Table of contents for August 27, 2018 in TIME Magazine

‘THIS was a fantastic read! Long live Spike Lee!!’ @NAP2030, on Twitter ‘If people listen to many views and think for themselves ... this is more unlikely to happen.’ @JACQUELINECS12, on Twitter SPIKE LEE’S LONG GAME Our Aug. 20 cover profile of the BlacKkKlansman director struck a chord. Spelman College president Mary S. Campbell called Carrie Mae Weems’ cover portrait “stunning.” Jim Eisenshtadt of West Bloomfield, Mich., said Rembert Browne’s profile was “beautifully written,” and the Rev. Al Sharpton displayed it on MSNBC as proof of how long Lee has been “mainstreaming” discussion of hate. Meanwhile, Stu Luttich of Geneva, Neb., thinks it will take more than one person to change hearts and minds: “Difficult to understand how racial prejudice and racism can ever be put to rest…

ISLAND PARADISE In 2009, British charity worker Ben Southall beat 34,000 other candidates to become caretaker of Australia’s tropical Hamilton Island for six months. He ended up working long hours to promote the island. DAY DREAM Want to sleep on the job? Mattress Firm said in July it’s hiring a “snoozetern” to test beds in its Houston offices and post about them on social media. The intern will also film videos and offer sleeping tips. SWEET TOOTH Ferrero, the Italian company that owns Nutella, announced plans to hire 60 amateur “sensory judges” to taste its products. Candidates will relocate to Italy in September and go through a paid training program.…

IT’S HARD TO COMPREHEND the numbers: 1,000 victimized children; 300 priests; seven decades of abuse, kept silent in a single state. But the stark details in the Aug. 14 Pennsylvania grand jury report into sex abuse by Catholic Church leaders are nauseatingly easy to picture and hard to erase from your mind. The ring of clergymen who took nude photos of a boy posing as Christ on the Cross. The Allentown priest who forced a boy to give him oral sex, then washed his mouth out with holy water. The teenage boy raped so aggressively over several years that his back was injured. In most cases, it’s too late for action. Many of the accused are dead, and almost all their crimes fall beyond the state’s statute of limitations.…

As California has grown drier and hotter over the past few decades, its wildfire season has expanded from a trying few months to a yearlong struggle—causing greater and greater damage. The situation sharpens a critical legal question being asked around the globe: Who should be responsible for the costs of climate change? California is an exemplarily complex case. In June, the state’s department of forestry and fire protection determined that 12 devastating fires that struck Northern California late last year were the result of trees coming into contact with power lines or other problems tied to the electric utility Pacific Gas & Electric. Thanks to a policy known as inverse condemnation, the utility could be on the hook for those damages, which the company says could easily surpass $10…

On Aug. 8 a new Oscars category, for “outstanding achievement in popular film,” was announced. No one yet knows exactly what that means, but if nothing else, it tells us one thing: the Academy thinks the public is stupid. For the past several years, the big Oscar winners have been smaller, independently financed pictures—not big-budget and -studio films. And Hollywood now seems ashamed that it long ago stopped giving us smart spectacles like Lawrence of Arabia or even dull but polished pictures like A Beautiful Mind. It’s disheartening, then, that the Academy should suddenly find the need to carve out a separate category for movies that maybe aren’t good in what it perceives as an artistic way but that lots of people simply like. Especially because, by focusing only…

ON A BRIGHT, CLOUDLESS EARLY-AUGUST DAY IN Silicon Valley, Serena Williams opens the back door of the Spanish-style home she shares with her husband, tech entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian, and walks down a flower-lined path to her office. Lemon trees bloom near the entrance to the backyard tennis court; in the clear distance, airplanes slip over the San Francisco Bay. Serena—who long ago ascended into the pantheon of stars known by a single name—swaps her pink Crocs for sneakers, and grabs a broom and dustpan to sweep pine needles off the hard court. Just three nights earlier, Serena suffered the worst defeat of her 23-year professional career, a 6-1, 6-0 drubbing at the hands of Johanna Konta in the opening round of a U.S. Open tune-up tournament down the road…

‘I just gave the maximum allowed donation to Jennifer Lewis, a democrat running for my father’s congressional seat.’BOBBY GOODLATTE, via Twitter, son of retiring Republican Representative Bob Goodlatte, objecting to his father’s role in the firing of FBI agent Peter Strzok, which he described as “political grandstanding” 17 Number of days an endangered killer whale swam with her dead calf on her back—her way of grieving, according to the Center for Whale Research ‘The Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has approached me multiple times about taking Tesla private.’ ELON MUSK, Tesla CEO, clarifying in an Aug. 13 blog post what he meant by “funding secured” when he announced he’s “considering” taking Tesla private in a surprise Aug. 7 tweet ‘MEN CANNOT CONTROL THEMSELVES ... SO ALL OF SOCIETY HAS…

Venezuela scraps fuel subsidies Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced sweeping cuts to domestic gasoline subsidies on Aug. 14, as his country’s economic collapse continues. At current prices, filling the tank of an SUV 9,000 times costs roughly as much as a cup of coffee. Maduro said the move would stop fuel smuggling. Google can still find out where you are Many Google-owned services store location data even when consumers use privacy settings that tell the apps not to do so, the Associated Press reported on Aug. 13. Google typically asks permission to use location data, but users would need to turn off separate settings to prevent Google from storing their location. Vehicle attack in London Three people were injured in London on Aug. 14 when a man crashed a…

IT WAS ONCE TAKEN FOR GRANTED THAT WRITING ABOUT THE far-flung world was a white man’s task. But when V.S. Naipaul—who died at 85 on Aug. 11—stormed that bastion with his portrayal of life in the former colonies, he transformed the literary landscape. Born in rural Trinidad, Naipaul was determined to escape, winning a scholarship to Oxford in 1950. He made England his home for the rest of his life. He published more than 30 books—novels, essays, memoirs and political travelogues through troubled regions—and picked up almost every major literary award, from the Booker Prize in 1971 to the Nobel Prize in 2001. As the grandson of indentured Indian laborers in the Caribbean and as an immigrant student in Churchill’s England, Naipaul suffered from a certain rootlessness. He ferociously…

Party unity’s diminishing returns “The country suffers when major bills are passed along party lines,” writes former U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, who argues that the practice leaves the country with imperfect legislation that neither party has an interest in fixing as weaknesses emerge over time. Documenting a massacre Five years ago, photojournalist Mosa’ab Elshamy witnessed the Egyptian military killing hundreds of protesters in Cairo. The horrors continue to haunt him. Still, journalists helped provide a narrative that combatted the state’s. He writes, “That is no small thing in today’s world.” Let tech address inequality Northwestern University law professor John O. McGinnis criticizes progressives for calling inequality the defining issue of today but then regulating against the equalizing effects of tech companies, which offer people cheaper business opportunities and services.…

He folds, only to be crushed when she reveals her cards. As Rachel, a professor of economics and game theory at New York University, tells her students, “The key is playing to win, instead of trying not to lose.” To many in Hollywood, Crazy Rich Asians might look like a risky bet. It’s the first modern story with an all-Asian cast and an Asian-American lead in 25 years; the last, The Joy Luck Club, was in 1993. It’s an earnest romantic comedy in a sea of action and superhero films. It features two leads who are new to movies: Wu, an actor most recognizable for her role on the ABC series Fresh Off the Boat, and Henry Golding, a virtual unknown who last worked as a travel host for…

At first glance, Minding the Gap looks like it’s a movie about skateboarding. But taking it at face value would undermine one of this year’s most thoughtful and emotionally complex films. The documentary, which made a splash at Sundance and is now streaming on Hulu, centers on the stories of three skateboarders from Rockford, Ill.: Zack, a 23-year-old new father; Keire, a talented teenager looking for direction; and the film’s director, Bing Liu, who has spent more than a decade filming his friends. For these young men the skate park provides a refuge for their troubles. The gravity-defying tricks and rough thrills they attempt are just a front for deeper issues as these young men move into adulthood, interrogating the ways in which they have been shaped by race,…

‘Now Idlib is our target, although not only Idlib.’ SYRIAN PRESIDENT BASHAR ASSAD, to Russian media in July ON AUG. 9, THE SYRIAN ARMY DROPPED LEAFLETS ON the province of Idlib telling residents that “the war is nearing its end” and urging them to cooperate with government forces. One showed grainy pre-war images of an old woman embracing a soldier; a young man studying; and a leafy, peaceful Damascus street: THIS IS HOW WE WERE BEFORE TERRORISM, it read. Then came photos of a destroyed neighborhood, a young boy carrying an unexploded shell, and women covered in niqabs and chained together. IT’S TIME TO STOP THE BLOODSHED AND DESTRUCTION, another flyer said. For years, Syria’s defeated rebels have fled to the northern territory of Idlib, which was established…

ON THE EVENING OF AUG. 10, A HORIZON AIR grounds crewman towed a 76-seat Dash-8 Q400 from a maintenance area at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, jumped into the cockpit and took off. The 29-year-old, later identified as Richard Russell, flew around the Puget Sound area for about an hour, musing about the sunset over the Olympic Mountains, an orca whale recently spotted mourning her dead calf and whether he could coax the twin-engine turboprop into doing a barrel roll. It’s not clear if he knew that a pair of F-15 fighters were following him for much of his flight, missiles loaded. “I’ve got a lot of people that care about me, and it’s going to disappoint them to hear that I did this,” Russell told air-traffic controllers, according to recordings.…

FIRED FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was removed from the Russia investigation after criticizing President Trump in text messages, by FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich, on Aug. 10. REVOKED The security clearance of John Brennan, former CIA director under President Barack Obama and frequent critic of President Donald Trump, by the White House, on Aug. 15. The move was criticized by experts as an unprecedented attack on a political opponent. OBTAINED U.S. citizenship, by First Lady Melania Trump’s parents, after she sponsored them through the legal immigration program that her husband has denounced as “chain migration.” REJECTED A bill to legalize abortion, by Argentina’s Senate, on Aug. 9, after a 17-hour hearing. While the decision was a blow to grassroots activists, many saw the campaign as the start of…

RECEP TAYYIP Erdogan is having a very bad August. Turkey’s President finds himself locked in a confrontation with a belligerent Donald Trump, and the U.S. President has again shown himself willing to use economic weapons that can inflict real pain. In response to a diplomatic standoff over a U.S. citizen detained in Turkey, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Turkey’s Justice and Interior ministers. Trump then announced plans to impose 20% tariffs on Turkey’s aluminum and 50% on its steel. In response, the lira lost nearly one-third of its value in three days. Turkish equity markets fell 17% on fears that Turkish companies won’t be able to pay debt denominated in euros or dollars. Erdogan’s missteps left Turkey’s economy vulnerable. All Trump had to do was provide a shock…

WRITERS HAVE LONG IMMORTALIZED cult leaders in novels, television and film as irresistible forces who seduce followers into submission. But in reality, they aren’t always magnetic. The elusive Bhagwan of the Rajneeshees in Netflix’s recent documentary series Wild Wild Country hid from the public eye behind his captivating secretary. Keith Raniere lured members into his headline-making group Nxivm by praising their brilliance rather than demonstrating his own. Even in the political arena, we’ve seen caustic leaders with little charisma build rabid followings. Two provocative debut novels—R.O. Kwon’s The Incendiaries and Blair Hurley’s The Devoted, both out this summer—present utterly charmless prophets who abuse religion in order to cast spells on headstrong young women. Together the stories urge readers to examine their own vulnerabilities. The Incendiaries’ Phoebe holds sway over…

‘ WOMEN WANT TO HEAR WOMEN, BECAUSE WE WANT TO KNOW WE’RE NOT ALONE ’ Back in 2003, you were a runner-up on Nashville Star, a televised country-music competition. You’ve since become one of country’s biggest acts. What set you apart from the beginning? I have always been pretty honest, in my music and with my fans, about who I am: being flawed, a regular girl with regular problems. I’ve made a career based on telling the truth. How has country music changed since you started? For the past couple of years it’s been skewed one way: a lack of women and songs with content from women’s perspectives. When Carrie [Underwood] and I first came on the scene, there was this whole generation…