Author: NY TIMES

One day about 60 years ago, the comedian Bert Lahr put on a devil suit, held up a potato chip and uttered a phrase that would become a food-marketing milestone: “Betcha can’t eat just one.”Positioning food as deliciously addictive, as Lay’s did in its sly TV commercial, became advertising gold. In the decades that followed, Oreos and freezer waffles (“L’eggo my Eggo!”) were portrayed as so irresistible that people fought over them. A popular stoner movie, “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle,” chronicled two friends’ obsessions with fast-food sliders.Craveability became such a selling point that Kellogg’s went all in…

I’m not especially powerful; it doesn’t matter which in-jokes include me and which dinners I’m invited to. But it’s instructive to think of the digital rooms being constructed by those who are. We often get glimpses of such group chats in court filings, the familiar blue-and-white bubbles of iMessage screenshotted and laid out as evidence. A chain of messages among Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson, for instance, was one of many chats at issue in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit against Fox News. The tone is amusingly familiar; they complain, gossip, co-process the news. Carlson admits something he’d…

Roy Calne, a British surgeon whose work on organ transplantation helped turn what was once considered impossible into a lifesaving procedure for millions of people around the world, died on Jan. 6 at a retirement home in Cambridge, England. He was 93.His son Russell Calne said he died from heart failure.There are groundbreaking surgeons and groundbreaking researchers, but very few people are both. Dr. Calne (pronounced “kahn”) was an exception: He developed and practiced many of the operating techniques involved in transplantation, while at the same time working to identify what drugs would get the body to accept a new…

Throughout the week, Nublu in Alphabet City has been hosting nightly satellite shows, too. This is a festival that continues to ask what it means to present a music festival — particularly one that aspires to represent an entire, protean genre. And, especially at the marathons, it continues to yield opportunities to be surprised, to test your expectations of buzzy new bands, and even to be usefully let down by artists you considered great.Speaking of surprises, my biggest of the weekend was Zacchae’us Paul, a pianist and vocalist increasingly known for his work alongside Melanie Charles, and who may soon…

Hamas led the Oct. 7 assaults on southern Israel that, the Israelis say, killed around 1,200 people. The Israeli military response has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, a majority of them women and children, according to Gazan health officials.On Monday, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said it had resumed emergency and rescue services in Gaza City, in the north of the strip, more than two months after the Israeli ground offensive forced it to halt operations and shut down its hospital.Weeks of intense airstrikes and the Israeli ground offensive had essentially cut off the north. The resumption of services is…

The U.S. military said the Iranian-backed Houthi militia struck an American-owned container ship, a day after a missile aimed at a Navy destroyer was shot down. No injuries were reported aboard the cargo ship. Source link

The only place in the NFL where reversals happen is on the field. The league rarely backs down when it comes to adding media rights. If you’re betting on whether Saturday’s first live exclusive NFL playoff game will be repeated in the future, you’d be wise to bet big on the same thing happening during the 2024 postseason.Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s executive vice president of media distribution, said virtually the same thing during a conference call with reporters three days before the game.”Since it’s only relevant to the wild-card game, we’re excited to continue the conversation,” Schroeder said. “That’s the…

But that was before local officials initiated a criminal investigation into her about aggravated fraud, followed by an Italian consumer rights group bringing a class-action suit. Eventually Ms. Ferragni consented to pay a substantial fine, donating her fee for hosting the annual Sanremo Music Festival, Italy’s most popular television broadcast, for what she termed a “communication error.” Yet, despite the gesture of contrition, she found herself abandoned by major sponsors like Coca-Cola, the eyewear giant Safilo and then by followers in the hundreds of thousands.When, at last, Ms. Ferragni resurfaced on Instagram after the Christmas holidays, it was to post…

Ever bought a discounted new phone from Apple? For most people, the answer is no. That’s because Apple doesn’t really do discounts.But in China, Apple is slashing the price of some of its latest iPhones by $70 amid worries that Chinese consumers have cooled on the brand. That would save a buyer about 6 to 8 percent, based on prices on Apple’s China website. It has also knocked $112 off the price of some MacBook Air laptops. The sale will start on Thursday and run through Sunday.Cutting prices on high-end electronics to buyers in China is an unexpected move for…

Breana Newton, a legal coordinator in Princeton, N.J., who posts regularly about books on TikTok, was one of the people who responded to Ms. Blalock’s video. “I am going to show you bookshelf wealth,” Ms. Newton, 33, says in a video of her own. “Ready?”She then gives viewers a brief tour of her home, showing books everywhere — on shelves, in overflow piles here and there, and strewed across the bed. Absent is the sense that the rooms have been staged, or that the books were bought with the consideration of how they would look on Instagram.In an interview, Ms.…