‘This is why our fresh produce keeps making us sick’
Timothy D. Lytton at The New York Times
While “cases of cyclosporiasis have reached a new high this year, the parasitic infection has spread in recent summers, too, abetted by warmer weather and higher consumption of fruits and vegetables,” says Timothy D. Lytton. To “break the cycle of infection, the fresh produce industry has to step up its efforts to prevent contamination on farms and better sanitize food.” The government also “needs to identify outbreaks more quickly so that contaminated food can be removed from store shelves.”
‘The new college virtue isn’t about if you cheat, but how well’
Natalie Sandoval at USA Today
At colleges, AI “makes cheating easier, certainly,” says Natalie Sandoval. But its “rise is downstream from a cultural shift in higher education.” Americans are “witnessing a move away from a culture that valued honor and integrity (think of the social conditions that once made ‘a man of his word’ mean something) toward one where ambition and prestige are the only markers of worth.” To “be a striver is to be concerned with the appearance of prestige above all else.”
‘The attack on workers begins and ends with Black women’
Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman and Ayanna Pressley at The Boston Globe
Black women have “always been the backbone of the American economy,” say Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.). In 2025, “thousands of Black women left or lost their jobs, with college-educated Black women and Black women in the federal workforce being disproportionately impacted.” What is “happening to Black women in the workforce is a harbinger for every worker and family in America,” a “perfect storm of this administration’s attacks on workers’ rights, equal pay and the workforce.”
‘“The Odyssey” will overwhelm you — and not only with spectacle’
Will Leitch at The Washington Post
The “movie industry appears to have been turned entirely upside down this year” as big-budget films have “dramatically underperformed,” says Will Leitch. This is “why there remains, truly, no one like Christopher Nolan,” who has “more on his mind than just spectacle.” His new film “The Odyssey” is “about the hubris of man, about how the more we convince ourselves we have conquered nature and the gods, and believe that we no longer need to look to history.”
Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
