Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Safe House’ Review: Singing a Song of Loneliness

    Enda Walsh’s formal experiment, at St. Ann’s Warehouse, finds him in pared-back mode.Wearing a meadow-green T-shirt that proclaims her an Irish Princess, Grace dances with a white stuffed bunny that is her confidant. The music is Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty” waltz, and it’s a clue to how Grace’s life plays out — not the ballet’s storybook ending, just the tragic parts.In this snippet of a scene near the top of Enda Walsh’s new play “Safe House,” which opened on Thursday at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, the music gets speedier, more intense, all sense of comfort vanishing. Control, too, but that’s hardly a constant for Grace, a homeless young woman with a mind blurred by alcohol. Like Sleeping Beauty after the curse kicks in, she is exiled from a life that looked secure enough from the outside but was treacherous from the start.Fair warning, though: Woven through with songs by Anna Mullarkey that are sung by Kate Gilmore as Grace, Walsh’s Abbey Theater production feels more like a live performance of a concept album than a play. In his plumbing of trauma and abuse — think “The Walworth Farce” or “Medicine,” his most recent play at St. Ann’s — he can have a way of reaching right into your viscera. Not here, unfortunately.In “Safe House,” it is 1996 in rural Galway, and Grace is scrabbling together an existence on the margins. Guzzling box wine, trading her body for money, she plays grim bits of her sepia past on repeat in her head; for us, these are projections upstage or scraps of audio. Long gone though she is from the home she grew up in, which for her was a place of harm, she has not severed every family tie.On the other end of a phone, we hear her father pick up.“I can hear you breathing,” he says, in Irish. “Where are you, Grace?”The set and costume design are by Katie Davenport, while video is by Jack Phelan.Teddy WolffWe 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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    The Influence of Foreign Aid

    America is losing a diplomatic tool the government has relied on for decades.Foreign aid isn’t just charity. It’s power. That was the original idea behind the United States Agency for International Development, which J.F.K. set up in the early 1960s to win the support of developing countries that might have otherwise drifted into the Soviet sphere. Elon Musk dismantled it in recent weeks. For now, most of its work has stopped and its worldwide staff has been called home.President Trump and his team have criticized a few progressive State Department programs, like a Colombian opera about a trans character and a D.E.I. music event in Ireland. But the core of U.S.A.I.D.’s mission has been helping the world’s poor, and it was a means to an end. “You have to understand,” a veteran American diplomat told me, “we didn’t do this work because we’re all a bunch of bleeding-heart liberals. We did it for influence.”In today’s newsletter, we’ll examine that effort — and the results it got.Good worksHow do you measure influence abroad? Experts have come up with the acronym DIME — diplomacy, information, military, economic — to describe the traditional levers of power. U.S.A.I.D. covers every aspect but the military one. More

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    How ‘Based’ Is Grok 3? + Robinhood C.E.O. Vlad Tenev on Markets for Everything + Vibecoding 101

    Listen to and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTube | iHeartRadioThis week, Elon Musk brought a new chatbot into the crowded A.I. universe — Grok 3, the latest model from his company xAI. We break down how it compares with other leading models and what it reveals about Musk’s larger ambitions. Then, Vlad Tenev, the chief executive of the investing platform Robinhood, lays out his vision for the future of investing and fields some difficult questions about his company’s role in fueling a culture of risky financial speculation. Finally, Kevin revisits his high school coding era and tries to make Casey a new software tool, with an A.I. assist.Guest:Vlad Tenev, chief executive of Robinhood and co-founder of Harmonic.Additional Reading:There Are Probably Too Many A.I. Companies NowAn Investing Revolution Is Coming. The U.S. Isn’t Ready for It.Is Math the Path to Chatbots That Don’t Make Stuff Up?Photo Illustration: The New York TimesCredits“Hard Fork” is hosted by More

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    Former Sheriff’s Deputy Is Convicted in Killing of Colorado Man

    Andrew Buen was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the 2022 killing of Christian Glass, who was experiencing a mental health crisis on a mountain road.A former Colorado sheriff’s deputy who fatally shot a 22-year-old man who was experiencing a mental health crisis on a dark mountain road in 2022 was convicted Thursday of criminally negligent homicide.The former deputy, Andrew Buen, could face up to three years in prison when he is sentenced on April 14, according to the Clear Creek County District Attorney’s Office. The jury declined to convict him on the more serious charge of second-degree murder in the killing of Christian Glass, whose death prompted scrutiny of how the police handle crisis intervention, prompted changes to how officers train for similar situations and resulted in a $19 million settlement for Mr. Glass’s parents.Last year, Mr. Buen was found guilty of reckless endangerment in connection with the shooting, but the jury could not reach a verdict on the second-degree murder charge, which carries a maximum penalty of 48 years in prison. That set up this month’s trial, which lasted two weeks.Mr. Glass’s father, Simon Glass, said Thursday that conviction of Mr. Buen had brought him significant relief.“We don’t have to be constantly worrying, ‘Will he get away with it?’” Simon Glass, 56, said by phone after attending the trial. “The jury probably showed him a little more mercy than he showed our son, but it’s a conviction.”A lawyer for Mr. Buen, Mallory Revel, said in a statement that a murder count “was never the appropriate charge in this case, and we are grateful to all of the jurors for recognizing that.”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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    Trump Administration Questions Funding for California High-Speed Rail

    Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy lashed out on Thursday at “mismanagement” in California’s troubled high-speed rail project, announcing an investigation into how the state was spending a $3.1 billion federal grant on a project that he said was “severely — no pun intended — off track.”In a letter to the state High Speed Rail Authority, the Federal Railroad Administration said it would conduct inspections, review activities and examine financial records. It warned that the state could be liable for any further expenditures of federal money under the grant authorized by the Biden administration if they are not determined to be in compliance with the grant’s requirements.The loss of so much federal money, if it were eventually held back, could fundamentally threaten a project that is already struggling with inadequate funding, potentially delaying the installation of electrical systems and the purchasing of trains — both essential big-ticket items.The project, as it was originally envisioned, would connect Los Angeles and San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes with 220-mile-per-hour trains, among the fastest in the world, at a cost of $33 billion. But Mr. Duffy noted that the costs of the project have escalated threefold since then and that it was failing to achieve the goal.“The project is not going to happen,” Mr. Duffy said at a news conference at Los Angeles Union Station. “There is no timeline in which you are going to have a high-speed rail that is going to go from Los Angeles to San Francisco.”That original ambition had already been scaled back by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who committed in 2019 to building a starter line within the Central Valley, from Merced to Bakersfield. But the estimated $22.9 billion cost of even that minisystem has escalated to over $30 billion, leaving a $6.5 billion shortfall in the available funding — even with the $3.1 billion federal grant expected to be received.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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    Review: In ‘Liberation,’ the Feminist Revolution Will Be Dramatized

    Bess Wohl’s moving new play, about a group of women in 1970s Ohio, explores the power of sisterhood and the limits of motherhood.How much would you give to see your mother again as she was in her prime — which is to say, before she had you?That’s one of the be-careful-what-you-wish-for scenarios that Bess Wohl dramatizes in “Liberation,” her gutting new play about the promise and unfinished business of feminism. All the clenched fists and manifestoes in the world cannot point its second-wave characters, or even their nth-wave daughters, to the sweet spot between love and freedom. Indeed, the play’s warning, if not quite its watch cry, is: “It’s almost impossible to have both.”At any rate, it hasn’t been working for the six women who meet on Thursdays at 6 p.m. on the basketball court of a local rec center in a backwater Ohio town in 1970. There, amid banners celebrating local team championships — boys’ teams only, of course — they try to make of their random sisterhood a lifeboat to survive the revolution they seek. On the agenda: consciousness raising, problem sharing, political action and self-love prompts. Yes, at one session they all get nervously naked.But “Liberation,” which opened on Thursday at the Laura Pels Theater, is neither satire nor agitprop. As directed with cool patience by Whitney White, the better to let its climax sear, and with a cast led by Susannah Flood and Betsy Aidem each at the top of her form, it is gripping and funny and formally daring. In a trick worthy of Escher, and befitting the complexity of the material, it nearly eats the box of its own containment, just as its characters, lacking other emotional sustenance, eat at theirs.The burden of the trick falls mostly on Flood, whose role is a superimposed, asynchronous portrait of at least two women. The main one is Lizzie, a young journalist stuck on the wedding beat at the local paper, with obits thrown in as a sop to her demand for equality. (In a way, the two beats “are the same thing,” she says.) Denying that she is the group’s leader, though she made the fliers and booked the room, she wants a revolution without having to give up anything to get it and while honoring everyone’s contrasting ideologies. History tells us where that approach typically leaves the left.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 Feb. 21, 2025

    Colin Adams opens our solving weekend.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — We tend to be very hard on ourselves, and I really wish we weren’t. Some people may see self-criticism as a display of high standards, or something that might stem from an experience in their pasts that I am highly unqualified to discuss.In the first instance, we may believe that being hard on ourselves spurs us to achieve our goals, but, most of the time, it really just holds us back. It makes us afraid to try new things, because we feel as if we’ll be bad at it, and therefore, what’s the use of even trying?Maybe that’s why there are so many people who — hang on tight, here comes a big segue — are afraid to try crossword puzzles. They’ve read about how hard they are, internalized that and given up before they even got started. And that’s such a shame.You’ve probably heard the idiom “Everyone has to start somewhere.” You may be picking up your first crossword ever (a Monday, please, as those are the most straightforward and the easiest to get into) or deciding whether you want to leave your midweek solving comfort zone by trying a Friday grid.What’s stopping you? The fear of making a mistake? That’s what the backspace key and the eraser are for. Here’s another idiom: “If you don’t make mistakes, you don’t make anything.” Free yourself from that fear.The best way to achieve your solving goals is to just get started. And then continue. You’ll get better as you go along, I promise. And if you need some help, there is Wordplay, as well as our warm and welcoming commenters.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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    Trump Marks Black History Month, Even as He Slams the Value of Diversity

    The Black History Month reception held at the White House on Thursday had all of the pomp of celebrations past. Guests sipped champagne and snacked on lamb chops and collard greens. The crowd delighted in their invitations, snapping selfies. And when President Trump walked out alongside one of the greatest Black athletes in the world, Tiger Woods, the crowd roared with their phones in the air.But the dissonance in the East Room was jarring.Mr. Trump may have praised the contributions of Black Americans on Thursday, but he has spent the weeks since his inauguration eviscerating federal programs aimed at combating inequality in America. He has suggested that efforts spurred by the civil rights movement had made victims out of white people. He blamed a deadly plane crash over the Potomac River on diversity programs in the Federal Aviation Administration.On Thursday, Mr. Trump tried to show appreciation to the Black community by extolling those he sees as representative of Black American progress.“Let me ask you,” Mr. Trump said as he began his remarks, “is there anybody like our Tiger?”Mr. Trump and Mr. Woods are actively engaged in negotiations in search of a lucrative golf merger deal, and the president referred to Mr. Woods repeatedly during his roughly 20-minute address a crowd of several hundred guests. Mr. Woods wasn’t the only Black athlete to get a shout-out; Mr. Trump also heralded Muhammad Ali and Kobe Bryant.During his remarks, Mr. Trump made little reference to issues that have historically plagued the Black community, such as elevated poverty rates, the wage and wealth gap between Black and white Americans, and gun violence. He promised to put statues of Black Americans in a new “National Garden of American Heroes.”Among those to be honored was Prince Estabrook, an enslaved man and the first Black American to spill blood in the Revolutionary War, along with Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Billie Holiday and Aretha Franklin — and maybe Mr. Woods one day, Mr. Trump said.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