Aurelia Butler

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    Online Dating Is Out, IRL Is In

    As Gen Z and Millennial daters flee the apps and look for love in the wild, many have no idea where to start.Maxine Williams’s company, We Met IRL, hosts mixers and speed-dating events for young singles looking to find love without using the dating apps they’ve practically been raised on. Finding a partner offline feels like a “fantasy” that exists only in movies to many of her peers, Ms. Williams, 29, said.“People are wanting a meet-cute,” she added, though the first minutes of the dating events are hardly the stuff of great rom-coms. Attendees come hungry for in-person connection, Ms. Williams noted, but many are surprised by how awkward they feel.“It’s rough,” she stressed. “Like, guys on one side, girls on the other side. It’s very much middle-school vibes.”There’s plenty of evidence that singles are looking for love offline, the way people dated until the last few decades. Dating app burnout has become rampant, and platforms are struggling to attract and retain users, particularly younger ones. Match Group and Bumble have lost more than $40 billion in market value since 2021. Dating apps are in trouble, the headlines tell us; actually, they’re dead. Mindless swiping is out, and “intentional dating” with a plan and a clear goal is in.The problem? Finding love in person has never been easy. And it can be particularly tricky for daters who are accustomed to having an endless stream of potential romantic prospects right at their fingertips.“They’re sort of trapped between these two worlds,” said Melissa Divaris Thompson, a marriage and family therapist in New York City. “The online space doesn’t feel great, and meeting somebody out in the world feels very vulnerable.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Can Your Spouse Copy Your Snacks?

    B: If you put the concept of grilled cheese into the universe, you must expect a melty, delicious echo to come back to you. So long as he’s making it himself, copying is no crime. But no matter how I personally feel about your peanut butter and banana slices (queasy is the answer), stealing your snack is, well, stealing, and must stop. More

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    If Elon Musk and Donald Trump Make Up, Don’t Be Surprised

    For all the insults that Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump traded on Thursday, don’t be surprised if they make up again days from now. In the meantime, they both benefit.Elon Musk was once known for doing things. The entrepreneur reached a new peak of fame on Thursday for saying things. It was mostly bad things about President Trump.The spat was revelatory, it was epic, it was historic, at least according to the thousands of earnest and excited commentaries that were instantly published.It was also a well-timed outburst.Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump did not have a feud five days ago and might not have a feud five days from now. Until proven otherwise, all of this is theater. Think of it as the political version of professional wrestling. For a few hours, everyone was diverted by the spectacle of a brawl between the world’s richest man and its most powerful person.Mr. Trump took a break from tariffs and deportations. For Mr. Musk, the episode was even more valuable. His wealth comes from the promise that Tesla, his electric car company, will own a significant slice of the self-driving future. The launch of Tesla’s robotaxi business is next week in Austin. Skepticism abounds. The more attention it gets, the bigger a disappointment it could be.Mr. Musk’s SpaceX business is even more problematic. For all its promise to set up colonies on Mars, it is having trouble with the basics. The ninth flight test of SpaceX’s Starship program a few days ago saw both the reusable booster exploding and, 40 minutes later, the rocket itself blowing up. It wasn’t the first such failure either.SpaceX, which is owned by Mr. Musk, left, is having trouble with the basics of spaceflight. Pool photo by Brandon BellWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump’s Pledge to Not Tax Overtime Could Become Federal Law

    When President Trump first floated the idea of “no tax on overtime” at a campaign rally last year, he did not elaborate on how it would work. Could anyone who works more than 40 hours a week claim a tax break? Would overtime pay really be completely tax-free?The answer to both questions, as it turns out, is no.Under the sprawling domestic policy bill that Republicans pushed through the House and are preparing to steer through the Senate, the tax break would be limited. It would be available only to Americans who, under federal law, must be paid at a time-and-a-half rate for working any time exceeding 40 hours in a week. That’s a broad group that includes almost all Americans who are paid an hourly wage, but many salaried workers would not be eligible.And the tax relief would not be total. Americans would still owe payroll taxes, and potentially state income taxes, on their overtime pay. Federal income taxes would be eliminated on those wages, but only on the earnings attributable to the 50-percent bump in pay — only a third of the money made while working overtime.Even with those limitations, both critics and supporters of the idea believe the tax break could reshape the American labor market. The White House Council of Economic Advisers expects that the policy will motivate Americans to work more and help strengthen the economy.Skeptics think the change would primarily drive people to reclassify their earnings or even change jobs in order to file for overtime. They worry that if enough people sought jobs that offer overtime, wages in those positions could eventually fall.“Ultimately, it’s going to create unintended consequences that incentivize certain behaviors in the labor market and thus create winners and losers from that,” said Emmet Bowling, a labor policy analyst at the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank. “Hourly jobs might become more desirable because of this tax deduction.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    How NASA Would Struggle Without SpaceX if Trump Cancels Musk’s Contracts

    If President Trump cancels the contracts for Elon Musk’s private spaceflight company, the federal government would struggle to achieve many goals in orbit and beyond.In 2006, a small, little-known company named Space Exploration Technologies Corporation — SpaceX, for short — won a NASA contract to ferry cargo and supplies to the International Space Station.At that moment, SpaceX had not yet launched anything to orbit and would not succeed until two years later with its tiny Falcon 1 rocket. But since then, the Elon Musk-founded company has become the linchpin of all American civilian and military spaceflight.It started in 2010 with the launch of the first Falcon 9 rocket. By 2012 the launcher was sending cargo to the space station.NASA money helped finance the development of the Falcon 9, and SpaceX capitalized on the NASA seal of approval to entice companies to launch their satellites with SpaceX.It became the Southwest Airlines of the rocket industry, selling launches and hauling satellites into orbit at a lower price than most other rockets then available.That story repeated during the Obama administration when SpaceX won a contract to take astronauts to the space station, which it did for the first time in May 2020 during the first administration of President Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    NYT Crossword Answers for June 6, 2025

    Adrian Johnson opens our solving weekend.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — This is Adrian Johnson’s 12th crossword in The New York Times, and he seems to enjoy hanging out at the end of the week. Eight of Mr. Johnson’s puzzles were published on Fridays or Saturdays and, if you are just joining us, the crosswords on those days run without themes.There are pros and cons to constructing themeless crosswords. Pros include having more open space in which to place those lengthy, wonderful entries (as long as you can keep your black square count down) and not needing to come up with and polish a theme. The primary con is that it’s tough to get a themeless puzzle published these days. Only two are published each week, and the bar is extremely high. The result is that you may have a long wait before your puzzle sees the light of day.Fortunately for us, Mr. Johnson’s puzzle cleared the bar. His long entries and quadruple stacks in the northeast and southwest are lively, and there’s a decent amount of wordplay in the clues.Tricky Clues4A. Very slick, Mr. Johnson, but you can’t fool us with [Adviser to an acting president?]. The word “acting” refers to a dramatic performance (as in Martin Sheen’s portrayal of President Bartlet in “The West Wing.” The answer is DRAMA COACH.17A. ATTA, or whole wheat flour, is [one of two ingredients used to make chapati]. The other ingredient is water, although oil and salt may be added. Want to make the Indian flatbread known as chapati? Here’s a recipe from New York Times Cooking.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Fight Brings the Memes Out in Full Force

    What happens when two billionaires with huge followings on social media start a public feud? Great memes.It was a messy divorce, and the internet was watching from the sidelines. So of course, the memes were out in full force.As the relationship between President Trump and Elon Musk unraveled publicly on Thursday, bystanders flooded social media with memes comparing them to the main figures in some of the most legendary feuds, including the teenage frenemies of “Mean Girls” and the rappers Drake and Kendrick Lamar.“The big beautiful bill led to the big beautiful breakup,” one person observed on X, Mr. Musk’s social media platform, referring to the disagreement over Mr. Trump’s domestic policy bill that set off the clash. An X account devoted to political jokes posted a doctored image of an iPhone emergency alert: “THE GIRLS ARE CRASHING OUTTTTT,” it announced.It’s “like Kendrick v. Drake but with two Drakes,” another X user posted, comparing Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk to the rapper who was perceived as having definitively lost his feud with Mr. Lamar after Mr. Lamar performed a diss track at the Super Bowl in February.Other scenarios recast Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk as a divorced couple sharing custody of their child, Vice President JD Vance; supermarket lobsters being egged on to fight; and two monkeys engaged in a knife fight surrounded by cheering spectators clutching fistfuls of money — a scene from a 2000 episode of “The Simpsons.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More