Aurelia Butler

It was only a little more than a decade ago that Mark Zuckerberg had few qualms about airing his politics.Earnest and optimistic — perhaps naïvely so — he rushed onto the national stage to discuss issues he cared about: immigration, social justice, inequality, democracy in action. He penned columns in national newspapers espousing his views, spun up foundations and philanthropic efforts and hired hundreds of people to put his vast riches to work on his political goals.That was Mark Zuckerberg in his 20s. Mark Zuckerberg in his 40s is a very different Mark Zuckerberg.In conversations over the past few years with friends, colleagues and advisers, Mr. Zuckerberg has expressed cynicism about politics after years of bad experiences in Washington. He and others at the top of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, believed that both parties loathed technology and that trying to continue engaging with political causes would only draw further scrutiny to their company.As recently as June at the Allen and Company conference — the “summer camp for billionaires” in Sun Valley, Idaho — Mr. Zuckerberg complained to multiple people about the blowback to Meta that came from the more politically touchy aspects of his philanthropic efforts. And he regretted hiring employees at his philanthropy who tried to push him further to the left on some causes.In short — he was over it.His preference, according to more than a dozen friends, advisers and executives familiar with his thinking, has been to wash his hands of it all.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

Helene was a tropical storm in the Caribbean Sea Tuesday morning Eastern time, the National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory. The tropical storm had sustained wind speeds of 45 miles per hour.  All times on the map are Eastern. By The New York Times Where will it rain? Flash flooding can occur well […] More

“Intermezzo,” the Irish novelist’s fourth novel, is one of this fall’s most anticipated books.Seven years into her writing career, a new book by Sally Rooney is all but guaranteed to be an event.Rooney, an Irish novelist, has been hailed as a voice of the millennial generation, a writer who can marshal the economic uncertainty and emotional precarity that haunt young adults into moving, thorny romances that question intimacy and the value of art. Her 2017 debut, “Conversations With Friends,” was followed by “Normal People” in 2019 and “Beautiful World, Where Are You” in 2021.She has met both critical and commercial success. And with her increased profile came increased scrutiny: those who say her novels are smut thinly disguised by intellectual, refined prose. Or that, despite being written by a self-proclaimed Marxist, the sexual politics of her books can seem awfully retrograde.Regardless, critics are largely positive on her latest novel, “Intermezzo,” about a pair of Irish brothers mourning the recent death of their father, and the women they both become entangled with. (Note: Several of the articles below are behind subscription paywalls.)What did we say?“Clearly this book is going to divide people,” writes our own Dwight Garner, who is very decidedly not divided in his enthusiasm for Rooney’s latest.Rooney’s writing about love hits as hard as it does because she is especially adept at evoking loneliness, for which love is a salve. There is so much restraint and melancholy profundity in her prose that when she allows the flood gates to open, the parched reader is willing to be swept out to sea.What did she say to us?While many reviewers have been sure to point out how “Intermezzo” is told primarily from the perspective of two men, as opposed to Rooney’s previous books, she told The Times’s David Marchese that it wasn’t an overly intentional choice.Interestingly, the first voice that came to the page for me in this project was Margaret’s — the character who becomes entangled in Ivan’s life in the course of the book. It certainly wasn’t that I sat down thinking, I have to write a book where the male voice is central. I just felt my way through the story that seemed to emerge when I encountered these characters, which is what I always try to do.She’s trying something new.Laura Miller at Slate writes that this is “deeper territory for Rooney.”While sadder and less of a page-turner than her three previous novels, “Intermezzo” is in many ways a more truthful book. As delicious as Rooney’s earlier love stories have been, they tend to conclude with a tidiness that defies reality. It’s very rarely the case that two people finally becoming a couple will solve most of their problems, and loss inevitably waits around each of life’s corners. “Intermezzo” is the work of an artist who is continually trying out new techniques and continually growing, but in a direction that might inspire fewer bucket hats, tote bags and Netflix adaptations. Perhaps not all of her current fans will follow her there, but the ones who do won’t regret it.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

Emily Brieve, a Republican county commissioner in Michigan, voted for Donald J. Trump in 2020. Her campaign website highlighted her opposition to abortion rights. And until this year, she had never considered voting for a Democratic presidential candidate.But to Ms. Brieve, 42, the people with whom Mr. Trump surrounds himself seem increasingly “extreme.” His running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, is “divisive” and “robotic,” ripe for caricature on “Saturday Night Live.” And after Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court nominees helped overturn Roe v. Wade, she thought some state abortion restrictions went too far.“I’m still not 100 percent sure how I’m planning on voting,” Ms. Brieve, of Caledonia, Mich., said in an interview. “I just know that I’m not supportive of Trump, and I won’t vote for Trump ever again.”In a bitterly divided nation, relatively few Americans are genuinely torn between Mr. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Ms. Brieve represents a different yet crucial kind of undecided voter: one who has ruled out Mr. Trump but is grappling with whether to support Ms. Harris, write in someone else or skip the top of the ticket entirely.In recent elections, center-right voters who have recoiled at the direction of the Republican Party — particularly college-educated suburbanites — have played significant roles in Democratic victories, helping propel President Biden in 2020 and shaping key 2022 midterm contests.Now, in the final stretch of this campaign, Democrats see opportunities to expand that universe of voters. The party is betting that since Mr. Trump was last on the ballot, he has disqualified himself with more Americans who detest his election denialism and conspiracy theories, as well as his party’s abortion bans.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

More from our inbox:Trump and the Psychiatrists: Is He Unfit to Serve?The Folly of a Second DebateA Heartwarming Story of Immigrants in the Heartland Tara BoothTo the Editor:Re “To Persuade a Reluctant Tween to Read, Try Cash,” by Mireille Silcoff (Opinion guest essay, Sept. 8):While I appreciate Ms. Silcoff’s desire to have her daughter experience the joys of reading, I seriously doubt that paying her daughter to read “worked.” While the monetary reward persuaded her daughter to read the book in the short term, it was unlikely to facilitate the motivation to read, which must feel like a choice and unpressured.Decades of research have shown that paying people to do things they love undermines their subsequent motivation, and paying them to complete tasks they do not enjoy keeps the motivation tied to rewards so that they are less likely to value the activity and choose to engage in it on their own.The belief in rewards as an effective motivator is a myth; other strategies are more likely to facilitate long-term motivation. Rewards are a simple fix that is likely to backfire.Wendy S. GrolnickLongmeadow, Mass.The writer is professor emeritus of psychology at Clark University and co-author of “Motivation Myth Busters: Science-Based Strategies to Boost Motivation in Yourself and Others.”To the Editor:I loved this guest essay because that’s precisely what I did 20 years ago when my husband and I traveled for our yearly two-week vacation to the beach with my daughter, two nephews and three other children who often vacationed with us.I offered each child a new book of their choice and $20 if they finished it before the trip was over. All of the kids got the $20 to use during two hours on their own at souvenir shops, and this reading challenge became a standard of our summer vacations.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

In January 2021, after pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, Mark Zuckerberg announced a new priority for Meta: He wanted to reduce the amount of political content on the company’s apps, including Facebook and Instagram.As the United States hurtles toward November’s election, Mr. Zuckerberg’s plan appears to be working.On Facebook, Instagram and Threads, political content is less heavily featured. App settings have been automatically set to de-emphasize the posts that users see about campaigns and candidates. And political misinformation is harder to find on the platforms after Meta removed transparency tools that journalists and researchers used to monitor the sites.Inside Meta, Mr. Zuckerberg, 40, no longer meets weekly with the heads of election security as he once did, according to four employees. He has reduced the number of full-time employees working on the issue and disbanded the election integrity team, these employees said, though the company says the election integrity workers were integrated into other teams. He has also decided not to have a “war room,” which Meta previously used to prepare for elections.Last month, Mr. Zuckerberg sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee laying out how he wanted to distance himself and his company from politics. The goal, he said, was to be “neutral” and to not “even appear to be playing a role.”“It’s quite the pendulum swing because a decade ago, everyone at Facebook was desperate to be the face of elections,” said Katie Harbath, chief executive of Anchor Change, a tech consulting firm, who previously worked at Facebook. 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

An Ohio sheriff has been stripped of his role providing security at his county’s early voting location, members of a local elections board said, after he compared immigrants to insects and urged residents to record the addresses of people who have yard signs supporting Vice President Kamala Harris.In a Facebook post earlier this month, the sheriff, Bruce D. Zuchowski of Portage County, called Ms. Harris a “Laughing Hyena,” and described immigrants as locusts, the crop-destroying pests that were said in the Bible to have caused a plague in Egypt.“Write down all the addresses of the people who had her signs in their yards!” Mr. Zuchowski, a Republican who is running for re-election, said of Ms. Harris’s supporters, according to a screenshot of the since-deleted post. Then when immigrants “need places to live,” he wrote, “we’ll already have the addresses of their New families.”His comments were met with swift condemnation. And on Friday, the bipartisan Portage County Board of Elections voted 3 to 1 to remove the sheriff’s office from its role providing security at the board’s office during the early voting period, which lasts from Oct. 8 to Nov. 3. (One Republican board member voted for the motion; the other Republican member voted against it.)During early voting in Portage County, which is southeast of Cleveland, residents can vote only at the Board of Elections office.The board’s vote came in response to residents’ fears stemming from Mr. Zuchowski’s post, and concerns that the presence of the sheriff’s department on site could create an “appearance of impropriety,” said Terrie Nielsen, the deputy director of the Elections Board, who is a Democrat.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

Los sondeos más recientes, la saga de Kamala Harris y Kimberly Guilfoyle, el caso contra Sean Diddy Combs y más para estar al día.Quedan seis semanas, es decir 42 días, para las elecciones en Estados Unidos y, según las encuestas más recientes, la contienda sigue muy ajustada entre la vicepresidenta Kamala Harris y el expresidente Donald Trump.Aquí tenemos una selección de notas enfocada sobre todo en los sondeos más recientes, así como algunas sugerencias más de lo que hay que saber para estar al día con la política estadounidense.En cifras. Nuestro especial interactivo de encuestas muestra el desempeño de ambos candidatos en los promedios de una gran variedad de sondeos; la página se actualiza con frecuencia e incluye también comentarios e interpretaciones de nuestros periodistas. Y también tenemos cifras detalladas para estados seleccionados, entre ellas las de Florida.Trump repunta. Los sondeos más recientes muestran una tendencia inesperada respecto a resultados anteriores: Trump ha ganado ventaja en Arizona, Carolina del Norte y Georgia, estados del llamado Cinturón del Sol. Estas son las observaciones de Nate Cohn, analista político jefe del Times.Cuestión de precisión. En las siguientes semanas veremos una abundancia de resultados de sondeos electorales. Algunas encuestan votantes registrados, otras a votantes posibles. Cada casa encuestadora aborda el asunto de manera distinta. Esta guía explica las implicaciones de cada enfoque.Respaldo estelar. Cuando Taylor Swift expresó recientemente su apoyo a Harris se despejó una duda que carcomía a muchos analistas. Pero ¿qué impacto tendrá su respaldo en la contienda? The New York Times no había llevado a cabo encuestas sobre Swift. Hasta ahora. Esto es lo que mostró un sondeo reciente sobre la popularidad de la cantante en materia partidista.Tercera vía. Liz Cheney, destacada republicana y crítica franca del expresidente Trump, ha sugerido que, en caso de que pierda las elecciones, el Partido Republicano debería ser reemplazado por otra opción. “El propio partido ha rechazado la Constitución en nombre del apoyo a Trump”, dijo. (Trump, por su parte, ha dicho que, si pierde, “el pueblo judío tendrá mucho que ver con esa derrota”).Memorando político. JD Vance, el senador republicano y compañero de fórmula de Trump, ha ido ganando notoriedad en las últimas semanas, al plantear algunas de las ideas y afirmaciones que podrían configurar el “trumpismo 2.0” y posicionarse como heredero del movimiento MAGA (Make America Great Again). “Vance oscila entre la agresividad y el deseo de aparecer como un guerrero feliz”, observó Michael C. Bender, reportero del Times que ha estado viajando con Vance en campaña.Adversarias. Kimberly Guilfoyle, partidaria de Trump y prometida de Donald Trump Jr., ha estado haciendo campaña contra Harris, a quien acusa de intentar bloquearla de un trabajo hace más de 20 años, algo que la candidata demócrata a la presidencia ha negado en varias ocasiones. Esta es la historia de dos jóvenes abogadas que ascendían en la fiscalía de San Francisco.Si alguien te reenvió este correo, puedes hacer clic aquí para recibirlo directo en tu buzón, gratis.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