Author: NY TIMES

Wallpaper is a powerful design tool that can transform a room.You start with a white box and end up with what feels like an entirely different space, wrapped in an intricate floral design or a bold geometric pattern.But which one: Intricate or bold? Floral or geometric? With so many colors and patterns available, choosing one can feel almost impossible. And once you do, how do you avoid botching up the installation?Todd Nickey and Amy Kehoe, of the Los Angeles-based design firm Nickey Kehoe, often wrap rooms in color and pattern, so we asked them for advice. And Mr. Nickey, who…

When New York magazine’s finance advice columnist dropped an article that went viral on Thursday about falling victim to a $50,000 scam, my heart skipped a beat.My own financial planner had gone to jail years ago, which I’d chronicled in a few columns. Nearly all of us are vulnerable to scams, at least sometimes. What would I have done if someone called and insisted that my children, in particular, were in grave danger?The writer, Charlotte Cowles, who once had a weekly business column with The New York Times, described crooks spinning a fantastical tale: First, they impersonated Amazon and told…

The NewsGrowing numbers of children and adolescents are being prescribed multiple psychiatric drugs to take simultaneously, according to a new study in the state of Maryland. The phenomenon is increasing despite warnings that psychotropic drug combinations in young people have not been tested for safety or studied for their impact on the developing brain.The study, published Friday in JAMA Open Network, looked at the prescribing patterns among patients 17 or younger enrolled in Medicaid in Maryland from 2015 to 2020. In this group, there was a 9.5 percent increase in the prevalence of “polypharmacy,” which the study defined as taking…

“Serenade” is somewhere in between, a violin concerto that Bernstein, late in the writing process, dressed up with a philosophical title whose connection to the score is tenuous at best. Yoo, to her credit, leaned into the music as abstract rather than programmatic, neither too ruminative nor romantic. And, on the way out, she let the audience know that she is just as comfortable with a flamboyant encore, playing Vieuxtemps’s “Souvenir d’Amérique,” a series of virtuosic and entertaining variations on “Yankee Doodle.”In both the Rachmaninoff and the Bernstein, Rouvali kept the Philharmonic at a supportive, even deferential reserve, to the…

Israeli special forces were combing southern Gaza’s largest hospital in search of hostages’ remains on Friday, as Gazan officials announced that a power outage at the medical center had caused the deaths of five Palestinians in the critical care unit.While the raid has left the hospital, Nasser Medical Center, barely functional at a time when the overall health system in Gaza is struggling, the Israeli military announced that it had arrested 20 people, who it said had participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel.Gaza’s Health Ministry said that electric generators had cut out and that all power…

No one seemed to know what had happened to one of the most important bass guitars in music history, though in the decades since it went missing there had been some dramatic rumors.Was the Höfner violin bass, which had accompanied Paul McCartney and the Beatles to worldwide fame, tucked away in a private collection? Had it been secretly shipped to a wealthy fan in Japan?It turned out the bass was passing time in a more unassuming locale: the loft of a family home in East Sussex, England. The family reported the guitar in late September, after a couple of journalists…

Ice ages have not lasted this long.Kylian Mbappe joins Real Madrid… something that’s been going on for about a decade at least.Competitor When the two began courting each other, the concept didn’t even exist. Twitter is still fun (and called Twitter), Taylor Swift hasn’t heard of American football, and the closest thing we have to a global pandemic is watching Contagion.It’s been a relentlessly long saga, in fact the worst transfer saga yet, filled with endless posturing, constant lies and falsehoods, and thousands of stories claiming it was finally happening.Well now, once and for all, indeed. Kylian Mbappe will leave…

“Girl power, basically,” said Hillary Taymour, the designer of Collina Strada, backstage before her show at the start of New York Fashion Week. She wasn’t talking about bows and whistles; she was talking about the state of women in the world.“I wanted to make a wardrobe to take on anything,” Ms. Taymour said, standing next to the actress Gina Gershon, who was wearing a long plaid coat with the sleeves puffed and smocked from shoulder to wrist. The coat made Ms. Gershon look like a Shakespearean gym bunny. She smirked and announced, “I feel baller in this.” She didn’t have…

Starting this year, some of the money in 529 college savings accounts can be used for retirement if it’s not needed for education.New rules under the federal law known as Secure 2.0 allow up to $35,000 in a 529 account to be rolled over to a Roth individual retirement account for the beneficiary of the 529 account if certain conditions are met.State-sponsored 529 accounts, named for a section of the tax code, are used to pay for education expenses — mainly college costs. Money deposited in the accounts grows tax free and can be withdrawn tax free to pay for…

Listen to and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTubeA year ago, a chatbot tried to break up Kevin Roose’s marriage. Ever since, chatbots haven’t been the same. We’ll tell you how. Then, we’ll talk through the latest ways the world is adapting to artificial intelligence. And finally, Aravind Srinivas, the chief executive of Perplexity, will discuss his company’s “answer engine,” a challenger to Google’s search engine that could reshape the web as we know it.Credits“Hard Fork” is hosted by Kevin Roose and Casey Newton, and produced by Davis Land and Rachel Cohn. The show is edited by…