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Not so long ago, political analysts were speaking of the “G-2” — that is, of a potential working alliance between the United States and China aimed at managing global problems for their mutual benefit. Such a collaborative twosome was seen as potentially even more powerful than the G-7 group of leading Western economies. As former Undersecretary of the Treasury C. Fred Bergsten, who originally imagined such a partnership, wrote in 2008, “The basic idea would be to develop a G-2 between the United States and China to steer the global governance process.” That notion would become the basis for the Obama administration’s initial outreach to China, though it would lose its appeal in Washington as tensions with Beijing continued to... Read more

Various houseplants in a shrimp pan sauce

The bottom half of a mouse with pizza grease

Rubber bands and hair ties in whole milk

Raw chicken juice reduction, from garbage

Window condensation, fish tank water, and one piece of kibble

Something crunchy we found on the floor at 3:00 a.m.

Whatever it is that the people eat

House flies and tuna au jus

Prescription food for a cat that isn’t you

One bite of a giant loaf of bread

Wooden table corners

The top half of a mouse, gently shredded

The cream cheese off a bagel

Moth

People skin after they just worked out

Plastic bag in gelatin and fish aspic

Sour cream and ground beef from a Taco Bell nacho bowl

Preprocessed dry kibble (vomited up by another cat)

Just gravy

Somehow even wetter gravy

A teaspoon of each of the six assorted traditional flavors of regular cat food

To the Editors: Fintan O’Toole is a brilliant writer, and usually a sharp-eyed observer of things cultural and political, here and abroad. In his latest piece, “Bump and Grind” [NYR, May 11], he again excels as a writer. Regrettably, however, he falls short as a legal observer, and in a way that is unhelpful to […]

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There can be no denying that, over the last several years, there has emerged a broad economic consensus in favour of a fundamental transformation of the UK economy.   In 2019, a poll from the Institute for Public Policy Research and YouGov found that 60 percent of people wanted the government to introduce significant changes […]

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“He was a warm friend, not to liberty merely, but to English liberty.” – Lord John Russell, grandfather of Bertrand Russell, writing of his ancestor, William Lord Russell, executed by Charles II on 21 July 1683 My first introduction to Bertrand Russell occurred when someone at Oxford gave me a copy of his book, The […]

So, to reiterate how this works, each Covid infection has a good chance of doing damage to your body, especially to your brain, cardiovascular system and to your immune system, which does not become stronger, but rather disregulated and weakened against future infections, not just of Covid but of other diseases.

This damage may not be symptomatic, in which case you don’t have “Long Covid”, but it’s real. Each time you get re-infected there is a chance of more damage, and I’m almost entirely certain, an increased risk of Long Covid.

Long Covid itself can be mild, or it can be crippling. Millions of people now can’t work as a result and others are suffering and less able to work or to enjoy their lives.