Subterms
<!–> [–><!–> –> <!–>Each circle is a university: PublicPrivate–> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–>In fiscal year 2023 alone, roughly $60 billion flowed from the federal government to universities in all 50 states, funding research on an array of topics, like cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and rare isotope beams. Funding went to small colleges, like the College of St. […] More
The decision comes as Taipei has been building ties with Somaliland, a breakaway territory that has resisted Chinese efforts to expand its influence in Africa.Somalia has barred Taiwanese passport holders from entering the country, the self-governing island’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday, blaming Chinese pressure on the African country as Taipei forges stronger ties with the breakaway territory of Somaliland.The enclave of about five million people declared independence from Somalia in 1991 after the collapse of the central government in Mogadishu. But despite having its own government, currency and institutions, Somaliland has not been widely recognized by governments internationally, making it difficult for it to sign trade and security agreements or control its airspace.In recent years, Somaliland has deepened diplomatic relations with Taiwan, causing outrage in Somalia and China as it has resisted Beijing’s attempts to expand its influence in Africa. Somaliland is now courting the Trump administration for diplomatic recognition after years of building relationships with Republican lawmakers and conservative research organizations.The decision to bar Taiwanese passport holders comes days after the island’s foreign minister visited Eswatini, the tiny southern African kingdom and its only remaining diplomatic ally on the continent.Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that the Somali Civil Aviation Authority had notified airline operators last week that its passport holders would not be allowed to “enter, exit and transit” Somalia starting on Wednesday.The foreign ministry said that Somali authorities cited compliance with United Nations Resolution 2758, a measure passed in 1971 that recognized the People’s Republic of China as the only legitimate Chinese representative at the United Nations. The resolution does not mention Taiwan’s sovereignty status. Beijing claims Taiwan as its territory, and has said the resolution gives it legal status over the island.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
<!–> [–><!–>The New York Times reconstructed how the Trump administration and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador struck a deal that led to the deportation of more than 200 Venezuelan migrants to a Salvadoran prison.–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> –>The day before<!–> –><!–> [–><!–>Mr. Trump secretly signed an executive order invoking an 18th-century wartime law called […] More
Meet Ballerina Cappuccina and the Italian brain rot crew, an absurd group of A.I.-generated characters that are flooding TikTok.The first thing you need to know about Italian brain rot is that it isn’t strictly Italian.The second thing you need to know is that any discussion of what it means will most likely make you seem very uncool (you’re just supposed to get it) and will probably involve a lot of head scratching.You have been warned.A little etymology, to start. Last year, the Oxford University Press designated “brain rot” the word of the year. The phrase refers to the deteriorating effect of scrolling through swathes of “trivial or unchallenging” content online. It can also be used to describe the content itself; in other words, the term refers to both the cause and the effect of intellectual deterioration.The Italian brain rot subgenre emerged in January, when absurd characters generated by artificial intelligence started to show up in TikTok feeds. The characters melded animals or humans with inanimate objects, and many were tagged with the hashtag #italianbrainrot, which now has over 3 billion views. The memes have some vague Italian-ness to them — either their names sound Italian or they touch on stereotypical (or reductive, depending on who you ask) Italian cultural markers, like coffee, and are often accompanied by A.I.-generated audio of what sounds like a heavily accented Italian man’s narration but, when translated, is often nonsensical.That the memes are tagged brain rot is a cheeky acknowledgment that the content is “ridiculous” and “mumbo jumbo,” said Yotam Ophir, an associate professor of communication at the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences. It is also, he added, a recognition of the ridiculous universe being created by and for those who would be considered extremely online, with a nod to the broader proliferation of “A.I. junk” or slop.First, there was a shark with feet wearing Nike sneakers, called Tralalero Tralala (the TikTok account associated with the first iteration of that character has been deleted). Then came Bombardiro Crocodillo, a military bomber plane with a crocodile head. Among the most recent, and most popular, entries into the cast of characters is Ballerina Cappuccina — a ballerina with a cappuccino cup head, created in March by Susanu Sava-Tudor, a 24-year-old in Romania. The entire trend, Mr. Sava-Tudor said in an email, is a “form of absurd humor” that is “less about real Italy and more about the cinematic myth of Italy.” So far, the original Ballerina Cappuccina video, in which Mr. Sava-Tudor spelled the character’s name Balerinna Cappucinna, has racked up more than 45 million views on TikTok and 3.8 million likes.The lyrics to the Italian soundtrack attached to the video, when translated, are as follows:Cappucina dancer, mi mi miIs the wife of the Cappucino Assasino,And she loves music, la la la
@mr_lindsay_sped Replying to @Itsdannykantu Everyone wanted to know about #ballerinacappuccina so here she is! Stick around to the end to see me strut my stuff to the sound. 😅 #italianbrainrot #ballerinacappuccina #genalpha #genalphaslangs #teachersoftiktok ♬ оригинальный звук – WXRMANE 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
The artist, 25, struck platinum with “Sailor Song.” Her debut album is a tribute to her lost sister, and an attempt to make sense of a few rudderless years.Gigi Perez walked into a Brooklyn restaurant last week with a toothpick wedged in her mouth, stood up after dinner and slid in another one. She had glanced at a clear box of them sitting on the table periodically, like she was seeking comfort or reinforcement. But for two hours, she mostly kept her gaze fixed to the side, avoiding eye contact while she spoke — as she often finds herself doing — about death.“Getting older, watching the people in your family get older — I feel like I’m on a conveyor belt that’s going to this inevitable end,” she said.At 25, Perez speaks with a weariness of someone at least twice her age. She was at one of her favorite Japanese spots in Williamsburg, not too far from where she used to live; she was days away from releasing her debut album and 10 hours from a brutally early wake-up call for “The Today Show.”Like many young musicians, Perez is figuring out what comes next after virality. Her lilting, guitar-powered anthems have blazed through TikTok, amassing millions of streams and a fervent fan base. “Sailor Song,” a ballad about lusting after a girl who looks like Anne Hathaway (yes, it was based on a real woman), went platinum and has been planted on Spotify’s most-streamed songs in the United States for months; it became a No. 1 single in the United Kingdom last fall. But Perez’s career hasn’t been built on celebration. She is carving a catalog out of grief.“When you’re a kid, music is verbalizing things you don’t know how to say — you don’t have the vocabulary to understand. You’re discovering how you feel in real time,” Perez said. OK McCausland for The New York TimesOne of her first songs to garner attention on SoundCloud, “Sometimes (Backwood),” took off six months after her older sister, Celene, died suddenly in 2020. Perez’s LP, “At the Beach, in Every Life,” released less than a week ago, is largely a tribute to her. It is also an attempt to shape and sharpen the last, often rudderless years of her own life.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
Internal documents and interviews with people familiar with the operation reveal how the White House seized on a wartime law to accelerate immigrant deportations.President Trump’s deportation in March of more than 200 alleged gang members from Venezuela to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador has emerged as a flashpoint in his administration’s use of wartime powers to expel immigrants.Lawyers for those deported say the March 15 operation circumvented due process and swept up those who are not gang members. The Supreme Court is now poised to weigh in on how the White House has sought to apply the Alien Enemies Act, which had previously only been invoked by presidents in time of war.A team of reporters from The New York Times reviewed court filings and government documents and interviewed government officials and lawyers for deportees and their relatives to reconstruct how the United States secured the deal with El Salvador and seized on the law to supercharge its deportation efforts.Here are five takeaways.El Salvador’s president pressed the U.S. for assurances that the deportees had gang ties.President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador has championed President Trump and his immigration agenda and publicly celebrated the arrival of the deportees from the United States. But behind the scenes, Mr. Bukele expressed concern about who the United States sent to be imprisoned in his new Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT, according to according to people familiar with the situation and documents obtained by The New York Times.During the negotiations, Mr. Bukele told U.S. officials he would take only what he described as “convicted criminals” from other countries. He made it clear that he did not want migrants from other nations whose only crime was being in the United States illegally.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
As they addressed reporters inside the Oval Office in mid-April, President Trump and his Salvadoran counterpart appeared to be operating in lock step.The United States had just deported more than 200 migrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, and President Nayib Bukele said his country was eager to take more. He scoffed at a question from a reporter about whether he would release one of the men who a federal judge said had been mistakenly deported.“I mean, we’re not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country,” Mr. Bukele said.But weeks earlier, when the three planes of deportees landed, it was the Salvadoran president who had quietly expressed concerns.As part of the agreement with the Trump administration, Mr. Bukele had agreed to house only what he called “convicted criminals” in the prison. However, many of the Venezuelan men labeled gang members and terrorists by the U.S. government had not been tried in court.Mr. Bukele wanted assurances from the United States that each of those locked up in the prison were members of Tren de Aragua, the transnational gang with roots in Venezuela, according to people familiar with the situation and documents obtained by The New York Times.The matter was urgent, a senior U.S. official warned his colleagues shortly after the deportations, kicking off a scramble to get the Salvadorans whatever evidence they could.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
The Supreme Court’s answer will determine whether a Catholic school in Oklahoma can become the nation’s first religious charter school.The very identity of the nation’s 8,100 charter schools is on the line on Wednesday, as the Supreme Court considers whether they are fundamentally public or private institutions.If they are public, there is little room for religious instruction, as proposed by the school at the center of the case, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which seeks to open in Oklahoma as the nation’s first religious charter school.But if they are private, as St. Isidore’s lawyers will argue, banning a religious group from operating a charter school when other nonprofits are free to do so would be religious discrimination.If the Supreme Court decides charter schools are private, it would most likely allow St. Isidore to open, and potentially pave the way for religious charter schools in other states.Charter schools, which were created in the 1990s to give families more options, have long occupied a hybrid space in education.They are like traditional public schools in many ways because they are paid for by taxpayers and free to attend.But charter schools are also run by private entities, often nonprofits, and are not zoned, allowing students to attend regardless of their ZIP codes. And unlike at many public schools, their teachers typically are not unionized.Today, about 3.7 million students attend charter schools, in 44 states and Washington, D.C., representing about 7 percent of the public school sector. But in some cities, like Detroit and Philadelphia, enrollment is far greater, representing a third to half of all students.Whether they should be classified as public or private may hinge on the specifics of Oklahoma state law.Justices will most likely consider technical issues, like how charter schools are created. In Oklahoma, a state board must approve new charter schools, a fact that many in the mainstream charter school movement argue places them firmly in the public realm.“A charter school doesn’t exist unless the government gives it reason to open,” said Starlee Coleman, president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, which opposes allowing religious institutions to operate charter schools.Lawyers for St. Isidore say that it was created by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa and that it is operated by a board of private citizens. They will argue that St. Isidore is a private school with a government contract.Any ruling in favor of St. Isidore could have broad implications.Twelve Republican-leaning states filed an amicus brief in support of St. Isidore’s petition, while 18 states, mostly Democratic-leaning, opposed. More
