James' World 2

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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.”

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Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York Times; photographs by Ralf Geithe and Image Source, via Getty Images

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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.

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Image by Mykyta Dolmatov/Getty Images

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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.

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Maria Medem

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https://www.nytimes.com

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We often think about how the foods we eat affect our hearts, waistlines, and even the environment. But they also have a major impact on our brains.

As a nutritional psychiatrist, I study how dietary changes can lead to meaningful improvements in our mood and mental well-being.

Foods like leafy greens, colorful fruits and vegetables, seafood, and nuts, beans, and seeds all promote brain health.

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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.

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Up and at them

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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.

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Photo: Sukrita Rungroj (Shutterstock)

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These are the best personal finance books for 2022:

• “I Will Teach You To Be Rich,” by Ramit Sethi
• “Finance for the People,” by Paco de Leon
• “The Automatic Millionaire,” by David Bach
• “The Simple Path to Wealth,” by JL Collins
• “Get Good With Money,” by Tiffany “The Budgetnista” Aliche
• “Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away,” by Julien and Kiersten Saunders
• “Retire Before Mom and Dad,” by Rob Berger
• “When She Makes More,” by Farnoosh Torabi
• “You Are a Badass at Making Money,” by Jen Sincero
• “The Millionaire Next Door,” by Thomas J. Stanley
• “Spend Well, Live Rich,” by Michelle Singletary
• “Your Money or Your Life,” by Vicki Robin
• “Broke Millennial Takes On Investing,” by Erin Lowry
• “Get a Financial Life,” by Beth Kobliner
• “The Financial Diet,” by Chelsea Fagan and Lauren Ver Hage
• “The Money Manual,” by Tonya B. Rapley
• “Clever Girl Finance,” by Bola Sokunbi
• “How I Invest My Money,” by Joshua Brown and Brian Portnoy

We’ve put together a list of 18 books for every stage of life and for every money goal, whether you want to retire early, invest in the stock market, start conversations about money with your family, or just see money from a different point of view. 

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Amazon; Alyssa Powell/Insider

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