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What a difference a year makes.

On the eve of the anniversary of Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the 2016 presidential elections, Democrats in Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere notched a surprisingly robust round of victories Tuesday night in elections that have been widely interpreted as a referendum on the Trump presidency and a potential augur of the 2018 elections.

The results in Virginia, where the prospects of gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam gave Democrats severe heartburn over the last week, were particularly surprising: Not only did Northam coast to victory over Ed Gillespie, a Republican who had embraced the Trump message if not the president himself, but Democrats won legislative races across the Old Dominion, putting control of the House of Delegates—not generally expected to be up for grabs—within Democratic grasp. Bob Marshall, a particularly outspoken anti-LGBT conservative, was defeated by Danica Roem, who becomes the first openly transgender legislator in state and U.S. history.

Money may not be able to buy love, but here in Japan, it can certainly buy the appearance of love—and appearance, as the dapper Ishii Yuichi insists, is everything. As a man whose business involves becoming other people, Yuichi would know. The handsome and charming 36-year-old is on call to be your best friend, your husband, your father, or even a mourner at your funeral.

His 8-year-old company, Family Romance, provides professional actors to fill any role in the personal lives of clients. With a burgeoning staff of 800 or so actors, ranging from infants to the elderly, the organization prides itself on being able to provide a surrogate for almost any conceivable situation.

Yuichi believes that Family Romance helps people cope with unbearable absences or perceived deficiencies in their lives. In an increasingly isolated and entitled society, the CEO predicts the exponential growth of his business and others like it, as à la carte human interaction becomes the new norm.

It’s four days until Taylor Swift’s Reputation comes out, and the singer herself has not said a word to the public about it. There has been no in-depth magazine profile of the once omnipresent star. No magazine covers. No radio station call-ins. No live stream of her addressing the world from a talk-show set—though, Tuesday, she posted some short videos letting the world know that a group of handpicked fans recently listened to the album in Swift’s own home.

Maybe the journalism is still to come, under embargo until the release date. But it seems increasingly likely that she was serious with this recent Instagram caption (and possible lyrical preview): "There will be no further explanation. There will just be reputation." It was paired with an image of Swift’s Reputation tie-in magazine, on sale at Target with her new album on Friday. She is closing in, cloistering herself with her diehards on one side of a wall and everyone else on the other.  

The old adage that a man who represents himself has a fool for a client has seldom been demonstrated quite so colorfully as in the transcript of Carter Page’s testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on November 2.

Page, a former foreign-policy adviser to the Trump campaign,  does not have a lawyer. He agreed to testify on the condition that the transcript be made public, and while it’s hard to know what motivated him to make that deal—in fact, it’s often hard to figure out what motivates him—the result does not reflect kindly upon him.

If there is one major focus to the 243-page transcript, it is Page’s July 2016 trip to Russia, where he delivered a commencement speech at the New Economic School in Moscow. Page made the trip in a private capacity, rather than as a Trump campaign official, as he took pains to point out. One of the people in attendance was Arkadiy Dvorkovich, a deputy prime minister of Russia.

Americans who know nothing else about firearms are all too familiar with the name AR-15. It’s the semi-automatic weapon that murderers have used in many of the most notorious and highest-casualty gun killings of recent years: Aurora, Colorado. Newtown, Connecticut. Orlando, Florida, San Bernardino, California.  Now, with modified versions, in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Sutherland Springs, Texas.

What is this gun? Why is it the weapon that people who want to kill a lot of other people, in a hurry, mainly choose? Tim Dickinson offered a useful history of the AR-15’s emergence as the main implement of mass murder last year in Rolling Stone ("All-American Killer: How the AR-15 Became Mass Shooters’ Weapon of Choice"), and Megan O’Dea in Fortune and Aaron Smith for CNN also had valuable reports.

"If there’s a downside, it is kind of crazy tasting," said Geoff Woo, the founder of HVMN, a Silicon Valley company that makes nootropics, or performance-enhancing supplements. We were in a conference room in The Atlantic’s office building, and he was bracing me for my trial run of his latest product.

It was a small, clear vial labeled "Ketone," a new type of energy drink his company is releasing this week. Its nutrition label says it contains 120 calories, but no carbs, no fat, and no protein. Instead, it’s all ketones, the chemical that Woo and his company are calling a "fourth food group." He hopes the drink will allow people to reap the benefits of occasional fasting—high ketone levels inside the body—without actually having to not eat.

Tuesday delivered a string of high-profile victories for Democrats in gubernatorial races. Democrat Ralph Northam won the Virginia governor’s race in what had become a nail-biter of a contest, defeating Republican Ed Gillespie in the election to replace outgoing Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe. In New Jersey, Democrat Phil Murphy prevailed in the race to replace Republican governor Chris Christie, an expected victory over Republican Kim Guadagno.

The New Jersey gubernatorial Democratic win paves the way for the party to enact progressive policies statewide. Christie has clashed with the state’s Democratic-controlled legislature. Murphy’s win could set the stage for tax increases, marijuana legalization, health care, education investments and the enactment of other liberal policy priorities.

Call it shock and awe. Call it a purge. Call it a clean sweep. However it’s characterized, the mass arrest of some of Saudi Arabia’s most prominent royals, administrators, and tycoons last weekend has completely upended both the structure of the Saudi elite and the country’s way of doing business. It’s not exactly the Night of the Long Knives, as the luxurious Ritz-Carlton hotel in which the detainees are being held is hardly a nightmarish gulag. But it is the latest installment in an astonishingly rapid series of upheavals whereby all power is being concentrated in the hands of elderly King Salman and his 32-year-old son and heir, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MbS.

If MbS is behaving like any of his predecessors it is King Abdel Aziz ibn Saud, who founded the modern Saudi state in 1932. He is essentially positioning himself as a new Abdel Aziz who will create a new Saudi Arabia for a new era and a new economy. Clearly, he intends to do that by wiping the slate clean and beginning with an overwhelmingly strong hand that brooks no opposition. The purges are being carried out under the rubric of anti-corruption, in a populist spirit and with what appears to be a strong constituency of public support, especially among the youth. The prince is simultaneously implementing his Vision 2030, which includes an emphasis on local tourism and entertainment, and social changes deemed necessary for both modernization and economic diversification, particularly regarding women’s rights like the right to drive.

One day last summer, around noon, I called Athena, a 13-year-old who lives in Houston, Texas. She answered her phone—she’s had an iPhone since she was 11—sounding as if she’d just woken up. We chatted about her favorite songs and TV shows, and I asked her what she likes to do with her friends. "We go to the mall," she said. "Do your parents drop you off?," I asked, recalling my own middle-school days, in the 1980s, when I’d enjoy a few parent-free hours shopping with my friends. "No—I go with my family," she replied. "We’ll go with my mom and brothers and walk a little behind them. I just have to tell my mom where we’re going. I have to check in every hour or every 30 minutes."

Those mall trips are infrequent—about once a month. More often, Athena and her friends spend time together on their phones, unchaperoned. Unlike the teens of my generation, who might have spent an evening tying up the family landline with gossip, they talk on Snapchat, the smartphone app that allows users to send pictures and videos that quickly disappear. They make sure to keep up their Snapstreaks, which show how many days in a row they have Snapchatted with each other. Sometimes they save screenshots of particularly ridiculous pictures of friends. "It’s good blackmail," Athena said. (Because she’s a minor, I’m not using her real name.) She told me she’d spent most of the summer hanging out alone in her room with her phone. That’s just the way her generation is, she said. "We didn’t have a choice to know any life without iPads or iPhones. I think we like our phones more than we like actual people."

John F. Kennedy is one of the most mythologized figures in contemporary American history. At age 17, though, he was just a kid trying to get into college (a kid with a wealthy, famous father, of course).

The Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum has a digitized version of Kennedy's 1935 Harvard application, which includes his grades and his response to the essay prompt, "Why do you wish to come to Harvard?" Here's how the future president answered:

The reasons that I have for wishing to go to Harvard are several. I feel that Harvard can give me a better background and a better liberal education than any other university. I have always wanted to go there, as I have felt that it is not just another college, but is a university with something definite to offer. Then too, I would like to go to the same college as my father. To be a "Harvard man" is an enviable distinction, and one that I sincerely hope I shall attain.

April 23, 1935

John F. Kennedy

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