resistance is futile A peer’s promise can help kids pass the marshmallow test Younger children were slightly more likely to successfully delay gratification than older children. Jennifer Ouellette – May 15, 2025 9:46 am | 0 For decades, Walter Mischel's "marshmallow test" was viewed as a key predictor for children's future success, but reality is a bit more nuanced. Credit: Igniter Media For decades, Walter Mischel's "marshmallow test" was viewed as a key predictor for children's future success, but reality is a bit more nuanced. Credit: Igniter Media Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more You've probably heard of the infamous "marshmallow test," in which young children are asked to wait to eat a yummy marshmallow placed in front of them while left alone in a room for 10 to 15 minutes. If they successfully do so, they get a second marshmallow; if not, they don't. The test has become a useful paradigm for scientists interested in studying the various factors that might influence one's ability to delay gratification, thereby promoting social cooperation. According to a paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, one factor is trust: If children are paired in a marshmallow test and one promises not to eat their treat for the specified time, the other is much more likely to also refrain from eating it. As previously reported, psychologist Walter Mischel's landmark behavioral study involved 600 kids between the ages of four and six, all culled from Stanford University's Bing Nursery School. He would give each child a marshmallow and give them the option of eating it immediately if they chose. But if they could wait 15 minutes, they would get a second marshmallow as a reward. Then Mischel would leave the room, and a hidden video camera would tape what happened next. Some kids just ate the marshmallow right away. Others found a handy distraction: covering their eyes, kicking the desk, or poking at the marshmallow with their fingers. Some smelled it, licked it, or took tiny nibbles around the edges. Roughly one-third of the kids held out long enough to earn a second marshmallow. Several years later, Mischel noticed a strong correlation between the success of some of those kids later in life (better grades, higher self-confidence) and their ability to delay gratification in nursery school. Mischel's follow-up study confirmed the correlation. Mischel himself cautioned against over-interpreting the results, emphasizing that children who simply can't hold out for that second marshmallow are not necessarily doomed to a life of failure. A more nuanced picture was offered in a 2018 study that replicated the marshmallow test with preschoolers. It found the same correlation between later achievement and the ability to resist temptation in preschool, but that correlation was much less significant after the researchers factored in such aspects as family background, home environment, and so forth. Attentiveness might be yet another contributing factor, according to a 2019 paper. There have also been several studies examining the effects of social interdependence and similar social contexts on children's ability to delay gratification, using variations of the marshmallow test paradigm. For instance, in 2020, a team of German researchers adapted the classic experimental setup using Oreos and vanilla cookies with German and Kenyan schoolchildren, respectively. If both children waited to eat their treat, they received a second cookie as a reward; if one did not wait, neither child received a second cookie. They found that the kids were more likely to delay gratification when they depended on each other, compared to the standard marshmallow test. An online paradigm Rebecca Koomen, a psychologist now at the University of Manchester, co-authored the 2020 study as well as this latest one, which sought to build on those findings. Koomen et al. structured their experiments similarly, this time recruiting 66 UK children, ages five to six, as subjects. They focused on how promising a partner not to eat a favorite treat could inspire sufficient trust to delay gratification, compared to the social risk of one or both partners breaking that promise. Any parent could tell you that children of this age are really big on the importance of promises, and science largely concurs; a promise has been shown to enhance interdependent cooperation in this age group. Koomen and her Manchester colleagues added an extra twist: They conducted their version of the marshmallow test online to test the effectiveness compared to lab-based versions of the experiment. (Prior results from similar online studies have been mixed.) "Given face-to-face testing restrictions during the COVID pandemic, this, to our knowledge, represents the first cooperative marshmallow study to be conducted online, thereby adding to the growing body of literature concerning the validity of remote testing methods," they wrote. The type of treat was chosen by each child's parents, ensuring it was a favorite: chocolate, candy, biscuits, and marshmallows, mostly, although three kids loved potato chips, fruit, and nuts, respectively. Parents were asked to set up the experiment in a quiet room with minimal potential distractions, outfitted with a webcam to monitor the experiment. Each child was shown a video of a "confederate child" who either clearly promised not to eat the treat or more ambiguously suggested they might succumb and eat their treat. (The confederate child refrained from eating the treat in both conditions, although the participant child did not know that.) Then the scientist running the experiment would leave the Zoom meeting for an undisclosed period of time, after telling the child that if both of them resisted eating the treat (including licking or nibbling at it), they would each receive a second one; if one of them failed, neither would be rewarded. Children could not see or communicate with their paired confederates for the duration of the experiment. The scientist returned after ten minutes to see if the child had managed to delay gratification. Once the experiment had ended, the team actually did reward the participant child regardless of the outcome, "to end the study on a positive note." The results were controlled for unavoidable accidental distractions, so the paper includes the results from both the full dataset of all 68 participants and a subset of 48 children, excluding those who experienced some type of disruption during the ten-minute experiment. In both cases, children whose confederate clearly promised not to eat their treat waited longer to eat their treat compared to the more ambiguous "social risk" condition. And younger children were slightly more likely to successfully delay gratification than older children, although this result was not statistically significant. The authors suggest this small difference may be due to the fact that older children are more likely to have experienced broken promises, thereby learning "that commitments are not always fulfilled." Of course, there are always caveats. For instance, while specific demographic data was not collected, all the children had predominantly white middle-class backgrounds, so the results reflect how typical children in northern England behave in such situations. The authors would like to see their online experiment repeated cross-culturally in the future. And the limitation of one-way communication "likely prevented partners from establishing common ground, namely their mutual commitment to fulfilling their respective roles, which is thought to be a key principle of interdependence," the authors wrote. DOI: Royal Society Open Science, 2025. 10.1098/rsos.250392  (About DOIs). Jennifer Ouellette Senior Writer Jennifer Ouellette Senior Writer Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban. 0 Comments

Part antiques dealer, part architect, this Belgian maverick is an unlikely source of lessons for contemporary material reuse Marcel Raymaekers (1933–) never qualified as an architect. This did not stop him from procuring the materials for, designing and building around 150 villas across Belgium. The exact number is unknown: Belgium’s architectural establishment mostly ignored and rejected Raymaekers just as he ignored and rejected them, and as a result his work has never been collated or taken seriously. Raymaekers himself never kept records of his work; he regarded the drawing board as a ‘torture device’, preferring sketches and improvisation on site, determined by the material batches he had to hand. The extent of Raymaekers’ oeuvre is also hard to fathom because he wanted to keep it under the radar of the tax authorities. They caught up with him eventually; he was bankrupted in 2014. Today, Raymaekers is a 92‑year‑old tenant living inside what was once his personal empire, Queen of the South, in the Limburg countryside in north‑western Belgium. This compound was – and to a limited extent, still is – a vast salvage yard packed with components scavenged from aggressive postwar demolition. This puzzling place, completed in 1972 but constantly expanded, is stuffed with billowing pitched roofs, impossible archways, numerous appendages and antechambers. In its heyday – the 1970s and ’80s – Queen of the South also had a nightclub, a restaurant, a jazz venue, Raymaekers’ own ultra‑luxe apartment, and an estaminet – a plush, wood‑panelled, banquet‑seated, mirror‑pillared café‑bar. Marcel Raymaekers was born in 1933 near Leuven in Belgium. In 1950, he enrolled to study architecture at the Sint-Lukas School in Brussels but left a year later without a degree. Though not officially an architect, Raymaekers proceeded to design around 150 projects, from suburban homes to hotels and music venues – in 1986, he completed the Orlando discotheque, which burned down in 2014 Credit: Roger Dyckmans It was here that Raymaekers would sit – when he was not criss‑crossing Belgium scouting for materials – scoping out clients as they stumbled giddily into his world, overwhelmed by the aspiration and status anxiety that Queen of the South was designed to induce. The project was also a cultural hub attracting misfits and eccentrics, wheelers and dealers, experts and charlatans. The novelist Hugo Claus had his 50th birthday at Queen of the South, honouring Raymaekers in his speech. Raymaekers and his wife Hilde did interviews for newspapers, magazines and TV, often while reclining on their bed. The media was not interested in him as an accomplished architect, but as a purveyor of kitsch, an absurdity.  What Raymaekers had to sell his clients was more than simply antiques or even houses composed of them (buy enough materials and he would design you a house for no charge: that was always the deal). What Raymaekers was really selling were dreams of nobility: the life of a lord and lady of the manor, set apart (and above) from an increasingly modernised, homogenised world. Sensuality and hedonism, expressed through haptic, resplendent materials, was a big part of the allure too – the promise of a new way of life. One of Raymaekers’ bigger projects was a love hotel, Rubensexclusief, near Diest, completed in 1979. Each chamber was bestowed with an excess of padded velvet upholstery, often creeping up the walls and curving onto the ceilings. In the lobby, a salvaged confession booth was intended as a hiding place for guilty parties. Raymaekers brought several clients here to celebrate a successful transaction or to introduce them to his material language before starting design negotiations. His clients were middle‑class professionals – teachers, dentists, entrepreneurs, doctors, engineers, florists, pharmacists. Wealthy, but not extraordinarily rich. Many of his houses allowed them to live and work – interfacing with the public – on the same property. House Kelchtermans from 1970, for example, designed with architect Jos Witters, is composed of three pyramids – a home, a doctor’s office and a garage – structured with reclaimed oak beams. The roof tiles were salvaged by the client himself, Dr Kelchtermans, who received tips on where to find them from his patients, many of whom were farmers whose buildings were undergoing modernisation or demolition. Inside, it is all split‑levels, enormous fireplaces and complex, spiralling spaces. But the house’s biggest flourish is the skylights: 23 cupolas from decommissioned Lockheed T‑33 fighter jet cockpits. Raymaekers had found them languishing in a salvage yard on the other side of Flanders, saw their architectural potential and persuaded the client to buy them. Client participation was everything. The Boncher family’s house, completed in 1984, is a mash‑up of components from a derelict slaughterhouse in the city of Tienen and an army barracks in Verviers. The Bonchers themselves spent weeks carefully dismantling the bricks, Gobertange white stone and fleur‑de‑lis roof tiles from the slaughterhouse. Raymaekers had the grand entrance and guardhouses from the barracks available in his stock at Queen of the South, probably at a time‑sensitive discount. Many of the construction and final design decisions for House Boncher were left to happenstance; as the contractors built the walls up row‑by‑row, whenever a hole was needed for a window, Raymaekers would decide the dimensions only at that moment, based on whatever blue limestone window frame he happened to have in stock. Occasionally, the masons had to deconstruct part of a wall if a larger‑than‑anticipated window became available.  ‘Raymaekers’ houses are intelligent, instinctive assemblages of unpredictable material streams’ The interior, too, required improvisation. A white stone staircase, salvaged from a church pulpit, was meant to spiral up to the main bedroom of House Boncher but turned out to be about 200mm too short. The solution? Raymaekers and the contractors decided to build a hefty bump into the floor, consisting of cobbles and decorative tiling. It gave the staircase the necessary boost to reach up to the bedroom. It was typical of how designing exclusively with old materials required Raymaekers to empower and trust his contractors. Their design contributions, extemporisation and management of materials and how they might fit together were intrinsic to the realisation of every project. Working with large batches helped simplify matters – or allowed further complexity. When the Antwerp townhouse of art nouveau architect Joseph Bascourt was demolished to make way for the extension of a car park, Raymaekers snapped up the facade. Without knowing or caring how the pieces were originally composed, Raymaekers shuffled them into a new configuration for the facade of a flower shop a client had commissioned in the Brussels hinterland, completed in 1987. Raymaekers moved Bascourt’s decorative entablature from the top of the facade down to eye level, the better to be enjoyed; that this meant the windows on the top floor would now poke strangely above the roofline was fine with both Raymaekers and the client. The shreds of Raymaekers’ reputation that survive today, and what can be retrieved and reconstructed of his private and professional habits, are complex at best. His charisma and determination enabled him to convince artisans, contractors, labourers and clients to stretch themselves beyond what they thought possible, adding their own talent to his difficult buildings. But Raymaekers could also be intimidating and domineering. Collaborators often stepped away from his all‑consuming process; clients who considered him too pushy and found themselves running out of money could cease working with him. But this was not the case for his spouses, sons, grandchildren and daughters‑in‑law. They were bound to him by more than his business practice and art, and some of them suffered enduring and even unbearable distress. Their suffering is the shadow behind Raymaekers’ work. When researchers from Belgian design practice Rotor and the University of Ghent – also the authors of this article – started showing up at Queen of the South in 2011, it was not because of Raymaekers’ reputation; it was merely to include Queen of the South on Opalis’s database, a roster of salvage dealers covering much of north‑western Europe. We only realised the extent and importance of his work after several years and at least three visits. Raymaekers had refused all interviews since his bankruptcy, but after some persuasion, a meeting was scheduled in the courtyard on a grey winter day. Triggered by newspaper cuttings, his own limited archive of photographs and strolls through the stock, a picture emerged of the rich reuse ecosystem in which he was active in his glory days. It is this ecosystem, along with the remarkable and necessary fluidity of Raymaekers’ practice with old building materials, that was critical to his success. Belgium was blessed in the postwar period with a remarkably robust network of demolition contractors who were also salvage dealers, antiques dealers who were also designers, industrial scrapyards willing to let architects pick through their mountains of waste. The landscape was ripe for reuse. So was the legislative field. Raymaekers’ oeuvre could be mistaken, at a cursory glance, for just more Ugly Belgian Houses (several of them have indeed appeared on Hannes Coudenys’ infamous blog). His houses appear to be kitsch, chaotic, brazen, overstuffed with mixed metaphors. But they are much more than that. They are intelligent, instinctive assemblages of unpredictable material streams. They are bracing, never boring. And though they are wildly out‑of‑step with today’s tastes, the houses – and moreover, the kind of innovative practice that built them – have a lot to teach spatial practitioners about reusing architectural materials and circularity in the construction industry. And as with any of those so‑called ‘ugly’ Belgian houses, the label is a trivialisation (and an elitist one) of something systemic and generative. What makes possible such expressionistic and characterful suburban houses in Belgium – whatever one thinks of their quality – is government policy since the postwar era. While other European countries went all in on standardised social housing, in Belgium, the 1948 De Taeye Law offered construction grants and a state guarantee on mortgages, triggering families to initiate, help design and sometimes even execute the construction of their own homes, tapping into a rural tradition of self‑reliance. Raymaekers worked at a time when modernisation – and the demolition it demanded – was churning out a constant flow of antique materials. It was also a time when the merger and exchange of roles in the architectural process – from material procurement, to design and collaboration live on site – was still possible. Material reuse today is much harder. It must work precisely against the linear flows of extraction, capital, efficiency and predictability – all supercharged by the digital and its requirement of an almost omniscient predictability, and by increasingly demanding rules around compliance and liability. But to explore the wild potential of material reuse – not just to reduce embodied carbon, but to unleash new design potential and a richer culture around material (heritage) and practice – it must be possible to imagine ways in which material procurement, construction sites and the architects’ role can change fundamentally again.  Illustration: Laslo Antal for The Architectural Review. Read more about the process of making this portrait here 2025-05-15 Justinien Tribillon Share AR May 2025CircularityBuy Now

Lovell House | © Julius Shulman Few residential projects in the history of architecture have so concisely synthesized the aspirations of the modernist movement as the Lovell House. Designed by Richard Neutra and constructed between 1927 and 1929, this hillside residence overlooking Los Angeles is more than a stylistic landmark. It is a rigorous exploration of space, health, and industrial modernity. Commissioned by Dr. Philip Lovell, a health advocate and proponent of naturopathy, the house was conceived not as a retreat from the world but as a manifesto supporting rational living. For Neutra, who had recently arrived in the United States from Europe, this project represented a professional breakthrough and a profoundly personal alignment of ideological principles. Lovell House Technical Information Architects1-6: Richard Neutra Location: 4616 Dundee Drive, Los Feliz, Los Angeles, California, USA Area: 446 m2 | 4,800 Sq. Ft. Project Year: 1927 – 1928 Photographs: © Julius Shulman Philip Lovell wanted a house that would express his ideas of health, hygiene, and fitness. I wanted a house that would express my ideas of modern architecture. In the end, we built both. – Richard Neutra 7 Lovell House Photographs © Michael Locke, Flickr User © Michael Locke, Flickr User © Barcelo Photography © Barcelo Photography © Barcelo Photography © Barcelo Photography © Julius Shulman © Julius Shulman © Julius Shulman © Julius Shulman © Julius Shulman © Julius Shulman Context and Commission The interwar period witnessed a radical reevaluation of domestic space, partly driven by technological advancements and shifting attitudes toward hygiene and well-being. Within this cultural milieu, Dr. Lovell, already known for commissioning the Lovell Beach House by Rudolf Schindler, sought to build a residence that would embody his beliefs in clean living, sun exposure, and fresh air. His choice of Neutra, an architect trained in Vienna and influenced by figures such as Adolf Loos and Erich Mendelsohn, signaled a deliberate move toward a more European, functionalist approach. The Lovell House was Neutra’s first major commission in the United States and his opportunity to engage with the burgeoning discourse around the International Style. Lovell’s trust in Neutra and the architect’s commitment to creating a scientifically ordered environment set the stage for one of the most iconic modern homes in American architecture. Design Strategies and Construction Innovation On the hills of Los Feliz, the Lovell House is among the earliest examples of residential steel-frame construction in the United States. Neutra’s use of this system, more commonly associated with commercial or industrial buildings then, allowed for a remarkably lightweight structure that could seemingly float above its steep site. The steel frame also permitted large spans and cantilevers, freeing the plan from traditional load-bearing constraints and enabling expansive glazed openings. The house is organized as a vertical sequence of spaces, with each floor serving a distinct function. The lower level includes areas for exercise and recreation, aligned with Lovell’s ideals, while the upper floors house living and sleeping quarters. Circulation is carefully orchestrated, with a suspended exterior stair emphasizing the connection between levels without interrupting the building’s formal clarity. Transparency and openness are guiding principles throughout the design. Ribbon windows, floor-to-ceiling glazing, and open terraces blur the boundary between inside and out, capitalizing on Southern California’s climate while reinforcing Neutra’s belief in architecture’s capacity to mediate between human beings and their environment. Materiality and Environmental Integration The Lovell House’s material language is deliberately spare. Industrial steel, concrete, glass, and stucco are deployed precisely, rejecting ornamentation in favor of surface, proportion, and rhythm. Neutra’s choice of materials was aesthetic and deeply aligned with the project’s hygienic ethos: smooth, cleanable surfaces, built-in furniture, and controlled daylight contribute to a sense of physical and psychological well-being. Despite its machine-like clarity, the house is far from alienated from its context. The steeply sloping terrain becomes an active component of the design. Outdoor terraces, bridges, and gardens mediate between the constructed and natural environments, encouraging movement, exposure to sunlight, and engagement with the landscape. Neutra’s sensitivity to site and orientation ensured that the building was not merely placed on the land but woven into its topography and climate. Legacy and Influence The Lovell House has long occupied a pivotal place in the architectural canon. Featured in the 1932 Museum of Modern Art exhibition that introduced the International Style to an American audience, it exemplified the movement’s nationalist ideals in built form. Its influence on subsequent generations of architects in the U.S. and abroad cannot be overstated. For Neutra, the project marked the beginning of a prolific career dedicated to what he termed “biorealism”: integrating architecture with its inhabitants’ physiological and psychological needs. The house’s emphasis on health, efficiency, and environmental responsiveness would become hallmarks of his later work. Lovell House Plans Sketches | © Richard Neutra Floor Plans | © Richard Neutra Elevations | © Richard Neutra Elevations | © Richard Neutra Isometric View | © Richard Neutra Lovell House Image Gallery About Richard Neutra Richard Neutra (1892–1970) was an Austrian-American architect whose work played a pivotal role in defining the architectural identity of mid-20th century California. Deeply influenced by European modernism and trained under figures like Adolf Loos and briefly Frank Lloyd Wright, Neutra brought a rigorous, human-centered approach to design that emphasized clarity, health, and environmental responsiveness. His architecture fused technological precision with psychological and physiological considerations, resulting in dwellings that were as much about wellness as they were about aesthetics. Best known for projects like the Lovell House and the Kaufmann Desert House, Neutra’s legacy is a model of modern architecture’s potential to harmonize life, nature, and innovation. Credits and Additional Notes Client: Dr. Philip Lovell Design Period: 1927 Construction Period: 1928–1929 Site Conditions: Steep hillside lot in Los Feliz with expansive views over Los Angeles Construction System: Steel-frame structure with gunite (sprayed concrete) and stucco cladding Architectural Style: International Style / Modernism Neutra: Complete Works by Barbara Mac Lamprecht, Peter Gossel, Dion Neutra, Julius Shulman

When a Toronto legal eagle who happens to be a hardcore design hound moved into a new home in the city’s Rosedale neighborhood, she knew exactly what she wanted: something moodier and edgier than her last place. She was done with the white wall living that defined her previous home. “I wanted a feel of age and patina,” she says. “The last thing I wanted was a new-build vibe.”So she enlisted Montana Labelle, the rock star of the city’s design scene, to renovate her 1911 Dutch Colonial–style home. The interior designer, who has long Hitchcock-blonde hair and intricate wrist tattoos (her Canadian parents named her Montana “just because they liked the sound of it”) is a graduate of the Parsons School of Design in New York, and she has a wait list among Toronto’s young professional set. She also has a lifestyle brand featuring objects she creates largely out of her favorite material, marble—everything from richly veined salad spoons to toothbrush holders to toadstool-shaped side tables.Patrick BillerA custom bookcase holds the homeowner’s collection of Montana Labelle Lifestyle and vintage ceramics. The chair is by Adrian Pearsall.“Montana is a bit of an outsider, and as such she has attracted the right kind of people.”—Tommy Smythe Despite her firm’s growth, Labelle is selective about the clients she takes on, and she keeps a relatively low profile. “She has managed to remain a bit of a mystery,” says Tommy Smythe, a Toronto decorator and television personality. “Montana is a bit of an outsider, and as such she has attracted the right kind of people. She’s working with clients who want her to create a world for them. She’s truly an artist.”Patrick BillerThe living room mantel in the 1911 home was covered in volcanic ash–glazed tile by Formafantasma for Dzek. Custom cocktail table; Montana Labelle Lifestyle bowl; Samsung Frame TV.Labelle’s face lights up when she speaks of her passion for craftsmanship and objects with beautiful imperfections. “People are craving authenticity and connection in their spaces more than ever,” she says. “Cookie cutter decor is being swapped out for unique pieces that tell a story and add personality to a home.”Patrick BillerThe dining room’s Cresco table by Acerbis is framed by 1970s Mobil Girgi chairs and a vintage Fritz Hansen settee. Sconces by RBW; Venetian plaster walls in Benjamin Moore’s Natural Cream; artwork by Michael J. Kuczer.For this 4,000-square-foot residence she created a bathroom vanity out of a midcentury brutalist dresser, clad a living room mantel in Formafantasma volcanic tiles, and planted a deep clay soaking tub in the primary bathroom. She also enlisted decorative painter Jeanne Shemilt to sheath the walls in rich Venetian plaster finishes. “I wanted every room to feel warm and curated,” Labelle says.Patrick BillerIn the primary bath the clay soaking tub is by Studio Loho. Vintage Pierre Chapo chair; walls in Benjamin Moore’s Masada. The hands-on approach extended to the client, who appears to be as conversant in French designers from the 1960s and in midcentury Italian lighting fixtures as she is in the law. She and Labelle, together with Shemilt, put their heads together, and within a year (which in design terms is basically the blink of an eye) they had created a richly realized and one-of-a-kind monument to the power of women who know what they want—and what they don’t. “What can I say?” says the homeowner, whose first project with Labelle was eight years ago. “We are very efficient.”Tour this Handcrafted, Patina-filled Toronto HomeThe lawyer had no desire for a house that looked like the neighbors’ homes. “She is moody in a good way,” Labelle says. “She likes rooms that are dark and interesting. We wanted to create something that would reflect her personality.”Walls were knocked down, curios were purchased, and each room became a modern yet eminently livable refuge. There were vintage wall tapestries, a midcentury Italian modular sofa now re-covered in earthy Dedar stripes, and in the family room Labelle designed white shutters and had them customized with polka dot cutouts. The goal was to nail down the cool factor but with nothing cold about it.The goal was to nail down the cool factor but with nothing cold about it.Labelle found many of the home’s vintage pieces on Etsy, as well as at Texas and Massachusetts antiques fairs, from which she livestreamed her favorite finds to the client. “I’d send a picture, and within minutes she’d say yes or no,” the designer says. Labelle pushed her to accept groovy finds. For her part, the owner insisted on a bathtub and a laundry room sink ample enough for her goldendoodle, along with a long harlequin-tiled hall corridor where her dog could frolic on freezing winter days.Though the project wrapped two years ago, Labelle and the client still text daily—about their pets or cool design images they spot on the internet. The homeowner now has a dream home as well as a friend and thought partner—and no regrets. “It’s a very different house,” she says of her place. “Every time somebody comes over, they say it’s unlike anything they’ve ever seen before. And I know if I ever had to move out of this house for whatever reason, it would be okay, because Montana would help me make the next one equally amazing—if not more.” ◾This story originally appeared in the May 2025 issue of Elle Decor. SUBSCRIBE

Iron Man was a resounding success when it opened in 2008, earning more than half a billion dollars and declaring in no uncertain terms that Marvel Studios—and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as it later came to be known—had arrived. Although Marvel was also developing movies about Thor, Captain America, and Ant-Man at the time, Iron Man 2 was pushed to the front of the line and set for release in May 2010, just two years after the first film. The idea was to cash in on the surprise success of Iron Man and give the other movies a little more time to breathe and develop, with the ultimate goal of teaming all the characters up in The Avengers. But perhaps due to its rushed production schedule, studio growing pains, and the need to lay down breadcrumbs for the stories to come, Iron Man 2 was a shaky affair when it eventually came out. Not that this hurt its box office potential. It grossed more than the first film. Still, it did not escape the notice of critics and hardcore fans, resulting in a film that still regularly lands near the bottom of MCU movie rankings. Strangely, however, Marvel Studios has repeated many of the same mistakes it made on Iron Man 2 in later films while also taking some of the wrong lessons from the troubled production of the MCU’s first sequel. A Rushed Development With Iron Man 2 announced days after the release of Iron Man (even before the relative failure of The Incredible Hulk that same year), Marvel had to scramble to come up with a story and lock down its principal players. Robert Downey Jr., of course, was signed to reprise the role of Tony Stark at a much higher salary. Gwyneth Paltrow was also confirmed to return, as was director Jon Favreau (who would also once again play Stark security chief Happy Hogan). Also returning were Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg as Nick Fury and Agent Phil Coulson, respectively, expanding the presence of S.H.I.E.L.D. that was briefly established in the first film. Downey and Favreau tapped writer/actor Justin Theroux to pen the screenplay, which would introduce villains Justin Hammer and Whiplash (actually a sort of hybrid of that character and the Crimson Dynamo) into the story after comic book arch-nemesis The Mandarin was nixed as both too fantastical and potentially racist. Also slated to make her debut in the movie: Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), a nod to the impending creation of the Avengers but one of the many elements of a movie that was potentially piling up too many plot threads. Although initial reports suggested that at least part of the film would adapt the famous “Demon in a Bottle” storyline, in which Tony Stark becomes a full-blown alcoholic, that aspect of the narrative was toned down due to concerns over toy sales and younger viewers’ perception of Iron Man. The movie reportedly began filming without a finished script, something that would hamper future Marvel movies and lead the studio to make reshoots a permanent part of every film’s production schedule. This necessitated Theroux having to do daily rewrites on the set with Favreau and Downey, with the latter’s ad-libbing and improvisatory style of acting further muddying what was already a confusing and tonally uneven plot. New Faces, New Problems As mentioned, Downey, Paltrow, Favreau, Gregg, and Jackson (the latter after some torturous negotiations) all returned to their roles in Iron Man 2, but Terence Howard, who co-starred in Iron Man as Tony Stark’s best friend, Col. James “Rhodey” Rhodes, did not. Depending on who you ask, Howard was either too difficult or too expensive—or both—to keep around for the sequel. He was replaced by Don Cheadle, who’s played Rhodey (and become a fan favorite, at least until Secret Invasion retconned him as a Skrull) ever since. Ironically Marvel should have learned from this and the recasting of Bruce Banner (from Edward Norton to Mark Ruffalo) that it was okay to recast a major role once in a while. But the biggest mistake Marvel made in this regard was arguably announcing that T’Challa/Black Panther would not be recast after the tragic death of Chadwick Boseman, which left the MCU without one of its most potentially important superheroes (Marvel has since seemingly eased up on this, with Harrison Ford replacing the late William Hurt as “Thunderbolt” Ross and rumors circulating that a new T’Challa from a different universe will soon appear). Still, the casting of Iron Man 2’s villains, Justin Hammer and Ivan Vanko/Whiplash, set some precedents that would later haunt the MCU in a different way. Hammer was played by Sam Rockwell (an early candidate for Iron Man himself) and acquitted himself well, but his role was in some ways superfluous to a story already packed with new characters and themes and his function in the movie was not always clear (he’s also yet to reappear in the MCU). But it was Mickey Rourke being courted to play Whiplash that perhaps caused the most angst. With Rourke coming in hot off his Oscar-nominated, Golden Globe-winning comeback performance in The Wrestler, Marvel wanted to seize a prestige casting coup—a move similar to its hiring of recent Oscar winner Brie Larson years later to play Captain Marvel. It could be argued that neither Rourke nor Larson was ultimately the right fit for their roles, but luring award winners to a comic book universe was too tempting for Marvel to pass up. In retrospect, they might have even dodged a bullet when Joaquin Phoenix passed on playing Doctor Strange given the actor’s reportedly mercurial methods. Rourke allegedly made bizarre demands to Marvel on Iron Man 2. This included that Vanko have a pet bird and wear his hair in a bun. He also reportedly clashed with Favreau during filming. Later he would say publicly he was unhappy with the final product, claiming that a lot of his performance was left on the cutting room floor. Whiplash in the finished film is certainly a strange character and the first of many undercooked Marvel villains to come. But that didn’t stop the studio from pursuing other actors and filmmakers basking in the glow of a high-profile awards run. Too Much of Everything Whereas the first Iron Man was a sleek, crisply told origin story, Iron Man 2 was, narratively speaking, a mess. The film dealt with Tony Stark’s inability to reconcile his personal identity with his new public persona as Iron Man, his lingering issues with his father, Howard Stark (John Slattery), his burgeoning drinking problem (less visible in the finished film, but still there), and his discovery that the core element in his arc reactor was slowly poisoning him. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! And that was just Tony; the rest of the film introduced Black Widow and the beginnings of the Avengers, put Rhodey in his War Machine armor for the first time, expanded the role of Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D., set out easter eggs for Thor and Captain America, and tried to balance the roles of two villains whose motivations and tones were not at all well-defined or complementary. It was, in short, a hodgepodge of ideas, plot points, and hints at future movies that all but dragged itself over the finish line without a coherent structure—a problem that would crop up again in the MCU. The franchise’s obsession with world-building at the expense of focus and logic reared its head in Avengers: Age of Ultron, which brought four new characters into an already crowded ensemble (Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Vision, and the title villain) while also planting seeds about Asgard, Wakanda, and the Infinity Stones (some of which, to be fair, did pay off later). Even the underrated Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, released years later, acted partly as a commercial for the still-unaired Ironheart TV series (ironically The Marvels worked in reverse, requiring audiences to watch two TV shows to understand some of what was happening). Part of the charm of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, of course, is watching out for those many easter eggs, post-credit scenes, and surprise cameos that remind us that it is indeed a universe, one that’s constantly evolving and expanding. But some of those universe-building elements have worked better than others over the years, and with Iron Man 2, it felt like sensory overload—not that that stopped Marvel from doing it again and again in the years since. Iron Man 2: The Gift That Keeps on Giving? Iron Man 2 was an even bigger success at the box office ($624 million) that its predecessor ($585 million), but it also cost more ($200 million as opposed to $140 million) and was less enthusiastically received by critics. It was a troubled, patchwork project from the start, but even as Marvel Studios went on to hit heights of success no one could have possibly imagined for a filmed comic book universe, the studio continually made the same mistakes that dogged the production of Iron Man 2 and kept it from being the sequel it could have been. In some cases those mistakes may have temporarily dinged the brand (Age of Ultron), but in the long run, their impact has not done permanent damage to the MCU or the vast majority of its output. Still, with the last few years being particularly rocky ones for the MCU in terms of quality and coherence, it might not hurt Kevin Feige and company to fire up Iron Man 2 once in a while and remember it as a cautionary tale of what not to do.

What do the Suez Canal, the Roman Goddess Libertas, and ancient Egyptian sculptures have in common? The Statue of Liberty. Surprising? Sure, but the connections make sense when you know the story as recounted by Columbia University psychologist Sheena Iyengar on a recent episode of Hidden Brain. The French artist Frédéric Bartholdi drew inspiration from Egyptian sculptures when he submitted a design for a sculpture that was going to be built at the Suez Canal. That plan for the Suez Canal sculpture fell through, leading Bartholdi and a friend to raise money to create a sculpture as a gift to the United States. Bartholdi designed the sculpture after studying the intricacies of the Roman Goddess Libertas, a significant female icon in the late 1800s. He also modeled the statue on Isabelle Boyer, who was 36 years old in 1878. Finally, Bartholdi incorporated his mother’s face into the proposed design. The result? The Statue of Liberty. Bartholdi’s unorthodox yet methodical approach yielded one of the most famous sculptures in the world. How did he do it? Did he let his mind run wild? Did he generate endless lists or draw hundreds of plans for each sculpture? Was he a 19th-century brainstorming advocate? The Problem “Yes,” would be the answer of many innovation experts today. From stand-ups to workshops and templates to whiteboards, getting the creative juices flowing often involves brainstorming along with the reminder that “there are no bad ideas” and “more ideas are better.” Practiced and repeated so often, this approach to creativity must work, right? Wrong, says Iyengar. Too many ideas hinder creativity because the human brain can only manage a few ideas at once. “Creativity requires you to have a bunch of pieces and to not only be able to have them in your memory bank in a way that you can kind of say what they are, but to be able to keep manipulating them in lots of different ways. And that means, you know, in order for your mind to be able to be facile enough to do that, it is going to need fewer pieces.”— Hidden Brain, “How to be more creative” Evidence for this view includes a study published by Anne-Laure Sellier of HEC Paris and Darren W. Dahl of British Columbia. The authors compared knitting and crafting in two experimental studies. The results suggested that restricting the number of materials and other creative inputs enhanced the creativity of study participants. The reason was the participants’ ability to enjoy the creative process more, which enhanced their creative output. A few years ago, I had a similar experience while planning a series of studies. As with any initiative, identifying the scope was key. The problem? Rather than choose from two or three well-defined options, the team discussed several themes at once and then piled on a series of ideas about the best format for presenting these themes: Lists, tables, graphs, images, and flowcharts. The results looked something like this. A messy whiteboard is not inherently bad. The question is whether brainstorming results like these block or enhance creativity. If the board above seems overwhelming, it’s worth considering a more structured process for creativity and idea generation. The Solution: Three Ways To Enhance Creativity Just as Bartholdi approached his designs methodically, designers today can benefit from limits and structure. In this article, I’ll shed light on three techniques that enhance creativity: Controlled curiosity Imposing constraints and making a plan Look to other domains Tip 1: Controlled Curiosity In today’s world, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that creativity comes from simply exposing yourself to a flood of information — scrolling endlessly, consuming random facts, and filling your mind with disconnected data points. It’s a trap because mindless absorption of information without understanding the purpose or deeper context won’t make you more creative. True creativity is fueled by curiosity, the drive to know more. Curiosity is powerful because it acts as an internal compass, guiding our search for knowledge with intention. When you’re curious, you don’t just passively take in information; you actively seek it with a purpose. You have a question in mind, a direction, a reason that shapes the way you explore. This sense of purpose transforms information from a chaotic influx of data into structured, meaningful insights that the brain can organize, categorize, and retrieve when needed. In my role as a user experience (UX) researcher, I recently needed to review 100+ internal and industry research papers to establish and understand what was already known about a specific subject. The challenge was how to sort, organize, and absorb this information without feeling overwhelmed. Was it better to leverage AI tools like Gemini or ChatGPT to summarize this body of knowledge? How reliable would these summaries be? Was it better to read the executive summaries and copy a few themes to include in a synopsis of all of these papers? What was the best way to organize this information? Which tool should I use to summarize and organize? Faced with a tight deadline and mounting stress, I paused to reassess. To avoid spiraling, I asked: What are the core objectives of this research review? I then defined three key goals: Extract three to five themes to present to several internal teams. Craft a research plan pegged to these themes. Leverage these themes to inform a series of screens that the design team would create to test with real users. With clearly defined objectives, I had a purpose. This purpose allowed me to channel my innate curiosity because I knew why I was wading through so much material and who would read and review the synthesis. Curiosity drove me to explore this large body of research, but purpose kept me focused. Curiosity is the drive to learn more. Creativity requires curiosity because, without this drive, designers and researchers are less likely to explore new ideas or new approaches to problem-solving. The good news is that research and design attract the naturally curious. The key lies in transforming curiosity into focused exploration. It’s less about the volume of information absorbed and more about the intent behind the inquiry, the depth of engagement, and the strategic application of acquired knowledge. Purposeful curiosity is the difference between drowning in a sea of knowledge and navigating it with mastery. Tip 2: Imposing Constraints And Making A Plan Just as purpose makes it easier to focus, constraint also contributes to creativity. Brainstorming 50 ideas might seem creative but can actually prove more distracting than energizing. Limiting the number of ideas is more productive. “Some people think that having constraints means they can’t be creative. The research shows that people are more creative when there are constraints.”— Dr. Susan Weinschenk, “The Role of Creativity in Design” The point is not to limit creativity and innovation but to nurture it with structure. Establishing constraints enhances creativity by focusing idea generation around a few key themes. Here are two ways to focus on idea generation: During meetings and workshops, how might we (HMW) statements help concentrate discussion while still leaving room for a variety of ideas? For example, “How might we condense this 15-step workflow without omitting essential information?” Identify the problem and conduct two exercises to test solutions. For example, three customer surveys conducted over the past six months show a consistent pattern: 30% of customers are dissatisfied with their call center experience, and time-on-call has increased over the same six-month period. Divide the team into two groups. Group 1 writes two new versions of the greeting customer service representatives (CSRs) use when a customer calls. The next step is an A/B test. Group 2 identifies two steps to remove from the current CSR script. The next step is a trial run with CSRs to record time-on-call and customer satisfaction with the call. “Constraint” can be negative, such as a restriction or limitation, but it can also refer to exhibiting control and restraint. By exercising restraint, you and your team can cultivate higher-quality ideas and concentrate on solutions. Rather than generate 50 ideas about how to reconfigure an entire call center setup, it is more productive to focus on two metrics: time-on-task and the customer’s self-rated satisfaction when contacting the call center. By channeling this concentrated energy towards well-defined challenges, your team can then effectively pursue innovative solutions for two closely related issues. Tip 3: Look To Other Domains Other domains or subject areas can be a valuable source of innovative solutions. When facing a challenging design problem, limiting ideas but reaching beyond the immediate domain is a powerful combination. The high-stakes domain of airplane design provides a useful case study of how to simultaneously limit ideas and look to other domains to solve a design problem. Did you know that Otto Lilienthal, a 19th-century design engineer, was the first person to make repeated, successful flights with gliders? Maybe not, but you’ve likely heard of the Wright brothers, whose work launched modern aviation. Why? Lilienthal’s work, while essential, relied on a design based on a bird’s wings, requiring the person flying the glider to move their entire body to change direction. This design ultimately proved fatal when Lilienthal was unable to steer out of a nosedive and crashed. The Wright brothers were bike mechanics who leveraged their knowledge of balance to create a steering mechanism for pilots. By looking outside the “flight domain,” the Wright brothers found a way to balance and steer planes and ultimately transformed aviation. In a similar fashion, Bartholdi, the French artist who sculpted the Statue of Liberty, did not limit himself to looking at statues in Paris. He traveled to Egypt, studied coins and paintings, and drew inspiration from his mother’s face. Designers seeking inspiration should step away from the screen to paint, write a poem, or build a sculpture with popsicle sticks. In other words, paint with oils, not pixels; write with ink, not a keyboard; sculpt with sticks, not white space. On its face, seeking inspiration from other disciplines would seem to contradict Tip 2 above — impose constraints. Examined from another angle, however, imposing constraints and exploring domains are complementary techniques. Rather than list ten random ideas on a whiteboard, it’s more productive to focus on a few solutions and think about these solutions from a variety of angles. For example, recently, I found myself facing a high volume of ideas, source material, and flow charts. While organizing this information was manageable, distilling it into a form others could absorb proved challenging. Rather than generate a list of ten ways to condense this information, I took the dog for a walk and let my eyes wander while strolling through the park. What did I see when my eyes lit upon barren trees? Branches. And what do flow charts do? They branch into different directions. Upon finishing the walk, I jumped back online and began organizing my source material into a series of branched flows. Was this wildly innovative? No. Was this the first time I had drawn flowcharts with branches? Also no. The difference in this case was the application of the branching solution for all of my source material, not only the flow charts. In short, a walk and a nudge from nature’s design helped me escape the constraints imposed by a two-dimensional screen. Stepping away from the screen is, of course, good for our mental and physical health. The occasional light bulb moment is a bonus and one I’m happy to accept. Conclusion Yet these moments alone are not enough. You must channel inspiration by applying practical techniques to move forward with design and analysis lest you become overwhelmed by so many ideas that you become paralyzed and unable to make a decision. To avoid paralysis and reduce the chances of wasting time, I’ve argued against brainstorming, endless lists, and wall-to-wall post-its. Instead, I’ve proposed three practical techniques to boost creativity. Controlled curiosity. From brainstorming to endless scrolling, exposing yourself to high volumes of information is a trap because absorbing information without understanding the purpose or deeper context won’t make you more creative. The solution lies in transforming curiosity into focused exploration. Purposeful curiosity allows you to explore, think, and identify solutions without drowning in a sea of information. Imposing constraints. Brainstorming long lists of ideas might seem creative, but can actually prove more distracting than energizing. The solution is to nurture creativity with structure by limiting the number of ideas under consideration. This structure enhances creativity by focusing idea generation around a few key themes. Look beyond your immediate domain. Otto Lilienthal’s fatal glider crash shows what can happen when solutions are examined through the single lens of one subject area. The solution is to concentrate on innovative solutions for a single issue while reflecting on the problem from various perspectives, such as two-dimensional design, three-dimensional design, or design in nature. Resources How to be More Creative, Hidden Brain Media “Focus Creative Success is Enjoyed through Restricted Choice” by Annie Laure-Sellier and Darren W. Dahl Further Reading on Smashing Magazine “Boosting Up Your Creativity Without Endless Reference Scrolling,” Marina Chernyshova “UX And Design Files Organization Template,” Vitaly Friedman “The Scent Of UX: The Unrealized Potential Of Olfactory Design,” Kristian Mikhel “Fostering An Accessibility Culture,” Daniel Devesa Derksen-Staats

What’s the opposite of a “bear hug”?That was the phrase often used to describe President Joe Biden’s approach to Israel since the October 7, 2023 attacks: publicly and enthusiastically backing Israel, particularly when it comes to its wider regional conflict with Iran and its proxies, while quietly trying to restrain Israel’s actions in Gaza. Now President Donald Trump is traveling through the Middle East this week for a multi-country tour and dealmaking bonanza that pointedly does not include a stop in Israel. (Trump has denied the snub, saying his trip is “very good for Israel.”)The trip is the latest example of how Trump’s approach to the country often seems like a mirror image of his predecessor’s: he has little interest in restraining or pressuring Israel on its war in Gaza, but perhaps even less interest in supporting Israel on wider regional issues or aligning the two countries’ approach to the region. This is still an administration that is fiercely “pro-Israel” in rhetoric and in its willingness to punish Israel’s critics in America. But in practice, as he conducts his foreign policy, Trump seems remarkably unconcerned about what Israel has to say about it. “The one message that’s consistent [from Trump] is ‘I have plans for the region. You’re welcome to be a partner, but if you prefer to be ignored, go ahead,’” said Nimrod Novik, former foreign policy adviser to the late Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. This is not the Trump Israel was expectingWhen Trump was reelected last November, the response from the Israeli government was near rapturous. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had an often fraught relationship with Biden’s administration, praised Trump for “history’s greatest comeback” and predicted a “powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America.”It’s not hard to figure out why Netanyahu was so optimistic. During his first term, Trump, who often describes himself as the most pro-Israel president in history, took a number of precedent-smashing steps to demonstrate that support, including moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, which is not considered the country’s capital by most of the international community, and recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights.His first term included the Abraham Accords — a series of deals, mediated by the United States, normalizing relations between Israel and a number of Arab countries — as well as the scrapping of President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, loathed by Netanyahu’s government. Even by the standards of the US-Israel relationship, Trump’s approach stood out for its unconditional support. There were early indications that the second term would bring more of the same. For his ambassador to Israel, Trump picked Mike Huckabee, a Christian Zionist whose views on Israeli-Palestinian issues would put him on the far right even in Israeli politics. One of Trump’s most notable domestic initiatives so far has been a widespread crackdown on universities and activists over last year’s anti-Israel protests. Nor has his White House engaged in much Biden-style soul-searching about Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza: Trump quickly lifted the limited restrictions on arms exports to Israel and sanctions on violent West Bank settlers that Biden had put in place. His suggestion that Gaza be “cleaned out” of its Palestinian inhabitants to make room for a resort was received ecstatically by the Israeli far right. But when it comes to the Middle East, writ large, it’s been a different story. Trump seems remarkably unconcerned about appearing to be on the same page as the Israelis in his approach to the region, and has repeatedly negotiated directly with Israel’s main adversaries while cutting Israel out entirely.In early March, Axios reported that Trump’s envoy for hostage affairs, Adam Boehler, had been negotiating with Hamas over the release of American hostages — without coordinating with Israel, and breaking a longstanding precedent of the US refraining from direct talks with the terrorist group. The news created a firestorm of controversy and Boehler was removed from the talks, but just this week, Hamas agreed to release the last surviving American hostage, Edan Alexander. The negotiations that led to the release, led by Trump’s all-purpose foreign envoy Steve Witkoff, reportedly came after Hamas reached out via an “Arab Americans for Trump” group. Israel learned about the talks not from the White House, but from its own intelligence services. It was not the only surprise Netanyahu has gotten recently. During an Oval Office meeting with the prime minister last month, Trump dropped the surprise announcement that he was dispatching Witkoff and other negotiators to begin direct talks with Iran over its nuclear program. Netanyahu, who learned of the talks only after arriving in Washington, DC, has pushed the US to insist on a complete dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program. But officials including the secretary of state and vice president have suggested they might be open to Iran maintaining some type of civilian nuclear program — effectively returning to a similar framework to the one Trump tore up in 2018. And while Israel welcomed Trump’s decision in March to step up the US air campaign against the Houthis, the Yemeni militant group that has been firing missiles and drones at Israel as well as ships traveling through the Red Sea since the start of the Gaza war, Trump abruptly announced an end to the bombing earlier this month. He said he had received assurances from the Houthis that they would refrain from attacking US ships. (The rate at which the campaign was burning through American money and munitions also probably played a role.) Trump’s announcement made no mention of Israel, even though the Houthis had attacked Tel Aviv’s airport days earlier. The message was unmistakable: Israel could deal with the Houthis on their own. All in all, the Trump administration has been in direct talks with three of Israel’s main adversaries — Hamas, Iran, and the Houthis — to cut deals without Israel’s input, a nearly unprecedented situation according to longtime observers of relations between the two countries.“I don’t think there’s an administration, Democrat or Republican, that has even come close to undertaking the sort independent outreach that the Trump administration has now contrived over the course of the last three months,” said Aaron David Miller, a veteran Mideast peace negotiator who served in several US administrations. A changing GOP meets a changing Middle EastWhat explains the new frostiness in the US-Israel relationship? One answer may be that Trump is simply growing frustrated with Netanyahu. If there’s one consistent theme in Trump’s worldview, it’s skepticism about allies that, as he sees it, take more from America than they give. During his Oval Office meeting with Netanyahu, Trump brushed aside a suggestion that he should lift tariffs on Israel, saying “We give Israel $4 billion a year. That’s a lot. Congratulations, by the way.” Some Trump critics in the US have been crediting him for his approach to the relationship. The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman praised the president for realizing that “Netanyahu is not our friend,” while former Bernie Sanders foreign policy adviser Matt Duss credited him with handling “Netanyahu more effectively than alleged foreign policy expert Joe Biden did.” Netanyahu himself is probably not the only factor here. The second Trump term has also seen the rise in influence of the so-called “restrainer” wing of Republican foreign policy, who want to reduce America’s military footprint abroad, especially in the Middle East, at the expense of traditional hawks. While not uniformly anti-Israel (though some outside Trump allies like Tucker Carlson would probably qualify), the restrainers are much less inclined to think that US and Israeli interests are aligned. Vice President JD Vance, for instance, has stated that while Israel has a right to defend itself, he doesn’t believe the US should be drawn into a war with Iran. Trump’s speech in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, which included pointed shots at “neocons” and “nation builders,” may have been an indication of which faction is winning the battle for influence. And according to reporting by the Washington Post, former national security adviser Mike Waltz, one of Trump’s most traditionally hawkish advisers, was fired in early May in part because of Trump’s anger that Waltz had been in communication with the Israeli government about using military force against Iran. This is also not the same Middle East that Trump dealt with last time around. Israel isn’t the only longstanding US ally getting snubbed on Trump’s trip; previous presidents might have been expected to make a stop in Egypt or Jordan. But Trump is making a beeline for the Gulf, home of lucrative arms and computer chip deals, not to mention golf resorts and free 747s.During Trump’s first term, the Saudis and Emiratis were more or less aligned with the US and Israel on wider regional security matters — namely, the perceived danger posed by Iran. This was the context that made the Emiratis’ recognition of Israel in the Abraham Accords possible. This time, when Trump sits down with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the UAE’s Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, he’s likely to hear a different story. The Saudis and Iranians have reached a detente, and both Gulf countries have tried to extricate themselves from the long and brutal conflict with the Houthis in Yemen. Both now support a deal with Iran that would avoid war, and both supported an end to the US campaign against the Houthis. They’re also increasingly frustrated with Israel’s war in Gaza and the anger it has provoked throughout the region, including in their own populations. The scenes coming out of Gaza have raised the costs of appearing to be aligned with Israel.“Both MBS and MBZ have his respect. He listens to them,” said Novik, now a fellow at the Israel Policy Forum, of the Saudi and Emirati leaders. “They believe that what happens in Gaza doesn’t stay in Gaza. It’s destabilizing the region, and that’s bad for business.” All indications are that Trump is these days more interested in what he calls the “gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi” than the winding streets of Jerusalem. A case in point: both the first Trump administration and the Biden team sought a major regional deal that would tie US nuclear or security cooperation with Saudi Arabia to Saudi recognition of Israel. Though Trump is still calling for the Saudis — who have never recognized the Jewish state — to normalize relations, his team has reportedly dropped it as a demand for US-Saudi nuclear cooperation. If this comes to pass, it would effectively be giving up on what would be the crown jewel of the Abraham Accords process. A hands-off stance on GazaAll this is a dramatic shift, but it’s certainly not the change that critics of Biden’s support for Israel were hoping for. Trump has iced out the Israelis on regional diplomacy just as Israel is considering a plan for an “intensive escalation” of its military operations in Gaza. This could include the destruction of most of the enclave’s remaining buildings and and would give civilians a choice between moving to a tiny “humanitarian area” or leaving — though it’s not clear what countries would be willing to accept them if they did. Trump and his senior officials have not spoken out publicly about the plan and, according to Axios’ reporting, have “effectively given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a green light to do as he sees fit.” Israeli officials say the operation will begin if there is no ceasefire and hostage deal by the end of Trump’s visit to the region this week, though there are few indications that Trump is actively involved in pushing for one. It seems unlikely that Trump would employ pressure tactics that Biden was unwilling to use, such as conditioning military aid or addressing the Israeli public directly about the war. Trump has shifted radically on policy in the past, but for the moment, his cold shoulder doesn’t seem any more likely to put an end to the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza than Biden’s bear hug. See More:

Warning: contains spoilers for Bridgerton seasons one to three. Bridgerton’s creators have shown keen instincts when it comes to rearranging their adaptation of Julia Quinn’s book series for a TV audience. Instead of keeping in step with Quinn’s chronology and following Anthony Bridgerton’s love story up with that of his brother Benedict, they skipped ahead in season three to show us Colin and Penelope Featherington’s scandal-and-blackmail-hit romance. It was the right move, not just because Nicola Coughlan’s Penelope had quickly become a fan favourite and it makes sense to meet the audience where they are, but also because it drew the show’s Lady Whistledown storyline to a welcome close. In the TV show, it was revealed that Penelope was the Ton’s gossip columnist in the finale of season one. In Quinn’s novels, that mystery was stretched out until book four. Pen and Colin’s story leapfrogging Benedict’s meant that the Whistledown scandal could be put to bed at the right time for the TV show without the search for her true identity becoming too repetitive or dragged out. Now that Netflix has officially picked up Bridgerton for seasons five and six, the showrunners face a new choice: to stick with one sibling’s love story per season, or to run two concurrently. The latter makes much more sense for TV. In a book series, it’s less apparent that the rest of the characters are standing around with nothing much to do while the leads get on with their plot; on TV, that would be much more visible and much more of a problem. After Benedict’s romance is told in season four, which is due to arrive in 2026, next up in the book chronology is Eloise’s story, followed by Francesca’s. However, there are already signs that the showrunners are planning to rearrange things. Michael Stirling, a pivotal character in Francesca’s story who isn’t introduced until book six in Quinn’s timeline is already on screen as the gender-swapped Michaela in the season three finale. That suggests Francesca’s story will come in season five, or will perhaps begin as early as season four. Once again, that would be the right move for TV. Michaela’s arrival has piqued interest in Francesca’s story, and it would be a waste to stall for two seasons to deliver on that promise. The needs of the TV show are better served by overlapping the siblings’ stories than by continuing to separate them out into one per season. Season five could be both Eloise and Francesca’s, with season six telling the (aged-up) stories of remaining Bridgerton kids Gregory and Hyacinth. But where would that leave the showrunners’ oft-stated goal of making the full eight seasons of Bridgerton? There is, of course, one solution that Bridgerton’s creators are already showing signs of setting in motion: use the older women. Introduce non-book romances for TV characters who are better loved and more central on screen than they ever were in the books. We’ve already seen it with Violet Bridgerton, whose frisson with Lord Anderson had a promising start in season three. Why not spend the next four seasons also relighting the fires of Lady Danbury, Lady Featherington, or even Queen Charlotte herself? By weaving in romantic plotlines for women at a different stage in their lives to the debutantes and twentysomethings, Bridgerton can serve the needs of its TV audience and its characters both. Bridgerton season four is due to arrive on Netflix in 2026.

Three Formerly Enslaved Artists Created Beautiful Pottery 150 Years Ago, and Now Their Wares Are Coveted Around the World The stunning vessels from the H. Wilson & Company were forgotten for generations, only to gain new appreciation for the craftsmanship that went into them Photographs by DeSean McClinton-Holland Jacoba Urist June 2025 A jar made by H. Wilson & Company in Capote, Texas. Right, the muddy banks of Salt Creek, a tributary of the Guadalupe River about 50 miles northeast of San Antonio, where Wilson’s pottery company sourced its fine red clay.  The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; DeSean McClinton-Holland In 1856, the Reverend John McKamie Wilson Jr., a Presbyterian minister and entrepreneur interested in clay science, relocated from North Carolina to Texas. There in the Capote Hills—a rural, sparse enclave in Guadalupe County, 12 miles from the town of Seguin—Wilson opened a business called Guadalupe Pottery. Wilson mainly sold jugs, churns, crocks and cemetery flower jars. The pots featured crescent handles and a deep chocolate-colored interior of liquefied clay. Before refrigerators and iceboxes, high-fire, nonporous pottery was essential to life—the Tupperware or Ziploc bags of the 19th century. Clay pots preserved everything from grains, beef and butter to whiskey and even drinking water. The potters who worked under Wilson’s direction mostly used alkaline glaze, one of the oldest methods in ceramics, to create a glassy exterior from a slurry of wood ash, sand and clay. An arduous process in the 1850s, it took days to stoke underground wood-burning kilns to a high enough temperature for a successful firing. Three of Wilson’s potters were enslaved servants who traveled to Texas with him—Hiram, James and Wallace. For more than a decade, these men were responsible for nearly every facet of Guadalupe Pottery’s production: from mixing clay and expertly “throwing” the pots on a kick wheel to glazing and stacking vessels and meticulously controlling the temperature and duration of the kiln’s flames. The men kept working for the reverend even after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. In Texas, slavery didn’t end until June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and issued General Order No. 3, informing the people of Texas that all who’d been enslaved were free—the event commemorated as Juneteenth.  Paula King Harper, a descendant of Hiram Wilson, sits on the steps of the Sebastopol House in Seguin, Texas, with Wilson vessels from her own collection. Harper leads the Wilson Pottery Foundation and coordinates the Wilson Pottery Show each October. DeSean McClinton-Holland Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $19.99 This article is a selection from the June 2025 issue of Smithsonian magazine In 1869, Hiram founded his own stoneware business at a new site with James and Wallace, H. Wilson & Company. (Though not biologically related, all three took their enslaver’s surname, the practice of some Black Americans at the time.) Some scholars believe that H. Wilson & Company was the first business in Texas founded and owned by formerly enslaved people.  Pots created by the hands of Hiram Wilson and his colleagues have been passed down through households and sold at garage sales over the course of many generations. Today, their rich history, as well as their distinctive styles and glazes, make the jugs sought-after acquisitions for museum collections. Left to right: A preserve jar, a three-gallon butter churn and a large jar with a lid from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; a stoneware jar from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.  The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (3); NMAH A century and a half later, the pots they made are celebrated in the ceramics world. In silvery grays and greens, with uneven salt drips and textured glazes that resemble the moon’s surface or, sometimes, an orange peel, Wilson wares are coveted both as objets d’art and for their extraordinary story of Black self-determination in the postwar South. Wilson pottery now resides in museums across the United States, from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston—an indelible part of the country’s entrepreneurial and creative heritage.   The story of Hiram, James and Wallace Wilson is woven through with threads of folklore, given the sparse records kept at that time, particularly for people born into slavery. But over the last 50 years, researchers have uncovered more details about the Wilsons. Georgeanna Greer—a San Antonio pediatrician and ceramics collector-aficionado—was passionate about locating abandoned kilns, and she left a trove of Wilson information behind, including a 1973 taped interview with James Wilson’s son, James Wilson Jr.  Capote Baptist Church has been in the midst of a restoration since 2012. After a new pastor, Terry Williams, arrived, its membership surged from 4 congregants to 85. DeSean McClinton-Holland A wooden cross on the property of the Capote Baptist Church that Hiram Wilson founded in 1872 DeSean McClinton-Holland Emancipation offered the Wilsons an opportunity none had ever expected. Establishing a pottery business was complex and costly. It meant finding a suitable site, testing clay, constructing a kiln and hiring proficient workers. And the men did all this in an “intensely dangerous environment,” said Ashley Williams, a recent fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In the late 1860s, Black residents of Guadalupe County “filed almost 200 complaints with the Freedmen’s Bureau for unpaid wages and violent crimes” perpetrated against them. A Baptist missionary from Maine, the Reverend Leonard Ilsley, helped Hiram buy 600 acres of land for $500 and likely either gave Hiram a personal loan or served as a guarantor in the transaction. When Hiram died in 1884­—survived by his wife, Senia, and 11 children—Ilsley served as administrator of his estate. One of Hiram’s great-great-granddaughters, LaVerne Lewis Britt, first discovered her connection to the potters after her retirement, when she became interested in genealogy. Over the course of five years, she researched and wrote a book called In Praise of Hiram Wilson, which describes how her ancestor created a thriving post-slavery community in Capote. Hiram set aside 10 of his 600 acres for a Baptist church and became its minister. The white steepled chapel remains active today, beside a cemetery with cedar and crape myrtle trees. Many Wilsons have been laid to rest there, including Hiram, whose grave is marked by a tall obelisk.  Pastor Terry Williams has been leading the Capote Baptist Church since 2015. When he arrived, he says, he felt the spirit of Hiram Wilson and other former slaves who founded the church in 1872—“a cold breeze coming up in the summertime.”  DeSean McClinton-Holland A Bible rests on the piano at Capote Baptist Church. Right, the building has been in the midst of a restoration since 2012. After Pastor Williams arrived, its membership surged from 4 congregants to 85. Hiram also founded a one-room schoolhouse where Paula King Harper, another of his descendants, says her grandmother once taught. King Harper is the current president of the Wilson Pottery Foundation. On the phone, she described how interest in her celebrated ancestor’s technique has spread in collector circles since the organization’s founding in 1999. A pottery collector in San Antonio was at a garage sale and noticed the green salt glaze drip from underneath dirt that had dried on a gallon jug. “They purchased it for less than $10, went home, cleaned it up, and guess what it was? A stamped H. Wilson.” Finding that stamp is now the equivalent of finding a signed painting by a renowned artist. King Harper once sat at an auction that included several pieces of Wilson pottery from someone’s private estate. “There was a beautiful, pristine five-gallon jug I watched sell for $12,000,” she said. Traditionally, clay artists, who made quotidian jugs and jars rather than purely aesthetic works, have been considered second-tier makers, ranking below sculptors. But over the last few decades, contemporary and historic ceramicists like the Wilsons are receiving new scholarly and art-world attention. Williams, the recent Smithsonian fellow, is researching the Wilsons as part of her doctorate at Columbia University. She notes that most enslaved potters wouldn’t have been able to inscribe their names or initials on a pot. But once the Wilson potters were free, they added a maker’s mark, which made all the difference. Future generations were able to dive into the records and find out more about the remarkable potters. “Because we can tie the makers to these objects, which is so rare, it allows us to see the story about the resilience of the Wilson potters during slavery, and their extreme success and survival,” Williams said. Elmer Joe Brackner Jr. was a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Texas when he unearthed buried ceramic shards and located the original kilns at two different H. Wilson & Company sites. DeSean McClinton-Holland Ashley Williams, a recent pre-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, has been researching the Wilson potters as part of her PhD dissertation on crafts made by enslaved and imprisoned artists. DeSean McClinton-Holland The Wilsons’ style may have been influenced by the works coming out of the Edgefield district in South Carolina, a place then known as a kind of pottery Mecca. It was famous for massive, bulbous jars and glazes, features that the early Wilson pots share. Edgefield has its own significant history of highly skilled Black craftsmen, including David Drake, the earliest known enslaved potter to inscribe his work. CollectorsDeSean McClinton-Holland Later, the Wilsons’ pottery took on more distinctive features. The men started out using alkaline glaze, but once they opened their own business they switched to salt glaze, likely for its strength and waterproofing properties. Salt glaze also produces more consistent colors and textures, such as the bumpy orange-peel finish admired by H. Wilson & Company collectors. At the time, the method was uncommon in Texas, according to Michelle Johnson, project manager of the William J. Hill Texas Artisans and Artists Archive at the Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, part of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. “And it was dangerous,” she said, because salt glaze produces highly toxic chlorine gas from the wet salt thrown into the kiln during firing. (For this reason, contemporary ceramicists avoid the method altogether.) The Wilsons may have learned the technique from Isaac Suttles, an Ohio-born potter known for salt glazing, who is listed in the United States census as living in Seguin at the time.  The Sebastopol House, a Greek Revival home, was built in the 1850s by enslaved laborers who had advanced skills in working with concrete. Today, the building houses the Wilson Pottery Museum.  DeSean McClinton-Holland Lid rims are another notable element of H. Wilson & Company’s jars. At the first pottery-making site, during their enslavement, the men made more tie-down rims—jars without lids that require paper or cloth as a cover, which were easier and faster to make. Later, at their own shop, they crafted rims fitted for lids. Those lid rims allowed for more watertightstorage, but they also required more sophisticated expertise.If you think you may have stumbled on one of these treasures at a garage or estate sale, look for a horseshoe-like handle—the most significant visual identifier of a Wilson pot. It’s still unclear why Hiram, James and Wallace switched to these thicker, rolled handles from their original Edgefield-inspired crescents. It may have been because horseshoe handles are sturdier, offering more surface connection to the pot’s body. It’s another puzzling question that Williams is pursuing and hopes to answer in the future.  It took a long time for the art world to discover the Wilsons’ creations. After Hiram’s death in 1884, James and Wallace Wilson went on to work at another pottery site run by Marion Durham, a potter from South Carolina who had moved to Texas with John Chandler, who was most likely his enslaved servant at the time. By the time the Wilsons joined them, Durham and Chandler were in business together. That site closed in 1903. These pots remained in circulation, but many details of their story were lost.  Modern replicas of the Wilson pottery logo created by Earline Green. DeSean McClinton-Holland Earline Green, an educator and a member of the Wilson Pottery Foundation’s board of directors. Green helps promote the potters’ legacy by demonstrating their innovative 19th-century techniques.  DeSean McClinton-Holland Decades later, an anthropology graduate student named Elmer Joe Brackner Jr. conducted a magnetometry survey to find buried pottery. (Clay contains iron oxides that can become magnetized.) At the original Guadalupe Pottery site he found what’s known as a “groundhog kiln,” a uniquely Southern, semi-subterranean kiln used in the 19th century for firing alkaline-glazed pottery. At the second site, home of the independent H. Wilson & Company, Brackner found ceramic-glazed shards and another groundhog kiln. His research, and that of Georgeanna Greer, the ceramic historian, helped piece together the Wilsons’ unusual story. After many years of advocacy by the Wilson Pottery Foundation, art historians and curators began scouring land deeds, court documents and handwritten capacity marks (numbers that denote the volume of each jug) to present a fuller picture of the Wilsons, sometimes correcting previous theories about their methodology and timeline. Texas ceramic artist Earline Green researches the Wilsons’ past while creating her own pottery to honor their legacy. In 2018, she interviewed Wilson descendants and collectors and visited historical societies in Texas for archival information. Two years later, she curated an exhibition on her campus in Fort Worth; the show also displayed ceramic pieces she created based on the work of the Wilson potters. Deacon Willie Hightower Sr., a descendant of Hiram Wilson and one of the current deacons at Capote Baptist Church. DeSean McClinton-Holland Hiram Wilson’sDeSean McClinton-Holland The narrative continues to evolve, due in no small part to proud descendants of Hiram, James and Wallace. Every three years, hundreds of people gather in Seguin, Texas, for a jubilant three-day Wilson family reunion that is open to the public. In 2023, festivities included the Wilson Pottery Foundation gala and a tenth anniversary celebration at the Wilson Pottery Museum. The last reunion fell on the weekend before Juneteenth, and the reunion committee arranged a kickoff concert Sunday evening followed by Juneteenth events in Seguin’s downtown square. “I was fortunate to grow up in Texas in the 1980s, around the time when our cousin LaVerne Lewis Britt had uncovered the history,” explains DeSean McClinton-Holland, the photographer of this story and a Wilson descendant through his maternal grandmother. “I grew up knowing bits of the story and visiting the church.” He describes the process of documenting Hiram Wilson’s legacy as a healing journey. “To think, he was born into slavery and was able to accomplish so much shortly thereafter,” he says. “It’s inspiring and motivating to think of all the freedoms we have now, and that we really have to push a bit harder.”  Get the latest Travel & Culture stories in your inbox.

In the Minecraft universe, saddles were essentially an ancient technology whose recipe was lost to time. Nobody knew how to craft them. However, that’s all about to change with craftable saddles added into Minecraft’s upcoming Summer Drop 2025. They can be experienced now in Minecraft’s test realms (Java snapshot and Bedrock’s beta and preview). Just a simple three leather and one iron ingot recipe is ushering in a new, more easily accessible era of mounts. The history of saddles in Minecraft goes back to 2010, when they were introduced as a means to ride pigs. Over time, the uses of saddles increased beyond just pigs with rideable horses, donkeys, mules, striders, and camels. But while the demand for saddles increased, their supply did not. Players looking to foster a bond with a noble steed relied on gifts from the RNG gods. To find a saddle, players would have to find one in a dungeon chest or a villager chest, fish one out of the water, loot one off rare spawning mobs, or trade a villager for one. In some runs, this could take less than a couple of minutes, if you’re lucky to find one in the closest village. In others, it could be a frustrating, repetitive process. A common complaint with saddles, and mounts by extension, is that they are most useful in the early and midgame when they are hardest to find. Traveling on a mount doesn’t eat up hunger, and they’re great for traversing the overworld without having to jump for every one-block vertical change. Beyond that, having a noble steed chilling in diamond armor at your home bases’ stables is just cool. Turning saddles into a simple recipe, while also allowing shears to take saddles off mounts without inventories (like pigs), means that more rides than ever will be taken — giddyup!