After 88 Days of Censored News, TV and Chat, Iranians Are Coming Back Online; The New York Times, May 27, 2026

 Erika Solomon and Sanam Mahoozi , The New York Times; After 88 Days of Censored News, TV and Chat, Iranians Are Coming Back Online

The government is letting people connect with the world after a near-total internet shutdown. But not everyone has access, and those who do wonder how long it will last.

"For 88 days, they could not chat with family or friends online. Their access to independent news, or to the websites they needed to run their businesses, was blocked. Simple pleasures, like streaming their favorite television shows, were denied them.

Now, after what activists say was the longest nationwide internet shutdown in history, Iran’s government seems to be restoring access. Many Iranians are reconnecting to the world, eager to resume the online habits most people take for granted."

Are We Losing Our Democracy?; The New York Times, October 31, 2025

 The Editorial Board, The New York Times; Are We Losing Our Democracy?

"Countries that slide from democracy toward autocracy tend to follow similar patterns. To measure what is happening in the United States, the Times editorial board has compiled a list of 12 markers of democratic erosion, with help from scholars who have studied this phenomenon. The sobering reality is that the United States has regressed, to different degrees, on all 12.

Our country is still not close to being a true autocracy, in the mold of Russia or China. But once countries begin taking steps away from democracy, the march often continues. We offer these 12 markers as a warning of how much Americans have already lost and how much more we still could lose."

‘Orwell: 2+2=5’ Review: How George Came to See the World as Orwellian; The New York Times, October 2, 2025

  Manohla Dargis, The New York Times; ‘Orwell: 2+2=5’ Review: How George Came to See the World as Orwellian

"“The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude,” George Orwell wrote in 1946, a year after the end of the World War II. That line appears early in “Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5,” an essayistic documentary from Raoul Peck that surveys its title subject’s life and work, using them as a lens to explore authoritarian power in the past and the present. Densely packed, the movie is a whirlwind of ideas and images, by turns heady, enlivening, disturbing and near-exhausting. It’s a work of visceral urgency from Peck, who’s best known for his 2017 documentary “I Am Not Your Negro,” about James Baldwin.

Peck plucked that observation about art and politics from Orwell’s essential 1946 essay “Why I Write,” in which he lists “four great motives for writing” — especially for writing prose and, of course, aside from earning a living — including “political purpose.” Near the end of the essay, Orwell writes that he hopes to start a new book. What soon followed was “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” the seismic novel that helped turn his name into an adjective. Anchored by Orwell’s writing — and Damian Lewis’s calm, intimate voice-over — Peck charts the writer’s life in tandem with world-shattering events, focusing on when he was working on “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” which was published in 1949. Months later, Orwell was dead."