Author: NY TIMES

AUSTIN, Texas — On a recent Wednesday, world champion sprinter and Olympic medalist Gabrielle Thomas was busy fielding emails about a meeting she had to attend at a volunteer health clinic while preparing for a Ad voiceover with blue font. chip sponsor and figuring out the logistics of an upcoming weight training session, when she had an epiphany.”I really didn’t realize what my life was like now,” she said, looking up from her phone while sipping coffee at a cafe.She wasn’t kidding.Almost all of Thomas’ achievements in track and field, including two medals at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, a silver…

The future looked bright despite the rain on Tuesday evening at the Museum of Modern Art, where guests — including Elon Musk and Seth Meyers — gathered for a screening of a new PBS documentary series, “A Brief History of the Future.”Mr. Musk, flanked by security, came with a preschooler in tow, his 3-year-old son, X Æ A-12, who is better known simply as X. (Same as Mr. Musk’s social media platform.)X’s mother, the musician Grimes, is featured in the documentary series, which follows innovators who are trying to tackle some the world’s most pressing problems, like climate change and…

When it came to wildfires, 2021 was an increasingly common kind of year in Montana: Flames consumed 747,000 acres, an area nearly the size of Long Island.About 2,700 of those acres were on Don Harland’s Sheep Creek Ranch, where ever-drier summers have turned lodgepole pines into matchsticks ready to ignite. After the smoke cleared, Mr. Harland found creeks running black with soot and the ground hardening more with every day that passed.A former timber industry executive, Mr. Harland knew the forest wouldn’t grow back on its own. The land is high and dry, the ground rocky and inhospitable — not…

The pianist Alice Sara Ott, barefoot and wearing a silver bracelet, was smiling and singing to herself the other day as she practiced a jazzy passage of Ravel at Steinway Hall in Midtown Manhattan. A Nintendo Switch, which she uses to warm up her hands, was by her side (another favored tool is a Rubik’s Cube). A shot of espresso sat untouched on the floor.“I feel I have finally found my voice,” Ott said during a break. “I feel I can finally be myself.”Ott, 35, who makes her New York Philharmonic debut this week, has built a global career, recording…

The revival of Nicolas Joël’s Art Deco-inspired production of Puccini’s “La Rondine” at the Metropolitan Opera highlights a quality that Puccini is not necessarily known for: restraint.In his headline-making debut, the Chilean-born American singer Jonathan Tetelman, who has a Deutsche Grammophon recording contract and the potential to become the house’s next major Italian-opera tenor, didn’t necessarily arrive with a splash.His performance had the careful craft of an Olympic diver who breaks the water’s surface without generating ripples. His second assignment this month is another Puccini work, “Madama Butterfly,” and in a show of faith from the company, he will star…

Amateur golfers will line up on Thursday at the Trump National Doral near Miami, having agreed to pay more than $9,000 apiece to play a friendly round alongside some of the world’s top professionals.Rooms at the resort hotel will fill up with fans as a pro tournament featuring some of the biggest names in the sport gets underway on Friday. The resort’s restaurants and bars will pull in more business, and the Trump name will be beamed around the world on television and the internet.Behind this surge in business at one of former President Donald J. Trump’s properties is his…

For half a century, the Sernesi family lived in a storied villa overlooking Florence, in which the Renaissance artist Michelangelo was raised and later owned. The property came with several buildings, an orchard and a drawing of a muscular male nude etched on the wall of a former kitchen. Tradition has it that the work was drawn by a young Michelangelo, though scholars are not as sure.Last year, the Sernesi family sold the villa. Now they want to sell the mural drawing, which was detached from its original location in 1979 so that it could undergo a much-needed restoration. Etched…

PHILADELPHIA — Bryce Harper entered the on-deck circle as a potential tying run on Monday night with two outs in the 10th inning. With backup catcher Garrett Stubbs in the dugout, he found Whit Merrifield, one of the Phillies’ only rookies.”Man,” Stubbs said, “you’re going to want to see this.”Normally, when Harper hits, time stops at Citizens Bank Park. That’s an unfair expectation when the greatest in a sport has a 30% success rate. That’s what’s so special about Harper. Time and time again he has met the highest expectations.He ended Monday’s game with five strikeouts.”Obviously, that didn’t work out,”…

When Zach Horrall, a social media specialist at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and Corlan McCollum, a children’s librarian, got engaged two years ago, they wanted to connect their wedding to a larger event. At first, they considered Halloween, but when they realized Indianapolis was in the path of totality for the April 8, 2024, solar eclipse, they changed course.The two are planning an outdoor wedding, with the ceremony timed to the approximately three minutes and 45 seconds of totality in the Indianapolis region. They hope their 75 guests will pay more attention to the eclipse than to them.“It takes a…

How Iger beat back Peltz It’s over. Disney fended off the activist investor Nelson Peltz for the second time in two years, as its shareholders rejected his effort to win two seats on its board.The House of Mouse claimed a “substantial” margin of victory, after a bitterly fought contest with Peltz and his major backer, the former Marvel chair Ike Perlmutter. Based on preliminary results from Wednesday’s annual investor meeting, Disney’s board candidates won the backing of 75 percent of individual shareholders, an outsize investor base.But like any good Disney tale, the board fight provided a series of lessons for…