I admit it: Like many liberals, I’m feeling a fair bit of MAGAfreude — taking some pleasure in the self-destruction of the American right.
There has, after all, never been a spectacle like the chaos we’ve seen in the House of Representatives this week. It had been a century since a speaker wasn’t chosen on the first ballot — and the last time that happened, there was an actual substantive dispute: Republican progressives (yes, they existed back then) demanded and eventually received, procedural reforms that they hoped would favor their agenda.
This time, there has been no significant dispute about policy — Kevin McCarthy and his opponents agree on key policy issues like investigating Hunter Biden’s laptop and depriving the Internal Revenue Service of the resources it needs to go after wealthy tax cheats. Long after he tried to appease his opponents by surrendering his dignity, the voting went on.
But while the spectacle has been amazing and, yes, entertaining, neither I nor, I believe, many other liberals are experiencing the kind of glee Republicans would be feeling if the parties’ roles were reversed. For one thing, liberals want the U.S. government to function, which among other things means that we need a duly constituted House of Representatives, even if it’s run by people we don’t like. For another, I don’t think there are many on the U.S. left (such as it is) who define themselves the way so many on the right do: by their resentments.
When you win drop me a million, it will be greatly appreciated!
Another Mega Millions drawing, another night without a big winner.
No one hit all six numbers and won the estimated $940 million jackpot, pushing the lottery prize to an estimated $1.1 billion ahead of the next drawing Tuesday night.
The prize is now the third-largest in U.S. history.
The numbers drawn late Friday were: 3, 20, 46, 59, 63 and gold Mega Ball 13.
There have been 24 drawings without a jackpot winner, stretching back for more than two months. The winless streak is largely due to the game’s long odds of 1 in 302.6 million.
he new estimated prize of $1.1 billion is for a winner who chooses an annuity paid annually over 29 years. Grand prize winners usually take the cash option, which for Tuesday night’s drawing will be an estimated $568.7 million.
“Mega Millions has just reached the $1 billion mark again. It’s especially nice to see the jackpot grow throughout the holidays and into the new year,” Pat McDonald, the Ohio lottery director and lead director of the Mega Millions Consortium, said in a statement early Saturday. “As the jackpot grows, we encourage our players to keep within their entertainment budget and enjoy this jackpot run right along with us.”
The only Mega Millions jackpots larger than the estimated $1.1 billion opportunity on Tuesday have been the $1.53 billion won in South Carolina in 2018 and $1.33 billion winning ticket in Illinois in July, Mega Millions said in the statement.
.
Mega Millions jackpot rises to $1.1 billion after no winner
If you are driving home from work along a road you’ve traveled numerous times before, your mind is likely to wander. You might become absorbed by a great conversation on the radio, or start rehearsing for an important meeting the next day. You steer your car down your usual route in a largely automatic way, without having to pay deliberate attention to the steering wheel, the subtle movements of your feet on the pedals, or the ever-changing traffic conditions around you. Yet if you encounter a sudden cognitive challenge, such as an unexpected road closure, you are quickly able to shift gears, identifying a new route home via a side street that you rarely use.
This kind of shift toward more deliberate thinking happens in a variety of different situations: for instance, when you have to carefully search for the solution to an especially tricky crossword clue, or think of a new way to frame an argument to change a stubborn friend’s mind. How the brain balances between the cognitive modes involved in these scenarios – relatively automatic processing and more deliberate processing – remains poorly understood, which suggests we need new ways of thinking about it.
It’s instructive to start by considering the kinds of features in our brains that might help us handle challenging multitasking situations. Firstly, we need to be able to learn all the ins and outs of a particular challenge – otherwise, how might we anticipate the next step in a complex sequence, like driving along a road occupied by other cars and pedestrians? We also need to be able to process all the information related to the task at hand, without it seeping over into another process we’d like to run in parallel – otherwise, we might allow a crescendo on the stereo to affect whether we swerve our car’s steering wheel into oncoming traffic. In addition, we’d like to be alerted when any process we’re allowing to run on its own goes awry. Deprived of this control, we’d plow right through a red light or fail to notice a pesky detour sign.
.
A 3D CT scan of the gut. Photo by Callista Images/Getty
Credit where credit is due: Make America Great Again was a brilliant slogan, precisely because nobody knew what it meant. Was it about bringing back jobs in manufacturing? Was it about restoring straight, white, Christian men to what some of them thought was their natural position of social dominance? MAGA became an all-purpose code for reversing whatever was bugging you about 21st-century America.
And one important strain of MAGAism was and is the belief that wokeness is making America militarily weak. Back in 2021 Senator Ted Cruz famously shared a video comparing Russian military ads, which feature manly men doing manly things, with a U.S. ad telling the story of a female recruit raised by two mothers. “Perhaps a weak, emasculated military is not the best idea,” Cruz declared.
Remarkably, the idea that wokeness makes us weak has persisted despite the failures of the decidedly un-woke Russian military in Ukraine. Senator Tom Cotton, who has published a book titled “Only the Strong: Reversing the Left’s Plot to Sabotage American Power,” recently declared that “soldiers join the army to kill the bad guys — not to learn to speak like they’re in a faculty lounge.”
.
Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York Times; photographs by Ralf Geithe and Image Source, via Getty Images
Everyone has at least one habit they’d love to shed, and at least a dozen they dream of picking up. But what is it that makes nail-biting so irresistible—or daily exercise so elusive? While there’s an entire subsection of the internet devoted to figuring it out, it’s easy to find oneself surrounded by information and advice but unable to put anything into action.
Enter Nir Eyal. His site, NirandFar, explores some of the best ways to tackle habits (both good and bad), as well as the psychology behind our relationship with them. He also ties those very concepts in with personal development and business strategy in his books Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life and Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.
My mom’s choir was halfway through its carol concert when I realized that her name was missing from the program. I knew she wouldn’t be too broken up about it — she’d say “No need to go into a swivet” — but I was incensed. The oversight instantly became a referendum on everything we’d lost that year.
This was my mom’s choir debut, and her long white hair glowed beatifically as she belted “We Three Kings” on a riser beneath the pulpit where, 10 months before, my sister and I had eulogized our 59-year-old dad. The concert was the first event she’d been excited about since then. She’d reminded me of the date and time on multiple occasions, assuring me and my husband that nobody would care if our toddlers made a ruckus.
Now, sitting in a pew my kids had decorated with stickers, I thought of my mom’s calls after Thursday night rehearsals — her excitement about difficult hymns and new friends. “They’re really kicking my butt,” she said as if she’d joined the Olympic gymnastics team. I pictured the piles of sheet music spread across her dining room table; the stream of choral classics pouring from her record player; and her first solo Christmas tree, waiting to be decorated after the concert. How proud she was that she’d put up the lights alone.
Three Years Later. How many January 6th Offenders are in jail? So far, three years later, roughly only 165 of the 800+ cases brought as a result of the January 6 attack have been fully adjudicated, with a total of 65 defendants receiving sentences to either jail or prison terms. Another 50 have been sentenced […]
Of all the different things you can try to improve your productivity, a morning routine is one of the most effective.
There are a few reasons why morning routines are so useful. The first is obvious to anyone who has ever procrastinated, just getting started is often the hardest part. If you can start out with the right momentum towards your goals, you’ll avoid wrestling with yourself in the morning to get started.
The second is that the morning, particularly before the workday officially begins, is a quiet time with fewer social obligations. For many of us, the rest of the day can present a chaotic, ever-changing blast of responsibilities, urgent errands and unexpected interruptions. The morning, in contrast, is often the most consistent part of your day.
A new test of how Apple gathers usage data from iPhones has found that the company collects personally identifiable information while explicitly promising not to.
The privacy policy governing Apple’s device analytics says the “none of the collected information identifies you personally.” But an analysis of the data sent to Apple shows it includes a permanent, unchangeable ID number called a Directory Services Identifier, or DSID, according to researchers from the software company Mysk. Apple collects that same ID number along with information for your Apple ID, which means the DSID is directly tied to your full name, phone number, birth date, email address, and more, according to Mysk’s tests.
According to Apple’s analytics policy, “Personal data is either not logged at all, is subject to privacy-preserving techniques such as differential privacy, or is removed from any reports before they’re sent to Apple.” But Mysk’s tests show that show that the DSID, which is directly tied to your name, is sent to Apple in the same packet as all the other analytics information.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Mark Peterson for The New York Times
A 3D CT scan of the gut. Photo by Callista Images/Getty
:extract_focal()/https%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Fpocket-collectionapi-prod-images%2F6111086f-6a5e-42e9-b1f1-1c60fc4c8d29.jpeg)
Image by Mykyta Dolmatov/Getty Images
.
Up and at them
Photo: Sukrita Rungroj (Shutterstock)
James' World 2 