THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: The latest cover features Cartoons & Puzzles: A magazine maze, cartoonists on their forebears, Stephen Sondheim’s puzzle love, a hundredth-birthday diary, and more.
Best Acting in a Helmet, Best Nervous Breakdown, Craziest Charm—the film performances so good Wesley Morris had to invent his own categories. By Wesley Morris
Why Won’t Senators Stand Up to Trump? We Asked 3 Who Called It Quits.
“The Fighters” by Joe Donnelly: on being transplanted as a boy from New Jersey to Ireland, and the grim school days spent at Willow Park primary school in Dublin.
“Fire Watching” by Harmony Holiday: a mediation on Los Angeles, its devastating fires, and finding meaning.
“The Deer” by Raia Small: “I have never killed anyone, so I can say that I don’t understand. But I am getting to know my own cruelties …”
Fiction
“A Long Line of Violence” by Tomas Moniz: A duo travels from the Mission District to Lassen Volcanic National Park to return a rifle to its battleground.
“Plums” by Feroz Rather: A young man steals as much time as he can with his beloved among the orchards and buses of his town in Kashmir.
“Viable” by Suzanne Rivecca: “The person I call in situations like this is Colette, the city government version of me, an abstinent ex-junkie disliked by the mayor, with a soft spot for schizophrenics, a love for lancing abscesses, and zero work/life balance.”
Poetry
Brian Ang, Nica Giromini, Kelly Gray, Michael Kennedy Costa, Kayla Krut, Maw Shein Win, Jared Stanley, and John Yau.
In Conversation
Chris Feliciano Arnold talks to Venezuelan scholar, journalist, and poet Boris Muñoz about literature, authoritarianism, and the importance of cronistas.
Millions of teenagers in Australia woke up on Wednesday to find themselves locked out of social media accounts after the government introduced a ban for under-16s – the first of its kind – on the platforms.
Far from being a kneejerk response to a moral panic, it’s a move backed up by detailed investigation into the effects of unfettered online access on children – and one that several other countries are poised to follow. Australian eSafety research found seven in 10 children aged 10 to 15 had encountered content associated with harm online. Three-quarters of those had most recently encountered that – including misogyny, violence, disordered eating and suicide – on a social media platform.
“We are seeking to create some friction [in the] system to protect children where previously there has been close to none … We are treating big tech like the extractive industry it has become,” Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, told an audience earlier this year.
Spotlight | Syria, one year after Assad While country’s return to global stage has filled many Syrians with pride, domestically old grievances threaten efforts to rebuild the state. William Christou reports from Damascus
Feature | The inside story of the race to create the ultimate AI In Silicon Valley, rival companies are spending trillions of dollars to reach a goal that could change humanity – or potentially destroy it. Robert Booth reports
Feature | On the trail of London’s snail farming don Terry Ball – renowned shoe salesman, friend to former mafiosi – has vowed to spend his remaining years finding ways to cheat authorities he feels have cheated him. His greatest ruse? A tax-dodging snail empire. Jim Waterson caught up with him
Opinion | What words are left to describe Trump’s global rampage? Deadly US boat strikes in the Caribbean are the latest example of a president corrupting both the law and morality, argues Jonathan Freedland
Culture | The best books of 2025 From fiction to food, people to poetry, science to sport: Guardian critics round up the year’s essential reads
THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: The latest cover features ‘Pierre-Emmanuel Lyet’s “Christmas Avenue”’ – The celebratory chaos of the season.
The Trump Administration’s Chaos in the Caribbean
Pete Hegseth’s conduct is a case study in how the government’s growing sense of heedlessness and unaccountability is shaping disastrous policy. By Jonathan Blitzer
Oliver Sacks Put Himself Into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost?
The scientist was famous for linking healing with storytelling. Sometimes that meant reshaping patients’ reality. By Rachel Aviv
How to Leave the U.S.A.
In the wake of President Trump’s reëlection, the number of aggrieved Americans seeking a new life abroad appears to be rising. The Netherlands offers one way out. By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
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