Rosie Gray

Rosie Gray has covered politics for BuzzFeed News and The Atlantic

Sunday

Rosie Gray

Inside RFK Jr.’s kooky White House quest

After Linda Como, a sixty-four-year-old administrative assistant from Quincy, Massachusetts, was fired from her hospital job for refusing to be vaccinated against Covid, she discovered Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine activism, and it resonated with her. But that’s not the only reason Como came to the Boston Park Plaza hotel one morning in April to see Kennedy launch his long-shot 2024 presidential campaign. “I grew up in Boston, went to Boston public schools, so you know the Kennedy family,” Como told me. “They’re like the royal family. So I’ve always been a fan of the Kennedys.” Kennedy lore runs deep in Boston. This is where Robert Kennedy’s father Robert F. Kennedy and his uncles John F. Kennedy and Edward M.

RFK Jr

Tuesday

Rosie Gray

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the anti-confidence man

Dealing with the writer, statistician, Twitter warrior and self-described flâneur Nassim Nicholas Taleb is no simple matter. First there was the initial approach, months ago. I ventured to email him and ask for an interview despite his long-held and often-expressed low opinion of journalists. (Heuristic: those who make the biggest deal out of disliking the media care about it the most.) To my surprise, Taleb agreed to it almost immediately even though he “doesn’t do interviews.” Some logistical back and forth ensued. Then a twist: he would only agree to be interviewed if he wasn’t photographed. Why? Because in photos he is “made to look sickly and weak.

taleb

Monday

Rosie Gray

Big Pickleball is coming for your tennis court

One morning this past summer I played tennis with two friends at the John J. Carty tennis courts in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. About halfway through our session, dozens of senior citizens flooded onto what looked like four child-sized tennis courts next to ours. Wielding rectangular paddles, the seniors formed doubles teams and thwacked plastic wiffleballs back and forth across the nets, producing a bracingly loud pop-pop-pop sound. They were playing pickleball, a sport with origins as a 1960s backyard pastime that has become a craze in the United States over the past few years. Given the small courts and slow ball, the players didn’t have to move very far in any direction to keep a good rally going. They looked like they were having a lot of fun.

Pickleball