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The Best Movies of 2025

Movies are the great escape. “Optimistic endings, passionate romances,” sings the incarcerated dreamer of “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” who looks to old Hollywood movies as an oasis of beauty and faith. Yet in 2025, a year when the drama of entertainment was eclipsed by the

Simulation may illuminate safer cannabinoid drugs

New psychoactive substances, originally developed as potential analgesics but abandoned due to adverse side effects, may still have pharmaceutical value if researchers could nail down the causes of those side effects. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

2000 Words for Japanese Rain

From artist Miya Ando, Water of the Sky, A Dictionary of 2,000 Japanese Rain Words . Through a collection of 2,000 Japanese words, their English interpretations, and 100 drawings, Ando describes the breadth and diversity of rain’s many expressions: when it falls, how it falls,

A fear of betrayal shared by Japan and Europe

In Europe, we are afraid that Donald Trump’s America may be selling us out to Russia. In Japan, where I have just been, the fear is of Trump selling them out to China. For Europe and Japan the shared danger is of the superpowers, especially the United States and China, getting