Author: NY TIMES

After watching “I Saw the TV Glow,” the new film from the director Jane Schoenbrun, I felt a sensation I hadn’t felt in a while: I need this soundtrack.The genre-defying movie is a surreal story about two high schoolers in the 1990s who become obsessed with a “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”-like show called “The Pink Opaque.” It’s a rich film that draws on horror, ’90s television and Schoenbrun’s experience coming out as transgender. But it also boasts some incredible tunes, like a hypnotic cover of Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl” by the artist yeule and performances…

When pro-Palestinian student protesters took over Hamilton Hall at Columbia University last month and renamed it “Hind’s Hall,” the banner they unfurled contained images of a cartoon character created over 50 years ago that symbolizes the resilience of Palestinians.On either side of the text were two images of a barefoot boy with tattered clothes and spiky hair, his back turned to us.The character is called Handala (variously transliterated as Hanzala or Handzala), a name derived from a native plant that is deep-rooted, persistent and bears bitter fruit, and has become a potent symbol of the Palestinian struggle. The image was…

Two years into President Biden’s term, his aides began negotiating with Saudi leaders to have the kingdom establish diplomatic relations with Israel. But when the Israel-Hamas war began last October, the talks withered.American and Saudi officials have tried to revive prospects for a deal by demanding more from Israel — a cease-fire in Gaza and irreversible steps toward the founding of a Palestinian nation. Now those officials say they are close to a final agreement on the main elements of what the Saudis want from the deal: a U.S.-Saudi mutual defense pact and cooperation on a civilian nuclear program in…

We graduated and got our first jobs. Two years to the day after my injury, a college friend, Jonny, fell down a flight of stairs after a night out in New York City and died. At 23, from a traumatic brain injury. When I heard the news, I thought of his mother. Then I thought of my mother, knowing that could have been me, and stopped feeling sorry for myself.Over time, my leg healed, and my back mostly healed. Every few months, my back locks up and I can hardly move. When that happens, I take a week off and…

Chinese officials signaled their growing alarm over the country’s worsening property market on Friday, unveiling a plan to step in to buy up some of the vast housing stock and announcing even looser rules for mortgages.The flurry of activity came just hours after new economic data revealed that Chinese authorities are staring at a hard truth: No one wants to buy houses right now.Policymakers have tried dozens of measures to entice home buyers and reverse a steep decline in the property market that has shown few signs of recovering soon.On Friday China’s vice premier, He Lifeng, indicated a shift in…

Robert H. Dennard, an engineer who invented the silicon memory technology that plays an indispensable role in every smartphone, laptop and tablet computer, died on April 23 in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y. He was 91.The cause of death, at a hospital, was a bacterial infection, said his daughter, Holly Dennard.Mr. Dennard’s pioneering work began at IBM in the 1960s, when the equipment to hold and store computer data was expensive, hulking — often room-size machines — and slow. He was studying the emerging field of microelectronics, which used silicon-based transistors to store digital bits of information.In 1966, Mr. Dennard invented a…

Late in “Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola’s plaintively hopeful movie about — well, everything under the sun — a character speaks to the power of love. It’s a wistful moment in a fascinating film aswirl with wild visions, lofty ideals, cinematic allusions, literary references, historical footnotes and self-reflexive asides, all of which Coppola has funneled into a fairly straightforward story about a man with a plan. It is a great big plan from a great big man in a great big movie, one whose sincerity is finally as moving as its unbounded artistic ambition.“Megalopolis,” which had its world premiere at the…

The Arab League called on Thursday for a United Nations peacekeeping force to be deployed in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied West Bank until a two-state solution can be negotiated, in a statement that also called for the U.N. Security Council to set a time limit for that political process.The notion of deploying U.N. peacekeepers into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been mentioned occasionally by diplomats. But the Arab League’s statement appeared to be the first time the group had officially made such a request in a written document, according to Farhan Haq, a U.N. spokesman.It’s unlikely that U.N. peacekeepers…

NATO allies are inching closer to sending troops into Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces, a move that would be another blurring of a previous red line and could draw the United States and Europe more directly into the war.Ukraine’s manpower shortage has reached a critical point, and its position on the battlefield in recent weeks has seriously worsened as Russia has accelerated its advances to take advantage of delays in shipments of American weapons. As a result, Ukrainian officials have asked their American and NATO counterparts to help train 150,000 new recruits closer to the front line for faster deployment.So…

In 2014, Fie Isolde’s future husband wrote her a 28th birthday card that, she said, was “full of dreams about all the things we were going to do.”“When I got the card,” the Danish jewelry designer recalled last month during a video interview from her boutique in the Sycamore neighborhood of Los Angeles, “my first thought was actually my fear: One day, this ink will be gone.”So in 2020, she had the words microscopically engraved on the 14-karat gold ring that she now wears on her right pinkie.“You can’t read it with the naked eye, only with a loupe,” Ms.…