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Ex-NBA star dismisses Caitlin Clark's chances of scoring in BIG3
Former NBA star Kenyon Martin dismissed any chance of Caitlin Clark being able to score if she decides to take up the BIG3 basketball league's offer.
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‘It’s Almost as If They Support a Hypothetical War’
“This is our 9/11,” an Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson said a few days after the rape, torture, kidnapping, and mass murder of Israelis on October 7. Or it was worse than 9/11. “Twenty 9/11s,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a few weeks later, once the scale of the devastation was evident. As for the current military campaign in Gaza? Earlier this month, Netanyahu told new IDF cadets, “We are preventing the next 9/11.”I’m a New Yorker. For me, 9/11 was the unbearable loss of thousands of lives. But I’m also a veteran of America’s War on Terror, so for me, 9/11 was also the pretext for disastrous, poorly conceived wars that spread death and destruction, destabilized the Middle East, created new enemies, and empowered Iran.[George Packer: Israel must not react stupidly]Finally, I’m an American. My country is supporting Israel militarily and diplomatically, and so I have a stake in answering this question: Is the United States enabling Israel to make the same terrible mistakes we did after 9/11?In principle, Israel has a case for military action in Gaza, and it goes something like this. Across its border sat an army of tens of thousands of men intent on massacring civilians. Ghazi Hamad, from Hamas’s political bureau, declared that the atrocities of October 7 were “just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth.” Yes, rooting out Hamas would be brutal—the group welcomes civilian collateral damage and has entrenched itself in hundreds of miles of tunnels honeycombed through civilian infrastructure. But peace is illusory as long as Hamas remains in power.Perhaps, in an alternate world, Israel could have fought such a war with restraint, in order to degrade Hamas’s military power without playing into its hands by causing unnecessary civilian suffering. Israel would have helped, rather than hindered, the efforts of outside states to funnel humanitarian aid into Gaza—showing that it distinguished the Palestinian people from Hamas battalions and valued their lives. If Israel had very different internal politics, it might even have signaled a positive vision for the war’s end—one premised on rebuilding a Gazan government led by Palestinians not committed to Israel’s destruction but to a fair-minded two-state solution that would ensure full political rights for Gazans. But this is not the war that Israel has fought.“Sometimes it sounds like certain officials, it’s almost as if they support a hypothetical war, instead of the actual war that Israel is fighting,” Adil Haque, an executive editor at Just Security and an international-law professor at Rutgers University, told me.Friends of mine who support Israel have compared the Gaza campaign to the American and Iraqi fight against the Islamic State in Mosul, another large urban area of about 2 million people defended by an entrenched enemy hiding among civilians. At least 9,000 innocents died, many from American air strikes.I walked through the devastation in Mosul two years after the battle, and it was like nothing I’d ever seen. Blocks of rubble, the skeletal remains of homes and shops, survivors living in the shatters who spoke of starvation and horror, collecting rainwater or risking their lives to go to the river, where soldiers shot at them. “It’s like Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” one man told me in the ruins of his home. But he also said that ISIS was gone from Mosul forever. “Even if all I have is a piece of wood,” he said, “I would fight them rather than let them return.”The war Israel is actually fighting in Gaza bears little resemblance to that brutal and far from perfect, but necessary, campaign. Rather, in Gaza, Israel has shown itself willing to cause heavy civilian casualties and unwilling to care for a population left without basic necessities for survival. It has offered no realistic plan for an eventual political settlement. Far from the hypothetical war for Israeli security, this looks like a war of revenge. Palestinians gather to collect aid food in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip, on February 26, 2024, amid continuing battles between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. ( AFP / Getty) Israel’s approach to civilian lives and infrastructure is the first and most obvious problem. John Spencer, the chair of urban-warfare studies at West Point, told The Wall Street Journal this month that Israel sets the “gold standard” for avoiding civilian casualties. Defenders of Israel cite its use of precision munitions and its distribution of leaflets and phone calls warning civilians to evacuate combat areas.But evacuation orders can only do so much for a trapped population facing destroyed infrastructure, dangerous exit routes, and unrealistic time frames. Israel’s original evacuation order for northern Gaza gave 1.1 million people just 24 hours to leave. As Paula Gaviria Betancur, the United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, noted at the time, “It is inconceivable that more than half of Gaza’s population could traverse an active war zone, without devastating humanitarian consequences, particularly while deprived of essential supplies and basic services.”And precision munitions are good only when used precisely. Senior Israeli officials complained even before the war that the list of possible military targets in Gaza was “very problematic.” Then Israel dropped a massive amount of ordnance on Gazan neighborhoods—6,000 bombs in the first six days of the war alone. For comparison, the international coalition fighting ISIS dropped an average of 2,500 bombs a month across all of Syria and Iraq. To think that Israel was precisely targeting 1,000 strikes a day strains credulity. Satellite images do not show pinpoint strikes but whole flattened neighborhoods. From October 7 to November 26, Israel damaged or destroyed more than 37,000 structures, and as CNN reported in December, about 40 to 45 percent of the air-to-ground munitions used at that point were unguided missiles. Certainly Hamas’s practice of building its tunnels beneath civilian infrastructure means that destroying the tunnels will cause widespread damage, but the scale of this bombing campaign goes well beyond that.What does this mean for death tolls? Larry Lewis, the director of the Center for Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence at the Center for Naval Analyses, found that even if we accept the IDF’s claim that 12,000 of the roughly 29,000 Gazans reported dead by February 20 were enemy fighters, that would still mean that for every 100 Israeli air strikes, the IDF killed an average of 54 civilians. In the U.S. campaign in Raqqa, the American military caused an estimated 1.7 civilian deaths per 100 strikes.Israel’s lack of concern for civilian casualties is clear from well-documented individual strikes. On October 31, Israel struck the Jabaliya refugee camp with what appears to have been at least two 2,000-pound bombs, destroying entire housing blocks. News footage soon after showed at least 47 bodies, including children, pulled from the rubble in the refugee camp. Eventually the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry would claim 195 dead and hundreds more injured. The target of the strike was Ibrahim Biari, a Hamas commander who helped plan October 7, as well as a tunnel network and other Hamas fighters.[Read: Is the destruction of Gaza making Israel any safer?]During the Battle of Mosul, strikes that could be anticipated to kill 10 civilians or more required sign-off from the commanding general of Central Command, which oversees all American military activity across the greater Middle East. Deliberate strikes might have been analyzed by multiple working groups, and precautions taken to limit civilian casualties by using a more precise weapon with a smaller blast radius. A strike might have been canceled if the harm to civilians outweighed the possible battlefield advantage. In the Jabaliya strike, Israel caused foreseeable civilian casualties an order of magnitude greater than anything America would have signed off on during the past decades of war. And yes, 2,000-pound bombs are among the munitions that the United States has been sending to Israel, and which Israel has been using for strikes that American commanders would never permit from their own armed forces.Even more troubling has been Israel’s failure to allow humanitarian relief to reach the civilian population it has put at risk. On October 9, Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, declared a “complete siege” of Gaza, stating, “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” Since then, the Israeli bombing campaign has destroyed Gaza’s agriculture and infrastructure, and Israel has restricted aid coming from outside the Strip.The United States has played a game of push and pull, providing weapons but telling Israeli authorities that they must allow humanitarian aid into Gaza; Israel fails to sufficiently comply, and Gazans starve. In February, the deputy executive director of the World Food Programme, Carl Skau, announced that one out of every six Gazan children under the age of 2 was acutely malnourished. “Hundreds of trucks are waiting to enter, and it is absolutely imperative to make crossing points work effectively and open additional crossing points,” the European Union’s foreign-policy chief, Josep Borrell, said on March 18. “It is just a matter of political will. Israel has to do it.”A UN Security Council resolution noted on December 22 that under international law, all parties must “allow, facilitate, and enable the immediate, safe, and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance at scale directly to the Palestinian civilian population.” That Israel lets some aid through is not a defense. As Tom Dannenbaum, an associate professor of international law at Tufts University, pointed out at the beginning of the conflict, even when starvation is being used as a weapon of war, “often there can be a trickle of humanitarian relief or a stop-start permission of essentials into a territory that is besieged.” In Gaza, starving children fill desperately strained hospital wards. Israel can make no plausible argument that it’s meeting its obligations here.Perhaps the most damning indictment of Israel’s conduct is that it is fighting this war without any realistic vision of its outcome, other than the military defeat of Hamas. The “day after” plan that Netanyahu released in February suggests an indefinite Israeli military occupation of Gaza, rejects international negotiations toward a permanent settlement with the Palestinian people, and gives only a vague nod toward a reconstruction plan “financed and led by countries acceptable to Israel.” On March 14, Ophir Falk, one of Netanyahu’s advisers, declared in The Wall Street Journal that the military campaign was “guaranteeing that Gaza will never pose a threat to Israel again.” This is delusional.Violent repression can backfire or produce Pyrrhic victories. Look at my war. Toppling Saddam Hussein created a fertile chaos for insurgent groups of all types. When I deployed to Iraq as part of the American surge of troops in 2007, we successfully worked with Sunni leaders to bring down the level of violence, only for ISIS to rise from the country’s unstable politics over the decade that followed.Repression rarely completely eradicates terrorist groups. Even Israeli intelligence admits that Hamas will survive this war. And as the terrorism expert Audrey Kurth Cronin has noted, repression is difficult for democracies to sustain, because it “exacts an enormous cost in money, casualties, and individual rights, and works best in places where the members of terrorist groups can be separated from the broader population.” The latter is manifestly not the case in Gaza.Sheer force cannot make Palestinians accept the violence done to them, the destruction wrought on their homes, and their fate as a subject population, deprived of self-determination. Recent polls show two-thirds of Gazans blaming Israel for their suffering, and most of the rest blaming the United States, while in the West Bank support for armed struggle has risen. Defenders of Israel will often reference a quote attributed to Golda Meir: “If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.” But that’s not how Palestinians experience it. Even before October 7, the rate of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank was on track to reach an all-time high in 2023. More attacks followed.Making this combustible situation still worse are international actors who benefit from stoking conflict. Iran has long helped train, supply, and fund armed Palestinian groups, offering a reported $350 million in 2023 alone. More arms, training, and funding will flow in the future, not only to Gaza but around the region. Netanyahu has suggested that Israel will maintain military control of Gaza, operating a security buffer zone inside Gaza and closing the border with Egypt. From a military perspective alone, such an expensive commitment to endless repression within Gaza would be shortsighted. As Cronin points out, historically, “using overwhelming force tends to disperse the threat to neighboring regions.”A good pretext for a war does not make a war just. War needs to be carried out without brutality and drive at a just political end. Israel is failing on both counts. Hamas may be horrific, but just because you’ve diagnosed a malignant tumor doesn’t mean you hand a rusty scalpel to a drunk and tell him to cut away while the patient screams in terror.[Graeme Wood: Pressuring Israel works]All of which calls into question America’s support for this war. Washington never even tried to make its aid conditional on Israel’s abiding by the standards of wartime conduct that Americans have come to expect. The Biden administration has twice bypassed congressional review in order to provide weapons to Israel. Senator Bernie Sanders proposed having the State Department investigate possible Israeli human-rights violations, but the Senate rejected the bid. Any policy relying on less debate and greater ignorance should raise alarms in a democracy. The administration’s policy has already hurt America’s standing globally.“All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost,” a senior G7 diplomat told the Financial Times in October. “Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.”Defenders of the war often ask: If not this, what should Israel be doing? Some of the answers to that question are fairly easy. Israel should not approve strikes that will predictably kill more than 100 civilians for limited military gain. It should not bomb entire neighborhoods to rubble. And it must make an aggressive commitment to providing humanitarian relief, rather than being a stumbling block to groups trying to save lives in the midst of starvation.Other answers are more difficult, because to imagine a postwar Gaza that might lead to peace, or at least to the weakening of violent forces around the region, would be to imagine a very different Israeli government—one that could credibly commit to helping facilitate the rebuilding of a Palestinian government in Gaza and the provision of full political rights to the people there. Instead, Israel has a government that just announced the largest West Bank land seizure in decades, and whose prime minister offers nothing to Palestinians but “full Israeli security control of all the territory west of the Jordan.”The Biden administration has assured its critics that it is pressuring Israel to do better. It recently allowed a UN Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire to pass, even as it abstained and criticized the resolution for failing to condemn Hamas. But this will hardly repair the damage to America’s international reputation. Washington needs to address the war that is, not the hypothetical war U.S. officials would like to see. As Adil Haque told me, “It’s been five and a half months now, and there’s no indication that Israel will ever change its tactics in a significant way, so you either support the way it fights, or you can’t support it at all.” Washington needs to stop making excuses for Israel and stop supporting this war.So perhaps October 7 will be Israel’s 9/11, or 20 9/11s—not just because of the scale of the losses, but because of the foolishness and cruelty of the response. And a few years from now, if I talk with a survivor of this devastating war, will he blame Hamas for provoking it? I would guess that he’ll blame the country that bombed him without mercy and restricted the delivery of food while his family starved to death. And he’ll blame America for enabling it. And so will the rest of the world. And they’ll be right.
theatlantic.com
How Not to Be Bored When You Have to Wait
Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out.Like many, I travel a lot for work. Unlike many, I never get tired of it. On the open road are always interesting people and new places. Phoenix in July or Fairbanks in the winter? Bring it on. There is one thing about travel that bugs me, though, and has ever since my tender years: the constant waiting. When I travel, I wait in the TSA line, wait to board the plane, wait in restaurants, wait to check into hotels, and on and on.This pet peeve about waiting is shared by most Americans, 64 percent of whom have to wait in line at a business at least a few times a week, and two-thirds of whom say that their predominant emotion while doing so is negative (according to a survey by Waitwhile, a company whose business is, literally, queuing management). Small wonder that scholars find that waiting for products and services strongly lowers satisfaction and loyalty to a service provider; according to the Waitwhile survey, 82 percent of customers actively avoid going to a business with a line.For years, I have tried to design my life in such a way to lower how much time I have to spend waiting, and it has worked: I ask for the check as soon as the server brings me my lunch; I have all the subscriptions that help to streamline one’s passage through the airport; I patronize hotels that have self-service check-in kiosks. No doubt my waiting time is a fraction of what it used to be. But recently, I have realized that despite these improvements, I’m not any less aggravated by the waiting I still have to endure.[Read: What boredom actually means]This mystery has led me to conclude that I have gone about the whole problem in the wrong way. I have been trying to engineer the outside world to make it better for me. I should instead have been working on myself, to live better in a world of waiting.The problem with waiting for something we want—even when the waiting is not anxiety-provoking (as it can be for a medical result)—is that it produces two conditions that humans hate: boredom and lack of autonomy.One way of understanding boredom is that it’s a state in which you fail to find meaning. Standing in line, knowing that you’re doing so to get or do something but are being forced to spend the time unproductively, is what feels meaningless. That can lead to frustration.People resist the frustration of boredom so much that they will literally choose pain to pass the time: In one famous 2016 study, researchers ran an experiment in which they assigned participants to watch movies that were sad, neutral, or boring, during which they could self-administer painful electric shocks. Those watching the boring film shocked themselves more frequently and at higher intensity than the people watching the other films.Waiting also lowers your sense of autonomy—or, to use the psychological parlance, creates an external locus of control, which means that your behavior can’t change the situation at hand. This is extremely uncomfortable. Think of the last time you waited in an airport for a long-delayed flight, and the vexation that came from not being able to do anything about it except wait. For people who feel this a lot in their life—not just waiting in the occasional line but feeling as if they generally don’t have control over their circumstances, for economic, health, or social and family reasons—such a lack of autonomy is associated with depression.[Read: Boredom is winning]You have probably noticed that to compound these problems, time seems to slow down when you’re waiting for something. As a rule, time perception is highly contextual and subjective, and the perceived duration of an experience may seem to stretch out when we are under stress. In one experiment from the 1980s showing this, researchers asked people with arachnophobia to look at spiders—of which they were intensely afraid—for two stretches of 45 seconds apiece. They found that the phobic subjects systematically overestimated the amount of spider-watching time endured, especially after the second viewing of the spiders, which was likely related to the subjects’ already heightened stress levels.Your annoyance in a bank line probably isn’t as extreme as that, but the frustration likely still makes the time drag. All of this leads to a vicious circle of waiting and frustration: The discomfort from waiting makes the waiting seem to go on longer, and this perceived extended waiting time increases your frustration.Two obvious solutions to the waiting problem suggest themselves. The first is what I have always done, which is to try to engineer the external environment to eliminate as much waiting as possible. This means scheduling activities meticulously to avoid traffic when possible, subscribing to services that allow you to jump lines, and eating at weird hours when restaurants aren’t crowded. That strategy helps a little, for a while, but as psychologists have long found—and as I’ve discovered for myself—the psychic gains from repeatedly attaining such gratification don’t usually last. That is because of a psychological phenomenon known as affective habituation: the process by which the positive feeling falls when we get something again and again. Although the expense and inconvenience of these things are permanent, studies have shown that the benefits wear off quickly and become a new normal that is very nearly as frustrating as the old one.[Megan Garber: The great fracturing of American attention]Another waiting strategy most people have turned to of late is distraction by device. When a line forms, nearly everyone pulls out their phone to fritter away the time, playing games, checking email, and, especially, scrolling social media. You might think that this solution must work, the way everyone does it, but in fact it might not work at all.In one study published in 2021, researchers monitored the level of boredom (and fatigue) that people reported over the course of their workday. As their boredom increased, the more likely they were to use their phone. This did not provide relief, however. On the contrary, they reported more boredom and fatigue after having used the phone. Your phone may attract your attention, but after the first few seconds, it may expose the false promise that it really isn’t much more interesting than staring at the wall; meanwhile, it sucks up your energy.If these solutions that try to change the outside world are not helpful, looking within ourselves could be a better bet. I can recommend two ways to transform waiting time from something to endure into an investment in yourself.The first is the practice of mindfulness. The most common definition of this is a meditation technique in which one persists in focusing on the present moment. People typically find this quite difficult, even frustrating. But mindfulness can be much simpler and easier than the orthodox meditation practice. As my colleague Ellen Langer, whom I regard as a pioneer in mindfulness research, told me, “It’s simply noticing new things.”To do this involves putting down the phone when waiting in line—or for a train, or at the airport, or wherever—and simply paying attention. You may not have done this in a long time—perhaps not since you first got a smartphone. You will find—and the research backs this up—that looking around and deliberately taking note of what you observe will probably lower the discomfort from boredom.[Read: The benefits of a short attention span]The second personal change you can try is to practice the virtue of patience. Impatience is obviously central to the waiting-frustration cycle, and research has shown that those who have more patience have higher life satisfaction and lower levels of depression. Of course, the advice “Be patient” doesn’t seem especially helpful, does it? On the contrary, when an airline says “Thank you for your patience,” I quietly seethe with rage (that special road warrior’s rage exquisitely honed for airlines).Fortunately, scholars have found a solution that, like mindfulness, has a strong connection with Eastern wisdom: the loving-kindness meditation. This is a mental exercise of directing warm emotions toward others, including friends, enemies, the whole world—even airlines. Research has found that this practice can increase patience. As a bonus, you can use it anywhere.The best way to lower the misery of waiting, then, turns out to be not to change the world but to change oneself. That insight can apply not just to waiting but to life itself. Most of us go about our days feeling dissatisfied with the world, that it is failing in some way to conform to our preferences and convenience. But on a moment’s reflection, we realize how absurd it is to suppose that it might. To do so is like canoeing down a river and railing against the winding course it takes rather than simply following those bends as best we can.After research and upon reflection, I am trying a new strategy for waiting—and for a good deal else that bugs me—which is this: observing the world without distraction, and wishing others the love and happiness I want for myself.But if that fails, maybe I’ll just start shocking myself.
theatlantic.com
The Strange Intimacy of Middle Names
In 2011, demographic researchers across America realized something surprising: Census forms had a lot of spots left blank. When one person fills it out for the whole household, they might skip certain sections—especially the middle-name column. Sixty percent of people left out the middle names of their extended family members, and nearly 80 percent omitted those of roommates they weren’t related to. Respondents weren’t trying to keep secrets. Much of the time, they just didn’t know the middle names of the people they lived with.Middle names occupy a strange space in American society. We use them most in bureaucratic contexts. They show up on driver’s licenses and passports, but they aren’t required when booking plane tickets. You probably don’t include it in your signature, and you probably don’t put it in your social-media profiles. For many of us, the name feels like a secret. Only about 22 percent of Americans think they know the middle names of at least half of their friends or acquaintances, according to a poll conducted for The Atlantic by The Harris Poll. Yet you still might be offended if a spouse or a close friend forgets yours. Knowing this seemingly benign piece of information has become emblematic of your connection. “She don’t even know your middle name,” Cardi B laments about an ex-partner’s new fling in her song “Be Careful.” But the intimacy you miss out on when you don’t know someone’s middle name can be more than symbolic. The names can be Trojan horses of meaning about ourselves or our ancestors, couriers of overlooked parts of our identity.[Read: The least common, least loved names in America]This wasn’t always the case. Middle names were probably an export of medieval Italy’s tradition of double first names, the historian Stephen Wilson wrote in The Means Of Naming: A Social History. Over the next few centuries, the practice of giving children two names ricocheted across the European elite. In the late 19th century, it gained traction in America, predominantly among the upper class. It spread across social strata during the early 1900s as part of the rise of life insurance and Social Security cards. Prior to World War I, many Americans didn’t maintain consistent spellings of their first and last names. But with more official documents tracking who they were, spelling their names the same way each time and tacking on an extra one to distinguish family members with the same name just made sense. The result was a veritable takeover: By the late 1970s, 75 percent of Americans had middle names.In many other cultures, middle names either don’t exist or don’t serve the same purpose. Countries such as Japan, Korea, and China don’t have anything that directly correlates to American middle names, though many Americans with family from these countries give their kids one anyway. Meanwhile, in other communities in the United States, middle names are quite prominent. You might know a neighbor’s middle name, for instance, if you live in the American South. Southerners are more likely to go by their middle name than people living in any other part of the country, probably because they more often hand down the same first name across multiple generations and need a differentiator. Others in the region may opt for compound first-and-middle names, such as “Sarah Beth.” These are also common in many Hispanic families.But for many of the rest of us, hearing our middle name can seem oddly formal. It’s jarring when a parent uses it to scold us, because doing so injects a dose of ceremony and distance into a typically close relationship, Wijnand van Tilburg, a professor at the University of Essex, in England, told me. Some of us have become so hardwired to associate our middle name with wrongdoing, in fact, that even seeing it written down makes us less indulgent. In one study, participants were less likely to want a product that might be seen as a guilty pleasure—in this case, a bottle made to hold sugary drinks—after they imagined their full name, middle name included, engraved on it.Despite these formal, bureaucratic connotations, a variety of factors—be they idiosyncratic preferences or deep familial meaning—shape why these names are chosen, transforming them into far more than legalese. For some parents, the names are a creative exercise. Many of the most popular middle names in America—such as Marie and Ann, which ranked in the top-10 middle names for every single decade from 1900 until 2015—may have been chosen for their pleasing poetic rhythm, Sophie Kihm, the editor in chief of the baby-naming site Nameberry, told me. Metaphor-driven names such as Moxie are taking off too, as are more artistic ones, such as Symphony and Rembrandt. Kihm is also seeing a lot of animal names, such as Hawk and Lynx; the rapper Macklemore gave his daughter the middle name Koala. Others use the spot for something more personal. Forty-three percent of middle names honor a family member, compared with just 27 percent of first names. Indeed, middle names are commonly used to acknowledge where you came from. Many middle-class Mexican American families have chosen to give their children an English first name and a Spanish middle name; Kihm told me she’s seen many Asian Americans do the same in their respective languages. [Read: The rise of gender-neutral names isn’t what it seems ]In some cases, the middle name might reflect what parents would be most drawn to, if they weren’t concerned with social scrutiny. “People are willing to take bigger risks there than they are with the first name,” Kihm told me. Although scholars have observed that political tensions can trickle down into how parents name their kids, the virtue signals rarely spread to middle names. In America, the rise of anti-French sentiment during the early years of the Iraq War led to a marked decline in French first names—but there was no discernible impact on middle names. Recently, even as gender-neutral first names have become common, middle names have quietly subverted gender norms further. Kihm pointed out that girls are getting more traditionally masculine middle names, and vice versa. James, for instance, has become a popular middle name for girls; Rihanna recently gave her son the middle name Rose.This slot, then, is a place for parents to hide their values in plain sight. Sometimes we seem to expect the middle name to reveal something fundamental. Look no further than the TV and movie trope in which a character announces that some meaningful word—subtle, courageous, slick—is actually their middle name. (In Austin Powers, it goes: “Danger is my middle name.”) Your middle name, in this understanding, is a secret weapon, a raw reflection of your personality or of a hidden skill. This has filtered into actual naming trends in the past decade, as middle names with symbolic meaning such as Love have become more popular, according to Kihm.Middle names can’t telegraph all of who we are. But maybe sharing them feels so intimate because they carry a small piece of us. More than being a few letters printed on your ID, they’re a window into your family history, your parents’ tastes, and sometimes even their aspirations for who you might become.
theatlantic.com
Billy Donovan has sage advice for UConn as it seeks March Madness repeat
Everything Dan Hurley and Connecticut are going through — the pressure, the expectations, the distractions — Billy Donovan has experienced.
nypost.com
MoMA stabbing suspect is on his ‘deathbed’ after cancer diagnosis: lawyer
The unhinged man accused of stabbing two Museum of Modern Art employees in a fit of rage is on his “deathbed” at a New York City hospital, according to his attorney — who is looking to have the case tossed, The Post has learned. Gary Cabana, 62, may not make it after being diagnosed with...
nypost.com
Lloyd’s of London sees multi-billion dollar insurance loss from Baltimore bridge collapse
The collapse of Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge is likely to lead to a multi-billion dollar insurance loss, the chairperson of Lloyd's of London said on Thursday.
nypost.com
French lawmakers consider bill that would ban hair discrimination
French lawmakers are discussing a bill to ban discrimination based on hair texture, length, color or style, aiming to support those facing hostility due to their hair.
foxnews.com
College basketball coach says top player looking at $250K-$300K in NIL money from larger schools to transfer
Trey Townsend was a key piece in Oakland University upsetting Kentucky in the NCAA Tournament, but head coach Greg Kampe says he could be leaving for a big NIL payday.
foxnews.com
The World’s Unpopular Leaders
Why Biden isn’t alone with his low approval ratings.
nytimes.com
Internet in Love With Dad Taking Daughter's Boldly Decorated Car to Mechanic
Social media users adored the father in the latest viral clip, with one saying "this is so cute."
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newsweek.com
Chris 'Mad Dog' Russo shares gripe about March Madness: 'Absolute disgrace!'
Chris "Mad Dog" Russo has a large gripe with the scheduling of this year's Sweet 16 matchups for the men's NCAA Tournament, as many start after 10 p.m. ET.
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foxnews.com
King Charles New Message Hints at Health Woes
King Charles III has recorded an Easter message ahead of missing a key royal event.
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newsweek.com
Chris Christie withdraws from consideration for ‘No Labels’ presidential run
Christ Christie turned down an offer to run a third party presidential campaign under the No Labels title on Wednesday.
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foxnews.com
Riley Strain’s family ordered second autopsy after college student was found without pants, boots and wallet
The heartbroken family of Riley Strain had a second, private autopsy completed on their son as new details in his devastating discovery cast a shadow over his mysterious disappearance and death.
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nypost.com
Social Security Shares Update on Benefit Access
Changes to reporting rules for Supplemental Security Income benefits are set to begin in September, the agency announced.
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newsweek.com
What We Know About Palestinians Detained in Israel
Since Oct. 7, Israel has detained thousands of Palestinians suspected of militant activity. Rights groups allege that Israel has abused some detainees or held them without charges.
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nytimes.com
Los Angeles bill seeks reparations for families of people displaced due to building of Dodger Stadium
A bill has been introduced that will seek reparations for the families of people who lived in Chavez Ravine before they were displaced because of Dodger Stadium.
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foxnews.com
This monument has been missing from the Mall far too long
Of the many memorial and historic sites on the Mall, not a single one is dedicated to women.
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washingtonpost.com
California bill seeks to provide reparations for families displaced from land where Dodgers Stadium was built
A California lawmaker "aims to address the historical injustice faced by those living in the Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles" after an unfulfilled promise of public housing by city officials.
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foxnews.com
See ship simulator recreate moments leading up to bridge crash
CNN's Miguel Marquez joins Captain Morgan McManus on a ship simulator to try and recreate the moments leading up to the collision of a cargo ship into Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge.
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edition.cnn.com
MLB opening day: 2024 schedule, rule changes and everything you need to know about the upcoming season
MLB opening day marks the start of a long baseball season. Take a look at the 2024 matchups, rule changes and more about the professional league.
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foxnews.com
Schools across US embrace rare teaching opportunity offered by 2024 solar eclipse
Schools across the path of the April 8 total solar eclipse are leveraging the event as a rich teaching opportunity by incorporating hands-on activities and lessons.
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foxnews.com
Denmark’s King Frederik, Queen Mary’s impressive ‘earnings’ revealed — and they’re set for a huge pay rise
An official finance report published by the Danish Palace shows the whopping sum the Danish royals cashed in on in 2023.
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nypost.com
Bear that injured 5 shot dead, but critics say wrong bear killed
Opposition politicians say a 67-kilogram female bear was killed, which "cannot be in any way related to the 100-kilogram male they were looking for."
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cbsnews.com
Putin Issues F-16 Warning
The Russian president said "we will destroy their planes" when asked about the delivery of NATO aircraft to Ukraine.
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newsweek.com
On Holy Thursday at the Last Supper, Jesus gave us the gift of himself, says Minnesota priest
At the Last Supper, Jesus not only instituted the Eucharist, he also displayed servitude toward the disciples in washing their feet, said a Minnesota priest to Fox News Digital.
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foxnews.com
Putin Vows to Blast the West’s F-16s Out of the Sky in Ukraine
Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik via ReutersRussian President Vladimir Putin says his forces will shoot down any Western-supplied F-16 fighter jets given to Ukraine, claiming that the nuclear-capable aircraft wouldn’t change the situation on the battlefield.Speaking to Russian air force pilots late Wednesday, Putin said Moscow has no intention of attacking any countries in NATO but that F-16s could be targeted wherever they’re located if they’re being used against Russian forces. “Of course, if they will be used from airfields in third countries, they become for us legitimate targets, wherever they might be located,” Putin said, according to Reuters.Earlier in the day, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said F-16s were on schedule to be in the skies over Ukraine by mid-summer. He added that “pilot training is going well” but acknowledged that much more training for both pilots and engineers would be required “because the transition from Soviet-type aircraft to Western-type aircraft... requires major changes in everything.”Read more at The Daily Beast.
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thedailybeast.com
Inside the Scramble to Evacuate the Bridge, and an Investigation Into Boeing’s Safety Record
Plus, the man who was nearly vice president.
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nytimes.com
Grant will add rain gardens, trees to reduce erosion in Arlington stream
Arlington County was awarded about $280,000 in grant funding for efforts to reduce erosion at Grandma’s Creek, a stream in the Barcroft neighborhood.
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washingtonpost.com
Tax Return Deadlines Extended for Some Americans
Individuals and businesses impacted by 2023's wildfire in Hawaii are among those granted a deadline extension on their tax return.
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newsweek.com
The Nationals have rebuilt from within. That won’t be enough.
The rebuilding Nationals have remained cautious, but that needs to change, and soon.
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washingtonpost.com
Donald Trump's Mental Acuity Test Questioned on Fox News
The former president has sometimes cited the fact that he "aced" a cognitive test that was administered while he was in office.
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newsweek.com
California has to conserve water. Why is Sacramento dragging its heels?
The state water board knows California is facing a hotter, drier future, but it's letting urban utilities ignore appropriate 'water budgets' for a decade or longer.
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latimes.com
New York’s fanciest 'Korean wave' restaurants go where L.A. doesn’t: caviar and kimchi
Being a student of Korean foodways is essentially written in my job description as a Los Angeles critic. A visit to New York is showing where a new frontier might be heading.
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latimes.com
Bring buttons and dials back to new cars. Touch screens distract drivers
Good for European safety ratings group for pushing carmakers to return to manual controls for some car functions. U.S. should do the same. That seems to be what customers want and it's safer too.
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latimes.com
The mysterious life — and questionable claims — of Shohei Ohtani's interpreter
Now that Ippei Mizuhara is under a microscope following allegations he stole millions of dollars from Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani to cover gambling debts, key aspects of his biography have proved difficult to confirm or turned out to be false.
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latimes.com
Is this the worst Congress ever? Let's count the ways
The 118th Congress is on track to pass the least amount of U.S. legislation in modern times, all because of the self-defeating GOP House majority.
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latimes.com
‘Godzilla x Kong’ is here to please your lizard brain
‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’ is a monster smackdown that isn’t out for Oscars. Let it roar.
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washingtonpost.com
American happiness just hit a new low. Don't blame your parents.
The United States dropped out of the top 20 happiest nations. It's the under 30s that are dragging us down.
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latimes.com
GOP scrambles to organize early and mail voting despite Trump’s attacks
Republicans are playing catch-up to Democrats on voting before Election Day in battleground states, but Trump disparages those methods.
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washingtonpost.com
Biden Title IX rules on trans athletes set for election-year delay
The administration is preparing to issue Title IX regulations on sex discrimination in schools, but without companion rules on transgender athletics.
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washingtonpost.com
Another casualty of escalating clashes in the West Bank: The Palestinian olive harvest
As Israeli settlers use the war in Gaza as a pretext for a land grab in Palestinians' other territory, olive farmers fear their way of life may be on the verge of extinction.
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latimes.com
There will be no Hippie Hill 420 festival. Some San Francisco weed gurus say, so what?
This year's 420 festival at San Francisco’s Hippie Hill was canceled by organizers. Some cannabis advocates say it needs to get back to its activist roots.
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latimes.com
When Martin Luther King Jr. came to L.A., only one white politician was willing to greet him
The moment between King and L.A. County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn remains important in the minds of many Black residents. It is now memorialized with a bronze statue.
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latimes.com
Hollywood made friendship another unrealistic ideal. A Broadway hit finally smacks it down
Movies and TV shows have fetishized close friendship to the point that the real, often fraught rhythms of such relationships have been lost. Not so in 'Merrily We Roll Along.'
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latimes.com
Keep the party going with the best late-night hangouts in Koreatown
From karaoke clubs to wine bars to long-running restaurants with kitchens that stay open late, Koreatown will keep you entertained.
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latimes.com