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☆ With His Tale of Shipwreck, David Grann Is Steady as He Goes
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Jennifer Szalai | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

THE WAGER: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, by David GrannThere were multiple moments while reading David Grann’s new book, “The Wager,” about an 18th-century shipwreck, when it occurred to me that the kind of nonfiction narratives The New Yorker writer has become known for share something essential with a sturdy ship. A vessel freighted with historical controversy, tangled facts and monomaniacal characters needs to be structurally sound, containing and conveying its messy cargo. It should be resilient yet nimble enough to withstand the unpredictable waters of readers’ attentions and expectations. The men were survivors of the H.M.S. Wager, a British man-of-war that had left England nearly a year and a half before, part of a squadron that had been tasked with capturing a Spanish galleon filled with treasure.

CNN —A fresh leak of classified US intelligence documents suggests broad infighting between Russian officials, including some within the Federal Security Service (FSB) and Defense Ministry, the New York Times reported Thursday. The NYT report says the documents detail US monitoring of Russian intelligence and apparatus and military command. The Kremlin said it doubts the “reliability” of reports of broad infighting between Russian officials, in response to a CNN question about the NYT article. A litany of highly classified documents leaked online related to the Pentagon, pictured in Arlington, Virginia on April 6, 2023, has rattled US officials. The Pentagon has also stood up an “interagency effort” to assess the impact of the leak, Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said Sunday, while the Department of Justice opened an investigation into the leaks last week.

☆ The Best Part of Group Tours? Meeting New People. It’s Also the Worst Part.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-24 | by ( Kathleen Hughes | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Tourists gaze down at the ruins of Masada, an ancient mountaintop fortress in Israel, during the author’s tour of the Middle East. We were a group of 10 strangers on a two-week tour of the Middle East last year, and our social dynamic was, it’s fair to say, a bit rocky from the start. While the tour was fascinating, focusing on the ancient history of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, one guest interrupted frequently, criticizing the guides and the itinerary. “Why did you bring us here?” she asked on the streets of downtown Amman.

☆ Notable legal clouds that continue to hang over Donald Trump in 2023
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-20 | by ( Dan Berman | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +15 min

Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels and says the probe by Bragg, a Democrat, is politically motivated. According to the lawsuit, the Trump Organization deceived lenders, insurers and tax authorities by inflating the value of his properties using misleading appraisals. A federal judge ruled that Trump and FBI Director Christopher Wray can be deposed for two hours each as part of the lawsuit. “What (Trump’s lawsuit) lacks in substance and legal support it seeks to substitute with length, hyperbole, and the settling of scores and grievances,” US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks wrote. Woodward later released “The Trump Tapes,” an audiobook featuring eight hours of raw interviews with Trump interspersed with the author’s commentary.

☆ Donald Trump sues Bob Woodward for releasing audio of their interviews
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( David Goldman | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

New York CNN —Former President Donald Trump has sued journalist Bob Woodward for copyright violations, claiming Woodward released audio from their interviews without Trump’s consent. Woodward conducted several interviews with Trump for “Rage,” the author’s second book on the former president that hit bookstores in September 2020. Woodward later released “The Trump Tapes,” an audiobook featuring eight hours of raw interviews with Trump interspersed with the author’s commentary. That book, which went on sale October 25, 2022, contains the 20 interviews Woodward conducted with Trump from 2016 through 2020, including those for “Rage.”But Trump, in the lawsuit filed Monday in the Northern District of Florida, claims he did not give Woodward permission to release the audio of the interviews. In that case, US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks of the Southern District of Florida wrote that Trump has demonstrated a “pattern of misusing the courts to serve political purposes” as he ticked through several other failed lawsuits Trump has brought in recent years.

☆ How Did My Dogs Become My Decorators?
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Michelle Slatalla | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

DOGGIE DÉCOR The accessories that come with housing a dog—here, the author’s papillons, Pidgeon and Larry—can derail even the most fastidious homeowner’s interior design. AT A DINNER recently, my friends were ticking off their home-décor-related New Year’s resolutions. After all, I’ve spent years repainting, reupholstering, rearranging and refinancing my house to make it comfortable. This is one of our many, many sick bedtime routines, but I love him so much. So I crawled out from under the covers to help him make his evening bone selection.

☆ Prince Harry's William resentment makes 'Spare' a royal tragedy
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Vicky Ward | Vicky Ward Is The Author Of | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +6 min

“I was twenty the first time I heard the story of what Pa allegedly said to Mummy the day of my birth,” Harry writes. So, too, despite all Harry’s resentment, seems to be his brother. William stays by Harry’s side the night before Harry’s wedding, only leaving to stay the night with Kate and his kids. But on this topic, Harry’ resentment gets the better of him. They’ll read “Spare” and see that, personalities aside, the chief culprit for Harry’s lifelong resentment is the unfortunate law of primogeniture.

The proposals have alarmed voting rights activists and state Democrats, who tried and failed last year to block a GOP-backed overhaul of election laws — a priority of Gov. The 62 voting rights-related bills Texas lawmakers have already prefiled represent nearly all prefiled voting rights legislation across the country, according to a review of prefiled bills by Voting Rights Lab and NBC News. An election police forceRepublican-authored Texas bills, such as HB 549 and SB 220, propose creating a system of state “election marshals,” who would investigate allegations of violations of election and voting laws, and file criminal charges when warranted. Harsher penaltiesLegislation such as HB 39, HB 52, HB 222, HB 397 and SB 166 aims to raise the penalty for election and voting rights crimes to a felony from a misdemeanor. “All my bill does is restore the felony punishment for illegal voting,” Texas Rep. David Spiller, the author of HB 52, said in an interview.

☆ Can You Tell a Real Tweet From One Written by an AI Chatbot?
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( Brian Whitton | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Are you ready for a world where super-intelligent robots faithfully impersonate people? To help see what that might look like, The Wall Street Journal deployed ChatGPT, a free (for now) Artificial Intelligence trained on a huge dataset researchers gathered through 2021, which recently became a viral hit. We asked it to compose tweets in the style of public figures and institutions to see if anyone could distinguish them from the real thing. We included specifics in our prompts to the AI: write a tweet by Neil deGrasse Tyson about the universe. The topics we picked were based on the author’s previous tweets.

☆ How and where to use your travel points for a ski vacation
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-07 | by ( Jennifer Yellin | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +23 min

Marriott Bonvoy ski vacation hotelsOf the three major hotel chains in the US, Marriott has the largest number of properties catered toward ski vacations. Points required: A Category 7 property, requiring 25,000 to 35,000 World of Hyatt points per night. Points required: A Category 6 property, requiring 21,000 to 29,000 World of Hyatt points per night. Points required: A Category 7 property, requiring 25,000 to 35,000 World of Hyatt points per night. Points required: A Category 6 property, requiring From 21,000 to 29,000 World of Hyatt points per night.

☆ The Whole World’s Obsessed With Weather Now. What Took You So Long?
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-11 | by ( Kris Frieswick | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

THOSE WERE THE (CLOUDY) DAYS The author’s compulsion to track the weather dates back to early barometer-assisted bonding sessions with her father. Reports of a planned sequel to “Twister” whip up movie-fan anticipation. Apps, social-media pages and YouTube channels breathlessly describe what the weather is doing right now, saving you the trouble of looking out the window. On any given day, nonstop coverage tracks various weather disasters, giving each a name and a hashtag. The Kardashianization of Mother Nature leads me to ask one question: “What took you all so long?”

☆ Fact Check-Derogatory poster shows misleading statistics about children with same-sex parents
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-03 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +9 min

A poster that appears to have originated on a Neo-Nazi website presents misleading statistics about children who have same-sex parents, citing research that has since been called into question. The text in the poster reads: “92% of children raised by Gay Parents are abused. A large review of 19,000 studies and articles on the topic of same-sex parenting published in 2015 (here) also concluded that children raised by same-sex couples are no worse off than children raised by opposite-sex parents. The poster was created on a Neo-Nazi website and includes misleading statistics about same-sex parenting drawn from a small, controversial study. Most of the research on children with same-sex parents has found that they are not negatively affected as compared to other children.

☆ ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ author Jeff Kinney shares his book picks for middle readers
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-23 | by ( Megan Thomas | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

CNN —When author Jeff Kinney started writing the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series more than 15 years ago, he set out to create a comic that would resonate with adults and live in the humor section of book stores. “I’m really glad that I didn’t know that I was writing for kids because I think that oftentimes when an adult writes a kid’s book, they start with the lesson in mind. And so the priority of the book becomes the lesson,” Kinney recalled in a recent interview with CNN. “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” has sold more than 275 million copies, according to its publisher, with book number 17 in the series, “Diper Överlöde,” releasing Oct. 25. Kinney's next "Wimpy Kid" book, "Diper Överlöde," releases on Oct. 25.

☆ Andy Warhol’s Image of Prince Comes Before Supreme Court
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-12 | by ( Jess Bravin | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

Pop artist Andy Warhol, pictured in 1976, created the Prince Series as among his last works of art before he died in 1987. WASHINGTON—A case involving two of the 20th century’s most famous visual and musical artists comes before the Supreme Court Wednesday, in a copyright dispute pitting a celebrity photographer against the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts over a photo she shot of Prince that Warhol used as the basis for a series of silk-screen prints. Compared with other forms of intellectual property, copyrights last a long time—for works produced since 1978, generally for 70 years after the author’s death. But copyrights confer weaker protections than patents, for other parties are entitled to make “fair use” of copyright material to create new works of their own. Copyright cases typically turn on whether a subsequent work was transformative or merely duplicative of earlier material.

☆ 'Mr. Harrigan's Phone' review: The Netflix movie gets its message across with a smart Stephen King adaptation
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-05 | by ( Review Brian Lowry | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

Harrigan’s Phone” to the relatively short list of really good Stephen King adaptations, garnishing a coming-of-age story with understated hints of the supernatural and thoughtful rumination about cellphones that finds true horror in their ubiquity. In one highly amusing ramble, Mr. Harrigan rattles off every terrible thing that the cellphone might unleash, calling it “a gateway drug” for all manner of societal ills, including the dissemination of bogus news. Harrigan’s Phone” exhibits a level of restraint not regularly associated with the movie’s two high-profile producers, Ryan Murphy (“American Horror Story”) and the prolific horror maven Jason Blum. (Whether the movie promotes Apple’s flagship product while decrying its effects will likely be, to reference another “Twilight Zone,” in the eye of the beholder.) Harrigan’s Phone” premieres October 5 on Netflix.

☆ 'Interview With the Vampire' review: AMC pumps fresh blood into Anne Rice's story
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-30 | by ( Review Brian Lowry | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

Desperate to replace “The Walking Dead,” AMC might have completed an improbable baton pass from zombies to another kind of undead. In that sense, this seems to have been produced at least as much with AMC+ in mind as the linear network AMC. Sam Reid as Lestat Du Lioncourt and Jacob Anderson as Louis De Pointe Du Lac in "Interview with the Vampire." “Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire” premieres October 2 at 10 p.m. ET on AMC and AMC+.

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