“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has now gone on 841 days and counting (the newspaper Kommersant keeps a running daily tab). Putin euphemistically still refers to the conflict as a special military operation, as opposed to its actual name: war. With no end in sight, the recriminations have now bubbled up to the surface in the Kremlin. The political infighting is taking place at the highest levels of government. Several high-ranking generals have been indicted on bribery and other criminal charges. This controversy is occurring at the worst possible time as a new minister of defense, Andrei Belousov, has just assumed control of the army. Belousov appears to be an observer and not a trigger of this upheaval. How deep the purge will be remains anyone’s guess, although Putin has already limited Belousov’s authority by rejecting any change in the Russian General staff. Dmitri Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, provided the official rationale behind Belousov’s appointment. Military spending had increased significantly since the war, and Putin wanted an economist to manage the consequences. Belousov is also the ultimate company man: before his new appointment, he was in charge of implementing Putin’s national projects and post-2024 election decrees. Belousov’s mandate also includes ensuring the soldiers in the special operation receive the necessary social services that they are owed.But providing these services remains difficult. Russia faces severe shortages of medicine because of sanctions. The head of the Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, also recently announced that Russia faces a deficit of 30,000 doctors. Putin has also promised to increase the pay of health workers and modernize the health care system. All this takes money, something that is in short supply in the Russian Federation. Add interest rates at 16 percent and a wave of bankruptcies, and Russian business is strapped for funds.” (William E. Pomeranz/Wilson Center)
“When Lionsgate revealed June 17 it would bring Francis Ford Coppola’s $120 million passion project Megalopolis to U.S. theaters, plenty of questions swirled — and not just about whether an actor playing a reporter would show up at screenings to ask questions of Adam Driver’s onscreen character midway through the movie, as happened at Cannes. (The answer to that question, according to sources, is yes, when at all possible.) More pressingly, folks in Hollywood wondered if the deal called for Lionsgate to put its own skin in the game by paying for any of Megalopolis’ marketing. After all, other suitors balked at that prospect after a late March screening for studio heads. Lionsgate, it appears, will not be paying for marketing. Instead, Coppola is expected to provide the spend himself. Lionsgate intends to put the feature on more than 1,500 screens, which sources in the distribution world say would require around $15 million to $20 million in marketing. It’s unclear how much Megalopolis’ campaign will entail. The film will also play on some Imax screens, potentially a boon for the project, which is banking on Coppola’s status as one of the great living filmmakers to draw in aficionados.” (Aaron Couch and Kim Masters/THR)
“Trump’s latest notion is both economically and fiscally illiterate. ‘If a 20yo interviewing for a House internship suggested replacing the income tax with a massive tariff, they’d be laughed out of the interview,’ Brian Riedl, a conservative budget expert, wrote on X. The politics of Trump’s latest scheme are perhaps even worse, because this plan exposes the hypocrisy of his faux populism. Indeed, what’s striking about the idea is just how regressive and non-populist it is. Replacing the income tax with tariffs would result in massive tax cuts for the ultrarich—at the expense of middle and lower-class Americans. Brendan Duke and Ryan Mulholland of the left-leaning Center for American Progress estimate that Trump’s proposal would raise taxes by $8,300 for the middle 20 percent of households, if American consumers end up bearing the full brunt of tariffs on imports. Working Americans would be hit first by the higher tariffs and then by the inevitable economic fallout as businesses that rely on imports are crushed. Those same workers would also see the downstream effects of the inevitable retaliation from America’s former trading partners, which would likely result in a global trade war. Even a more modest version of Trumponomics—imposing a 10 percent tax on all imports and a 60 percent tax on all imports from China, without trying to replace the income tax altogether—could result in a $2,500 annual tax increase for the typical family. Duke and Mulholland estimate that this plan would slap a $260 tax on the typical family’s electronics purchases, an $160 tax on its clothing purchases, and a $120 tax on its pharmaceutical-drug purchases. Middle-class families would pay more for gas and oil, along with toys and food. That’s because, as any economist will tell you, a large portion of increased tariffs are ultimately paid by consumers, not by the companies importing the goods. Republicans used to understand this concept, but now they seem desperate to deny it: Anna Kelly, a Republican National Committee spokesperson, recently insisted, ‘The notion that tariffs are a tax on U.S. consumers is a lie pushed by outsourcers and the Chinese Communist Party.’ This is economic bunkum.” (Charles Sykes/The Atlantic)
“Amid the steady torrent of MAGA-branded falsehoods and cynical spin jobs streaming through this election season, one whopper has stood out: the notion that Donald Trump’s criminal conviction in New York would prove an asset to his reelection campaign … But now that the verdict has sunk in—and Biden strategists have awakened to the advantages of pitching an aggressive message around Trump’s rampant criminality—voters are looking unlikely to join the retinue of MAGA leaders in storming the Bastille. A new poll from Politico/Ipsos finds that 21 percent of independent voters say that Trump’s conviction makes them less likely to vote for him, with just 5 percent describing themselves as more likely to support him on the basis of his felon status. In what looks to be a close election in which swing voters may once again play an outsize role, these numbers are anything but good news for the Trump campaign.” (Chris Lehmann/The Nation)
“The Biden administration is taking the unprecedented step of banning US companies and citizens from using software made by a major Russian cybersecurity firm with a new prohibition on its sale because of national security concerns, Commerce Department Secretary Gina Raimondo announced Thursday. The move uses relatively new Commerce Department authorities built on executive orders signed by Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump to ban the sale and provision of software products by Russian firm, Kaspersky Lab, inside the US. Previously installed software from the company can continue to be used but it will not be possible to download updates … US government agencies are already banned from using Kaspersky Lab software, but action to prevent private companies from using the software is unprecedented. US officials have for years alleged that the Russian government could force Kaspersky Lab to hand over data or use its anti-virus software to attempt to carry out hacking or surveillance of Americans — accusations that Kaspersky Lab strenuously denies … ‘While we’ve been exploring every option at our disposal, we ultimately decided that given the Russian government’s continued offensive cyber capabilities and capacity to influence Kaspersky’s operations, that we have to take the significant measure of a full prohibition, if we’re going to protect Americans and their personal data,’ (Secretary Raimondo) told reporters.” (Zachary Cohen, Sean Lyngaas and Jennifer Hansler/CNN)
“No one can predict the future, yet you will probably not go broke betting that there will never be a weirder story about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. than the one about his brain being partially eaten by a worm that crawled inside and died. That’s not to say there won’t be more weird ones, just that they probably won’t top the brain-eating-worm one. They’ll definitely get up there, though. Case in point: On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that the presidential candidate (1) previously lived with an emu and that (2) said emu was so aggressive with his wife that she had to carry around a shovel for protection. Yes, in an interview with the paper of record, Kennedy revealed that Cheryl Hines is ‘good’ with his wild pet ravens—more on them later—in contrast to how she felt about Toby the Emu, who ‘moved out to Malibu with Mr. Kennedy in 2014 and took up residence in the backyard.’ Why didn’t Hines like Toby? Probably because he ‘took to charging at her violently,’ and not just once or twice, but so frequently that she ‘started carrying a shovel in self-defense whenever she stepped outside.’ Speaking about the ordeal to reporter Rebecca Davis O’Brien, the actor said that every morning she would wonder: ‘Is today going to be the day that I wake up and kill an emu in my backyard?’ Luckily for Hines, Toby is no longer around (he was killed by a mountain lion).” (Bess Levin/VF)
“This is the Hollywood ‘Brat Pack.’ It is to the 1980s what the Rat Pack was to the 1960s—a roving band of famous young stars on the prowl for parties, women, and a good time. And just like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, and Sammy Davis Jr., these guys work together, too—they’ve carried their friendships over from life into the movies. They make major movies with big directors and get fat contracts and limousines. They have top agents and protective P.R. people. They have legions of fans who write them letters, buy them drinks, follow them home. And, most important, they sell movie tickets. Their films are often major hits, and the bigger the hit, the more money they make, and the more money they make, the more like stars they become. Everyone in Hollywood differs over who belongs to the Brat Pack. That is because they are basing their decision on such trivial matters as whose movie is the biggest hit, whose star is rising and whose is falling, whose face is on the cover of Rolling Stone and whose isn’t. And occasionally, some poor, misguided fool bases his judgment on whose talent is the greatest. The Brat Packers act together whenever possible—and it would be a major achievement for the average American moviegoer not to have seen at least one of their ensemble movies over the past four years. The first Brat Pack movie was Taps, the story of kids taking over a military school, a sleeper that took in $20.5 million. Then came The Outsiders, adapted from the S. E. Hinton novel and directed by Francis Ford Coppola; Rumble Fish, another Coppola-Hinton effort; The Breakfast Club; and now, on June 28, the release of the latest matchup of the Brats, St. Elmo’s Fire. Emilio Estevez is the unofficial president of the Brat Pack. (He is also the unofficial treasurer; other members seem to forget their wallets when they go out together, and Estevez usually picks up the check.) He may get his best notices yet, for his role in St. Elmo’s Fire. ‘I’ll bet if you asked everyone in the cast who their best friend is,’ says Joel Schumacher, who directed and co-wrote St. Elmo’s Fire, ‘they’d all say Emilio. He’s that kind of guy.’” (David Blum/NYMag)
“BRYAN HANCE WAS sitting in his basement one Sunday afternoon in June 2020 when he got an email about a secondhand bike for sale. A BMC Roadmachine 02 from a Swiss company, the bike was painted the color of a traffic cone, with goblin-green racing stripes. It was gorgeous. The bicycle boasted some of the fanciest components anyone could buy, like sleek Zipp wheels and electronic shifting. It was the kind of ride that made other cyclists envy it and its owner as they blew past on a straightaway. Hance guessed that a bike like that probably cost $8,000. Yet it was being offered for a fraction of that amount. Hance wasn’t in the market for a new bicycle, though. What intrigued him about the bike was something else: It was stolen. Hance is the cofounder of Bike Index, a site where people can register their bicycles (for free) and record when one has been stolen. This allows cyclists, and law enforcement, to keep their eyes peeled for a swiped bike. Since it was started in 2013, Bike Index has helped recover more than 14,000 stolen bikes, from Sacramento to Saskatchewan and as far away as Australia … Not so long ago, bike theft was a crime of opportunity—a snatch-and-grab, or someone applying a screwdriver to a flimsy lock. Those quaint days are over. Thieves now are more talented and brazen and prolific. They wield portable angle grinders and high-powered cordless screwdrivers. They scope neighborhoods in trucks equipped with ladders, to pluck fine bikes from second-story balconies. They’ll use your Strava feed to shadow you and your nice bike back to your home. A product designer who lives in an affluent neighborhood of Silicon Valley told me how, when he left his garage door open a crack for just an hour one morning in early 2020, thieves stole his $8,000 customized enduro mountain bike. He and his wife bought an alarm system. One night not long after, when the couple had latched the garage but forgotten to turn on the alarm, thieves broke open the door and stole his replacement bike, and this time grabbed his wife’s too—$26,000 in bikes lost in three months. Her bike was now for sale on that Facebook page. These were crazy times. The pandemic had been great for bike theft, because it had been great for bicycling.” (Christopher Solomon/WIRED)
“I understand that there are many people who are not always asking themselves, How can I get it back? But I am. Sometimes in fact this question feels like the animating force behind my emotional life—where did it go and how can I retrieve it? No one knows what it is, least of all me. Not long ago I was taking a train north toward Poughkeepsie and I was overcome with the memory of a previous train ride, on a Friday in July several years ago, toward a house in the woods where we stood one night on the porch and watched heat lightning and fireflies rise off the grass in the steam of a recent rain. Other more and less important things happened that weekend, but that is the image that came to me as I stared out the train window, along with the feeling that I could never get it back, any of it. I am speaking of what is generally called nostalgia, though I think the word is overused such that it conjures the gentle, moony feeling you might get listening to a second-rate James Taylor song. No, the feeling I am trying to describe is totalizing, characterized by sharp, surprising loss wrapped up with something like pleasure. That day on the train, I was so overwhelmed that I had to lie down. Bars are good places to go if you want to chase feelings like this. Or bad places, depending on your perspective. But it’s true that people who frequent bars—who really frequent them—are often the kinds of people who are looking for something lost, and perhaps getting lost in that looking. This is related to the consumption of alcohol, which can feel at times like a shortcut to bygone days. It also has to do with the spaces themselves, which are designed to be familiar and to mimic, perhaps, other bars where we’ve been before while retaining their own particular magic. That’s what a good bar is like, anyway.” (Sophie Haigney/The Paris Review)
“According to a UPI report, additional eighteenth-century bottles containing preserved fruit have been recovered from a cellar at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s Virginia plantation. In all, 35 bottles have been found in five storage pits. Twenty-nine of the bottles, which are thought to have been prepared before the beginning of the Revolutionary War, remain intact. Most of the vessels held cherries and berries thought to be gooseberries or currants. Examination of the cherries indicates that they were a tart variety with a more acidic composition that may have facilitated their preservation. The examination also showed that the stems of the cherries had been cut neatly, and so were probably harvested with shears. ‘The bottles and contents are a testament to the knowledge and skill of the enslaved people who managed the food preparations from tree to table,’ said Mount Vernon archaeologist Jason Boroughs.” (Archaeology)