"It remains possible that many people remain reluctant to jump back into work for a variety of other reasons: having to care for children whose classes are remote; fearing the coronavirus; reconsidering their careers." Perhaps those reconsidering their careers should include job report forecasters, because most everyone was a lot more bullish than reality. NYT Upshot: The Jobs Report: The Boom That Wasn’t. "April’s anemic job creation was so out of line with what other indicators have suggested that it will take some time to unravel the mystery." (The time it takes to figure out what happened will give everyone a nice window for political attacks.)
2. That's What Xi Shed
The US has gotten back on board with the global fight to limit climate change. China says it will play along, but Xi blinded me with science because his country's pollution numbers are increasing, steady as Xi goes. WaPo: Chinese greenhouse gas emissions now larger than those of developed countries combined. "China now accounts for 27 percent of global emissions, while the U.S. accounts for 11 percent." If China doesn't address this emissions nightmare, that's all Xi wrote...
+ Related: There's a Giant Chinese Rocket Plunging Toward Earth. "Given the fact that most of the planet is covered in water, there's about a 70% chance the debris will fall into an ocean." (Why doesn't that make me feel better?)
3. Weekend Whats
What to Doc: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's three part documentary on Ernest Hemingway is excellent. That shouldn't surprise us since it pairs America's most well-known documentarian with one of its greatest writers. There are so many book excerpts that the doc was basically co-written by Hemingway. (Though, there's no way he'd ever accept a co-writing credit...)
+ What to Hear: In 2017, Rag'n'Bone Man burst onto the music scene with the hit song Human. Now he's back with a new album, Life By Misadventure. (Start with All You Ever Wanted.)
4. Everestless
"Private jets, often used primarily by Bollywood glitterati and business moguls who left weeks ago, are now being booked by the middle class who are spending their live savings to save their lives ... But it is those without a life savings to spend who are spreading the deadly virus to neighboring countries. Thousands of migrant workers escaping the country have now turned neighboring Nepal into the next hell." Indians Run for the Exits, Taking COVID Risks With Them.
+ "Even as the country faces its steepest coronavirus wave yet, it has kept its main tourist attraction, the Nepali side of Mount Everest, open to foreigners seeking to climb the world’s tallest mountain." WaPo: Covid reached Everest base camp. Now climbers are trying to prevent its spread amid a record season. (If you're really that desperate for a risky climb, try a Peloton treadmill.)
5. The Old Brawl and Cheney
"Revealingly, it is not Cheney’s impeachment vote that now looks like the move to get her bounced from the Party’s leadership. It is her refusal to shut up about it and embrace the official party line of forgetting about Trump’s attack on democracy and moving on—which is the approach of all but a handful of prominent Republicans." Susan Glasser in The New Yorker: Forced to Choose Between Trump’s Big Lie and Liz Cheney, the House G.O.P. Chooses the Lie.
+ "Cheney’s courageous stand against the party of Trump is a stand against a party she helped build, a monster she helped create. The tragedy is not that she might suffer for her folly, but that American democracy will. Her latter-day epiphany is welcome, but it also comes far too late." Adam Serwer in The Atlantic: Liz Cheney Has Only Herself to Blame. (Yes, this is true. And yes, we welcome her stand.)
6. A Bend in the Rio
"Thursday's raid in Jacarezinho, one of the city's largest slums known as favelas, was carried out by about 200 police officers and included an armoured helicopter with a sniper. The area is dominated by Comando Vermelho, or Red Command, one of Brazil's largest criminal organizations." Brazil violence: Rio police accused by residents of abuses in raid. "The deadliest police operation in the city's history has left 25 dead."
7. Hold My Cheer
"On the day she was crowned homecoming queen, Emily Grover wore a sparkly silver dress. A bouquet of roses rested in the crook of her arm, and a crown adorned her curled blond hair. Then the achievement crashed down around her: Prosecutors accused her and her mother, an assistant principal in the same school district, of casting hundreds of illicit votes to rig the election. Grover was expelled from her high school, and her mother, Laura Carroll, was suspended from her job." WaPo: Teen accused of rigging vote to become homecoming queen will be tried as an adult. (Only in today's America could rigging a homecoming election be treated as a more serious crime than trying to overturn a real one.)
8. Balls of Steal
"Bobby Thomson's 1951 home run remains one of the most famous walk-offs in MLB history. His bat, glove and cleats reside in Cooperstown, but arguably baseball's most hallowed piece of rawhide went the way of Jimmy Hoffa. Dozens of fans claimed to have the ball in the days after Thomson's homer, and one even conned World Series tickets out of Thomson in exchange for what he thought was the actual ball. It wasn't." ESPN: Inside the mysterious world of missing sports memorabilia.
9. Nitrous-Fungible Token
"David DeVore Jr. was 7 when he became an internet celebrity from a home video. In 2008, his dad, David DeVore Sr., filmed a video of him groggily and hilariously reacting to medication from a tooth extraction that became David After Dentist." What is he doing these days? He's a 20-year-old college student and selling his viral video as an NFT. (I'll never forgive my kids for failing to go viral.)
10. Feel Good Friday
"As Bosynak, exhausted, collapsed onto a sun bed, Gupta jogged to the nearest store to get some disinfectant and, on a whim, chocolate ice cream. Back on the beach, Gupta started tending to Bosnyak's wounds. Then she handed him the ice cream and he smiled gratefully. 'Something changed, for me, in that moment,' she recalls. 'There was a click in my heart somewhere.' Bosnyak felt it too, even as he lay there, bleeding." He saved her from drowning and they fell in love. (Cut to a year from now. "Honey, take out the garbage." ... "I saved your damn life, how about if you take it out!?")
+ "There were a lot of surprises on a flight to Hawaii last week, starting with the birth of a baby to a woman who didn't know she was pregnant. Not only did there happen to be a doctor on board the Salt Lake City-Honolulu flight, but there were also three neonatal intensive care nurses -- and all of them immediately got to work."
+ Wrongly Convicted Of Murder, Juan Rivera Uses Settlement Money To Open Barber College With His Former Prison Guard.
+ South Africa to end captive lion industry.
+ Drew Robinson makes San Francisco Giants' Triple-A roster after losing eye in 2020 suicide attempt.
+ Special mat installed at Huntington Beach, providing better access to visitors using wheelchairs.
+ WaPo: How a rural Virginia town came together for an unforgettable pandemic prom.