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In today’s edition:
WpGet the full experience.Choose your planArrowRight- Why giving roses on V-Day is a bad idea
- The MAGA crowd won’t open their eyes on Ukraine. Others must work around them.
- No one saw Japan’s renaissance coming
- Praise Hulu, the great rebundling is nigh!
Roses are red, the planet is blue
“Oh, I don’t want anything big this Valentine’s Day, please. Maybe just 70 lbs. or so of carbon emissions? And only if they look perky at the store!”
The sad truth of life is that every rose has a thorn, and it turns out that the thorn of buying bouquets of roses — grown mostly outside the United States — is a pretty dire environmental downside. Well, that and actual thorns. Hardly romantic!
Still, Amanda Shendruk and Michelle Kondrich’s analysis of cut flowers’ environmental impact manages to be delightful, mostly thanks to an interactive animation that renders the industry as an 8-bit video game; it feels as though your bouquet might have been carried from Cerulean City by a Charizard rather than from Colombia via one of 30 (30!) flights a day to Miami in the weeks leading up to Feb. 14.
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Airfreight is pretty necessary when the goods are as ephemeral as flowers, Amanda and Michelle explain, and all that flying adds up. One study they cite found that a bouquet of imported flowers has nearly twice the carbon footprint of the 8 oz. steak you might feed your sweetie that night.
“Romance doesn’t need to be limited to roses,” they point out. Consider non-flower alternatives — the classic chocolates, say, or something cuddly. A Bernedoodle!
If you’re set on blooms, there are plenty that are easier on the planet, Amanda and Michelle write, such as those local to where you are. Americans might consider snapdragons, peonies or zinnias to start.
Best yet: slowly growing your own. “Ultimately, the environmental harms from the flower industry stem from our desire for cheap and instant gratification,” they write.
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What better gift, then, than a labor of love?
Chaser: Cartoonist Edith Pritchett presents a guide to the perfect Valentine’s gift for every stage of a relationship. Check to see whether a nose-hair trimmer is right for you.
Ukraine’s big roadblock
This past Wednesday, Max Boot’s morning began with a 5:15 a.m. air-raid alarm that roused him from bed in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro. He spent hours in a bomb shelter with the civilian targets Russia’s Vladimir Putin keeps trying to kill, then emerged to later visit an apartment building where a Russian missile strike killed at least 64 and took out the entire front wall, revealing a victim’s clothes still fluttering in a top-floor closet.
What was Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) up to?
All of Max’s account of his recent trip to Ukraine is devastating, and he wishes the Republican speaker of the House could understand it just a fraction. If he did, Max hopes, Johnson might not be so dead-set on obstructing aid to Ukraine alongside other MAGA Republicans.
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“It’s easier to stab people in the back if you’re unwilling to look them in the eye,” Max writes.
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Josh Rogin, meanwhile, says there is no longer any point in serious lawmakers attempting to bring the MAGA crowd along on Ukraine. “Leaders in both parties must work against or around them, not with them,” he writes.
The Senate, Josh explains, is finally moving forward with an aid package, but it’s possible that Johnson doesn’t even allow a floor vote in the House — or wishes to tinker with the legislation such that any eventual help would arrive too late for Ukraine.
A method called a discharge petition might successfully get the bill to the floor even without Johnson, but Josh isn’t picky. His advice to Congress? Use “whatever maneuvers it takes.”
Chaser: E.J. Dionne zooms out to come to an unpleasant political conclusion: The Republican problem is metastasizing.
From U.S. Ambassador Rahm Emanuel’s assessment of Japan’s surprise vigor after decades of sluggish growth and relative inactivity on the world stage. It’s a turnaround, he writes, that nobody saw coming.
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In addition to its beefier military commitments, the country is bringing in more foreign investment and securing higher wages for its workers. It’s working more closely with (and sometimes leading) regional partners. And it’s reestablishing its soft power with more cultural exports; thank you, Shohei Ohtani.
So … what changed? Emanuel writes that Japan “realized that its future is indivisible from what happens in the region and around the world.” At the end of the day, what that really means is stepping up across the board as a counterweight to China.
Chaser: In late 2022, Jason Willick previewed the grand strategy behind Japan’s big defense buildup.
Less politics
If there’s anyone who loves a bundle, it’s Megan McArdle, who has written before on the virtues of such packaged-together services as cable plans. In 2018, I wasn’t ready to hear it. But now, paying monthly for Netflix, Max, Hulu, Apple, Paramount, Peacock, Prime and several more that I’m sure I’m forgetting (but which my credit card certainly isn’t), I’m a little more amenable to the pitch.
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Today, Megan writes that ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery’s new partnership to form a sports megastreamer shows that the great rebundling is upon us — “though along different lines from the previous bundle,” meaning the cable setup isn’t coming back, either. The market will mercilessly drive us to a new normal, but Megan writes that we might like where we end up.
Smartest, fastest
- Jen Rubin calls the special counsel’s impugning of President Biden’s mental acuity a “political hatchet job.” To Ruth Marcus, it’s an “egregious abuse of power.”
- Pakistan’s shocking election result shows that authoritarians don’t always win, the Editorial Board writes.
- Karen Attiah lifts the hood on a little-understood movement adding a wrinkle to the politics of the Gaza war: Black Zionism.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
A dozen streamers
Tied together with a bow
Carbon-free bouquet
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
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You’re reading the Today’s Opinions newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox.
In today’s edition:
“Oh, I don’t want anything big this Valentine’s Day, please. Maybe just 70 lbs. or so of carbon emissions? And only if they look perky at the store!”
The sad truth of life is that every rose has a thorn, and it turns out that the thorn of buying bouquets of roses — grown mostly outside the United States — is a pretty dire environmental downside. Well, that and actual thorns. Hardly romantic!
Still, Amanda Shendruk and Michelle Kondrich’s analysis of cut flowers’ environmental impact manages to be delightful, mostly thanks to an interactive animation that renders the industry as an 8-bit video game; it feels as though your bouquet might have been carried from Cerulean City by a Charizard rather than from Colombia via one of 30 (30!) flights a day to Miami in the weeks leading up to Feb. 14.
Airfreight is pretty necessary when the goods are as ephemeral as flowers, Amanda and Michelle explain, and all that flying adds up. One study they cite found that a bouquet of imported flowers has nearly twice the carbon footprint of the 8 oz. steak you might feed your sweetie that night.
“Romance doesn’t need to be limited to roses,” they point out. Consider non-flower alternatives — the classic chocolates, say, or something cuddly. A Bernedoodle!
If you’re set on blooms, there are plenty that are easier on the planet, Amanda and Michelle write, such as those local to where you are. Americans might consider snapdragons, peonies or zinnias to start.
Best yet: slowly growing your own. “Ultimately, the environmental harms from the flower industry stem from our desire for cheap and instant gratification,” they write.
What better gift, then, than a labor of love?
Chaser: Cartoonist Edith Pritchett presents a guide to the perfect Valentine’s gift for every stage of a relationship. Check to see whether a nose-hair trimmer is right for you.
This past Wednesday, Max Boot’s morning began with a 5:15 a.m. air-raid alarm that roused him from bed in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro. He spent hours in a bomb shelter with the civilian targets Russia’s Vladimir Putin keeps trying to kill, then emerged to later visit an apartment building where a Russian missile strike killed at least 64 and took out the entire front wall, revealing a victim’s clothes still fluttering in a top-floor closet.
What was Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) up to?
All of Max’s account of his recent trip to Ukraine is devastating, and he wishes the Republican speaker of the House could understand it just a fraction. If he did, Max hopes, Johnson might not be so dead-set on obstructing aid to Ukraine alongside other MAGA Republicans.
“It’s easier to stab people in the back if you’re unwilling to look them in the eye,” Max writes.
Josh Rogin, meanwhile, says there is no longer any point in serious lawmakers attempting to bring the MAGA crowd along on Ukraine. “Leaders in both parties must work against or around them, not with them,” he writes.
The Senate, Josh explains, is finally moving forward with an aid package, but it’s possible that Johnson doesn’t even allow a floor vote in the House — or wishes to tinker with the legislation such that any eventual help would arrive too late for Ukraine.
A method called a discharge petition might successfully get the bill to the floor even without Johnson, but Josh isn’t picky. His advice to Congress? Use “whatever maneuvers it takes.”
Chaser: E.J. Dionne zooms out to come to an unpleasant political conclusion: The Republican problem is metastasizing.
From U.S. Ambassador Rahm Emanuel’s assessment of Japan’s surprise vigor after decades of sluggish growth and relative inactivity on the world stage. It’s a turnaround, he writes, that nobody saw coming.
In addition to its beefier military commitments, the country is bringing in more foreign investment and securing higher wages for its workers. It’s working more closely with (and sometimes leading) regional partners. And it’s reestablishing its soft power with more cultural exports; thank you, Shohei Ohtani.
So … what changed? Emanuel writes that Japan “realized that its future is indivisible from what happens in the region and around the world.” At the end of the day, what that really means is stepping up across the board as a counterweight to China.
Chaser: In late 2022, Jason Willick previewed the grand strategy behind Japan’s big defense buildup.
If there’s anyone who loves a bundle, it’s Megan McArdle, who has written before on the virtues of such packaged-together services as cable plans. In 2018, I wasn’t ready to hear it. But now, paying monthly for Netflix, Max, Hulu, Apple, Paramount, Peacock, Prime and several more that I’m sure I’m forgetting (but which my credit card certainly isn’t), I’m a little more amenable to the pitch.
Today, Megan writes that ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery’s new partnership to form a sports megastreamer shows that the great rebundling is upon us — “though along different lines from the previous bundle,” meaning the cable setup isn’t coming back, either. The market will mercilessly drive us to a new normal, but Megan writes that we might like where we end up.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
A dozen streamers
Tied together with a bow
Carbon-free bouquet
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
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