Author: NY TIMES

No profit grows, Shakespeare once wrote, where no pleasure is taken. And so in the tedious march of life, we find joy in small things: The rising of the sun. A fine glass of wine. The greasy snap of a well-dressed potato crisp.But soft! Not so fast. Life affords no simple pleasures, and even that delectable crunch comes with a weighty debate: How much potato doth a true crisp — chip, to the Americans — contain?This — and several other probing questions of the crisp aficionado — was immortalized by a British tax appeals court last week, which ruled that…

I’d like to wear my treasure trove of vintage concert T-shirts to the office. I have been collecting them for years, and some of them are rare and striking. But can I? How do I style them without looking ridiculous? — Jen, SeattleThe vintage T-shirt sector — especially the vintage concert T-shirt sector — has become an increasingly rarefied collecting space, one that inspires the same level of connoisseurship, obsession and knowledge as any decorative art. Often such T-shirts exist in extremely limited numbers (and sizes), have their own graphic value and represent a specific moment in culture and politics.In…

Emma Budway, a 26-year-old autistic woman who is mostly nonverbal, had been living with her parents in Arlington, Va. She longed for her own place, but because she earned little income, she could not afford to move out. So when the opportunity came to move into a two-bedroom apartment in December 2019, she jumped at the chance.Now Ms. Budway lives at Gilliam Place, an affordable housing complex built on property that Arlington Presbyterian Church owns. “My world has gotten so much larger,” she said.Ms. Budway is the beneficiary of a growing real estate trend: Across the nation, faith-based organizations are…

Chris Young, the country music singer, was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, assaulting an officer and resisting arrest after an altercation at a bar in Nashville on Monday night, the authorities said.While Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents were looking at IDs in a downtown Nashville bar, Mr. Young, 38, struck one of the agents, according to an arrest affidavit filed with a criminal court in Nashville. Agents handcuffed Mr. Young after he did not comply with their orders, it said.Mr. Young, well-known among listeners of American country music, had his breakthrough when he won the country-music reality TV competition…

Soon after Yemen’s Houthi militia hijacked a commercial ship in the Red Sea, taking it and its 25-member crew hostage, the armed group used the vessel to record a music video.In the slick production, called “Axis of Jihad,” a drone camera pans over the hulking ship. Then a famous Houthi poet appears on the deck — accompanied by what appears to be a cardboard cutout of Qassim Suleimani, the Iranian commander assassinated in 2020 — and begins to sing.“Death to America and hostile Zion,” the poet, Issa al-Laith, calls out, backed by a relentless beat. “By God, we shall not…

As the traveling brass band ended San Giovanni Lipioni’s annual holiday concert with a rendition of Wham’s “Last Christmas,” the gray-haired villagers seated in the old church of the central Italian hill town gazed dotingly at the few young children clapping to the music.“Today there is a little movement,” Cesarina Falasco, 73, said from the back pew. “It’s lovely. It’s different.”San Giovanni Lipioni used to be known — if at all — for the discovery in its countryside of a third-century B.C. Samnite bronze head, a rare Waldensian Evangelical community and an ancient annual pageant with pagan roots that venerates…

Am I that guy? The question is both nagging and inescapable if you follow the men’s wear circuit, as I recently did — attending roughly 50 shows or presentations displayed in settings as disparate as school auditoriums, gilded ballrooms and construction sites where niceties like fire safety are notional at best.Trekking through Milan and Paris, I joined the throng of those who make a profession of tracking the latest doings of designers who often share little in common besides an urge to make clothes for masculine-presenting humans. Like them, I took pleasure in off time scrolling through quick-take reels on…

Federal regulators have ruled that Intuit, the maker of the tax-filing software TurboTax, must stop marketing its services as free, unless they are free to everyone or exceptions are clearly disclosed.TurboTax had for years claimed customers could file their taxes online for free. The Federal Trade Commission said in an opinion and final order issued on Monday that its advertising was deceptive because two-thirds of taxpayers were not eligible to file with the free product.The commission also found that the company’s attempts to disclose that not everybody qualified for free services were “ineffective and often inconspicuous.”Examples of ineligible taxpayers include…

Will this UNESCO distinction help protect it in the future?I certainly hope so. Opera can often be stereotyped as this archaic museum piece. We think of it as very elitist nowadays. But it was originally a people’s art form. Just a few generations ago, it was in cartoons: The youngest of the young were learning about characters such as the Barber of Seville.Nowadays, a lot of young people when first exposed to opera say, “This is so pompous and old-fashioned, and it doesn’t speak to me.” What is your response?I believe opera doesn’t get marketed properly. I don’t think there…

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel doubled down on his opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state this weekend, again rebuffing pressure from President Biden to agree to that path after the war in Gaza is over.“My insistence is what has prevented — over the years — the establishment of a Palestinian state that would have constituted an existential danger to Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement in Hebrew on Sunday. “As long as I am prime minister, I will continue to strongly insist on this.”The statement reiterated comments he made on social media the previous day, when…