Opinion | Hollywood Movies Like ‘Project Hail Mary’ Are Too Long These Days
In his e-newsletter, Ron Charles praised the brand new ebook “The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy,” by Ray Madoff, who explains the system’s focus of wealth and perpetuation of inequality: “Every copy should come with a coupon for a torch and a pitchfork.” (Estelle Vickery, Waynesville, NC)
In The Times, Sam Anderson tried out AI sun shades from Mark Zuckerberg’s firm. “Meta’s new gizmos are ordinary-looking Ray-Bans and Oakleys that have been juiced to the gills with hidden technology: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, two tiny speakers, five microphones, a wide-angle camera,” he wrote. “They are basically a whole sting operation that sits on your nose.”
“Once,” Sam added, “a Cybertruck came rumbling toward me, and as I reached up to snap a picture with my glasses I felt that something momentous was about to happen — that this collision of two notoriously obnoxious technologies might rip a hole in the fabric of space-time and send confetti raining down, and we would all wake up in a new reality where everyone is kind and all leaders are competent and the world’s abundant resources end up where they belong. Instead, the Cybertruck drove on. And “My sunglasses were still on my face.” (Stephen Waxman, San Francisco, and Miriam Bulmer, Mercer Island, Wash.)
Also in The Times, Clifford Winston examined the extinction of modestly priced vehicles: “While politicians and economists scratch their heads at voters upset about affordability in a decent economy, they seem to somehow miss the fact that for most Americans the purchase of a car has become a debt sentence.” (Joanne Hus, Vineyard Haven, Mass., and Gordon Rogers, Columbia, Mo., amongst many others)
And Abdi Latif Dahir evoked a latest day in Lebanon: “The mechanical growl of Israeli warplanes mixed uneasily with the soft, reverent hymns coming from the church near my home in Beirut on Easter Sunday. For a moment, the two sounds coexisted, as if the city itself were holding its breath, caught between faith and fear.” (Robert Ok. Leaverton, Absarokee, Mont.)
