James' World 2

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Like a mighty bulldozer that has thrown a track, the Donald Trump campaign for president has lost its forward momentum, causing analysts and Trump foes to speculate on what will happen if the Manhattan mogul fails to drag himself over the 1,237-delegate hump required to win the Republican Party’s nomination on a first ballot.

If Trump stalls, the Republican convention could enter brokered mode. (See this Boston Globe piece for the specifics, especially this piece on the intricacies of Rule 40.) Ohio Gov. John Kasich is almost banking on a convention that would free delegates pledged to candidates—by virtue of primary or caucus victories—to cast their subsequent ballots for a candidate of their choosing, namely Kasich. At this point, the struggling Marco Rubio is lullabying himself to sleep with the vision of a brokered convention, and Ted Cruz is probably humming the tune, too.

The free-for-all of a brokered convention would unleash the greatest display of political back-stabbing and double-dealing since the 1924 Democratic National Convention, which took a record 103 ballots and 16 sweaty days to select a nominee. For the journalists amassed in Cleveland for the Republican convention, it would be like covering a small war, a tsunami, and a mass shooting simultaneously, and nearly as dangerous.

The parallels between the Democrats’ 1924 convention and the Republicans’ upcoming one are there for a columnist’s taking. The 1924 Democratic Party was as divided as the Republican Party is today, maybe more so. The convention is often called the “Klanbake” because one of the front-runners, white shoe lawyer, and former Wilson Cabinet member William G. McAdoo, was supported by the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was a major source of power within the party, and McAdoo did not repudiate its endorsement. The other front-runner, New York Governor Al Smith, a Catholic who represented the party’s anti-Klan, anti-Prohibition wing (McAdoo also backed Prohibition, which was then the law of the land), and his faction failed by a slim margin to pass a platform plank condemning the Klan. The convention, which was held in Madison Square Garden, had no black delegates.

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Contributor: CEAshby

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The Lyrid meteor shower, a bright and fast meteor shower, is expected to peak this weekend. The Lyrids have lit up the sky for the past 2,700 years and potentially dozens of meteors could be seen per hour.

The shower comes each April and the best time to watch this year will be between April 21 to 23. The peak is expected at 1:06 UTC on April 23 — or 9:06 p.m. EDT Saturday, April 22 — according to EarthSky. 

This year, there won’t be a full moon, and with the sky dark enough, stargazers may be able to see 10 to 15 Lyrids per hour. Sometimes they have surges that produce up to 100 per hour. 

Those who want to see the meteor shower won’t see long trails streaking through the sky. Instead, Lyrids may look like fireballs, according to NASA.

The best time to view the Lyrids is in the Northern Hemisphere after moonset but before sunrise in an dark area without streetlights, NASA advises. Lying flat on the ground to view as much of the sky as possible will give you the best chance to see the shower, which should last until dawn. 

The shower is named after where they originate from: the Lyra constellation. This is the shower’s radiant point, and NASA says you shouldn’t look directly at this part of the sky to see the best view of the Lyrids. Instead, they will appear longer if you look away from the radiant point. 

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Startrails are seen during the Lyrids meteor shower over Michaelskapelle on April 20, 2020, in Niederhollabrunn, Austria.  Thomas Kronsteiner / Getty Images

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Species are disappearing faster than ever before—and it’s because of humans. We’re destroying habitats and disrupting fragile ecosystems in a new wave of mass extinction that threatens Earth’s incredible biodiversity. That loss is sometimes overlooked in environmental discussions, as the focus rests on climate change. But our lives depend on the extraordinary variety of natural life around us.

To help slow this trend, turn to one of these 10 organizations below. They are just a few of the many working to protect the plants and animals that make up our world—from the colorful corals to the dense forests, from the largest whales to the smallest beetles. Donate to them, advocate with them, and learn from them.

Find even more environmental action inspiration in our How to Help the Planet collection, with advice on coexisting with creatures, making your wardrobe more sustainable, and more.

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Image by Doug Stratton / EyeEm / Getty Images.

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The three-bedroom, two-bath, split-level house in Fayetteville, Arkansas, looks like a perfect family home. It’s got a charming brick exterior, a lush, green front lawn, and a fenced-in backyard perfect for hosting cookouts. It’s on a quiet street with two schools and a Boys and Girls Club nearby. But this perfect family home has an unusual owner—or owners.

The property, which these days is known as the Soapstone, is “owned,” in a roundabout way, by 102 investors who have collectively purchased just over $100,000 in shares through a company called Arrived Homes. The property is managed and rented out for $1,600 a month, a bit below the city’s average rent of $1,795. Investors, who can buy in for as little as $100, get a cut of the profits.

And it’s not just the Soapstone. Arrived, alongside a handful of other so-called fractional investment startups, are adding yet more noise to an already-crowded real estate market. Investors can buy into hundreds of similar properties on the company’s website, where each listing has an Airbnb-style profile that breaks down the neighborhood, costs, number of bedrooms and bathrooms—and return on investment. 

In addition to Arrived, there’s Lofty AI, which uses a token model for people to buy in and lets them collect rent later that same day. Another company, reAlpha, sells shares in homes that serve as Airbnbs—including a treehouse resort in the works. Landa lets people invest in shares valued as low as $5 in houses around Atlanta or $20 in Brooklyn apartment buildings. Daniella Lang, a product marketer at the firm, says investors “see this as an American dream opportunity” that lets them build wealth in real estate. Anyone can click a button to invest—but that doesn’t really make them homeowners.

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Illustration: Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images

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Part of the joy of travelling comes from experiencing the unfamiliar – a different climate, culture or cuisine. But when it comes to paying for things abroad, we might feel more comfortable using the currency we are most familiar with, the one we use at home.

This has recently become a common – and expensive – option for tourists withdrawing money from cash machines, or paying electronically in shops and restaurants.

When a restaurant bill arrives for example, foreign customers may be offered the choice on the card reader to pay in their home currency rather than the local one. This feature, known as “dynamic currency conversion” or “currency choice” sounds appealing at first – a service which has done the hard work for you, converting the bill to a currency you understand, giving you a better idea of how much money you are spending.

But it comes at a price – as the fees charged for this convenience can be exorbitant. In fact, one study shows that the average fee applied to this kind of conversion is a whopping 7.6%, more than double the cost of paying in the local currency (usually between 1.5% and 3%).

So suppose a French traveller goes out for dinner in a British town, and the final bill comes to £88.43, the equivalent of €100. Paying in UK currency, which would then converted to euros by the French diner’s bank, would lead to a payment of around €102. But using the dynamic currency conversion to pay the restaurant bill directly in euros would end up costing them €107.60.

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Millennials are many things, but above all, they are murderers,” Mashable noted in 2017, introducing a list of 70 items and institutions that Millennials were purported to have “killed,” including napkins, breakfast cereal, department stores, the 9-to-5 workday, and marriage. The list was tongue-in-cheek—the cereal aisle persists—but it captured something essential about a generation that has reshaped old habits of American life.

Even amid this slaughter of tradition, Millennials are best known for another characteristic: how broke they are. Millennials, it’s often said, are the first American generation that will do worse than its parents financially.

Pick up a book on Millennials, or wander into a discussion about them online, and this theme pops up again and again: The once-optimistic children of the 1980s and early ’90s are now wheezing under the burden of college debt, too poor to buy houses or start families, sucker punched by a hostile economy that bears no resemblance to the one their parents enjoyed as young adults.

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Patrick White

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Morénike Giwa Onaiwu’s daughter, Legacy, was diagnosed with autism in 2011 just before she turned 3. Months later, Dr. Onaiwu, a consultant and writer, was diagnosed as well.Credit…Annie Mulligan for The New York Times

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A digitized woman with long blonde hair dances in front of a blank spreadsheet. She’s showing you how to remove blank columns, or maybe to combine cells, or perhaps how to create a new formula to help you format an entire row. She is ecstatic to be there.

The woman is 30-year-old Kat Norton, better known as “Miss Excel,” who in 2020 began going viral for her high-energy, 15-second TikTok dances superimposed with hacks for navigating the popular data software program Microsoft Excel. Within months, she’d launched her very own digital class: the Excelerator Course, made up of 100 sub-10-minute video tutorials and packaged for the price of $297. Students can complete the tutorials and corresponding workbooks at their own pace, on their own time. They choose between the original or the advanced course (or shell out $997 for a course on the full Microsoft Office Suite), going from a total Excel newbie to a pro in just 12 hours.

The classes were a hit, particularly among her core audience of 25- to 35-year-olds who were looking to bulk up their resumes or improve their marketability; many of them were working from home due to the pandemic and considering a potential career change. And Norton is the platonic example of an online course teacher: She’s proficient in an in-demand skill and, perhaps most importantly, she’s very good at selling it.

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Paige Vickers for Vox

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When it’s dark outside, and the lights are on, I can see straight into my neighbor’s house. It’s a few days before Christmas, and she appears to be performing a mini Broadway show – in her pajamas. In front of a tastefully decorated tree, she squeals ‘It’s tiiiiiiimmmeee!!!!’ as she drops to the floor on her knees, spreads jazz hands, and wiggles her chest. Her smile is a dazzling white, her honey-colored hair sits in bouncy waves. Behind her, three young girls, in matching nightwear, twirl with giant candy sticks.

One day, I pick up binoculars. For hours, I observe this picture-perfect mother, her strong-jawed husband, and their five children, as they eat, read, sing and dance. My neighbor opens her curtains a little wider – she wants me to watch her. Soon she starts showing me products she uses so that, I too, can purchase this fantasy existence and be just like her.

I don’t spy on my neighbors. (I would be arrested.) But I’ve spent hours doing a completely legal equivalent: trailing fellow mothers online. Madison Fisher provides footage of everything, from the monumental (the birth of her twins) to the mundane (meal prep), to millions of followers on YouTube and Instagram. She is one of thousands of mothers on social media – dubbed ‘momfluencers’ – who open up their lives for my consumption.

Instagram gained popularity as a clever way to add filters to your spring break photos. When sponsored posts were launched, following the company’s sale to Facebook in 2012, it transformed into something else entirely: a giant shopping mall. In 2021, 3.8 million Instagram posts were marked worldwide with the hashtag #ad, a 27 percent jump from the year before. Instagram runs on sex, for sure: scantily clad women sell lipstick, handbags, and dietary supplements. It also runs on what happens nine months later: babies.

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The crowd along Sixth Avenue was losing its mind. It was Sunday, June 25, 1972, and Dr. Benjamin Spock was walking uptown with the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, the scrappier, more revolutionary precursor to the New York City Pride Parade. Although he had risen to fame as a pediatrician, Spock was almost as well known for his support of left-wing causes—from legalizing abortion to ending the Vietnam War—as he was for “The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care,” which had already sold more than ten million copies. Still, even by his standards, joining the Christopher Street crowd was a radical act. Two years earlier, when the march was held for the first time, its organizers had worried that no one would come. Those who did were so hopped up on adrenaline and fear that the fifty-block route, from the West Village to Central Park, took them half as long as anticipated; afterward, they jokingly called it the Christopher Street Liberation Day Run. Now here was Dr. Spock, one of the most influential figures in America, joining their ranks. As he passed by, the people lining the streets whistled and clapped and screamed themselves hoarse.

But all this hullabaloo was not, as it turned out, for the famous doctor; it was for a diminutive middle-aged woman marching just in front of him. She was not famous at all—not the author of any books, not the leader of any movement, not self-evidently a radical of any kind. With her jacket and brooch and plaid skirt and spectacles, she had the part-prim, part-warm demeanor of an old-fashioned elementary-school teacher, which she was. She was carrying a piece of orange poster board with a message hand-lettered in black marker: “PARENTS of GAYS: UNITE in SUPPORT fOR OUR CHILDREN.” She had no idea that the crowd was cheering for her until total strangers started running up to thank her. They asked if they could kiss her; they asked if she would talk to their parents; they told her that they couldn’t imagine their own mothers and fathers supporting them so publicly, or supporting them at all.

The woman’s name was Jeanne Manford, and she was marching alongside her twenty-one-year-old gay son, Morty. Moved by the outpouring of emotion, the two of them discussed it all along the route. By the time they reached Central Park, they had also reached a decision: if so many people wished that someone like Jeanne could talk to their parents, why not make that possible? The organization they dreamed up that day, which started as a single support group in Manhattan, was initially called Parents of Gays; later, it was renamed Parents FLAG, for Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays; nowadays, it is known only as PFLAG. Just a handful of people attended its first meeting, held fifty years ago this spring. Today, it has four hundred chapters and well north of a quarter of a million members.

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