Reconstructing a Pandemic

Last Friday morning , I received a phone alert from the Boston Globe : epidemiologists and genomicists had traced COVID-19 infections at a Boston biotech conference in late February and estimated that , by October , the conference had led to between some two and three hundred thousand cases , across twenty-nine states and multiple countries .
That was the headline , but the substance of the paper , which appeared in Science , was a careful tracking of a mutation of the coronavirus that had appeared among patients who were infected at the conference , which was held by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moved through Massachusetts and to other states and continents .
These are the kind of empirical facts that have been in short supply , and they provide a glimpse of not just a cluster of infections isolated in place and time but a branch of the pandemic as it spread through the world and through the year .
By 4 p.m. Friday , I was on a video call with the two lead authors of the paper , Jacob Lemieux , an infectious-disease physician and postdoctoral researcher at Harvard , and Bronwyn MacInnis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the Broad Institute ’ s Infectious Disease and Microbiome Program .
They looked a little worn out , having spent the day trying to explain a paper about the processes of superspreading to reporters who were primarily interested in how many infections could be traced to the conference .
“ In the initial version of the paper , we didn ’ t have a number—we didn ’ t want to go there , ” Lemieux said .
“ People kept asking , ‘ How many cases ?
How many cases ?
’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scientists , to flesh this out.
” Lemieux noted that , though the paper offered an estimate of the number of infections , it also included half a paragraph of caveats , most of which acknowledged the incompleteness of databases of coronavirus genomes and the imperfections of the calculations , including Lemieux and MacInnis ’ s , that rely on them .
“ What we ’ re trying to point out is it ’ s a big number , ” Lemieux said .
“ It ’ s bigger than we would have expected.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ an end to the coronavirus seems near .
This week , the first doses of the vaccine were administered at the hospital where Lemieux works and at many others around the country .
From another point of view , we are just beginning to see clearly how high the stakes have been , both in every public gathering and in every effort to regulate them .
Although researchers have suspected since early in the pandemic that the virus ’ s spread has been shaped by “ superspreader events , ” in which some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ explosively than others , no one knows whether the cause is the viral load in a host or the situations in which a host encounters other people—or some combination of the two .
Nothing about the Biogen conference was unique , Lemieux emphasized : a hundred and seventy-five people from several countries gathered in a hotel at the end of February , before anyone wore masks .
It was just a normal event in the course of the modern world .
Eight months later , that meeting had led to the infections of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ give or take .
MacInnis tilted her head back and looked straight upward while she thought through what she wanted to say .
She said , “ It certainly captures my imagination.
” Lemieux works in the lab of Pardis Sabeti , a researcher who has helped to pioneer the field of genomic epidemiology .
( Sabeti was profiled in The New Yorker in 2014 , at the height of the Ebola outbreak , when she led a global effort that pinpointed the first person to be infected with the virus ; the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ credited five co-authors who were killed by the disease . )
MacInnis is a close collaborator .
The idea behind the work , as Lemieux described it to me , is that classical epidemiology can be informed by the study of a virus ’ s genome ; researchers go back and forth between contact tracing and the lab ; insights from each pull the other along “ in a constant tug of war.
” In the case of the Biogen conference , an early breakthrough came from twenty-eight samples collected through initial testing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lemieux and MacInnis ’ s research team discovered a mutation that was common to all of the cases .
Remarkably , the mutation , C2416T , had only appeared twice in GISAID , an international database of COVID-19 sequences .
Those two samples came from a pair of elderly French patients who were tested a couple days after the conference ended .
Lemieux , MacInnis , and their co-authors wrote , “ This strongly suggests low-level community transmission of C2416T in Europe in February 2020 before the allele came to Boston via a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by superspreading at the conference.
” The researchers also identified a second mutation , which was present in seven of the twenty-eight samples but not recorded in any database ; they believe that it developed during or shortly after the two-day conference , which gives some sense of how quickly the virus can evolve .
In general , the team at the Broad Institute was more interested in understanding how the disease had spread than in the conference as a spreader event , so even as they worked on the Biogen samples they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Even in those with no connection to C2416T , they tended to find some similar patterns .
One data set came from a nursing home in greater Boston that had tested all its residents for COVID-19 .
None of the residents had been suspected of having the virus , but it turned out that eighty-five per cent did .
Sequencing the genomes from these samples , Lemieux and MacInnis ’ s team discovered that three separate lineages of the virus had entered the facility , likely over a period of a few weeks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Two lineages infected a couple of patients and did not spread further .
The third spread like wildfire , quickly infecting nearly the entire facility .
This lineage also followed the superspreader pattern : some factor had given it an unusual reach .
“ Most cases don ’ t lead to a lot of onward infection—they stop after one or two cases , ” MacInnis said .
“ But then certain cases , and certain introductions , just explode.
” The C2416T lineage evolved every week or two , but its genomic signature @ @ @ @ @ @ @ follow it out from the conference and across the country .
In March , the Massachusetts Department of Public Health had identified about a hundred cases that were connected to the Biogen conference .
But public-health tracing is designed to identify and isolate close contacts of those who have been infected , not to follow the spread of the virus infinitely into the future .
“ They ’ re usually limited in scope to the people at the event and maybe first-degree contacts—maybe secondary , at most , ” MacInnis told me .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ genomic data to the picture , you can see just how much further these events can go , and how much more of a devastating effect they can have.
” Even while following the path of the C2416T lineage , the researchers were also collecting unrelated samples of the virus in the community .
One cluster of samples that included the C2416T allele turned out to have come from a group of homeless shelters .
Lemieux said , “ And that was a moment when we were , like , ‘ Oh , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of weeks , the virus had migrated from the scientists and executives at the conference to the homeless .
Lemieux and MacInnis ’ s team eventually estimated that the viruses descended from the conference were responsible for between thirty and forty per cent of cases across the state by Halloween .
In the press , there were clues pointing farther afield .
A state health department might issue a press release saying they suspected that an outbreak originated with someone who had returned from Boston ; a newspaper report might suggest the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ samples to search , and quite frequently they found the telltale mutations .
By the end of October , they discovered that the C2416T lineage was present in 1.9 per cent of all American genomes in the GISAID database .
In North Carolina and Indiana , where outbreaks had clear connections to the Biogen conference , nearly twenty per cent of samples contained the C2416T allele .
Another marker , called G26233T , which Lemieux and MacInnis believe developed during or shortly after the conference , had travelled to Australia , Sweden , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ view , he and his colleagues had supplanted epidemiological theory about how the virus spread with empirical fact , and found that the spread was far more explosive than they might have otherwise predicted .
The story of the pandemic in the United States is marked by suspected superspreader events : a motorcycle rally in South Dakota , Mardi Gras in New Orleans , a funeral in Albany , Georgia , and another in Detroit .
Lemieux said , “ If you look at the sequences in Louisiana , they ’ re highly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a good fraction of the sequences in Boston are related .
Then you wonder , Well , was that Mardi Gras ?
But no one , to my knowledge , connected where those people went and who they interacted with to those sequences.
” It was very difficult to see the full picture , Lemieux said , unless you were returning “ to the blackboard and drawing the linkages between people ” and then merging that information with the data from genomic sequencing .
He added , “ I think that if we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ places , at other events , we ’ d really come to appreciate how the virus may not be behaving as we predicted it would , or how we think it does.
” On Sunday , after speaking with Lemieux and MacInnis , I called a Harvard epidemiologist named William Hanage , who collaborated on their paper and had been thinking about its public-health implications , to ask what should have been done differently .
I suppose , in a way , I was asking about a parallel year—about what could have happened @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scientists , and had scientists seen the whole pandemic as clearly as the Broad researchers now see the Biogen event .
Hanage said that , although scientists did not immediately know how unbalanced the spread could be , they did suspect that there were superspreading dynamics from early on in the pandemic , and that public policy could have been built around that insight .
The study , Hanage said , “ strongly suggests that limiting opportunities for superspreading helps , and what that means is limiting gatherings , basically.
” For example @ @ @ @ @ @ @ successfully pursued a far more aggressive and centralized approach aimed at “ cluster-busting.
” He said , “ I think also the number of introductions illustrates the relative importance of—I don ’ t want to call them travel bans , but—preventing the early introductions of the virus into the community .
That ’ s something which I think is much more widely accepted now than it was.
” He predicted that the “ dogma ” that argued against restricting travel would be widely revisited .
They don ’ t sound like measures that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even Biden was wearing a mask , before public-health authorities were sure that masks would help , and before they fully understood that the virus was airborne .
Measures like these required trust , and every link in that chain was weak : the public did not broadly trust the political leadership , the President did not trust the scientists , and the scientists could not yet clearly see the disease for what it was , because they were still basing their knowledge on theory and analogy rather than empirical fact .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We expect a certain pattern to a catastrophic event like this , but the pandemic has upended it ; the vaccine has arrived before we fully understand the disease .
When I replayed the tape of my conversation with Lemieux and MacInnis , I could hear in MacInnis ’ s voice , in particular , a current of awe—that , a year in , we were still discovering how contagious and unpredictable the virus can be .
In the recording of my own voice , I heard futility—that , no matter how brilliant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had a head start .
More on the Coronavirus • To protect American lives and revive the economy , Donald Trump and Jared Kushner should listen to Anthony Fauci rather than trash him .
• We should look to students to conceive of appropriate school-reopening plans .
It is not too late to ask what they really want .
• A pregnant pediatrician on what children need during the crisis .
• Trump is helping tycoons who have donated to his reëlection campaign exploit the pandemic to maximize profits .
• Meet the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recovery .
• The coronavirus is likely to reshape architecture .
What kinds of space are we willing to live and work in now ?

Facts are hard-won in medical science. To establish that one drug is slightly more effective than another might require hundreds of millions of dollars and a years-long trial among thousands of patients. A year ago, when the coronavirus first appeared, scientists knew virtually nothing about it—whom it might affect, how it spread. In March, when the pandemic forced much of the United States into lockdown, there was no consensus about whether people should wear masks; more fundamentally, there was no consensus about whether the virus was spread by droplets or whether it was airborne. Such facts are so hard to establish because they need to be sturdy enough to support a person’s life.
Last Friday morning, I received a phone alert from the Boston Globe: epidemiologists and genomicists had traced COVID-19 infections at a Boston biotech conference in late February and estimated that, by October, the conference had led to between some two and three hundred thousand cases, across twenty-nine states and multiple countries. That was the headline, but the substance of the paper, which appeared in Science, was a careful tracking of a mutation of the coronavirus that had appeared among patients who were infected at the conference, which was held by the drug company Biogen, and then moved through Massachusetts and to other states and continents. These are the kind of empirical facts that have been in short supply, and they provide a glimpse of not just a cluster of infections isolated in place and time but a branch of the pandemic as it spread through the world and through the year.
By 4 p.m. Friday, I was on a video call with the two lead authors of the paper, Jacob Lemieux, an infectious-disease physician and postdoctoral researcher at Harvard, and Bronwyn MacInnis, the director of pathogen genomic surveillance at the Broad Institute’s Infectious Disease and Microbiome Program. They looked a little worn out, having spent the day trying to explain a paper about the processes of superspreading to reporters who were primarily interested in how many infections could be traced to the conference. “In the initial version of the paper, we didn’t have a number—we didn’t want to go there,” Lemieux said. “People kept asking, ‘How many cases? How many cases?’ So we did our best, as scientists, to flesh this out.” Lemieux noted that, though the paper offered an estimate of the number of infections, it also included half a paragraph of caveats, most of which acknowledged the incompleteness of databases of coronavirus genomes and the imperfections of the calculations, including Lemieux and MacInnis’s, that rely on them. “What we’re trying to point out is it’s a big number,” Lemieux said. “It’s bigger than we would have expected.”
From one point of view, an end to the coronavirus seems near. This week, the first doses of the vaccine were administered at the hospital where Lemieux works and at many others around the country. From another point of view, we are just beginning to see clearly how high the stakes have been, both in every public gathering and in every effort to regulate them. Although researchers have suspected since early in the pandemic that the virus’s spread has been shaped by “superspreader events,” in which some branches of the disease spread much more explosively than others, no one knows whether the cause is the viral load in a host or the situations in which a host encounters other people—or some combination of the two. Nothing about the Biogen conference was unique, Lemieux emphasized: a hundred and seventy-five people from several countries gathered in a hotel at the end of February, before anyone wore masks. It was just a normal event in the course of the modern world. Eight months later, that meeting had led to the infections of a quarter of a million people, give or take. MacInnis tilted her head back and looked straight upward while she thought through what she wanted to say. She said, “It certainly captures my imagination.”
Lemieux works in the lab of Pardis Sabeti, a researcher who has helped to pioneer the field of genomic epidemiology. (Sabeti was profiled in The New Yorker in 2014, at the height of the Ebola outbreak, when she led a global effort that pinpointed the first person to be infected with the virus; the paper in which this finding was published credited five co-authors who were killed by the disease.) MacInnis is a close collaborator. The idea behind the work, as Lemieux described it to me, is that classical epidemiology can be informed by the study of a virus’s genome; researchers go back and forth between contact tracing and the lab; insights from each pull the other along “in a constant tug of war.” In the case of the Biogen conference, an early breakthrough came from twenty-eight samples collected through initial testing. Having sequenced and compared them, Lemieux and MacInnis’s research team discovered a mutation that was common to all of the cases. Remarkably, the mutation, C2416T, had only appeared twice in GISAID, an international database of COVID-19 sequences. Those two samples came from a pair of elderly French patients who were tested a couple days after the conference ended. Lemieux, MacInnis, and their co-authors wrote, “This strongly suggests low-level community transmission of C2416T in Europe in February 2020 before the allele came to Boston via a single introduction, which was then amplified by superspreading at the conference.” The researchers also identified a second mutation, which was present in seven of the twenty-eight samples but not recorded in any database; they believe that it developed during or shortly after the two-day conference, which gives some sense of how quickly the virus can evolve.
In general, the team at the Broad Institute was more interested in understanding how the disease had spread than in the conference as a spreader event, so even as they worked on the Biogen samples they also sought and analyzed other samples. Even in those with no connection to C2416T, they tended to find some similar patterns. One data set came from a nursing home in greater Boston that had tested all its residents for COVID-19. None of the residents had been suspected of having the virus, but it turned out that eighty-five per cent did. Sequencing the genomes from these samples, Lemieux and MacInnis’s team discovered that three separate lineages of the virus had entered the facility, likely over a period of a few weeks in March—three knocks at the door. Two lineages infected a couple of patients and did not spread further. The third spread like wildfire, quickly infecting nearly the entire facility. This lineage also followed the superspreader pattern: some factor had given it an unusual reach. “Most cases don’t lead to a lot of onward infection—they stop after one or two cases,” MacInnis said. “But then certain cases, and certain introductions, just explode.”
The C2416T lineage evolved every week or two, but its genomic signature remained consistent enough that the researchers could follow it out from the conference and across the country. In March, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health had identified about a hundred cases that were connected to the Biogen conference. But public-health tracing is designed to identify and isolate close contacts of those who have been infected, not to follow the spread of the virus infinitely into the future. “They’re usually limited in scope to the people at the event and maybe first-degree contacts—maybe secondary, at most,” MacInnis told me. “But, when you bring the genomic data to the picture, you can see just how much further these events can go, and how much more of a devastating effect they can have.” Even while following the path of the C2416T lineage, the researchers were also collecting unrelated samples of the virus in the community. One cluster of samples that included the C2416T allele turned out to have come from a group of homeless shelters. Lemieux said, “And that was a moment when we were, like, ‘Oh, my God.’ ” Within a couple of weeks, the virus had migrated from the scientists and executives at the conference to the homeless. Lemieux and MacInnis’s team eventually estimated that the viruses descended from the conference were responsible for between thirty and forty per cent of cases across the state by Halloween.
In the press, there were clues pointing farther afield. A state health department might issue a press release saying they suspected that an outbreak originated with someone who had returned from Boston; a newspaper report might suggest the same thing. The researchers could pinpoint which samples to search, and quite frequently they found the telltale mutations. By the end of October, they discovered that the C2416T lineage was present in 1.9 per cent of all American genomes in the GISAID database. In North Carolina and Indiana, where outbreaks had clear connections to the Biogen conference, nearly twenty per cent of samples contained the C2416T allele. Another marker, called G26233T, which Lemieux and MacInnis believe developed during or shortly after the conference, had travelled to Australia, Sweden, and Slovakia.
In Lemieux’s view, he and his colleagues had supplanted epidemiological theory about how the virus spread with empirical fact, and found that the spread was far more explosive than they might have otherwise predicted. The story of the pandemic in the United States is marked by suspected superspreader events: a motorcycle rally in South Dakota, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, a funeral in Albany, Georgia, and another in Detroit. Lemieux said, “If you look at the sequences in Louisiana, they’re highly related in much the same way that a good fraction of the sequences in Boston are related. Then you wonder, Well, was that Mardi Gras? But no one, to my knowledge, connected where those people went and who they interacted with to those sequences.” It was very difficult to see the full picture, Lemieux said, unless you were returning “to the blackboard and drawing the linkages between people” and then merging that information with the data from genomic sequencing. He added, “I think that if we looked and did similar studies in other places, at other events, we’d really come to appreciate how the virus may not be behaving as we predicted it would, or how we think it does.”
The Biogen conference ended on February 27th, at which point there had been only about a dozen deaths from COVID-19 across the United States. The turning point in the Democratic nominating contest occurred two days later, when Joe Biden won the South Carolina primary; it would be effectively over the following week, when Biden largely swept the Super Tuesday slate and several of his rivals dropped out and endorsed him at a rally in Dallas—an evening that ended with Biden and Beto and Amy O’Rourke happily sliding into a booth at a Whataburger, without masks. On the campaign trail, I’d grown accustomed to candidates, when events grew sleepy, turning to two reliable applause lines: one was to criticize Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education, and the other was to promise that a Democratic White House would “listen to the scientists” about COVID-19. Listening to scientists would have been an immeasurable improvement on how Donald Trump spent the year, likely saving tens of thousands of lives. But the slogan also obscured how little scientists knew at the time about how the virus spread—and how partial our understanding of it remains.
On Sunday, after speaking with Lemieux and MacInnis, I called a Harvard epidemiologist named William Hanage, who collaborated on their paper and had been thinking about its public-health implications, to ask what should have been done differently. I suppose, in a way, I was asking about a parallel year—about what could have happened had politicians listened to the advice of scientists, and had scientists seen the whole pandemic as clearly as the Broad researchers now see the Biogen event. Hanage said that, although scientists did not immediately know how unbalanced the spread could be, they did suspect that there were superspreading dynamics from early on in the pandemic, and that public policy could have been built around that insight. The study, Hanage said, “strongly suggests that limiting opportunities for superspreading helps, and what that means is limiting gatherings, basically.” For example, Hanage pointed out that Japan had successfully pursued a far more aggressive and centralized approach aimed at “cluster-busting.” He said, “I think also the number of introductions illustrates the relative importance of—I don’t want to call them travel bans, but—preventing the early introductions of the virus into the community. That’s something which I think is much more widely accepted now than it was.” He predicted that the “dogma” that argued against restricting travel would be widely revisited.
They don’t sound like measures that Americans were ready to accept, before even Biden was wearing a mask, before public-health authorities were sure that masks would help, and before they fully understood that the virus was airborne. Measures like these required trust, and every link in that chain was weak: the public did not broadly trust the political leadership, the President did not trust the scientists, and the scientists could not yet clearly see the disease for what it was, because they were still basing their knowledge on theory and analogy rather than empirical fact. In many ways, they still are. We expect a certain pattern to a catastrophic event like this, but the pandemic has upended it; the vaccine has arrived before we fully understand the disease. When I replayed the tape of my conversation with Lemieux and MacInnis, I could hear in MacInnis’s voice, in particular, a current of awe—that, a year in, we were still discovering how contagious and unpredictable the virus can be. In the recording of my own voice, I heard futility—that, no matter how brilliant the scientists studying it, the virus had a head start.
More on the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-12-17--The Electrifying Moves of Ann Reinking

The Electrifying Moves of Ann Reinking

Ann Reinking , who died Saturday at the age of seventy-one , was talented at being joyful—you could see her big heart through her big eyes whenever she flashed that sparkling , goofy , wonderful smile—but I liked her best when she didn ’ t even smirk .
When Reinking pouted , or had the restraint to let her sculpted jaw hover austerely while her outrageous body did the work of showing how much she loved moving it for us , she was at her smoldering best .
Reinking ’ s body exploded with the intensity of an artist whose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but whose beauty lies in the attempts to control it .
She was the kind of sexy you read about in the Bible : the snake in the garden , Delilah , any instance when God used the weather to punish human beings for being made out of flesh .
She was soul and skill but also the electrifying result of somebody trying to tame the untamable .
Her gorgeous , unruly body rose to the precise demands of choreography—most notably Bob Fosse ’ s—but please watch her , in this clip from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Michael Bennett ’ s outrageous requirements for dancer flexibility who is boss .
Obviously , she was outrageously beautiful , to the extent that her shiny sheets of parted dark hair and operatic cheekbones brought her desirability into the terrain of excess—which made sense , because when she moved , everything was a little more .
The angle of her back was a little more acute in its arch .
Her pelvis was a little more fluid , her legs opened a little wider , her gestures reached all the way down to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was meant to , but it was all part of the text .
Even when she was writhing , she was writing .
My favorite performance of hers , from “ All That Jazz , ” is in the hallucination number , “ There ’ ll Be Some Changes Made.
” At one point , Reinking lopes , then freezes toward the camera , in amplified Fosse regalia , the hat and sparkles and dance boots , with the alternating precision of a predator and its paralyzed prey .
She ’ s stunningly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ twitches her shoulders like she ’ s recovering from an orgasm .
She bends over backwards , extends her legs past the reasonable and toward the infinite , and makes a derby hat look unfathomably cool .
At one point , when she faces away from the camera for a variation on a chug , it seems like she ’ s winding herself up to finish the job of killing us dead .
The best part , however , is when Reinking , in closeup , closes her eyes and lowers her head @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Yeah , that ’ s right , ” before she opens her eyes to meet ours .
She ’ s on her knees at the end of the song , but by then you ’ ve been conquered .
She owns you , and she never cracked a smile .

The dancer Ann Reinking, star of Bob Fosse’s “All That Jazz,” made gestures that reached all the way down to her fingertips. Photograph by Josh Weiner / 20th Century Fox / Shutterstock
Ann Reinking, who died Saturday at the age of seventy-one, was talented at being joyful—you could see her big heart through her big eyes whenever she flashed that sparkling, goofy, wonderful smile—but I liked her best when she didn’t even smirk. When Reinking pouted, or had the restraint to let her sculpted jaw hover austerely while her outrageous body did the work of showing how much she loved moving it for us, she was at her smoldering best.
Reinking’s body exploded with the intensity of an artist whose expression can’t be tamed, but whose beauty lies in the attempts to control it. She was the kind of sexy you read about in the Bible: the snake in the garden, Delilah, any instance when God used the weather to punish human beings for being made out of flesh. She was soul and skill but also the electrifying result of somebody trying to tame the untamable. Her gorgeous, unruly body rose to the precise demands of choreography—most notably Bob Fosse’s—but please watch her, in this clip from “A Chorus Line,” show Michael Bennett’s outrageous requirements for dancer flexibility who is boss.
Obviously, she was outrageously beautiful, to the extent that her shiny sheets of parted dark hair and operatic cheekbones brought her desirability into the terrain of excess—which made sense, because when she moved, everything was a little more. The angle of her back was a little more acute in its arch. Her pelvis was a little more fluid, her legs opened a little wider, her gestures reached all the way down to her fingertips. She flowed when she was meant to, but it was all part of the text. Even when she was writhing, she was writing.
My favorite performance of hers, from “All That Jazz,” is in the hallucination number, “There’ll Be Some Changes Made.”
At one point, Reinking lopes, then freezes toward the camera, in amplified Fosse regalia, the hat and sparkles and dance boots, with the alternating precision of a predator and its paralyzed prey. She’s stunningly sexy as she flicks her hand and twitches her shoulders like she’s recovering from an orgasm. She bends over backwards, extends her legs past the reasonable and toward the infinite, and makes a derby hat look unfathomably cool. At one point, when she faces away from the camera for a variation on a chug, it seems like she’s winding herself up to finish the job of killing us dead. The best part, however, is when Reinking, in closeup, closes her eyes and lowers her head, then nods, like, “Yeah, that’s right,” before she opens her eyes to meet ours. She’s on her knees at the end of the song, but by then you’ve been conquered. She owns you, and she never cracked a smile.


newyorker--2020-12-17--William Barr Is Going, but His Trumpian Legacy Remains

Last week , it emerged that Barr had known for months that investigations of Hunter Biden ’ s taxes and financial dealings had been opened , but he adhered to a long-standing Justice Department practice and did not disclose any information that could influence the outcome of a pending election .
After Biden won , Barr refused to confirm Trump ’ s baseless claims that the contest had been stolen from him .
This weekend , Trump blamed his Attorney General for his defeat .
“ Why didn ’ t Bill Barr reveal the truth to the public , before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Trump tweeted .
“ Big disadvantage for Republicans at the polls !
” On Monday , the two men engaged in political pantomime .
In the tweet announcing Barr ’ s departure , Trump said that they had just had a “ very nice meeting ” and said Barr had done “ an outstanding job.
” Barr released an effusive resignation letter that hailed Trump ’ s “ unprecedented achievements ” despite “ a partisan onslaught ” that “ few could have weathered ” and “ in which no tactic , no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of bounds.
” A senior law-enforcement official , who asked not to be named , described the exchange to me as scripted : “ I think that this was a negotiated departure .
The President was clearly frustrated .
The A.G. was clearly frustrated.
” Former Justice Departments officials and legal experts were unequivocal in their assessment of Barr ’ s legacy .
They credited him for breaking with Trump in the prelude to and aftermath of the election .
But they predicted that he would go down in history as one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Attorneys General .
“ The few times Barr put the nation ahead of the President will not atone for the many times he chose the opposite .
He leaves a wounded department , ” Stephen Gillers , an expert in legal ethics at New York University School of Law , told me .
“ His tenure as Attorney General will be akin to the plague years at the Justice Department , ” David Laufman , a former Justice Department official , said .
“ I think his tenure has been an indefensible and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Donald Ayer , a former Deputy Attorney General , noted .
( The senior law-enforcement official was more magnanimous , calling Barr ’ s legacy a “ mixed bag.
” ) A spokesperson for Barr did not respond to a request for comment .
What made Barr unusual were the disparate qualities he exhibited as Attorney General .
He was aggressive , competent , and astute ; even critics admitted that at times his legal machinations were “ devilishly clever.
” He was also not simply a Trump acolyte .
For decades , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : he adamantly opposes the Supreme Court activism of the nineteen-sixties and seventies that legalized abortion , curtailed the powers of the President , and , he has contended , reduced the freedoms enjoyed by religiously observant Americans .
He was a committed Reagan-era conservative , fervently advocating a law-and-order approach to criminal justice , including strong public support for the police , the use of overwhelming force to restore order , and the employment of the death penalty .
What emerged unexpectedly in the Trump era was his willingness to act in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ politically aid the President he served , a pattern reminiscent of John Mitchell , Richard Nixon ’ s Attorney General .
The result was a dizzying array of actions in the twenty-two months that Barr has spent in the office .
He distorted the findings of the Mueller report , reduced the penalties faced by Trump loyalists whom Mueller prosecuted , expanded the Administration ’ s immigration crackdown , attempted to restrict access to abortion , aided attempts to win public funding for religious schools , executed more federal prisoners than any of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ruled against Trump , defied congressional oversight , said that organized religion was under “ assault ” from the liberal élite , vastly exaggerated the role of Antifa protesters in last summer ’ s marches for racial justice , reportedly ordered the police operation that enabled Trump ’ s Bible photo-op in Lafayette Square , called pandemic stay-at-home orders the “ greatest intrusion on civil liberties ” since slavery , said a Trump reëlection loss would plunge the country “ irrevocably ” down a “ socialist path , ” and warned that mail-in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to fraud .
Ayer , the former Deputy Attorney General , said that Barr undermined decades of Justice Department practice aimed at giving Americans confidence that the law applies equally to all citizens .
“ Throughout much of 2020 , there was the Attorney General , using the department ’ s resources and his own bully pulpit to echo and reinforce the President ’ s campaign narrative , ” Ayer said .
“ He did so many things this year that an Attorney General should never do.
” The senior law-enforcement official countered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that a strong Presidency is necessary in order to insure effective government , and that judges often curtail a President ’ s ability to implement policy .
In speeches , he has said that congressional oversight and the appointment of special counsels have become so politicized that the party in opposition uses them to lay relentless political siege to the Administration in power .
The official told me that Barr really thinks that the F.B.I.
’ s 2016 investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia should never have been conducted .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a reflection of Barr ’ s belief that F.B.I .
directors , who officially report to the Attorney General , have become too independent .
“ He truly believes that some of the things the F.B.I .
did was wrong , ” the official said , referring to the Trump-Russia investigation .
“ I think he wanted to rein in the F.B.I .
more.
” The problem with Barr ’ s views of the Trump-Russia investigation is that they fly in the face of fact .
They are , in short , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee found that Russia did intervene to aid Trump in the 2016 campaign , and that Trump campaign officials had met with a Russian intelligence officer or with individuals with ties to the Russian government .
A review by the Justice Department ’ s inspector general found that the F.B.I .
investigation was legally justified , given the actions of Trump ’ s associates .
Yet Barr , in a move that pleased the President , launched a criminal investigation of F.B.I .
officials who opened the Trump-Russia probe .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the federal prosecutor conducting that investigation , a special counsel , which will prevent Biden ’ s Attorney General from significantly limiting his work .
Attention now turns to Barr ’ s successor , Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen , who will serve in the post during the final four weeks of Trump ’ s Presidency .
Trump will likely pressure him to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hunter Biden , to keep alive his dark claims of election theft , Biden-family graft , and vast corruption on the part of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ record does not inspire confidence in his ability to resist Trump .
A staunch conservative who has never worked as a prosecutor , Rosen played a leading role in the Justice Department effort to block the publication of the former national-security adviser John Bolton ’ s unflattering memoir of his time in a dysfunctional Trump White House .
Barr deserves credit for refusing to go along with Trump ’ s post-election de-facto coup attempt .
But he also exacerbated the explosion of “ alternative facts ” in the Trump era .
At a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ facts were already rampant among Americans , Barr used his position as a fact-finder to increase discord , not ease it .
He decried the special-counsel probe and other investigations of Trump as politically motivated inquisitions .
Whatever his intentions , his legacy will be that he then unleashed those same demons .
Barr has extended the cycle of politically motivated investigations that increasingly plague American politics .

On Monday, William Barr’s nearly two-year tenure as Donald Trump’s Attorney General came to an abrupt end. The President, true to form, announced the departure of yet another senior official via Twitter. Pundits described Trump’s timing—he posted the tweet twelve minutes after the Electoral College had affirmed Joe Biden’s election—as that of a petty narcissist trying to regain the spotlight. Barr’s motive for resigning was less clear, but, for weeks, reports had circulated that the two men were barely speaking. Barr, once the most feared, criticized, and effective member of Trump’s Cabinet appeared to have finally broken with the President, and resigned.
Last week, it emerged that Barr had known for months that investigations of Hunter Biden’s taxes and financial dealings had been opened, but he adhered to a long-standing Justice Department practice and did not disclose any information that could influence the outcome of a pending election. After Biden won, Barr refused to confirm Trump’s baseless claims that the contest had been stolen from him. This weekend, Trump blamed his Attorney General for his defeat. “Why didn’t Bill Barr reveal the truth to the public, before the Election, about Hunter Biden,” Trump tweeted. “Big disadvantage for Republicans at the polls!”
On Monday, the two men engaged in political pantomime. In the tweet announcing Barr’s departure, Trump said that they had just had a “very nice meeting” and said Barr had done “an outstanding job.” Barr released an effusive resignation letter that hailed Trump’s “unprecedented achievements” despite “a partisan onslaught” that “few could have weathered” and “in which no tactic, no matter how abusive and deceitful, was out of bounds.” A senior law-enforcement official, who asked not to be named, described the exchange to me as scripted: “I think that this was a negotiated departure. The President was clearly frustrated. The A.G. was clearly frustrated.”
Former Justice Departments officials and legal experts were unequivocal in their assessment of Barr’s legacy. They credited him for breaking with Trump in the prelude to and aftermath of the election. But they predicted that he would go down in history as one of the country’s most destructive Attorneys General. “The few times Barr put the nation ahead of the President will not atone for the many times he chose the opposite. He leaves a wounded department,” Stephen Gillers, an expert in legal ethics at New York University School of Law, told me. “His tenure as Attorney General will be akin to the plague years at the Justice Department,” David Laufman, a former Justice Department official, said. “I think his tenure has been an indefensible and disgraceful betrayal of long-established norms,” Donald Ayer, a former Deputy Attorney General, noted. (The senior law-enforcement official was more magnanimous, calling Barr’s legacy a “mixed bag.”) A spokesperson for Barr did not respond to a request for comment.
What made Barr unusual were the disparate qualities he exhibited as Attorney General. He was aggressive, competent, and astute; even critics admitted that at times his legal machinations were “devilishly clever.” He was also not simply a Trump acolyte. For decades, Barr has had a consistent legal philosophy: he adamantly opposes the Supreme Court activism of the nineteen-sixties and seventies that legalized abortion, curtailed the powers of the President, and, he has contended, reduced the freedoms enjoyed by religiously observant Americans. He was a committed Reagan-era conservative, fervently advocating a law-and-order approach to criminal justice, including strong public support for the police, the use of overwhelming force to restore order, and the employment of the death penalty. What emerged unexpectedly in the Trump era was his willingness to act in a nakedly partisan manner in order to politically aid the President he served, a pattern reminiscent of John Mitchell, Richard Nixon’s Attorney General.
The result was a dizzying array of actions in the twenty-two months that Barr has spent in the office. He distorted the findings of the Mueller report, reduced the penalties faced by Trump loyalists whom Mueller prosecuted, expanded the Administration’s immigration crackdown, attempted to restrict access to abortion, aided attempts to win public funding for religious schools, executed more federal prisoners than any of his modern predecessors, criticized judges who ruled against Trump, defied congressional oversight, said that organized religion was under “assault” from the liberal élite, vastly exaggerated the role of Antifa protesters in last summer’s marches for racial justice, reportedly ordered the police operation that enabled Trump’s Bible photo-op in Lafayette Square, called pandemic stay-at-home orders the “greatest intrusion on civil liberties” since slavery, said a Trump reëlection loss would plunge the country “irrevocably” down a “socialist path,” and warned that mail-in ballots would “open the floodgates” to fraud.
Ayer, the former Deputy Attorney General, said that Barr undermined decades of Justice Department practice aimed at giving Americans confidence that the law applies equally to all citizens. “Throughout much of 2020, there was the Attorney General, using the department’s resources and his own bully pulpit to echo and reinforce the President’s campaign narrative,” Ayer said. “He did so many things this year that an Attorney General should never do.”
The senior law-enforcement official countered that Barr is sincere in his belief that a strong Presidency is necessary in order to insure effective government, and that judges often curtail a President’s ability to implement policy. In speeches, he has said that congressional oversight and the appointment of special counsels have become so politicized that the party in opposition uses them to lay relentless political siege to the Administration in power. The official told me that Barr really thinks that the F.B.I.’s 2016 investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia should never have been conducted. This last point is, in part, a reflection of Barr’s belief that F.B.I. directors, who officially report to the Attorney General, have become too independent. “He truly believes that some of the things the F.B.I. did was wrong,” the official said, referring to the Trump-Russia investigation. “I think he wanted to rein in the F.B.I. more.”
The problem with Barr’s views of the Trump-Russia investigation is that they fly in the face of fact. They are, in short, Trumpian. The exhaustive investigations by the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee found that Russia did intervene to aid Trump in the 2016 campaign, and that Trump campaign officials had met with a Russian intelligence officer or with individuals with ties to the Russian government. A review by the Justice Department’s inspector general found that the F.B.I. investigation was legally justified, given the actions of Trump’s associates. Yet Barr, in a move that pleased the President, launched a criminal investigation of F.B.I. officials who opened the Trump-Russia probe. In October, he made John Durham, the federal prosecutor conducting that investigation, a special counsel, which will prevent Biden’s Attorney General from significantly limiting his work.
Attention now turns to Barr’s successor, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, who will serve in the post during the final four weeks of Trump’s Presidency. Trump will likely pressure him to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hunter Biden, to keep alive his dark claims of election theft, Biden-family graft, and vast corruption on the part of the liberal élite. Rosen’s record does not inspire confidence in his ability to resist Trump. A staunch conservative who has never worked as a prosecutor, Rosen played a leading role in the Justice Department effort to block the publication of the former national-security adviser John Bolton’s unflattering memoir of his time in a dysfunctional Trump White House.
Barr deserves credit for refusing to go along with Trump’s post-election de-facto coup attempt. But he also exacerbated the explosion of “alternative facts” in the Trump era. At a time when division and confusion regarding basic facts were already rampant among Americans, Barr used his position as a fact-finder to increase discord, not ease it. He decried the special-counsel probe and other investigations of Trump as politically motivated inquisitions. Whatever his intentions, his legacy will be that he then unleashed those same demons. Barr has extended the cycle of politically motivated investigations that increasingly plague American politics.


newyorker--2020-12-18--Festive Holiday Recipes for 2020

Festive Holiday Recipes for 2020

Who says you can ’ t keep the spirit of the season alive while quarantining solo in an overpriced Murray Hill studio apartment ?
Start by blending one pound of softened butter and a cup of brown sugar .
Then spend fifteen to forty-five minutes scrolling through the old family photos your sister posted from the late nineties , before your dad ’ s bisexuality really became a problem for your mom .
Add one-half cup each of candied oranges , walnuts , raisins , and muttered curses about the false security of childhood .
This recipe makes enough dough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cookie .
It can be enjoyed with coffee , or all by itself , because it is perfectly fine alone. Once it ’ s baked , decorate it with a kindly face made of sprinkles and icing , and listen carefully as it gently reminds you that you are worthy of love .
The secret to this recipe is a pinch of cardamom .
And the secret to being single during a pandemic is rock-bottom expectations .
This pie is incredibly sweet and tender , unlike your mother .
When , exactly , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ What were you , seventeen ?
Chop two cups of pecans and toast them lightly , while you allow yourself to really wallow in your disappointment and grief , maybe for the first time .
Actually , screw the pie .
Have another glass of wine instead .
And don ’ t try calling her , she ’ ll just reply with one of those auto-generated “ sorry I can ’ t talk right now ” texts .
Think of this year as a much-needed break from your exhausting list of annual traditions—ear-splitting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kissing strangers in a crowded bar on New Year ’ s Eve , hearing that one guy in your subway station play “ Jingle Bell Rock ” way off-key every morning for a month .
.
.
Did you really enjoy these things , anyway ?
Well , yes , maybe you did .
Peel the sweet potatoes quickly , before your vision is blurred by tears .
Nothing beats a classic stuffed goose for Yuletide cheer , except maybe a functional government run by people with a shred of compassion .
To @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a loaf of day-old bread into chunks .
O.K.
, punching the bread while screaming isn ’ t totally necessary , but sure , go for it !
And , yeah , why not bash some of it into the carpet with a rolling pin while cursing the names of our so-called leaders ?
Feel that flush in your cheeks ?
It ’ s either rage or holiday cheer—either way , it sure is festive !

Old-Fashioned Fruitcake with Raisins and Resentment
Who says you can’t keep the spirit of the season alive while quarantining solo in an overpriced Murray Hill studio apartment? Start by blending one pound of softened butter and a cup of brown sugar. Then spend fifteen to forty-five minutes scrolling through the old family photos your sister posted from the late nineties, before your dad’s bisexuality really became a problem for your mom. Add one-half cup each of candied oranges, walnuts, raisins, and muttered curses about the false security of childhood.
A Single Gingerbread Person
This recipe makes enough dough for one, and only one, cookie. It can be enjoyed with coffee, or all by itself, because it is perfectly fine alone. Once it’s baked, decorate it with a kindly face made of sprinkles and icing, and listen carefully as it gently reminds you that you are worthy of love. The secret to this recipe is a pinch of cardamom. And the secret to being single during a pandemic is rock-bottom expectations.
Pecan’t Pie
This pie is incredibly sweet and tender, unlike your mother. When, exactly, did she become so emotionally unavailable? What were you, seventeen? Chop two cups of pecans and toast them lightly, while you allow yourself to really wallow in your disappointment and grief, maybe for the first time. Actually, screw the pie. Have another glass of wine instead. And don’t try calling her, she’ll just reply with one of those auto-generated “sorry I can’t talk right now” texts.
Bittersweet Potatoes
Think of this year as a much-needed break from your exhausting list of annual traditions—ear-splitting karaoke at the company holiday party, kissing strangers in a crowded bar on New Year’s Eve, hearing that one guy in your subway station play “Jingle Bell Rock” way off-key every morning for a month . . . Did you really enjoy these things, anyway? Well, yes, maybe you did. Peel the sweet potatoes quickly, before your vision is blurred by tears.
Classic Goose with Stuffed Rage
Nothing beats a classic stuffed goose for Yuletide cheer, except maybe a functional government run by people with a shred of compassion. To make the stuffing, start by tearing a loaf of day-old bread into chunks. O.K., punching the bread while screaming isn’t totally necessary, but sure, go for it! And, yeah, why not bash some of it into the carpet with a rolling pin while cursing the names of our so-called leaders? Feel that flush in your cheeks? It’s either rage or holiday cheer—either way, it sure is festive!


newyorker--2020-12-18--Ice Skating at the Rink at Rockefeller Center

When the Rink at Rockefeller Center ( above ) opened , on Christmas Day in 1936 , it was meant @ @ @ @ @ .
But the “ skating pond , ” as it was then known , has @ @ @ @ @ fixture of New York City .
Holden Caulfield went on a date there in “ @ @ @ @ @ , ” and Truman Capote took to the ice for a Life magazine photo op @ @ @ @ @ to the public , for fifty-minute skating sessions , until Jan. 17 ; masks and @ @ @ @ @ ) are required .

When the Rink at Rockefeller Center (above) opened, on Christmas Day in 1936, it was meant to be a temporary attraction. But the “skating pond,” as it was then known, has long since become a winter fixture of New York City. Holden Caulfield went on a date there in “The Catcher in the Rye,” and Truman Capote took to the ice for a Life magazine photo op. The rink is open to the public, for fifty-minute skating sessions, until Jan. 17; masks and advance tickets (via rockefellercenter.com) are required.


newyorker--2020-12-18--A Family’s Quarantine-Kitchen Bonding in “Have You Eaten”

In the first few months of quarantine , Lina Li was especially well fed .
In mid-March , Li , a junior at Ryerson University , in Toronto , decamped from her apartment downtown and moved back to her parents ’ house in the suburban town of Thornhill , about half an hour ’ s drive from the city .
Li ’ s mother , Yan Gao , was prepared for the lockdown—in January , after learning about the spread of the coronavirus in China , she stocked her pantry with staples : for starters , four bottles of soy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; a restaurateur friend supplied brisket , for the freezer .
The only thing Gao didn ’ t stock up on was vegetables—she doesn ’ t believe in frozen greens .
She grows zucchini , cucumbers , green onions , chives , and tomatoes in her garden .
The pandemic brought Gao ’ s two adult daughters and her husband—who , for decades , had split his time between Beijing and Toronto for business—under one roof .
The family played board games , watched movies , and took daily walks together—that is , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Gao whipped up .
After starting college , Li came to appreciate the time that her family spent around the dining table , when she and her mother could talk about how they sometimes misunderstood each other .
“ Generational barriers , cultural barriers , and language barriers , ” Li told me over the phone on Sunday , “ that ’ s something that ’ s always between us .
In day-to-day conversations , we were not on the same page.
” Li was born in China .
Her father , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see the world , moved to Canada in 1991 .
After a decade of working a string of odd jobs—washing dishes , babysitting , massaging—he started his own business in medical-uniform manufacturing , then brought his wife and two daughters , who were three and five , to Toronto .
Gao ’ s English was limited , and as a child Li sometimes had to accompany her to help translate on errands .
Li envied her classmates , whose parents could chat with their friends and understood how summer camp worked .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Li and Gao talk about their relationship while preparing dumplings , a northern Chinese favorite .
The film highlights the sensory details of the process , and their conversation and rapport reflect the way that their relationship has transformed over the years .
As Li became independent , she started to see her mother in a new light , appreciating the tenacity that it must have taken to uproot her life to start anew in a foreign land .
“ As we grew older , both sides came to accept the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , what is a mother-daughter relationship without some fuss over life ’ s smallest details , to be forgotten three minutes later ?
The pair , who talk sweetly in the film , had bickered that very morning , Li told me—her mother had been eager to get going with her to-do list , but Li wanted her to just sit still and chat for a bit .
In late September , Li moved back to Toronto .
Looking back at the six months that she spent at her parents ’ house , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made dumplings together : her mother making the filling , her father kneading the dough and forming it into dumpling skin with a rolling pin , she and her sister joining the assembly line to wrap the filling into crescent packets .
She is not that skilled , Li confessed , but she loves the steamy homeyness of the affair , and its connection to childhood memories .
But she also remembers sometimes feeling , during those months of family quarantine , like a caged , wing-clipped bird .
I couldn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was your capturer , COVID-19 or your parents ?
She demurred .
“ We were just appreciative that we were alive and healthy , ” she said , and eating well .

In the first few months of quarantine, Lina Li was especially well fed. In mid-March, Li, a junior at Ryerson University, in Toronto, decamped from her apartment downtown and moved back to her parents’ house in the suburban town of Thornhill, about half an hour’s drive from the city. Li’s mother, Yan Gao, was prepared for the lockdown—in January, after learning about the spread of the coronavirus in China, she stocked her pantry with staples: for starters, four bottles of soy sauce and ten bags of jasmine rice; a restaurateur friend supplied brisket, for the freezer. The only thing Gao didn’t stock up on was vegetables—she doesn’t believe in frozen greens. She grows zucchini, cucumbers, green onions, chives, and tomatoes in her garden. The pandemic brought Gao’s two adult daughters and her husband—who, for decades, had split his time between Beijing and Toronto for business—under one roof. The family played board games, watched movies, and took daily walks together—that is, between gulping down the elaborate meals that Gao whipped up.
After starting college, Li came to appreciate the time that her family spent around the dining table, when she and her mother could talk about how they sometimes misunderstood each other. “Generational barriers, cultural barriers, and language barriers,” Li told me over the phone on Sunday, “that’s something that’s always between us. In day-to-day conversations, we were not on the same page.” Li was born in China. Her father, who longed for better opportunities and wanted to see the world, moved to Canada in 1991. After a decade of working a string of odd jobs—washing dishes, babysitting, massaging—he started his own business in medical-uniform manufacturing, then brought his wife and two daughters, who were three and five, to Toronto. Gao’s English was limited, and as a child Li sometimes had to accompany her to help translate on errands. Li envied her classmates, whose parents could chat with their friends and understood how summer camp worked.
In her short documentary “Have You Eaten,” Li and Gao talk about their relationship while preparing dumplings, a northern Chinese favorite. The film highlights the sensory details of the process, and their conversation and rapport reflect the way that their relationship has transformed over the years. As Li became independent, she started to see her mother in a new light, appreciating the tenacity that it must have taken to uproot her life to start anew in a foreign land. “As we grew older, both sides came to accept the differences,” Li said. Still, what is a mother-daughter relationship without some fuss over life’s smallest details, to be forgotten three minutes later? The pair, who talk sweetly in the film, had bickered that very morning, Li told me—her mother had been eager to get going with her to-do list, but Li wanted her to just sit still and chat for a bit.
In late September, Li moved back to Toronto. Looking back at the six months that she spent at her parents’ house, Li sometimes thinks about the times they made dumplings together: her mother making the filling, her father kneading the dough and forming it into dumpling skin with a rolling pin, she and her sister joining the assembly line to wrap the filling into crescent packets. She is not that skilled, Li confessed, but she loves the steamy homeyness of the affair, and its connection to childhood memories. But she also remembers sometimes feeling, during those months of family quarantine, like a caged, wing-clipped bird. I couldn’t help asking a wicked question: Who was your capturer, COVID-19 or your parents? She demurred. “We were just appreciative that we were alive and healthy,” she said, and eating well.


newyorker--2020-12-18--The State of the Bagel

The State of the Bagel

The other day , hours after I ’ d hung up the phone with the chef Mark Strausman , he accidentally called me back .
“ Oops !
” he said .
“ That ’ s what happens when your fingers are covered in olive oil.
” Strausman was at his new restaurant , Mark ’ s Off Madison ( 41 Madison Avenue ) , which débuted last month near Madison Square Park .
His hands have been covered in olive oil for most of his sixty-odd years .
In the early nineties , the Queens native opened a series @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the original Coco Pazzo .
In 1996 , he created Freds at Barneys , turning it into an institution with satellites in Beverly Hills and Chicago .
Last year , Barneys went bankrupt , and Strausman was let go .
Never mind : he was already hard at work on Mark ’ s Off Madison , which he abbreviates as M.O.M.
, to emphasize the Jewish-mother theme .
Devotees of Freds will be delighted to find many of its signature dishes resurrected here , including the chopped chicken salad ( with avocado , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Estelle ’ s chicken soup , and bolognese lasagna .
But hand-painted letters on a glass wall in the dining room advertise what is , in my opinion , M.O.M.
’ s biggest draw .
“ Not Your Grandfather ’ s Bagels , ” they read , with “ Not ” crossed out .
In the August of his career , Strausman is chasing his youth , attempting to re-create the bagels ( plus bialys ) that he remembers eating as a kid .
He started this quest at Freds “ because I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to get rid of my motorcycle , ” he told me .
“ Bread-making became a passion because there ’ s an insanity about it.
” At M.O.M.
, he has a proper wood-fired bagel oven , which helps attain a distinctly crunchy exterior—coated in toppings only lightly , and on just one side , so as not to compete with the flavor of the malt-infused dough .
Straussie ’ s bagels , as he calls them ( available only on weekends ) , are both denser and smaller than most of their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bagels is not , Strausman explained , a result of the broader supersize phenomenon but , rather , of technological advancement ; to make bagels automatically , you need a wetter dough or else the machine will jam .
More water means more fuel for yeast , which means more rising and expanding .
Strausman is preserving the dying art of hand-rolling .
So , too , is a young woman named Elyssa Heller , across the river , at her indefinitely running pop-up , Edith ’ s ( 60 Greenpoint Avenue , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s ) , which offers what you might call your great-great-grandmother ’ s bagels—hand-rolled but also twisted , as in Old World Poland .
They ’ re as personal to Heller as Strausman ’ s are to him : boiled in water flavored with honey instead of malt , they refer also to Montreal bagels ( Heller went to college in Canada ) , and are made with flour milled from heirloom grains grown in Illinois , her home state .
Edith was Heller ’ s great-aunt , who once ran a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of recipes , many scrawled on paper plates or napkins , inspired some of the pop-up ’ s dishes , including the smoked-trout salad , served on a bagel with house-cultured cream cheese , sliced radish , and trout roe .
Otherwise , Heller aims to explore the Jewish diaspora .
She hesitated before offering schnecken , traditional German-Jewish sweet buns whose name ( German for “ snails ” ) doesn ’ t exactly roll off the tongue .
“ I was a little nervous that people wouldn ’ t get it and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Heller told me the other day .
But , she said , “ we want to tell stories with our food.
” Edith ’ s schnecken encase sour cherries and Turkish pistachios , or honey seasoned with the paprika-forward Middle Eastern spice mix baharat .
But perhaps the best represented of the planet ’ s scattered populations of Jews is the one right here in New York , in the form of a bagel sandwich called the BEC & L .
That ’ s “ B ” for bacon ( with apologies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ egg , Cheddar cheese , and a gloriously crispy , thick golden latke .
( Mark ’ s Off Madison bagel platters $ 22- $ 38 .
Edith ’ s bagel sandwiches $ 10.50- $ 12.50 . )
♦

The other day, hours after I’d hung up the phone with the chef Mark Strausman, he accidentally called me back. “Oops!” he said. “That’s what happens when your fingers are covered in olive oil.” Strausman was at his new restaurant, Mark’s Off Madison (41 Madison Avenue), which débuted last month near Madison Square Park. His hands have been covered in olive oil for most of his sixty-odd years. In the early nineties, the Queens native opened a series of Italian restaurants, including Campagna and the original Coco Pazzo. In 1996, he created Freds at Barneys, turning it into an institution with satellites in Beverly Hills and Chicago.
The bagels are topped with poppy seeds; a play on everything seasoning called Chicago, which includes hot-pepper flakes; salt; or sesame seeds. Photograph by Cassidy Turner for The New Yorker
Last year, Barneys went bankrupt, and Strausman was let go. Never mind: he was already hard at work on Mark’s Off Madison, which he abbreviates as M.O.M., to emphasize the Jewish-mother theme. Devotees of Freds will be delighted to find many of its signature dishes resurrected here, including the chopped chicken salad (with avocado, string beans, and pears), Estelle’s chicken soup, and bolognese lasagna. But hand-painted letters on a glass wall in the dining room advertise what is, in my opinion, M.O.M.’s biggest draw. “Not Your Grandfather’s Bagels,” they read, with “Not” crossed out. In the August of his career, Strausman is chasing his youth, attempting to re-create the bagels (plus bialys) that he remembers eating as a kid.
One of the menu’s bagel sandwiches features house-smoked salmon, house-cultured cream cheese, lettuce, and shallots pickled in amba, a mango-based Iraqi-Jewish condiment. Photograph by Cassidy Turner for The New Yorker
He started this quest at Freds “because I was having a midlife crisis and wanting to get rid of my motorcycle,” he told me. “Bread-making became a passion because there’s an insanity about it.” At M.O.M., he has a proper wood-fired bagel oven, which helps attain a distinctly crunchy exterior—coated in toppings only lightly, and on just one side, so as not to compete with the flavor of the malt-infused dough. Straussie’s bagels, as he calls them (available only on weekends), are both denser and smaller than most of their latter-day equivalents. The increased puffiness of bagels is not, Strausman explained, a result of the broader supersize phenomenon but, rather, of technological advancement; to make bagels automatically, you need a wetter dough or else the machine will jam. More water means more fuel for yeast, which means more rising and expanding. Strausman is preserving the dying art of hand-rolling.
After they’re boiled in honey water, the bagels are baked in the wood-fired oven at the Greenpoint pizzeria Paulie Gee’s. Photograph by Cassidy Turner for The New Yorker
So, too, is a young woman named Elyssa Heller, across the river, at her indefinitely running pop-up, Edith’s (60 Greenpoint Avenue, Brooklyn, in the pizzeria Paulie Gee’s), which offers what you might call your great-great-grandmother’s bagels—hand-rolled but also twisted, as in Old World Poland. They’re as personal to Heller as Strausman’s are to him: boiled in water flavored with honey instead of malt, they refer also to Montreal bagels (Heller went to college in Canada), and are made with flour milled from heirloom grains grown in Illinois, her home state.
Edith was Heller’s great-aunt, who once ran a deli in Brooklyn, and whose archive of recipes, many scrawled on paper plates or napkins, inspired some of the pop-up’s dishes, including the smoked-trout salad, served on a bagel with house-cultured cream cheese, sliced radish, and trout roe. Otherwise, Heller aims to explore the Jewish diaspora. She hesitated before offering schnecken, traditional German-Jewish sweet buns whose name (German for “snails”) doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. “I was a little nervous that people wouldn’t get it and they couldn’t pronounce it,” Heller told me the other day. But, she said, “we want to tell stories with our food.”
In addition to bagels, Edith’s offers pastries such as schnecken, a traditional German-Jewish morning bun, whose name translates to “snails.” Photograph by Cassidy Turner for The New Yorker
Edith’s schnecken encase sour cherries and Turkish pistachios, or honey seasoned with the paprika-forward Middle Eastern spice mix baharat. But perhaps the best represented of the planet’s scattered populations of Jews is the one right here in New York, in the form of a bagel sandwich called the BEC&L. That’s “B” for bacon (with apologies to the rebbes), paired with egg, Cheddar cheese, and a gloriously crispy, thick golden latke. (Mark’s Off Madison bagel platters $22-$38. Edith’s bagel sandwiches $10.50-$12.50.) ♦


newyorker--2020-12-18--The Best Video Games of 2020

The Best Video Games of 2020

Not so for video games at large , however .
The medium is ideally suited to coronavirus lockdown , when the boundaries of the physical world contract and the imagination strains for freedom .
Games offer a chance for the housebound to visit distant lands , for the unemployed to experience the satisfaction of a completed task , for the lonely to interact with others .
If you ’ re a skeptic , this might ’ ve been the year you picked up a controller .
Not everyone was convinced , of course .
In quarantine , many parents saw @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their children—even as those games provided surrogate playgrounds , places where friendships could be nourished .
Some veterans , too , might have been thrust into an uneasy relationship with the form .
Personally speaking , video games , with their synthetic rewards and twinkly distractions , didn ’ t quite manage to assuage my weariness with the world this year .
Perhaps that ’ s because they so often present us with a world in crisis , one which we alone can fix , usually through violent means .
The capacity to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ medium ’ s greatest appeal , and yet I increasingly find these particular kinds of stories hollow .
The idea that the great issues of our time can be solved by weapons , for example , seems to me not just a weakness of games but , increasingly , a failure of the human imagination , with consequences on a global-industrial scale .
Still , away from the corporate mainstream , artists continued to offer alternatives : games that were bold and nourishing , and that made a tough year just a tiny @ @ @ @ @ @ @ particular order , are some of the best .
Most riffs on the ancient Greek myths fixate on grandiosity : the gleam and power of Zeus and his extended family .
Hades is truer to the source material ; here is a world of Kardashian-esque gossip and intrigue , loyalty and bitchiness , all enacted at the celestial level .
You play as Zagreus , a son of Hades who , in the throes of teen angst , is desperate to escape the underworld and join his kin on Mount Olympus .
Hades @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , is only too happy to see you try , though he places a series of minions in your path .
The game ’ s difficulty is part of its joy ; you quest closer and closer to the exit before , health depleted , you are sent back to your bedroom .
The storytelling is perfectly pitched , and the thrills of the shifting maze invite endless attempts .
Animal Crossing arrived at the perfect moment : as the pandemic eroded the shape of our daily lives , the game offered the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ placed us on a deserted island , where we were left to pursue small tasks—catching fish and bugs , chopping trees , planting flowers—that were comfortingly achievable and tied to dependable rewards .
The sunny isle provided an escape from the cloying familiarity of our homes , and the game ’ s cast of anthropomorphic animals offered a set of manageable relationships .
Most profoundly , it allowed us to feel a modicum of control amid the chaos .
What more could we want ?
The Last of Us Part II ( PlayStation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brutal game evokes an old maxim : “ An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
” The story follows two young women in a post-apocalyptic America , where scavenger communities battle for territory and dwindling resources .
Revenge motivates each of the women , who belong to warring factions , and the game builds to a gruesome conclusion : a protracted fistfight , without music , in which we are forced to become intimate , reluctant participants .
The game is a towering technological achievement , and tastefully written—but its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , partly because its own brutality is so slickly entertaining .
Still , it ’ s a compelling study of fruitless vengeance , for those who can stomach it .
Through the Darkest of Times ( Switch , PS4 , Xbox One , iOS , Android , PC , Mac ) This strategy game opens in the Berlin of 1933 , just as Hitler assumes control of a progressive city ravaged by the Great Depression .
You play as the leader of a small group of citizens who , in the years leading @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resist the Nazi Party ’ s excesses .
In weekly turns , you gather the team and allocate various resistance-related tasks ; success depends on how wisely you delegate .
Throughout the game , you ’ re treated to historic scenes that chart key moments in the prewar years .
The story sometimes draws clunky connections to our own moment , but it also provides a sharp depiction , for those too young to remember , of how despotism can take root and bloom .
It was a good year to celebrate the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ call .
The game has you deliver packages , in a beat-up car , in the city of Nicalis , which is lifted straight from “ Blade Runner ” : it ’ s all humming hovercrafts and blistering neon .
Your objective is simple—make as much money as possible—and you ’ re pushed along by a radio dispatcher and the warm torrent of a synth soundtrack .
“ Playbour , ” as some academics have called this kind of toil simulation , has an elemental appeal , but Cloudpunk adds a dash of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your dispatcher , you can never ask what ’ s in a package .
Still , you can ’ t help but wonder , and the tug of curiosity is matched by the voyeuristic thrill of dipping into and out of citizens ’ lives .
Disc Room is a return to one of gaming ’ s primal challenges : How long can you evade this dangerous thing ?
From a bird ’ s-eye perspective , you dash your character around a small room while avoiding a succession of spinning saw blades .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ game mechanic , first popularized in arcades in the early eighties and then perfected , in the two-thousands , by the Japanese studio Cave .
But the genre is undergoing a renaissance , and Disc Room ’ s sly interpretation provides a gritty , compelling distraction .

In the Before Times, on transatlantic flights, I would often assume the role of a deadly virus that threatened the human race. The key to success in the game Plague Inc., from 2012, is to mutate in ways that both hasten the virus’s spread and impede a vaccine’s development. It was perversely enjoyable to pass an hour, forehead smushed against a window, swiping toward extinction. But 2020 spiked that small pleasure. Much like transatlantic travel itself, role-playing a pandemic can appear, at the moment, to be rather unseemly.
Not so for video games at large, however. The medium is ideally suited to coronavirus lockdown, when the boundaries of the physical world contract and the imagination strains for freedom. Games offer a chance for the housebound to visit distant lands, for the unemployed to experience the satisfaction of a completed task, for the lonely to interact with others. If you’re a skeptic, this might’ve been the year you picked up a controller.
2020 in Review New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows.
Not everyone was convinced, of course. In quarantine, many parents saw the quasi-divine power that games hold over their children—even as those games provided surrogate playgrounds, places where friendships could be nourished. Some veterans, too, might have been thrust into an uneasy relationship with the form. Personally speaking, video games, with their synthetic rewards and twinkly distractions, didn’t quite manage to assuage my weariness with the world this year. Perhaps that’s because they so often present us with a world in crisis, one which we alone can fix, usually through violent means. The capacity to order chaos is comforting, arguably the medium’s greatest appeal, and yet I increasingly find these particular kinds of stories hollow. The idea that the great issues of our time can be solved by weapons, for example, seems to me not just a weakness of games but, increasingly, a failure of the human imagination, with consequences on a global-industrial scale.
Still, away from the corporate mainstream, artists continued to offer alternatives: games that were bold and nourishing, and that made a tough year just a tiny bit brighter. Here, in no particular order, are some of the best.
Hades (Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac)
Most riffs on the ancient Greek myths fixate on grandiosity: the gleam and power of Zeus and his extended family. Hades is truer to the source material; here is a world of Kardashian-esque gossip and intrigue, loyalty and bitchiness, all enacted at the celestial level. You play as Zagreus, a son of Hades who, in the throes of teen angst, is desperate to escape the underworld and join his kin on Mount Olympus. Hades, an infuriating father with boomer energy, is only too happy to see you try, though he places a series of minions in your path. The game’s difficulty is part of its joy; you quest closer and closer to the exit before, health depleted, you are sent back to your bedroom. The storytelling is perfectly pitched, and the thrills of the shifting maze invite endless attempts.
Animal Crossing (Switch)
Source: Nintendo
Animal Crossing arrived at the perfect moment: as the pandemic eroded the shape of our daily lives, the game offered the gift of a steadying routine. It placed us on a deserted island, where we were left to pursue small tasks—catching fish and bugs, chopping trees, planting flowers—that were comfortingly achievable and tied to dependable rewards. The sunny isle provided an escape from the cloying familiarity of our homes, and the game’s cast of anthropomorphic animals offered a set of manageable relationships. Most profoundly, it allowed us to feel a modicum of control amid the chaos. What more could we want?
The Last of Us Part II (PlayStation 4)
This exquisitely rendered, deeply brutal game evokes an old maxim: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” The story follows two young women in a post-apocalyptic America, where scavenger communities battle for territory and dwindling resources. Revenge motivates each of the women, who belong to warring factions, and the game builds to a gruesome conclusion: a protracted fistfight, without music, in which we are forced to become intimate, reluctant participants. The game is a towering technological achievement, and tastefully written—but its critique of video-game violence can feel patchy, partly because its own brutality is so slickly entertaining. Still, it’s a compelling study of fruitless vengeance, for those who can stomach it.
Through the Darkest of Times (Switch, PS4, Xbox One, iOS, Android, PC, Mac)
This strategy game opens in the Berlin of 1933, just as Hitler assumes control of a progressive city ravaged by the Great Depression. You play as the leader of a small group of citizens who, in the years leading up to the war, choose to resist the Nazi Party’s excesses. In weekly turns, you gather the team and allocate various resistance-related tasks; success depends on how wisely you delegate. Throughout the game, you’re treated to historic scenes that chart key moments in the prewar years. The story sometimes draws clunky connections to our own moment, but it also provides a sharp depiction, for those too young to remember, of how despotism can take root and bloom.
Cloudpunk (Switch, PS4, PC, Xbox One)