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World War II didn’t so much begin as it gathered, like water rising until it breaches a dam. We, too, have been living through years of rising waters, though it took Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for much of the world to notice.

did Putin have any reason to think, before Feb. 24, that he wouldn’t be able to get away with his invasion?

He didn’t. Contrary to the claim that Putin’s behavior is a result of Western provocation — like refusing to absolutely rule out eventual NATO membership for Ukraine — the West has mainly spent 22 years placating Putin through a long cycle of resets and wrist slaps.

During the summer months, the gaps — particularly between J.&J. and Pfizer — began to narrow. By now, all the vaccines seem to be performing about equally well against coronavirus infections; in fact, Johnson & Johnson appears to be holding up slightly better.

As of Jan. 22, the latest data available, unvaccinated people were 3.2 times as likely to become infected as those who received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine; they were 2.8 times as likely to become infected as those who received two doses of the Moderna vaccine and 2.4 times as likely as those with two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech. Overall, then, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine appeared to be somewhat more protective against infection than the two alternatives.

Dr. Corey said the results jibe with his experience in H.I.V. research with the adenovirus that forms the backbone of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. “It has much longer durability than almost any other platform that we’ve ever worked with,” he said.

Joe Biden correctly argues that the struggle between democracy and autocracy is the defining conflict of our time. So which system performs better under stress?

when it comes to the most important functions of government, autocracy has severe weaknesses

it’s an occasion for a realistic assessment of authoritarian ineptitude and perhaps instability. What are those weaknesses?

As with any loving relationship, mine with Sweden is multidimensional and complex. I’m Nigerian American, and I’m a naturalized Swede based in Stockholm. I speak the language, and I’m raising its next generation. I was not surprised that some valid criticisms of the country’s history were quickly dismissed by Swedes. At the same time, I understand the Swedish defensiveness.

it is the most open society, run by the most private people. The cultural tropes it is praised for play a part in this: Lagom stipulates that we must take care of our individual needs first, without aggravating others in the process. This creates a society of interiority in which people are open-minded enough to allow their neighbors to do whatever they want, yet keep very close bubbles around their own lives to avoid stress, discomfort, and the unfamiliar

This is a part of why we have a segregated society where ethnic minorities congregate in subcommunities in order to feel accepted and listened to.

In both cases, heavy federal spending (on the war in Vietnam and Great Society programs in the 1960s, on the response to Covid in 2020 and 2021) added to demand. And shocks to global energy and food prices in the 1970s made the inflation problem significantly worse, just as they are doing now.

In contrast, efforts by the current Fed chairman, Jerome Powell, and his colleagues to bring down inflation enjoy considerable support from both the White House and Congress, at least so far. As a result, the Fed today has the independence it needs to make policy decisions based solely on the economic data and in the longer-run interests of the economy, not on short-term political considerations.

a key difference from the ’60s and ’70s is that the Fed’s views on both the sources of inflation and its own responsibility to control the pace of price increases have changed markedly. Burns, who presided over most of the 1970s inflation, had a cost-push theory of inflation. He believed that inflation was caused primarily by large companies and trade unions, which used their market power to push up prices and wages even in a slow economy. He thought the Fed had little ability to counteract these forces, and as an alternative to raising interest rates, he helped persuade Nixon to set wage and price controls in 1971, which proved a spectacular failure.

Ms. Chlapecka told me she identifies as feminist but that a lot of feminism needs to be “reworked.”

Like critiques of many women of her generation, hers include the historical whiteness of many strains of feminism, its heteronormativity and the persistence of anti-trans voices within the movement today.

The #BimboTok sphere is a diffuse collective of creators with different ideas and personas, but generally, it’s sex-positive and sex-work-positive

The White House will be illuminated in orange Friday night in honor of National Gun Violence Awareness Day, as the nation has been shaken by a recent string of deadly mass shootings.

Several other government buildings -- including California's Capitol dome and City Hall in New York City -- will also be lit up in orange over the weekend.

President Joe Biden on Thursday issued an appeal for stricter gun laws, including a ban on assault weapons, tougher background check laws and a higher minimum age of purchase.

On the day my daughter first tested positive, my 11-year-old son announced that he wasn’t feeling well and began developing classic coronavirus symptoms: headache, fatigue, sore throat, runny nose. My husband followed two days later with a sore throat and stuffy nose. Yet despite testing daily for seven days straight, my husband and son never tested positive for Covid-19 — including on PCR tests administered on my son’s fifth day of symptoms, and my husband’s third. (And yes, we did some throat swabs, too.)

I called experts in immunology, microbiology and virology to get their take.

And this rapid response changes everything about what happens next.

Ezra Klein, who devoted his weekend column to arguing for an optimistic, life-affirming response to the challenges of rising temperatures.

I endorse my colleague’s argument unreservedly, especially his reasonable historical perspective on how the risks of a hotter future compare to the far more impoverished and brutal straits in which our ancestors chose life for their children and, ultimately, for us

In worrying about hypothetical kids faring badly under climate change, the secular imagination is letting itself be steered toward the harsh analysis of Blaise Pascal:Let us imagine a number of men in chains and all condemned to death, where some are killed each day in the sight of the others, and those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows and wait their turn, looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope. It is an image of the condition of men.

What has changed, however, is the behavior of Republican elites, who used to push back against conspiracy theories but now cheerfully embrace them whenever it seems politically expedient.

Which, I’d argue, is where voodoo economics comes in — not as an idea but as a determinant of the kind of people who became Republican politicians.

The rise of supply-side economics coincided with the rise of movement conservatism — an interlocking network of elected officials, media organizations, think tanks and lobbying firms. Because the movement’s core ideology involved reducing taxes on the rich, it was lavishly supported by billionaires and corporate interests, and this in turn meant that it offered job security to anyone who remained sufficiently loyal.

In publishing, there are some books that are too big to fail. Very early on you get the message that this is a Major and Very Important Book. In 2013, that book was Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, which sold more than 1.5 million copies in its first year.

The book was about how women can make it to the top. It was a sort of “work-life balance” category buster, because she was telling women to pretty much forget about the “life” part.

when I looked through the galley, the whole thing was so manufactured and B-school-ish that I just wanted to put my head on the keyboard and have a little nap.