Author: NY TIMES

Emily Ratajkowski is doing a balancing act many famously beautiful women have to perform. In her 2021 book “My Body,” she reflects on what it’s been like to build a career based on her public image, and her struggle to control that image in an industry largely run by men. Since getting divorced a few years ago, she’s been thinking a lot about gender dynamics and the type of agency she wants to have in dating, too.Today, Ratajkowski reads “Why I Fell for an ‘I’m the Man’ Man,” by Susan Forray. Forray is also a successful, self-sufficient woman, dating after…

Federal Reserve officials are fiercely protective of their separation from politics, but the presidential election is putting the institution on a crash course with partisan wrangling.Fed officials set policy independently of the White House, meaning that while presidents can push for lower interest rates, they cannot force central bankers to cut borrowing costs. Congress oversees the Fed, but it, too, lacks power to directly influence rate decisions.There’s a reason for that separation. Incumbent politicians generally want low interest rates, which help to stoke economic growth by making borrowing cheap. But the Fed uses higher interest rates to keep inflation slow…

A pair of glasses from Meta shoots a picture when you say, “Hey, Meta, take a photo.” A miniature computer that clips to your shirt, the Ai Pin, translates foreign languages into your native tongue. An artificially intelligent screen features a virtual assistant that you talk to through a microphone.Last year, OpenAI updated its ChatGPT chatbot to respond with spoken words, and recently, Google introduced Gemini, a replacement for its voice assistant on Android phones.Tech companies are betting on a renaissance for voice assistants, many years after most people decided that talking to computers was uncool.Will it work this time?…

Every family has its archetypes, so here’s mine: My dad and my brother and I are all miserable. None of us are quick to experience joy, and all for different reasons — my dad is irritable, my brother is anxious and I’m bitter. The three of us combined could make one moderately unwell person. Instead, we are planets that orbit a sun more optimistic than we could ever be, and we hope that some of that shine rubs off on us periodically.My mother believes in a positive ethos: that things invariably will improve, that everyone is trying their best, that…

Here, Blanton is not only accompanying but also playing rhythmic melodic figures. When I first heard “Jive Rhapsody,” I remember thinking that it reminded me of what later Oscar Pettiford would play on the bridge of “Bohemia After Dark,” the same concept of rhythmic melodic figures but in a different strata this time. I love this intense feeling of groove and ostinato that, to me, brings back undeniable West African roots.Jimmy Blanton’s path is very inspiring for a bass player like myself, from the fullness of his sound to his beautiful melodic and harmonic explorations and, of course, his major…

The oil terminal’s piers stretch just a few score yards into the Black Sea from the Bulgarian coast. For 25 years, the Russian crude they received fed a sprawling network of economic and political influence that helped keep Bulgaria tethered tightly to the Kremlin.How much oil arrived at the terminal for use by a nearby Russian-owned refinery was something only the Russians knew: they controlled the piers, the meters recording the volumes delivered and the security force guarding the perimeter fences.In recent months, however, Russia has steadily lost its grip on the Rosenets Oil Terminal, near the Black Sea port…

Each spring a handful of attractive celebrities who do not seem as if they would hang out in any other situation are selected as co-chairs of the Met Gala, the black-tie blowout that is essentially the X Games of fashion (subtract motorcycles, add tulle).This year, Anna Wintour, Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez, Chris Hemsworth and Bad Bunny will head up the gala taking place on Monday. The co-chairs were revealed in February in an Instagram video created to look as if the five were yukking it up in a group text message. “I can free up that day,” Mr. Hemsworth wrote, with…

Kimberly Jolasun, a 32-year-old entrepreneur in Atlanta, has never voted for the Republican candidate for the presidency. That may be about to change.Her company, Villie, is an online platform that lets new parents share photos and updates about their babies with friends and relatives and register for gifts like strollers and playpens. Not yet profitable, her company needs financing to grow. But venture capitalists struggle with her untraditional profile, she said. Technology is dominated by white men in places like Silicon Valley and Austin, Texas. She is a Black woman in Georgia.Banks want to charge her interest as high as…

Eun Sung injured her right thumb in a fall in March and needed surgery to fix a torn ligament. But scheduling one has been difficult even though she lives in one of the most developed nations in the world, South Korea.“It was so hard to get an appointment, and I was told the earliest available operation would be next January,” said Ms. Sung, an office worker in Seoul, the capital. The one consolation, she said, was that she did not need surgery urgently.For more than two months, South Korea’s health care system has been in disarray because thousands of doctors…

In central Chile, not far from where the Andes Mountains meet the Pacific Ocean, a vast swath of pristine wilderness is changing hands under the most unusual circumstances.Roberto Hagemann, a Chilean businessman who owns the 325,000-acre property, has agreed to sell the land to his longtime adversaries, a band of upstart environmentalists who spent years thwarting his efforts to develop the property.The price: $63 million.It is a landmark transaction that will preserve some of the most ecologically significant territory in South America. Known as Hacienda Pucheguin, the property is surrounded by national parks and is cut by wild rivers, forests…