Weekly Review

Mark Zuckerberg revealed that Facebook’s parent company would be renamed Meta, a word that in Hebrew means “dead,” as part of a $10 billion move toward the creation of a metaverse, which will use virtual and augmented reality to bring elements of the physical world into digital spaces and vice versa.^{1 2 3 4} “You’ll also even have a home office where you can work,” said Zuckerberg, in a presentation describing its future capabilities.⁵ After Saudi Arabia’s recent announcement that it would open an oil-themed extreme park and resort as part of a national rebranding effort, a former Saudi intelligence officer said that the country’s crown prince was a “psychopath” who once planned to murder his own uncle with a poisoned ring made in Russia.^{6 7} The Alexander Palace, where the Romanovs were imprisoned before Bolsheviks relocated them to Siberia, was reopened to the public after a decade-long restoration project.⁸ “This bitch of a government has left us no choice,” said journalist Yevgenia Albats of the increasing support for Russia’s Communist Party.⁹ Buckingham Palace said that Queen Elizabeth would not attend the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, where local residents have complained of a growing rat infestation.^{10 11} The CEO of Barclays, who once cut his bonus and was fined when it was discovered that he was attempting to identify a whistleblower who wrote a letter of “concerns of a personal nature” about a senior employee of the bank, resigned after the release of preliminary conclusions from a probe into his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.^{12 13}

“We had a very good conversation about it. It’s still in the mix,” said the Senate Homeland Security Committee chairman, Gary Peters, of a carbon fee being negotiated in Biden’s spending bill that Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who owns millions of dollars of coal-company stock and receives nearly half a million in yearly dividends from them, has repeatedly refused to support.^{14 15} Steven Donziger, an activist and lawyer who secured a $9.5 billion settlement for the Quichua people of Ecuador after Chevron dumped oil on their lands, turned himself in to a federal prison in order to serve a six-month sentence; Donziger, who was disbarred and spent more than 800 days under house arrest after Chevron accused him of fabricating and withholding evidence in the trial, was denied release by an appellate court.^{16 17} A lawyer representing the U.S. government said that Julian Assange was faking the severity of his depression and autism, appealing a U.K. court’s refusal to extradite him on the grounds that he might commit suicide in prison; Assange was “drinking coffee in the company of other prisoners” and making “good eye contact,” the lawyer said.^{18 19} New studies showed that drinking coffee might help improve mood, prevent kidney stones, and reduce liver stiffness, and in an attempt to reduce shortages in the face of erratic weather caused by climate change, scientists have begun engineering beanless coffee.^{20 21 22 23} The World Bank stated that, if no meaningful changes were made soon to slow or stop the climate crisis, by 2050 up to 86 million people would be displaced from Africa, where 12 percent of worldwide coffee production takes place.^{24 25} A group of world leaders threw coins into Rome’s Trevi Fountain for good luck in fighting against environmental collapse, and a former Japanese prime minister said that climate change was making rice grown in Hokkaido tastier.^{26 27} 

The last known Jew remaining in Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul, who was rescued and brought to Turkey last month, said he would not move to Israel unless he was first paid $10 million plus cash for a winter coat.²⁸ At least seven Syrian refugees who appeared in “provocative banana-eating” videos on TikTok were deported from Turkey.²⁹ The Indian government threatened people celebrating Pakistan’s recent cricket victory with sedition charges.³⁰ A state of emergency was declared in Carson, California, where the overwhelming stench of rotten eggs has spread through the city, causing nausea and vomiting among residents and their pets.^{31 32} “We’re gonna be known as that stinky city now,” said one resident. A hiker lost on Colorado’s Mount Elbert ignored calls from rescuers because he did not recognize the phone number.³³—Charlie Lee