. Depending on your budget and space, you can add stock or custom cabinetry, a folding table or countertops.

2. Patio

• Small patio (about 49 sq. ft.): $250 to $2,500
• Medium patio (about 144 sq. ft.): $750 to $7,200
• Large patio (400+ sq. ft.): $2,000 to $20,000

In today’s housing market, outdoor living spaces have become one of the most coveted outdoor home features.

It’s important for homeowners not to neglect the backyard area when prepping for resale, says Mike McGrew, chairman and CEO of McGrew Real Estate, a Lawrence, Kansas-based realty firm.

“When most buyers see a house with a really nice backyard, they start to envision themselves sitting outdoors with friends having drinks,” McGrew adds. Also, outdoor areas offer more living space without the cost of a large-scale home addition.

With the popularity of home renovation reality shows, many buyers have come to expect the eye-catching exterior features. The more expensive the home, the more buyers desire exterior features, such as an outdoor kitchen or fireplace.

Because patios are generally made of concrete or pavers, they tend to cost less than a wood deck or porch to construct and are generally easier to maintain, say, with powerwashing versus periodic staining and resealing or painting. However, their resale value will likely be less than a deck or porch.

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We come into the world screaming and vulnerable—entirely dependent on adult caregivers to keep us safe and teach us how to connect with others. The nature of these earliest relationships influences how we behave towards others and see the world long after we’ve grown, but in more complex and nuanced ways than researchers previously thought, according to the results of a large, decades-long study examining how the quality of children’s interactions with parents and close peers went on to influence their relationships in adulthood.

In particular, early dynamics with mothers predicted future attachment styles for all the primary relationships in participants’ lives, including with their parents, best friends, and romantic partners, the study found. “People who felt closer to their mothers and had less conflict with their mothers in childhood tended to feel more secure in all of their relationships in adulthood,” says Keely Dugan, an assistant professor of social personality psychology at the University of Missouri and lead author of the study, which was published in October in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. “That’s a really striking finding because it demonstrates the enduring impact of that first person who is supposed to be there for you.”

Early childhood friends also played a strong role in predicting how participants approached their future close friendships—and their romantic connections. “When you have those first friendships at school, that’s when you practice give-and-take dynamics,” Dugan says. “Relationships in adulthood then mirror those dynamics.”

The idea that earliest relationships have an outsized impact on our lives was popularized in psychology by Sigmund Freud. British psychiatrist John Bowlby later incorporated some core Freudian elements to create attachment theory, which helps explain variations in how people approach close relationships. “Some people are quite comfortable depending on others, opening up to them and using them as a secure base, whereas other people lack that confidence and trust,” says the new study’s co-author, R. Chris Fraley, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Researchers today define attachment styles by where people fall along two dimensions, each shaped by early experiences with caregivers. The first, attachment anxiety, measures your level of confidence in the availability and responsiveness of those you are close to. People high in attachment anxiety might have more intense fears of abandonment or need for reassurance. The second factor, attachment avoidance, involves how comfortable you feel opening up to others and depending on them for support. Those high in avoidance may believe that people cannot be counted on or trusted, so they avoid asking for help or emotional support—even if they need it. A relationship with high attachment anxiety, avoidance, or both is defined as more insecure, while a relationship that is low in both attachment anxiety and avoidance is considered to be secure: “You feel comfortable and close to the other person, you trust them to be there for you, and you feel supported,” Dugan says.

It can be difficult to study exactly how early relationships go on to influence attachment style, though, because people’s retrospective reports of what happened to them in childhood are skewed by memory failings and emotional and cognitive biases, Dugan notes. Of the relatively few studies that have examined associations between early caregiving experiences and adult attachment styles, she adds, all have focused almost exclusively on a single early relationship: the maternal one.

To more deeply understand how early relationships with a wider variety of people impact attachment styles, Dugan, Fraley, and their colleagues turned to a landmark longitudinal study of 1,364 children and their families from around the U.S. It began when the children were infants and ended when they were 15 years old. Once the young participants were old enough to speak, they were surveyed about the quality of their relationships with their fathers, mothers, and best friends. Researchers also surveyed participants’ primary caregivers—who were mostly their mothers—and observed them interacting with their children. That study showed robust evidence that early experiences with caregivers matter for social development.

Between 2018 and 2022, 705 of the original participants, who by then were 26 to 31 years old, agreed to a follow-up study to collect information about their current relationships with their parents, best friends, and romantic partners. For those 705 participants, Dugan and her colleagues analyzed associations between the quality of early relationships and later attachment styles in adulthood. They found several notable patterns. First, a person’s relationship with their mother tended to set the stage for their later attachment style in general, as well as for their specific approaches to individual relationships with friends, romantic partners, and fathers. For instance, people who had more conflict with their mothers, were less close to their mothers, or had mothers who were reportedly harsher and showed less warmth during childhood and adolescence, tended to feel more insecure in their adult relationships.

The researchers didn’t find many associations between participants’ relationships with their fathers and their future attachment styles—perhaps because most identified their mother as their primary caregiver. “This cohort’s first assessment was in 1991, and even though the burden of caregiving still heavily falls on mothers, fathers were even less involved back then, on average,” Dugan says. “In cases where a father was the primary caregiver, the results might be flipped—but we don’t have that data.”

Early experiences with close friends, though, were an even stronger predicter than maternal relationships for determining participants’ approach to—specifically—romantic relationships and friendships in adulthood. “In general, if you had high-quality friendships and felt connected to your friends in childhood, then you felt more secure in romantic relationships and friendships at age 30,” Dugan says. People who enjoyed increasingly close and deepening friendships across childhood and adolescence also showed significant gains in those departments as adults, she adds.

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Last month, Eliud Kipchoge finished a marathon in 1 hour, 59 minutes and 40 seconds – an audacious feat that no one had ever accomplished before. Kipchoge is from the Kenyan Rift Valley region.

A day after he made history, Brigid Kosgei destroyed the women’s world record at the Chicago Marathon. She’s also from the Kenyan Rift Valley.

And in the New York Marathon on Sunday, a Kenyan rookie took down her country’s rock star in the women’s race. Joyciline Jepkosgei ruined countrywoman Mary Keitany’s chance at a fifth women’s title in the contest, but the latter came in second. And Kenyan Geoffrey Kamworor won the men’s race, his second NYC Marathon victory.

They’re all from the Rift Valley region. And people are taking note – marathoners from all over the world go there to train before major races.

East Africans – especially Kenyans and Ethiopians – have dominated marathons for decades, dashing across finish lines as their exhausted competitors barely made it. In the process, they’ve toppled their own records or those of their fellow citizens.

Kenyan marathon runners are such a phenomenon that research organizations have done studies on why they dominate long-distance races.

And experts say it’s mixture of several things.

Most of the elite runners are from the same region

Most Kenyan elite runners hail from the same ethnic groups known as the Kalenjins and the Nandis. The groups make up just 10% of the nation’s population of 50 million – but bring in a majority of the nation’s marathon medals.

“Internationally, Kalenjin runners have won close to 73% of all Kenyan gold medals and a similar percentage of silver medals at major international running competitions,” says Vincent O. Onywera, a professor of exercise and sports science at Kenyatta University in Nairobi.

They’ve passed on the passion for running across generations, turning the Rift Valley – especially the small town of Iten – into a mecca for the nation’s elite long-distance runners. There, children start running at a young age.

A lot of the young people from these areas grow up surrounded by successful runners. Most of them look at running as a way to make money, says coach Bernard Ouma, who trains elite Kenyan runners.

“You see your neighbor run and win, it motivates you to run and win,” he says. As a result, their communities have a deep tradition of running excellence built over the years.

They train and live in a high-altitude area

Most of the Kenyan runners who dominate marathons worldwide train and live in the high-altitude Rift Valley.

Iten, one of the towns that produces elite runners, sits nearly 8,000 feet above sea level in western Kenya. Training at high altitudes contributes to a running dominance that makes running at lower elevation child’s play, Onywera says.

“There is a widespread belief in the athletic community that altitude training can enhance sea level athletic performance, with at least three independent studies demonstrating that altitude training increases both sea level maximal oxygen consumption and running performance,” he says.

Then there’s diet and constant motivation

Iten has become known internationally as the place where long distance champions are made. So much so, runners from around the world go there to train before major races.

Running aficionado and author Adharanand Finn spent a lot of time in the town trying to find out the secret to Kenyan marathon runners. “I had a lifelong fascination with the uninhibited running style of the Kenyans and had always wanted to know the story behind their incredible athletes – I wanted to know what their lives were like. And when I saw there was no book, or at that time no films, on the subject, I decided to go there and write one.”

His book, “Running with the Kenyans,” gives more insight into what he found out. And there is no one major secret, he says.

“As the famed coach of David Rudisha, Brother Colm O’Connell, says, the only secret is that there’s no secret. It’s not one thing but a perfect storm of elements that come together in Kenya’s Rift Valley region to make the people there so strong at distance running,” Finn says.

There’s the location, the way of life, the environment.

“For a start, you have the altitude, the tough rural upbringing, and the fact that children run around everywhere. Then there is the simple diet, the lack of junk food, and the perfect running terrain — rolling hills, dirt roads — all over the place,” he says.

And if that doesn’t lure you in, there’s the proximity to international elite runners to motivate anyone.

“Running offers a great chance to make good money, to transform lives, even to transform whole communities,” Finn says. “This is compounded by the hundreds of role models everywhere. Almost every village has someone who has come back from ‘abroad’ with winnings, and these stars are very accessible and open to supporting the younger athletes.”

As a result, everyone who can run, aspires to be a runner, he says.

“You end up with thousands of people training together, pushing each other, helping each other, inspiring each other. This attracts agents, sponsors, coaches … and it keeps getting bigger. With all this impetus, some great athletes are going to emerge out the other end,” he says. “So really, it’s not a simple answer.”

Some have wondered whether genes play a role

There’s so much speculation on why Kenyans and Ethiopians keep crushing marathon competitions, the phenomenon has long been a subject of study. Organizations such as the British Journal of Sports Medicine have concluded that it’s unclear whether genes have anything to do with it.

“The periodic domination of middle and long distance running by different regions of the world is not a new phenomenon,” it says. “Researchers are yet to confirm a genetic or physiological advantage in being a middle or long distance runner of East African origin, and it is most likely that the reasons for their success are many.”

And while many physiological and anatomical factors have been suggested to explain the East African dominance, research has not revealed any definitive advantage, the study says.

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“I am convinced that we would not have found these people if the DNA that was found at this theft hadn’t matched with this database,” said Gaëtan Poitevin, a criminal lawyer in Marseille whose master’s thesis was on France’s DNA database.

How does the DNA database work?

France’s database, the National Automated Genetic Fingerprint File, had 4.4 million DNA profiles at the end of last year. Those profiles have been collected over almost three decades from people suspected or convicted of crimes, as well as people killed in natural disasters.

It has become a staple of police investigations, with forensic investigators collecting bits of saliva, sweat, hair, skin, semen, and blood, then sending them to be sequenced at public and certified private labs. The labs send the results to be compared to the contents of the enormous database, looking for exact matches.

“In just a few hours now, we can have a positive DNA result,” said Olivier Halnais, the head of the national union of forensic police officers.

How did France’s DNA database start?

France began its DNA database in 1998, after the serial killer Guy Georges, known as the “Eastern Paris killer,” was finally arrested.

Mr. Georges had been imprisoned for assaulting a woman with a weapon, and the police collected his DNA. But France had no centralized database at the time, so officers were unable to check his DNA against that found at the scenes of five murders of women who had also been raped.

After his release from prison, Mr. Georges went on to rape and kill two more women. He was arrested again and eventually convicted of the murders of seven women. The case spurred the creation of a national DNA database.

Initially, the database contained only the DNA of sexual offenders. But, over the next five years, it grew to include people convicted — or merely suspected — of a much wider range of crimes, including murder, terrorism, drug trafficking, assault, theft, and property damage.

The process of being removed from the DNA database is so onerous that few pursue it, Mr. Poitevin said. Those who refuse to give a DNA sample face at least a year in prison and a fine of at least 15,000 euros, almost $17,400.

From 2018 to 2022, an average of 680 people a year were convicted of refusing to provide DNA, less than one percent of people charged each year, according to the Justice Ministry.

“Among my clients, absolutely zero refuse, because for them, it’s an admission of guilt,” said Mr. Poitevin.

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Members of a forensic team inspect a window at the site where burglars broke into the Louvre and made off with eight of France’s historic crown jewels last month. Credit…Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

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The iconic shower scene in Psycho was originally supposed to play out without music. Instead, composer Bernard Herrmann created “The Murder”: as the killing transpires, violins shriek and scream along with the victim.

The film’s director, Alfred Hitchcock, reportedly later said that “33 percent of the effect of Psycho was due to the music.” In most horror flicks, the emotional current that carries the viewers is the music, which accelerates their anticipation and heightens the jump scares. It’s not just screaming violins, either: undulating synthesizers drive John Carpenter’s Halloween; “evil” clarinets underpin Hereditary; a recording from the 1930s enhances Get Out.

Studies have shown that certain fearful music activates the brain’s alarm-response system. So what is it that makes some music sound scary? Psychoacoustics researchers have found that some auditory features that are common in horror music are inherently frightening. The most obvious way music can scare us is by literally imitating screams, like Psycho does. Here, the instruments mimic a quality of human screams called roughness. When we scream, we press a high volume of air through our vocal cords, causing them to vibrate chaotically. This creates a sound wave with an amplitude that fluctuates rapidly, which our ears and brains perceive as rough or harsh.

To imitate this musically, violinists must push the limits of their instruments. “They’re pushing into that string, literally—just pushing the capacity of the instrument. You feel the whole instrument almost resisting the sound,” explains Caitlyn Trevor, a music cognition researcher and founder of the sound design consulting company SonicUXR. In a 2020 study, when Trevor was a researcher at the University of Zurich, she and her colleagues studied horror movie soundtracks and found many of these screamlike musical cues.

Rough vocalizations seem to have privileged access to our brain. In a study published in May, scientists found that the sound of a distant scream could elicit a response from the brain even in the deepest stage of sleep. When you hear a scream, it quickly activates the amygdala, a brain structure involved in processing danger, and it can trigger a cascade of alarm reactions in the nervous system. The short burst of sound may also trigger our startle reflex, which bypasses higher-order brain regions and goes straight to our body to help us respond fast.

Most horror music is not about directly inducing terror, however. Those moments of auditory release are usually preceded by long, roiling tracks that build suspense. “There are actually two very different types of music that are ‘scary’ or ‘fearful,’” Trevor explains. In 2023, she co-authored a study examining the musical differences between these two types of horror movie tracks. Participants rated the emotional effects of different excerpts. The results showed a distinction between anxiety-inducing and terrifying music; the two types “sometimes have completely opposite acoustic features,” Trevor says. Where terrifying music was loud, brash, and dense (a chorus of screamlike string instruments from Midsommar was ranked the most terrifying of all the examples in the study), anxiety-inducing music tended to be more varied. Here is where composers have the most room to play, using subtle auditory cues that are biologically ingrained to keep listeners on edge.

For example, some horror movies use (or are rumored to use) very low-frequency sounds on the border of human perception to give an intangible sense of doom. “Certain sounds mimic danger out there in the world,” explains Susan Rogers, a music producer and music cognition researcher at Berklee College of Music. “A low rumble is something we have evolved to be alert to,” she says—perhaps signaling a stampede, a storm, an earthquake or something else dangerous in the environment.

Fast tempos, especially ones that sound like a heartbeat, can also put us on edge, Rogers explains. In the theme from John Carpenter’s Halloween, a low thudding that is reminiscent of a heartbeat drives the music forward. “A predictable rhythm gives you a sense of momentum and that [the filmmakers are] leading toward something,” Trevor says. The listener doesn’t know where the music or the story are going, but they feel relentless and inevitable.

More commonly, though, horror movie music builds suspense by making itself unpredictable. Suspenseful music, Trevor found in her 2023 study, often keeps us on edge by sprinkling in bits of sound in unexpected places. Sometimes these scores use an unpredictable or lopsided beat, dropping notes here and there, to prevent the listener from settling into the rhythm, she adds.

“The soundtrack and the sound design are integral to letting you predict what’s going to happen, so sound designers in horror movies can use the technique of violating our predictions to get us to experience fear,” Rogers says. The brain is a prediction machine, and it allows us to tune out expected or constant noise. “Whether it’s a car engine or a rainstorm, we know how it’s going to go, so we move our spotlight of attention onto other things,” she continues. If you hear footsteps coming up the stairs, you might predict that they’ll continue until they reach the top; but if they stop halfway, you become alert. These sorts of “prediction errors” activate the amygdala and a memory-forming region called the hippocampus.

But some of the most frightening features of horror movie music are culturally learned and might not be inherently scary. For example, composers often build tension in music using dissonance, when the pitches of two or more notes seem to clash against one another. The idea that some harmonies are inherently dissonant has some truth—if two notes are too close together in pitch, the soundwaves can interfere, causing a “beating” pattern that can be unpleasant or grating on the ear. “But only at the most basic level is that universal. Above that, the musical concept of consonance and dissonance is entirely learned,” Rogers says.

Other harmonies that were once assumed to be inherently dissonant—for example, the so-called devil’s chord, or tritone, which is used often in horror movies—are perceived differently across different cultures. A 2016 study found that the Tsimane’ people of rural Bolivia, a group whose music does not use harmony, rated the tritone and other “dissonant” intervals as equally pleasant as “nondissonant” intervals.

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‘I’ve Always Had a Hard Time Making Friends — How Do I Not Be So Anxious About Putting Myself Out There?’

Hi Tefi!!

So I just recently turned 21! And as I’m starting to really enter “adulthood,” I guess I’ve realized that some of the relationships in my life don’t feel fulfilling on my end. I’ve always had a hard time making friends — I’m really quiet and shy when I first meet people, and I low-key come across as awkward. Obviously, that kind of turns people away, and if I’m being honest, I feel like that also holds me back from trying to talk to new people because I’m scared they won’t like me.

I have a small friend group, but I feel like they all have someone (either in the group or outside) who they’d rather hang out with. I feel like I’m a good friend. I’m genuinely caring and supportive, and I’d like to think I’m really funny. I don’t know, Tefi. I just feel like my friends hang out with me out of convenience, ’cause I’m the only one who drives. I also have a nine-to-five job, so it’s rare for me to be free during the week, but it sucks because I see them going out and hanging out and then when I finally get a day off, they’re all busy and can’t hang out. I don’t necessarily think there’s anything malicious behind it. I just think they’re not being very considerate of me or my feelings.

There are like three girls outside my social circle who I’d really like to be friends with, but I’m too scared to reach out and ask to hang out. Because I guess I don’t ever want them to feel pressured into hanging out with me or something, you know? But we’re always liking each other’s Instagram Stories and commenting, so I just feel like we’d be great friends. But I don’t know, I’m anxious about it.

I don’t want to go through my 20s all sad and lonely, but I don’t really know how to NOT be so anxious about putting myself out there more.

Sorry, this was so long! Thank you for your advice in advance!!
—Feeling Lonely

My sweet, sweet, lonely angel,

I caught myself smiling when I read “adulthood.” You’re right! You are an adult. But also, I can clearly remember myself at 21 and not feeling “adult” at all. I’m over a decade older than you, and I still think, Holy fuck, everyone is going to find out I’m really 17 cosplaying as 35. And by the way, you aren’t alone. I get ten-plus emails in the “Ask Tefi” inbox every single day asking me what to do about loneliness.

You’re currently in a weird period of life: outgrowing some of your friends. It fucking sucks, but it’s just one of those things we all go through. Now I have terrible news, and I need you to still like me after I tell you: You have to be brave and ask those girls to hang out.

Sometimes I go to events and I’ll feel like the biggest dork loser at the party. I even avoid checking my emails all day, so just in case no one talks to me, I can read them then and have something to do with my hands. I’ll see the coolest girls and I’ll think, how do I talk to them? Why would they talk to me? But! We have to be brave. And we have to reach out our hand ready to shake someone else’s and say, “Hi, I’m me. Who are you? It’s nice to meet you.”

Maybe that can be our act of bravery this week. Bravery isn’t like doing our own stunts in a movie or taming a wild animal. Sometimes bravery looks like wanting more friends and trying.

All my love,
Your friend Tefi

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With a half-mile remaining, Obiri and Lokedi were matching each other stride for stride when Obiri made one final surge, pumping her arms as she separated herself from Lokedi. Obiri finished in 2 hours 19 minutes 51 seconds to obliterate Margaret Okayo’s course record from 2003 by over two minutes.

Lokedi was 16 seconds behind Obiri, and Sheila Chepkirui, who had been hoping to defend her title from last year, placed third.

Obiri, who also won in 2023, recalled her feelings in Central Park: “I say, ‘This is my time, Sharon, let me make a move.’”

For Kipruto — who has now won world marathon majors in Tokyo, Chicago, Boston, and New York — his win was the narrowest margin of victory in the New York race’s history. In 2005, Paul Tergat edged Hendrick Ramaala by one second.

“I think there’s no secret in winning and finishing on the podium,” said Kipruto, who finished in 2:08:09. “Just believe in yourself and have patience and believe in training, what you are doing. I think that’s kept me running.”

While the leading men approached the race in a fairly steady fashion, the women seemed determined to infuse the proceedings with early drama. There were surges and counter-surges, and only a few of the top contenders could manage so much movement. By the midpoint of the race, a half-dozen women were still in the mix, including the New York race’s three most recent champions: Chepkirui, Obiri, and Lokedi.

One runner who constantly seemed to be tracking them was Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands, who must have been an unsettling sight for the leaders. A six-time Olympic medalist — including in Paris, where she was the women’s marathon champion — Hassan was making her New York debut just nine weeks after winning the Sydney Marathon, another major.

“I was so afraid, like, ‘Sifan is coming’,” Obiri said. “She’s so strong. She broke us in the Olympics. So that was on my mind.”

On Sunday, Hassan seemed in danger of being dropped more than once before clawing her way back to the leaders. But by Mile 20, she had fallen behind them for good and eventually faded to a sixth-place result.

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Hellen Obiri of Kenya became a two-time champion after winning the race. Credit…Ishika Samant/Getty Images

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Inside the Democratic Party — in its backrooms and its group chats, its conferences and its online flame wars — an increasingly bitter debate has taken hold over what the party needs to become to beat back Trumpism. Does it need to be more populist? More moderate? More socialist? Embrace the abundance agenda? Produce more vertical video?

The answer is yes, yes to all of it — but to none of it in particular. The Democratic Party does not need to choose to be one thing. It needs to choose to be more things.

In two days, there will be elections for governor of New Jersey, for mayor of New York City, and for governor of Virginia. Democrats are leading in all of these races. As of now, the RealClearPolitics polling averages show the Democrat up by about seven points in Virginia and about three points in New Jersey. These are not unusual leads in what have become reliably Democratic states. You can imagine a world where the violence and corruption of President Trump’s first nine months in office had led to a collapse in support for him and his party. We’ll see what Election Day brings. But we do not look to be in that world.

That’s all the more true if you look a year out, to the midterms. In the RealClearPolitics polling average, Democrats are leading by about 2.5 points when you ask Americans which party they want to see control Congress. At about this time in 2017, Democrats were up just over 10 points in the same average.

The news gets worse. To win the House back next year, Democrats will need to overcome the chain of redistricting Republicans are setting off across the country: Republicans have already redrawn the maps in Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas; they are seeking to do the same in Florida and Indiana, and they have others in their sights.

The Senate is even harder for Democrats: They will need to flip four seats in the 2026 midterms to win back control. That would mean defending seats in Georgia and Michigan, winning in Maine and North Carolina — no easy task — and then winning at least two seats in states that Trump won by 10 points or more, such as Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Ohio or Texas. That’s not some quirk of the 2026 Senate map. There are 24 states that Trump won by 10 points or more in 2024.

Any enduring majority — any real power — will require Democrats to solve a problem they do not yet know how to solve: The number of places in which the Democratic Party is competitive has shrunk. When the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, Democrats held Senate seats in Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and West Virginia. How many of those states remain in reach for Democrats today?

n American politics, power is not decided by a popular vote. In the Electoral College, in the House of Representatives, and particularly in the Senate, it is apportioned by place. Democrats don’t just need to win more people. They also need to win more places. That will require a more pluralistic approach to politics. It will require the Democratic Party to see internal difference as a strength that requires cultivation rather than a flaw that demands purification.

Think of it this way: If Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayor’s race running as a democratic socialist in New York City and Rob Sand wins the Iowa governor’s race next year running as a moderate who hates political parties, did the Democratic Party move left or right? Neither: It got bigger. It found a way to represent more kinds of people in more kinds of places.

That is the spirit it needs to embrace. Not moderation. Not progressivism. But, in the older political sense of the term, representation.

In 1962, Bernard Crick, a political theorist and a democratic socialist, published a strange little book called “In Defense of Politics.” Politics, for Crick, was something precious and specific: It “arises from accepting the fact of the simultaneous existence of different groups, hence different interests and different traditions, within a territorial unit under a common rule.”

The fact of difference is not always accepted. There are other forms of social order, like tyranny or oligarchy, that actively suppress it. But to practice politics as Crick defines it is to accept the reality of difference — that is to say, it is to accept the reality of other people whose values and views differ deeply from yours.

In my favorite line from the book, Crick writes, “Politics involves genuine relationships with people who are genuinely other people, not tasks set for our redemption or objects for our philanthropy.”

I love that. I think the path to a better politics — perhaps even a political majority — lives within it.

The endless fantasy in politics is persuasion without representation: You elect us to represent you, and where we disagree, we will explain to you why you are wrong. The result of that politics tends to be neither persuasion nor representation: People know when you are not listening to them. And they know how to respond: They stop listening to you. They vote for people who they feel do listen to them.

I am not a pessimist on the possibility of persuasion. But I believe it is rare outside a context of mutual respect. And if I were to say where the Democratic Party went wrong over the last decade, it’s there. In too many places, Democrats sought persuasion without representation, and so they got neither.

A Democratic strategist who has conducted countless focus groups told me that when he asks people to describe the two parties, they often describe Republicans as “crazy” and Democrats as “preachy.” One woman said to him, “I’ll take crazy over preachy. At least crazy doesn’t look down on me.”

That echoes what I have heard from the kinds of voters Democrats lament losing. I feel as if I have the same conversation over and over again: Sometimes people tell me about issues where the Democratic Party departed from them. But they first describe a more fundamental feeling of alienation: The Democratic Party, they came to believe, does not like them.

Many of these people voted for Democrats until a few years ago. They didn’t feel their fundamental beliefs had changed. But they began to feel like “deplorables.” They began to feel unwanted.

When I’d push on the experiences they had — when I would ask which Democrats, who were they talking about — I often found they were reacting to a cultural vibe or an online skirmish as much or more than a flesh-and-blood party. But they had felt something change, and I knew they were right.

Something had changed. It had changed on the left. It had changed on the right. The structure of American life changed in a way that has made the genuine relationships of politics much harder. Instead of representing many different kinds of people in many different kinds of places, the parties now tilt toward the place in which the elite of both sides spend most of their time and get most of their information. The first party that finds its way out of this trap will be the one able to build a majority in this era.

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Tim Enthoven

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The Los Angeles Dodgers won their second consecutive title in stunning fashion in the early hours of Sunday morning, depriving the Toronto Blue Jays of a first World Series in 32 years in a stomach churning, epic Game 7. Will Smith’s solo home run with two outs at the top of the 11th inning off Shane Bieber gave LA a 5-4 lead before Yoshinobu Yamamoto, pitching in relief just a day after throwing 96 pitches, got Alejandro Kirk to ground out into a World Series-ending double play, bringing a ninth title to the Dodgers organization.

“Man, they’re a special group of guys,” Smith said after the game. “We just never gave up, kept fighting, pitching our asses off, hitting, taking great at-bats. Finally punched through there. Man, that was a fight for seven games. That’s a really good Toronto Blue Jays team. I’m just excited. There’s nothing better than this.”

The Dodgers, heavy favorites to win the Fall Classic against the underdog Jays, won by the skin of their teeth. Their victory came despite their anemic offense, which generated just 17 runs across the series, and was arguably saved by one man: Yamamoto. So the $400m Dodgers get what they came for, yet another World Series title, one that will leave fans north of the US-Canadian border wondering what could have been. They will believe – perhaps correctly – that through seven games, the Jays were the better team.

Toronto were just two outs from glory, ensuring this defeat is all the more excruciating. The beginning of the Jays’ end began in the ninth inning, a frame which brought baseball fans one of the most extraordinary sequences of events in recent World Series memory.

With Toronto leading 4-3, Miguel Rojas, the Dodgers’ No 9 hitter, blasted a game-tying home run off Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman to tie the score at 4-4. It was a blast that ripped the soul out of the home fans in Toronto.

“I was never trying to hit a home run,” said Rojas. “I think this is the first home run against a right-handed pitcher during the whole year, and it came in the biggest part of my life and my career … I can’t really describe right now the emotions that I feel.”

Still, there was hope.

In the bottom of the inning, Yamamoto hit Alejandro Kirk to load the bases with one out. Then Rojas returned for another closeup, scooping up a Daulton Varsho grounder, throwing it home, and barely forcing out Isiah Kiner-Falefa at the plate. The play was so close it was reviewed, and the Blue Jays came within a whisker of winning the World Series on an overturned call. However, the decision was upheld at the Dodgers lived on.

On the very next play, Ernie Clement hit a ball to deep left-field where Andy Pages made a circus catch while colliding with teammate Kiké Hernandez. With Jays fans gasping for air, the 2025 season headed into extra innings.

“[Yamamoto] was the MVP of this series. That was incredible. I talked to him yesterday. I was like, ‘Hey, if you can give us one, we’re going to win.’ He gave us three. That was special,” said Smith. “He’ll have a few months off. I know he is going to need it, but yeah, I’m just happy for him. That was awesome.”

Toronto’s loss ends a dream season on the lowest of notes. A year after the frustrated Jays fan base demanded front office change, they made it to the 11th inning of the World Series without Shohei Ohtani, who they heavily courted after the 2023 season before he joined the Dodgers. And without Roki Sasaki, who they also did everything to sign last winter before he too signed for the Dodgers. They rode the April momentum of re-signing star first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr to a long-term deal, all the way into October, when a 22-year-old hurler with virtually no big league experience, Trey Yesavage, energized their postseason run.

But it wasn’t enough to unseat the majestic Dodgers and the series MVP, Yamamoto, whose manager proclaimed the pitcher “The Goat” in the postgame celebrations.

LA were down 3-0 in the third after Bo Bichette’s three-run blast off Ohtani forced the two-way master, who had a quiet night, into a rare walk of shame to the dugout.

The Dodgers looked to rebound in the fourth, when the 41-year-old Max Scherzer, rock solid through three innings, gave up a double to Smith, a single to Freddie Freeman, and walked Max Muncy, loading the bases. Teoscar Hernandez, loaded with a bat full of October magic, hit a sinking line drive to center, but Varsho made a sliding catch that prevented a possible base-clearing hit and held the Dodgers to a single run. Then Guerrero made a diving catch off a Tommy Edman line drive to retire the side. The Jays defense had rescued Scherzer, and the future Hall-of-Fame had finished four innings, allowing just a single run.

A contentious bottom of the fifth saw Dodgers reliever Justin Wrobleski brush back Andrés Gimenez before hitting him in the hand. The shortstop took issue, and the benches cleared, bringing temporary venom to the evening. Gimenez would exact revenge in the sixth inning with an RBI double off Tyler Glasnow, putting Toronto up 4-2.

Muncy narrowed Toronto’s lead with a solo eighth-inning home run off Yesavage, who was pitching in relief off the back of 17 strikeouts in 11 innings as a starter. That brought LA within a run before Rojas’s home run evened the score.

Three usual starters – Yamamoto, Glasnow, and Blake Snell – emerged from the Dodgers bullpen to hold Toronto to a single run after the third inning, allowing LA to keep the Jays in their sights. Ultimately, it was the Jays’ inability to break LA’s relievers on the night – they were just 3 for 17 with runners in scoring position – which led to their doom.

Now the Dodgers head back to the US with the first back-to-back titles MLB has seen since the 1999 and 2000 New York Yankees, needing just one more ring for the true dynasty.

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Yoshinobu Yamamoto is mobbed by his teammates after securing the World Series for the Dodgers. Photograph: Patrick Smith/Getty Images

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