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On a recent episode of the Burnt Toast podcast covering the rise of fat influencers losing weight, Virginia Sole-Smith, a journalist who writes about diet culture and who has contributed to The Times, said that influencers who once promoted fat acceptance but now claim they feel healthier when they are thinner are “throwing everyone else under the bus.”

“You used the hashtags in order to grow your following in order to post your affiliate links, get your sponsor deals, all of that,” Ms. Sole-Smith said. “So now what you’re basically telling us is you co-opted all that rhetoric and you don’t believe it at all, and that is pretty gross.”

Her co-host Corinne Fay said she thought it was better for influencers to be upfront if they were using weight-loss drugs instead of vaguely claiming to be “pursuing health.”“They don’t want to call it a diet, so it’s called a health and fitness journey,” Ms. Sole-Smith said. “That’s pretty exasperating.”

Ramsey, the well-known and intensely followed 63-year-old conservative Christian radio host, has 4.4 million Instagram followers, 1.9 million TikTok followers and legions more who listen to his radio shows and podcasts.

His message is brutal and direct: Avoid debt at all costs. Pay for everything in cash. Embrace frugality.

Plenty of 20- and 30-year-olds are pushing back, largely on TikTok. The hashtag #daveramseywouldntapprove, for instance, has 66.8 million views. Many say they don’t want to eat rice and beans every night—a popular Ramsey trope—or hold down multiple jobs to pay off loans. They also say Ramsey is out of touch with their reality.

If the Texas solar boom, the biggest in the USA, has little to do with Bidenomics, are we exaggerating the impact of Bidenomics? Rather than the shiny new tax incentives is it more general factors such as the plunging cost of PVs driving the renewable surge in the USA. Or, if policy is indeed the key, are state-level measures in Texas making the difference? Or, is this unfair to the IRA? Are its main effects still to come? Will it pile-on a boom that is already underway?

What did I learn?

First, when we compare the US renewable energy trajectory with the global picture, there is little reason to believe that Bidenomics has, so far, produced an exceptional US trajectory.

the ancient Hindu teaching on the stages of life, or ashramas, and the advice I received from a guru in southern India named Nochur Venkataraman. He taught me that many successful people get stuck in a stage called Grihastha—which is where you enjoy professional success and adulation—rather than progressing to Vanaprastha, which is where one should become more of a teacher (“crystallized intelligence”).

But there’s one more stage nearer the end called Sannyasa, which is to be fully enlightened and not working in the worldly domain. That transition is also sticky for many people—politicians, CEOs, sports figures, perhaps even the president—who struggle to stop doing what made them famous and admired. But that is the essence of truly retiring, and retiring well.

Matt: The United States seems to have the persistent problem of a geriatric ruling class. What’s your analysis of why that appears in our political elite?

with all these diverse issues, whether it's International monetary relations, alliance relations, concerns about the German question, nuclear strategy, and troop withdrawals, you'll have an expert in charge of each. But it's only at the top that these issues are all tied together.

President Kennedy, day after day after day, in 61 and 62 through 63, might have eight meetings. One might involve tax cuts, another the crisis with US steel, and the Test Ban Treaty, Berlin, and the balance of payments. Then different people would be in different meetings. So Carl Kaysen would deal with his portfolio and he would come in for one or maybe two of those meetings. Only at the top was some consideration given to all these issues. So in a president or prime minister's mind, the German question would be related to the balance of payments, which would be related to tax cuts, which would be related to Berlin, in a way that a mid-level person might not see.

It's sort of the reverse of the bureaucratic politics model. I started seeing that these issues got tied together in a way that many mid-level people would not see, but was understood at the top where grand strategy was made.  

The forces of American culture and politics are pushing men and women under age 30 into opposing camps, creating a new fault line in the electorate and adding an unexpected wild card into the 2024 presidential election. 

Voters under 30 have been a pillar of the Democratic coalition since Ronald Reagan left office in 1989. That pillar is showing cracks, with young men defecting from the party. Young men now favor Republican control of Congress and Trump for president after backing President Biden and Democratic lawmakers in 2020.

Women under 30 remain strongly behind Democrats for Congress and the White House. They are also far more likely to call themselves liberal than two decades ago.

we’re not in here to eat mozzarella and go to Tuscany. We’re not in here to accumulate money. We’re in here mostly to sacrifice, to do something. The way you do it is by taking risks.

Some people take risks and some people labor in the fields. You have the option of doing either one or the other. But my point is you should never have someone rise in society if he or she is not taking risks for the sake of others, period. That’s one rule.

The second one, you should never be a public intellectual if any statement you make doesn’t entail risk-taking. In other words, you should never have rewards without any risk

Reeve chronicles the alt-right’s rise in “Black Pill,” a chilling and insightful account of the throughline from dopey internet memes to Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, the seductions of QAnon and the storming of the Capitol. In Reeve’s telling, Charlottesville was the fulcrum between a before, when hateful ideologies were coalescing, largely out of view, and the after — which we now inhabit

the internet culture she depicts starts at least a decade earlier, when a teenager modified the source code of a Japanese website to launch an English-language version, 4chan. The site let users post images anonymously, and it did not take long for pornography and vile memes to find a home there.

Eventually, the site’s developer became troubled and began blocking the worst of it, especially during what came to be known as Gamergate, a mass harassment campaign against women in the video game industry.

Over the past 15 years, China has come to dominate the global market for solar energy. Nearly every solar panel on the planet is made by a Chinese company. Even the equipment to manufacture solar panels is made almost entirely in China. The country’s solar panel exports, measured by how much power they can produce, jumped another 10 percent in May over last year.

But China’s solar panel domestic industry is in upheaval.

Wholesale prices plummeted by almost half last year and have fallen another 25 percent this year. Chinese manufacturers are competing for customers by cutting prices far below their costs, and still keep building more factories.

the Mediterranean rush is turning Europe’s recent economic history on its head. In the 2010s, Germany and other manufacturing-heavy economies helped drag the continent out of its debt crisis thanks to strong exports of cars and capital goods, especially to China.

Today, Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal contribute between a quarter and half of the bloc’s annual growth. 

While Germany’s economy is flatlining, Spain is Europe’s fastest-growing big economy. Nearly three-quarters of the country’s recent growth and one in four new jobs are linked to tourism

. The concept of irrational German angst has become a bit of a cliche over the years, but this time the threats to social cohesion feel very real

a wave of aggression against politicians and activists. Last year alone there were 3,691 offences against officials and party representatives, 80 of which were violent

This series of assaults on politicians and activists fuel wider fears around the state of Germany’s post-war order

In Brussels, the seat of the European Union, rising crime, pollution and decaying infrastructure symbolize a continent in decline. With unusual clarity, Belgium shows what Europe has become in the 21st century: a continent subject to history rather than driving it.

For a long time, Belgian politicians and citizens hoped that European integration would release them from their own tribal squabbles. Who needed intricate federal coalitions if the behemoth in Brussels would soon take over? Except for the army and the national museums, all other levers of policy could comfortably be transferred,

The upward absorption has not come to pass. The European Union remains a halfway house between national government and continental superstate. There is no E.U. army or capacious fiscal apparatus. Consequently, Belgium has been put in an awkward position. Unable to collapse itself into Europe, it is stuck with a ramshackle federal state

His is just one of many complaints against BNN, a site based in Hong Kong that published numerous falsehoods during its short time online as a result of what appeared to be generative A.I. errors.

During the two years that BNN was active, it had the veneer of a legitimate news service, claiming a worldwide roster of “seasoned” journalists and 10 million monthly visitors, surpassing the The Chicago Tribune’s self-reported audience. Prominent news organizations like The Washington Post, Politico and The Guardian linked to BNN’s stories

Google News often surfaced them, too

Around half of all U.S. adults under 30 have used a dating site or app at some point in their lives, and one in 10 adults with partners say they met their significant other by dating online

Online-dating growth has been slowing. Paying users declined 6% in the first quarter of the year at Match Group, whose portfolio includes the League, Tinder and Hinge, compared with a 3% dip in the first quarter of 2023. The Bumble app grew paying users 18% in the first quarter, compared with 31% growth in the period a year earlier. 

Nearly half of all online daters and more than half of female daters say their experiences have been negative, according to Pew, and a growing tide of users are sharing their dissatisfaction

f disempowerment underlies the Republicans’ most potent issues in this campaign: inflation and immigration.

If Ms. Harris continues to repeat economic facts without acknowledging most voters’ feelings, she will fail to address the mood of discontent that has her running just behind Mr. Trump in the polls. Low unemployment, robust job growth, rising wages — by the usual metrics, the economy has been a success during the Biden years. And yet inflation looms so large for voters that most disapprove of the president’s handling of the economy. Why

Because inflation is not merely about the price of eggs. Many voters experience it as an assault on their agency, a daily marker of their powerlessness: No matter how hard I work or how much I make, I can’t get ahead or even keep up.

Harvard, where, at a wood-paneled dining hall last year, two juniors explained how to assess a fellow undergraduate’s earning potential. It’s easy, they said, as we ate mussels, beets and sautéed chard: You can tell by who’s getting a bulge bracket internship.

A bulge bracket bank, like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase or Citi. The biggest, most prestigious global investment banks

Not to be confused with M.B.B., which stands for three of the most prestigious management consulting firms: McKinsey, Bain and Boston Consulting Group.

Extreme weather events are on the rise. Headlines this summer have been filled with news of devastating hurricanes, droughts, flash floods and wildfires. If ever the time was right for Hollywood to take on the one disaster that affects us all, this is surely it.

In a poll conducted between April 25 and May 4, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that 62 percent of registered voters “would prefer to vote for a candidate for public office who supports action on global warming.”

That number includes 47 percent of respondents who identified as a liberal or moderate Republican. Only 15 percent of registered voters believed the U.S. government “is responding well to global warming.”