‘Dear June.’ A native of Rio de Janeiro, AmonTobin now lives in Montreal, after living, well, literally all around the world. His father is Irish, and at the age of two, he and his family moved to Morocco, the Netherlands, London, Portugal, and Madeira. As a teenager, he then settled in the United Kingdom—where, in Brighton, he started composing his own takes on downtempo, breakbeat, and trip-hop styles of music. It’s all given him an extremely eclectic set of influences. Still, against it, you can hear the lope of samba drums—particularly the pandeiro—ticking behind it on this track.
Quiet luxury. You’ll have seen them if you’ve been to Miami or Monaco, or perhaps you’ve read of Russian billionaires having theirs seized off the coast of Greece or Spain: the superyachts. They’re huge—and hugely expensive: Jeff Bezos’s 127-meter Koru cost him half a billion dollars and has a mast so tall that after its construction it couldn’t sail under Rotterdam’s iconic Koningshaven Bridge. Dissemble the bridge, Bezos suggested. Locals replied, threatening to pelt Koru with eggs.
And there are now more and more of them. Since 1990, the number of yachts longer than 250 feet (76.2 meters) has gone from less than 10 to more than 170. In the past 20 years, the average length of a yacht has grown by a third, to 160 feet. But they’re terrible assets. As the Financial Times once put it, “Owning a superyacht is like owning a stack of 10 Van Goghs, only you are holding them over your head as you tread water, trying to keep them dry.”
‘Blister.’ Off to New Zealand for some A-grade indie rock by Yumi Zouma, a Christchurch-based four-piece. Someone has mistreated their singer, Christie Simpson, and she’s not taking it lying down. To the offending party, “Blister,” she wails, “Why you gotta do me like that?”
A history of political violence. Early in the morning on Saturday, June 14, a man drove a black SUV with flashing police lights to the home of Minnesota state Representative Melissa Hortman, a top Democrat in the state legislature. He was wearing a badge and tactical vest and carried a taser. When she answered the door, he introduced himself as a police officer—and then shot and killed her and her husband, Mark.
Now infamously, he wasn’t a cop. He was planning a killing spree in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Before assassinating the Hortmans, he shot state Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. When the true police caught him the next day, they found a list of about 70 intended targets—mostly Democratic politicians but also doctors and officials at Planned Parenthood centers.
On the same day as the killings in Minnesota, Arthur Folasa Ah Loo was shot and killed while demonstrating in Salt Lake City as part of the nationwide protests against U.S. President Donald Trump. At another demonstration, in Culpepper, Virginia, a man drove an SUV into a crowd of protesters.
Neither are these the only recent examples of political violence in America. Just in the last three months, Pennsylvania’s Governor Josh Shapiro’s house was set on fire while he and his family were asleep inside; two Israeli Embassy workers were shot and killed in Washington, D.C.; protesters in Boulder, Colorado, calling for the release of Israeli hostages were set on fire; and in New Mexico, the Republican Party headquarters was firebombed—along with a Tesla dealership.
It seems political violence in America is getting worse.
Addictive consumer technology is getting to kids. A massive study on children’s screen time and mental health—following more than 4,200 young people across the U.S. for four years, and published on Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association—found no correlation between the longer screen time at age 10 and suicidal behaviors at age 14. It found something more specific.
The children most at risk for suicidal tendencies were those who used technology in an addictive way—meaning, they had trouble putting it down or felt the need to use it more and more. At age 14, kids with high or increasingly addictive behaviors were two to three times as likely as the others to have suicidal thoughts or to harm themselves.
The problem is, addictive usage is very common. When it comes to mobile phones, almost half of the children showed addictive usage. And addictive usage is more common among minorities and children in families at lower socio-economic levels.
‘Mysterious Girl.’ This single, from Los Angeles-based Neggy Gemmy’s upcoming album, is a perfect lost Saint Etienne song. It begins with a flute loop, then the 1990s club beats come in, and we’re off to the races. And what about this mysterious girl? “She smells of L.A. / She’s only going to break your heart.”
Global conflict is on the rise. The number of state-based, armed conflicts recorded last year was the highest since 1946, topping the record set the previous year, according to a report released on Monday by the Peace Research Institute Oslo.
Across 36 countries, there were 61 state-based, armed conflicts—28 in Africa, the highest number on any continent.
Almost 130,000 people died in conflicts worldwide last year, the vast majority in the Ukraine war and Gaza. Largely because of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the past three years have recorded more conflict-related deaths than any other period in the last 30.
“The world today is far more violent, and far more fragmented, than it was a decade ago,” says Siri Aas Rustad, the author of the study.
Israel vs. Iran vs. …? All week, Israel and Iran attacked one another through the air. On Friday, Israeli jets hit targets across Iran, while an Iranian missile damaged several buildings in Beersheba, in southern Israel—a day after another missile struck the region’s main hospital, wounding more than 240 people.
On Friday, European diplomats met with Iranian officials to negotiate over Tehran’s nuclear program and find a way out of the conflict. The Europeans didn’t say whether they’d made any progress; Iran says it would consider diplomacy only after Israel stopped its attacks.
Meanwhile, the big question is whether the U.S. will join Israel in attacking Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked U.S. President Donald Trump to work with Israel. On Thursday, Trump said he would take two weeks to decide.
What exactly would it mean for the U.S. to join the war?
‘Miraverahí.’ Buscabulla is a duo that met and started working together in Brooklyn, though they’re both from Puerto Rico. This track is off their just-released record, Se Amaba Así—and you’ll hear a lot of Brooklyn synth-pop in it. The album title translates to “The way love was.” It’s their first new recording since they were vaulted into prominence through a collaboration with Bad Bunny on his 2022 album, Un Verano Sin T.
