3 NYT articles worth reading

And not ironically

1. Great story -

   

Ever since losing his job during the pandemic, Mr. Kane had been trying to establish himself as a magnet fisherman with a YouTube channel. …[Last week, he found] a safe containing maybe $100,000. … The paper money, which had once been preserved in muck, was turning brittle and starting to disintegrate.

***

Mr. Kane walked into the Bureau of Engraving and put a two-and-a-half-inch knife, a can of pepper spray and the backpack with his waterlogged money through the metal detector. He hadn’t actually rehearsed what he would say to the security guard on the other side.

“We are treasure hunters, and we found a safe full of money that was stolen,” is what he went with. “It’s squished, and it’s been in a pond for about 10 years. It also smells terrible.”

[T]wo professionally dressed Treasury employees, a man and a woman, promptly came downstairs. ..

“Yeah, all of this is currency,” said the woman.

“Even the mud,” said the man.

Right there in the lobby he estimated that Mr. Kane was holding somewhere in the ballpark of $50,000 to $70,000. They and the rest of their 11-person team would need about nine months to officially count it and replace it with unblemished currency. But when they were done, the money would be his, tax-free.

2. It’s not just cheap crap and dog food that kills dogs we’re getting from China.

Some recently manufactured Boeing and Airbus jets have components made from titanium that was sold using fake documentation verifying the material’s authenticity, according to a supplier for the plane makers, raising concerns about the structural integrity of those airliners.

The falsified documents are being investigated by Spirit AeroSystems, which supplies fuselages for Boeing and wings for Airbus, as well as the Federal Aviation Administration. The investigation comes after a parts supplier found small holes in the material from corrosion.

[Luckily, Spirit AeroSystems has a major DEI program so I’m sure they’ll get to the bottom of it in no time!]

3. The beginning of understanding: The New York Times’s David Leonhardt notices that people the world over keep voting for less immigration and the politicians keep giving them more.

[F]or years, mainstream Western politicians, from the center-right to the center-left to the left, have dismissed voters’ concerns about immigration. Some politicians describe it as a free lunch, with only economic benefits and no costs. They portray worries about immigration — worries shared by millions of people of different races, especially those with lower incomes — as inherently ignorant or xenophobic. Some politicians claim that governments are helpless to control their borders.

Many voters responded by drifting to the only parties that promised to reduce immigration — parties on the extreme right. To be clear, these parties do traffic in racism, as well as conspiracy theories, violent rhetoric and authoritarianism. To many voters, though, the parties were also the one part of the political system willing to listen to public opinion about rising immigration.

ALSO, READ THE COMMENTS TO THIS ARTICLE — FROM NYT READERS:

European Parliament Elections: Key Takeaways

Sample: