The Netflix adaptation of Rumaan Alam’s 2020 runaway hit apocalyptic novel, Leave the World Behind, concludes relatably. The movie—directed by Sam Esmail and starring Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, and Mahershala Ali—sees tween girl Rose desperate to find out what happens in the finale of Friends as the world literally burns around her. Even though there’s a major telecommunications breakdown, Teslas are going haywire, and wildlife is gathering as if in anticipation of Armageddon, Rose must find out what becomes of Rachel, Ross, Chandler, Monica, Phoebe, and Joey. Do Rachel and Ross finally get back together? (Yes, even though Ross is a gaslighting softboy.) Do Chandler and Monica have a baby? (They have two, in fact.) What becomes of the iconic purple-walled loft? (Monica and Chandler give it up and move to the suburbs, thus signaling their descent into middle-aged uniformity.) More than just a reference to Gen Z’s pandemic-era obsession with bingeing a show that started 30 years ago this year, it’s indicative of our growing obsession with certainty in a world that’s anything but.
Today, though, the routes these ancient wanderers depend on are increasingly blocked. As the Galapagos’ human population soars—from about 2,000 in the 1960s to some 32,000 today—an expanding network of farms, roads, and tourist infrastructure disrupts the tortoises’ migratory paths, particularly on Santa Cruz. And beyond these roadblocks lurks an even more challenging barrier: nonnative vegetation that threatens to halt millennia of migration.
It became apparent to Hardy and his colleagues that Ramanujan could sense mathematical truths — could access entire worlds — that others simply could not. (Hardy, a mathematical giant in his own right, is said to have quipped that his greatest contribution to mathematics was the discovery of Ramanujan.) Before Ramanujan died in 1920 at the age of 32, he came up with thousands of elegant and surprising results, often without proof. He was fond of saying that his equations had been bestowed on him by the gods.
More than 100 years later, mathematicians are still trying to catch up to Ramanujan’s divine genius, as his visions appear again and again in disparate corners of the world of mathematics.
With the Olympics coming up, Los Angeles has a once-in-a-generation excuse to do something radical. There’s a model many L.A. activists are hoping to borrow from Paris: build in disability access, multimodal paths, and bus lanes in the name of Olympic preparation—and then let them become daily infrastructure afterward. In Paris, pedestrian plazas and HOV lanes established for the Games have since been made permanent.
That was not how it went in 1984, in spite of the Games’ car-free triumph. “The Games are over,” Mayor Tom Bradley said at the time. “Let the traffic begin.”
Climate change has marked effects on the restaurant industry. Changing temperatures and weather patterns mean ingredients that were once common are now harder to come by, and sourcing ingredients from sustainable farms can often be more expensive. Some restaurateurs hope that by championing things like locally sourced produce and sustainable seafood, diners will understand what a climate-friendly diet looks like. But while speaking about the environment is important, “preaching,” as Goldman puts it, is a turn-off, especially in hospitality, an industry that consumers rely on to provide, among other things, a good time... without interruptions. This puts restaurateurs in a precarious position of having to communicate choices and challenges without sullying the fun of eating out. Climate messaging can’t work if customers are too put off to walk through the door once, let alone habitually.
When the plot puzzle begins to assemble in the final 100 or so pages, “Memorials” really takes off and becomes something altogether different, genuinely earning its placement in the horror section of the bookstore. Readers will have to decide for themselves if the payoff is worth it, but it’s an enjoyable enough ride.