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The Dot-Com Bubble. The Housing Bubble. The Bubble Bubble?

Bubble tea, or boba, has been the hottest tea trend in America over the last decade, and though the tapioca treats have been expanding across the nation at a rapid rate, this is one craze that doesnt appear to be at risk of popping anytime soon.

Americans interest in bubble tea, originally concocted in Taiwan in the 1980s, has gottensteamy hotin recent years, according toBloomberg. In 2023, the US market for the drink uh, food, uh, drink, uh is estimated to be worth $640m. A decade from now, estimates rise to $2.2B.

In 2022, with some 30.5m kilograms in the trunk, tapioca-based foods beat out frozen tilapia and sugar confectioneries as the most-valued US food import from Taiwan, rising to ~$50m from less than ~$15m in 2020.

Globally, Taiwans tapioca export value passed the $100m mark in 2021, up 23%.

Bubble tea franchises are growing quickly:

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Chai-ching: Bubble tea is brewing up serious profits in the US - The Hustle

A group of young people sit around a dilapidated living room. Theyre on couches, on chairs, on the floor. The lovers among them are nestled close. People are drinking from red Solo cups. Someone has a flask. A joint is circulating. Theres laughter and passionate debate and easy alternation between the two. With the sound turned off, the scene would be so familiar just young adults, relaxing that you would never guess the question theyre working through together: Are we terrorists? Do we feel like terrorists?

Of course I feel like a [expletive] terrorist! one young man says, laughing. Were blowing up a goddamn pipeline!

No viewer will be surprised to hear this. Its right there in the movies title: How to Blow Up a Pipeline. But the man himself seems shocked, as if he cant quite believe what hes saying. He and the films other main characters are hiding in an abandoned house in West Texas. They plan to strap homemade explosives to an oil pipeline the next day, hoping to reveal the industrys fragility, encourage more ecosabotage and ultimately make fossil-fuel extraction untenable. Theyre going to call us revolutionaries, one young woman suggests, waving the joint for effect. Game changers. Not so, another counters. Theyre going to call us terrorists. Because were doing terrorism.

The talk turns to history and the way tactics considered beyond the pale are often played down in retrospect. The Boston Tea Party werent they terrorists, intentionally destroying key economic materials for political purposes? Martin Luther King Jr. was on an F.B.I. watch list; today hes an American hero. Someone suggests that having the government call you a terrorist might mean youre doing something right. Someone else suggests that when terrorism works, the forces of authority just lie and say change came entirely via passive, nonviolent, kumbaya actions. Someone argues that, hey, theyre not going to hurt anyone, to which someone else objects sure they are; the plan is to create a spike in oil prices, which will have an immediate effect on the lives of poor people. Revolution has collateral damage, a handsome young man says with the timeless confidence of a handsome and slightly drunk young man with an audience.

The scene is saturated with uncertainty, and nothing anyone says can make that uncertainty go away. The would-be saboteurs dont even know for sure that their bombs will go off, let alone what effect they will have if they do. They dont know if they will be caught. Above all, they cannot know how others, now or in the future, will view their actions. Will they be remembered if theyre remembered at all as brave warriors justified by the righteousness of their aims? As ordinary villains, sowing destruction and chaos to flatter their own radical impulses? Or as well-intentioned fools whose actions only made it harder, not easier, to achieve the changes they desired?

The question of what the future will make of us what distant generations, looking back, will think of our choices has probably been invoked for as long as humans have debated what to do next. But the climate issue has made this question inescapable. Decisions we are making right now are determining not just how much hotter and more polluted the world gets, but also how prepared future generations will be to live in the hotter, more polluted world we leave them. This line of thinking feels, at first, galvanizing: What will our descendants, our literal and metaphorical children, wish we had done to make their lives better?

The film How to Blow Up a Pipeline, directed by Daniel Goldhaber, was loosely adapted from a 2021 manifesto of the same name by the Swedish political theorist Andreas Malm. The books argument is simple: If the climate movement is serious about reducing fossil-fuel emissions at the necessary speed and scale, Malm contends, it will have to make room for strategies long dismissed as too extreme, including the illegal destruction of fossil-fuel infrastructure. Just a few years ago, this argument would only have appeared in organs of mainstream opinion so it could be condemned. Instead, the book received respectful coverage from outlets around the world. Now, surprisingly, it is a movie, one with prominent distribution and a cast featuring familiar faces from prestige TV.

Two of its young protagonists, we learn, met when one saw the other browsing through Malms book in a store. Their group sees itself as converting Malms argument into action, and the fact that the film treats this perspective with sympathy respect, even makes it a strange kind of cultural landmark. Until now, ecologically minded saboteurs have generally been presented onscreen either as villains or, at best, as lost souls, unserious radicals who, in their impatience and navet, go too far. Goldhabers film does contain several critiques of its young protagonists scheme, but it remains open to and, in some moments, palpably excited by the possibility that they are right and that their plan will work exactly as they hope.

But this is only a possibility. Thrillers work by planting questions and making us itch for answers. What makes Pipeline so interesting is the way it intertwines plot questions (will the explosives work?) with the uncertainty inherent in judging your actions by the standards of the future. Try as we might, we cannot always know the effects of our individual choices; we cannot know how they will relate to the actions of others or the currents of history; we cannot know how future generations will understand their world or through what lenses they will look back on ours. This uncertainty is the always-present shadow of every decision we make. It would be one thing to see a group of young adults drinking and debating Malms arguments in a dormitory; it is another to see them do it with bombs in a van outside. Like all of us, they are wondering what history will make of them, but the question is cranked up to 11 by the mass of explosives just yards away.

The movie itself tries something similar; it seems to be going out of its way to feel as though it is already about a historical event. Structurally, it uses flashbacks to give each character a back story that sketches his or her motivations. Stylistically, Goldhaber makes frequent nods to the paranoid political thrillers of the 1970s. The effect is both electrifying and disorienting: This insistently contemporary story ends up feeling like something from the past, seen from the future, underlining the way the uncertainties faced by the saboteurs are the same ones faced by the film itself. What are the chances that, years from now, How to Blow Up a Pipeline might be seen as something like Uncle Toms Cabin, a catalyst for historical change? What are the chances that its legacy might be widespread condemnation and draconian crackdowns on terrorist climate protests? What are the chances that it receives little notice at all and looks like just another example of our era talking about climate change but not halting it?

Pipeline does not have those answers. By the final frame, we do know what has become of the saboteurs plan. In a traditional thriller, the resolution of the plot would be a cathartic release from uncertainty, but here were plunged back into all the questions the movie knows cant be resolved. We cannot see the future until it arrives; it can go too many ways. This fact of life can be frightening. Its nice to be reminded that it can also underline the moral stakes of our decisions in a way that gives them heft and energy.

Source photographs: Neon; iStock/Getty Images

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Will We Call Them Terrorists? - The New York Times

Dwayne Johnson announced that Disney will produce a live action version of 2016's Moana at the company's 2023 shareholder meeting Monday

Dwayne Johnson/instagram Dwayne Johnson with daughters Tiana and Jasmine

Dwayne Johnson is ready to step back into "the role of a lifetime" in the live action version of Moana.

On Wednesday, Johnson, 50, shared a behind-the-scenes video of himself with his two younger daughters Tiana, 5 this month, and Jasmine, 7 and wife Lauren Hashian as they filmed their recent video announcing that Walt Disney Studios will produce a live action version of the 2016 animated film.

Behind-the-scenes footage of the shoot shows the pro wrester-turned actor and his family enjoying the sun and sand on location in Oahu, Hawaii and singing lines from Moana's iconic song "You're Welcome," for the video, which Johnson revealed during Disney's 2023 shareholder meeting Monday.

"I had the real honor and privilege of not only being here in the islands of Hawaii, where I did a lot of my growing up, but more importantly than that, I had the privilege of having my family with me," Johnson says in his Wednesday Instagram video.

"You know, I always like to say, if it all got taken away today, then what I just experienced with [daughter Jasmine] and her sister Tia was beautiful, man," he adds.

Related:Dwayne Johnson's Daughter 'Refuses to Believe' He's Maui from Moana in Cute Tea Party Video

"Did you have fun? This was the first time you ever shot something," Johnson asks Jasmine in the video, who replies: "I want to live here for [the rest of] my life."

"I have a little bit of influence. I think I can make that happen," Johnson replies. "That's the power of the islands."

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In his Instagram caption, Johnson wrote that his family "felt the mana, the power of the ocean and spirit of our ancestors," while on location for the shoot.

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"Thank you all so much for the love, excitement & support. Singing, dance, culture. Maui is the role of a lifetime and I'll give it all I got ," the actor added.

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection Moana (2016)

Johnson voiced the demigod character Maui in 2016's original Moana and will reprise the role in live action form for the newly-announced project. In Monday's announcement video, the actor promised the return of the title character, plus "Gramma Tala, the music, the dance, Te Fiti, Pua the pig, the village" and "the beautiful, powerful ocean."

Related:Dwayne Johnson's 3 Kids: Everything to Know

The Moana animated film, which starred Auli'i Cravalho in the title role, grossed $643 million worldwide following its Nov. 2016 theatrical release.

Directed by John Musker and Ron Clements with a screenplay from Jared Bush, the film featured a voice cast including Rachel House, Temuera Morrison, Jemaine Clement, Nicole Scherzinger and Alan Tudyk.

Moana features original songs written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mark Mancina and Opetaia Foa'i, and was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song.

The upcoming live-action film will be produced by Johnson, Dany Garcia and Hiram Garcia via their Seven Bucks Productions and Beau Flynn via Flynn Picture Co., according to a release.

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Dwayne Johnson Teases His Performance as Maui in 'Moana' Live Action Movie: 'I'll Give It All I Got' - Yahoo Entertainment

The fate of the 2020 presidential election may have come down to one vote. At the Wisconsin Supreme Court, President Donald Trumps bid to throw out around a quarter million ballots from Democratic strongholds was dismissed by a 4-3 margin. The decision secured the upper-Midwestern states electoral votes for Joe Biden, ensuring his White House win.

The decision put the already conservative-leaning Wisconsin court in the sights of MAGA Republicans.

This year, with an election for a seat on the court looming on Tuesday, far-right political funders including those who continued pouring money into attempts to overthrow the 2020 race after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol are putting millions into trying to throw the race to the right-wing candidate.

In the days after the attack, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, two of the countrys largest conservative political donors, gave more than $5 million to groups seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The same couple has spent more than $5 million so far backing the campaign of former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly. If Kelly wins, the court would maintain a 4-3 conservative majority but shift further in favor of the extreme right.

The Uihleins fund a variety of other major conservative PACs and super PACS to run ads that span the gamut of culture war topics in service of Daniel Kellys campaign, said Eli Szenes-Strauss, political director at Public Wise, a voting rights organization that endorsed Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz last week. Public Wise has given $375,000 to progressive groups working on the Wisconsin race.

The Uihleins, who founded shipping company Uline, each gave a maximum $20,000 directly to Kellys campaign. Richard also funds a super PAC called Fair Courts America that has spent at least $5.2 million so far on television, radio, and digital ads backing Kelly and opposing his liberal opponentProtasiewicz. (The Uihleins did not respond to requests for comment through requests made to Fair Courts America as well as company emails.)

With more than $30 million spent so far on television ads, Wisconsins upcoming April 4 Supreme Court election has already broken state records. The race is officially nonpartisan, but its implications for the right to abortions has garnered widespread attention. National groups supporting the right to abortion have spent half a million dollars backing Protasiewicz, and anti-abortion groups have spent more than $1.7 million backing Kelly. Kellys campaign declined to comment.

Its coming down to a couple of billionaires and the nefarious dark-money groups that they back hemorrhaging tens of millions of dollars into their candidates.

While the fight to restrict abortion has driven much of the messaging in the race, many observers have pointed out that democracy is also on the ballot. Kelly and his financial backers have played a key role in seeking to dismantle democratic checks and balances both in Wisconsin and across the country. Kellys work advising GOP officials in a fake elector scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election has come under heightened scrutiny in the weeks leading up to the Supreme Court election day.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court race could become a playbook for future Republican efforts to challenge election results around the country, Szenes-Strauss said.

The Republican Party and right-wing judicial advocacy groups are watching the race closely to see what kind of messaging works and turns out voters, he said. Its coming down to a couple of billionaires and the nefarious dark-money groups that they back hemorrhaging tens of millions of dollars into their candidates.

Elizabeth Uihlein, left, at the White House on Sept. 20, 2019, in Washington, D.C. Richard Uihlein, right,a major conservative political donor and co-founder of shipping giant Uline, onOct. 23, 2019.

Photos: Paul Morigi/Getty Images (l), Mark Hertzberg/ZUMA/Alamy (r)

The Uihleins gave lavishly to election denial efforts both in the run-up to and the immediate aftermath of the January 6 attack. Richard Uihlein was the primary funder of the Tea Party Patriots, a group that helped organize the rally that preceded the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Uihleins $4.3 million in contributions to the group led the Democratic Attorneys General Association to call on officials and candidates to refuse additional contributions from the family.

In the days following the attack, through the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation, the Uihleins gave millions of dollars to groups that spread lies about 2020 election results or aided Republican officials seeking to overturn the results.

The day after the attack, the couple gave $1 million to the Conservative Partnership Institute, where GOP lawyer Cleta Mitchell leads the groups work on undermining elections. Mitchell advised Trump during the call in which he pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to lie about the states election results.

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Less than a week after the Capitol riot, the Uihleins gave $250,000 to Turning Point USA, which had sent more than 80 buses of people to the rally that preceded the attack. On the same day, the couple gave $100,000 to the Federalist Society, whose senior member John Eastman drafted a plan for Trump to overturn the election results and spoke alongside him at the rally preceding the attack.

Between January 7 and February 21, 2021, the Uihleins gave millions to groups that amplified unfounded claims of voter fraud and stolen elections or worked to directly challenge election results. The groups included the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Center for Security Policy, Sons of Liberty, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Judicial Watch, FDRLST Media Foundation, and the Thomas More Society. The extent of the Uihleins contributions to groups that undermined the 2020 election was first reported in a January analysis from the watchdog group Accountable.US.

Former Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker appointed Kelly to the state Supreme Court in 2016 to complete the term of a retiring justice.

After losing his 2020 election to stay on the court, Kelly advised the Wisconsin Republican Party in its efforts to create a fake elector scheme to challenge the states presidential election results. Kellys role in the fake elector scheme was revealed in February 2022 during the state party chairs deposition to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack.

Kelly advised the Wisconsin Republican Party in its efforts to create a fake elector scheme to challenge the states presidential election results.

The state GOP and Republican National Committee paid Kelly just under $120,000 for his work, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported last month.

After his 2020 loss, Kelly also worked at several organizations linked to the Uihleins, as well as other figures involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including Mitchell, the Wisconsin Examiner reportedlast month. Kelly worked for an Illinois nonprofit called the Liberty Justice Center, which has done legal work for Fair Courts America. He also worked at the Bradley Foundation in Wisconsin, which funds conservative causes and where Mitchell is a member of the board of directors.

In state campaign finance filings, Fair Courts America, the Uihlein super PAC backing Kelly, shares an Illinois address with another of its major funders, a registered nonprofit advocacy group called Restoration Action. Restoration Action is run by Republican operative and former Illinois Senate candidate Doug Truax. On March 1, Uihleins PAC received $1 million from Restoration Action.

Truax is also founder and president of Restoration PAC, which is registered with the Federal Election Commission, or FEC. The Uihleins have used Restoration PAC to fund other groups backing Kellys campaign, sometimes claiming that Protasiewiczs backers want to push trans ideology on children. The groups include a super PAC called Women Speak Out that is associated with Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, as well as the American Principles Project PAC, which has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads attacking Protasiewicz since the February primary.

Uihlein has given $70 million to Restoration PAC since 2015. Last year, Restoration PAC gave $647,000 to Fair Courts Americas federal PAC.

Last year, Restoration PAC spent at least $3 million on independent expenditures in congressional races. The treasurer for Fair Courts America also signed FEC paperwork for many of Restoration PACs 2022 independent expenditures.

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Wisconsin Supreme Court Election Funded by Jan. 6 Megadonor - The Intercept

Tomato ketchup makes me shudder

Tomato ketchup, and the tomato sauce that comes with canned baked beans and spaghetti hoops, make me shudder. The sweet, vinegary smell is something I cant seem to get over. It makes my every nerve seize up and I end up holding my breath. I wont make a fuss about it, but I dont like holding ketchup bottles or holding plates with leftover ketchup on them. When I was younger, this aversion extended to mayo, barbecue sauce and other condiments, but I am happy to eat most of those now. I have a vague memory of someone smushing a sandwich with ketchup into my face as a child and the feeling of it being around my mouth and cheeks. While Ive occasionally eaten some accidentally, Im pretty sure Ive never dipped a chip or a nugget into ketchup in my life. Becci Wood, 31, London

Cant even be in a room with the smell of oranges and definitely not in a train carriage. Ive moved carriages on the tube more times than most people have had hot dinners. Also cant abide the look of that skin around the segments. When we had fruit salad at school in the early 70s, I used to put the oranges in my sock. My mother was delighted with this on wash day. I dont feel entirely the same about lemons, limes or grapefruit Im happy around the juice, zest, flavour and smell of those, though still wouldnt even entertain eating a whole segment. Just the thought of it is making me nervous. Jayne Pearson, 59, Cornwall

Ive survived so far without letting coffee pass my lips. I think it stems from having to see my A-level maths teacher first thing in the mornings to get some help. I would walk into the office to be greeted by an overwhelming stale coffee smell and then his coffee breath. I even went to Ethiopia and frequented coffee shops with coffee grinds on the floor, but couldnt bring myself to drink any. Although I dont drink it, I am able to discern between cheap coffee and freshly ground coffee. I feel like retching when I smell cheap coffee; freshly ground coffee is only a tad more bearable. It goes without saying that I dont eat anything with coffee in it either (tiramisu, coffee cake, etc). Not succumbing to the coffee craze over the years has saved me a fortune. AJ, 36, Surrey

Ive never had a sip of Coca-Cola or Pepsi, despite them being on offer at every birthday party or restaurant. I hated carbonated drinks as a child, and that hasnt really let up in early adulthood: I prefer beer flat and find that tonic detracts a good deal from gin. Soda just wasnt in my childhood home growing up, in the same way that network TV or fast-food packaging or the Bible werent. I never realised that my upbringing was odd or unusual (or un-American). Now, its a fun story for my Dutch and other international friends: they have an American classmate whos never had Coca-Cola or watched an episode of Friends, and is possibly less American than they are. I dont know if Id try it. Its not something that would make me retch, but between the carbonation and the sugar content, Id probably find it unpleasant. Jan, 20, Groningen, American living in the Netherlands

I havent had a banana since I was about six months old. I went off them and I have no intention of ever revisiting them. Its the smell; it makes me feel ill. Then theres the texture I dont like soft and squishy food. I used to hate meatloaf for the same reason. I had some in Tennessee in 1990 and I found it dry and rather like eating sawdust. Then I met the woman who became my wife. I gamely tried her meatloaf for supper one night and realised that my first experience of meatloaf had been appallingly bad and that it was possible to have lovely tasty meatloaf. So I changed my mind on that, at least. Marc Jones, 52, London

The concept of a milkshake is not a problem, but the thought of actually sitting down and drinking one leaves me in a cold sweat. In my postwar early schooling, when school milk was compulsory to build us up, I was forced to drink a small bottle of milk for the first few days. Having thrown up over myself, the teaching staff, the desk and the classroom floor, I knew a glass of milk wasnt for me. The thought of thickened, flavoured milk makes me gag. And no, I wouldnt couldnt ever try it. Joan Baker, 81, York

I was always picky with food as a child and have really grown into liking lots of different types of food. My biggest issues are raw tomato, iceberg lettuce and cucumber. So most side salads in the world, which is really annoying. But something about cucumber sandwiches just screams out to me. I love a tea party and they seem very fancy, despite being very simple, but isnt that part of the elegance? I would love to be able to serve them, with friends over with a pot of tea, scones and other treats, but its just not going to happen for me, sadly. Thom French, 34, Hackney, London

I love all fruit and veg except, for some bizarre reason, kiwi fruit. The very thought of them makes my face ache and I get the same aversion sensation as fingernails scraping on a blackboard. Ive no idea why. Seeing an unpeeled kiwi fruit gives me a much worse sensation than a peeled and sliced one. There is something about its skin that makes my skin crawl. I cant imagine what the poor kiwi fruit has ever done to make me react in this way. I might be persuaded to try a piece but only if someone else has peeled it for me. Cathy Elder, 61, Cardiff

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'I can't be in the same room as oranges': Guardian readers on their ... - The Guardian