In Gaza, the libraries are gone. We’ve all seen it on our phones, even as censorship continuously prevails. The schools are gone too. What survives, what has always survived, is the oral archive. The stories passed hand to hand, ear to ear, breath to breath. Edward Said reminded us, decades ago, that marginalized people must seize back the right to narrate, to produce what he calls “narrative evidence” when official accounts fail or disappear.

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When books burn and people vanish, Palestinian voices still insist on existing. There’s a famous Palestinian saying, albeit much more powerful in its original Arabic, that is the thesis of On the Zero Line, a collection of essays and poems written in the immediate aftermath of Israel’s invasion of Gaza in October, 2023: Bodies fall, not ideas.

That the book exists at all feels miraculous. On the Zero Line, published by Slow Factory and Isolarii, compiled by Tariq Asrawi of the Tibaq Publishing House in Ramallah, and translated into English by Samuel Wilder. Sadly, the publishers cannot now confirm the whereabouts of every writer in the anthology. That alone tells you everything.

In a moment engineered to destroy both people and their memory, the one thing the occupier cannot take away, Western literary institutions have taken the position to suppress anything that utters the word “Palestine.” Panels have been canceled and a single mention of Gaza can revoke a book tour. Manuscripts delayed because “now isn’t the right time.” A phrase that really means “we don’t want the backlash” and “we definitely don’t want literature that names the thing happening in real time.”

On The Zero Line matters now because we are witnessing, in real time, not only the destruction of human life in Gaza but the systematic dismantling of its cultural landscape. One can call it a  pushback against the idea that Palestinian life is only legible after the fact.

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In one entry, novelist Ahmad Issa begins with a brutal, sarcastic refrain: We are terrorists. That is what they call us, and certainly. I have no choice but to believe their narrative. He goes on—surely the Zionist media machine knows more than I ever could. He jokes—darkly—that he must accept that his wife, who lovingly prepares maqluba, is a terrorist, and that her maqluba must therefore be a weapon of mass destruction.

Maqluba, also known as the “upside-down” dish to Palestinians, is a fragrant, layered pot of rice, spiced vegetables, and tender meat that’s flipped dramatically onto a platter so it lands in one perfect, steaming tower. Because the Zionist narrative has become so normalized, so globally absorbed, Issa describes the psychic violence of being conditioned, even as a Palestinian, to doubt himself. To wonder if the simplest acts of care, like a home-cooked meal of maqluba, are somehow criminal.  It’s a dark satire of the “everything is Hamas” logic pushed by Zionist media, showing how absurdity becomes propaganda, and how propaganda becomes internalized harm. He’s describing the intimate damage of internalized erasure.

On The Zero Line matters now because we are witnessing, in real time, not only the destruction of human life in Gaza but the systematic dismantling of its cultural landscape.

To understand the urgency of On the Zero Line, one must understand the long lineage of Palestinian archival destruction and epistemicide, the killing of knowledge, as a weapon of settler colonialism. In 1948, as villages were depopulated under the Nakba, the newly formed Israeli army looted an estimated 70,000 Palestinian books and cataloged them under the sterile euphemism “Absentee Property.” Many of those books remain locked in Israeli institutions, misfiled as orphaned objects of “a vanished people.”

More recently in 2023 and 2024, airstrikes destroyed the Central Archives and Library of Gaza. The Rashad al-Shawwa Cultural Center, long a home for readings, lectures, theater, was also obliterated. Universities, literary salons, youth writing programs were gone or displaced.

One of the first things I noticed in the book is that many of the writers in On the Zero Line begin with questions, or return to them constantly. Questions of uncertainty. With the kind of thinking that happens when life has been whittled down to waiting: waiting for a signal, for news, for water, for morning, for the next airstrike.

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It’s one of the realities  of living under genocide, how the mind reshapes itself when so little is in your control. In Gaza, you don’t get to decide whether the internet is on or off, whether your phone has service, whether your home still exists by the time you return to it. And in that suspended state, the mind turns inward. It circles its own questions. Maybe that’s why so many entries are filled with Why? or How long? or What will happen to us? Because during war, and when the world narrows to danger and waiting, what else is there but questions?

The anthology becomes a guideline of questions not really expecting an answer, but needing to ask anyway.

Hesham Abu Asaker, one of the writers in the book, asks: “Do you see us, world? We see your forgetting as you silently tally our dead. Are you watching, or just admiring some aspect of our “heroism”, seduced by what is said?”

Razan Abu Asaker wonders, “How can death be so outrageous? How can it rip the heartbeat from a person’s chest with such ease?”

And A.A. Salama with the most simple of questions, “What’s wrong?”

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These are questions that don’t let the reader look away.

And to translate Gaza into English is to intervene in the world’s literary bloodstream. It interrupts the old colonial idea that Palestinian writing is supplementary, regional, “conflict literature,” always shelved next to tragedy rather than…normalcy.

And in the context of siege, translation stops being a scholarly act and becomes a logistical one. Like an act of smuggling. These writers can’t travel, but their sentences can. Their metaphors can. And their memories absolutely can. These poems slip under the door of the blockade, cross through fiber-optic cables, before landing in an editor’s email inbox thousands of miles away. Literature becomes the one border-crossing still possible. The only form of mobility no army has figured out how to fully restrict.

On The Zero Line is literature that has become its own archive not physically housed in buildings, because those buildings have been flattened, but housed in bodies, and in this case, a little red book.

For all the horror of the present moment, these stories cannot be locked away. They do not exist only during moments of catastrophe, nor do they require the dominant narrative of the media and of our governments to grant them meaning or legitimacy.

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Which means the reader becomes the library. The screen becomes the library. Every person who encounters this book becomes responsible for carrying it forward and amplifying the voices of those who cannot use their own.

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Take Major League Baseball, for example. Recently, the league placed Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase and pitcher Luis Ortiz on paid leave. Ortiz is reportedly being looked at as part of a gambling investigation tied to in-game prop bets. Over in the NBA, things are heating up too as former star Gilbert Arenas was arrested on suspicion of running illegal poker games. While Detroit Pistons guard Malik Beasley is also in the spotlight in relation to prop bets during the 2023-24 season.

Two years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in the NJ sports betting case (Gov. Murphy, et al. v. NCAA, NFL, NHL, NBA & MLB). Full ruling here – https://t.co/BrKMtdWxDo. Most important sentence from ruling below: pic.twitter.com/MSwr0hEIPx

— Ryan M. Rodenberg (@SportsLawProf) May 14, 2020

These are part of a larger trend that’s been growing ever since the US Supreme Court cleared the way for states to legalize sports betting back in 2018. What used to be a touchy subject in league offices is now fully woven into the sports world. And with gambling becoming easier to access and less taboo, it raises a big question whether betting culture is starting to take over pro athletes.

Why might some athletes be drawn to sports gambling and should they be able to gamble?

“Interesting… but the issue of professional athletes becoming involved in illegal gambling is complex but not entirely new,” Professor Andy Lane, a sport psychology expert from the University of Wolverhampton, told ReadWrite. “Sports history—particularly in boxing—shows longstanding links between gambling and attempts to influence outcomes, sometimes through organized crime.”

“From a psychological standpoint, elite athletes often exhibit traits such as high sensation-seeking, risk tolerance, and competitiveness—traits that are essential for sporting success but may also make them more susceptible to gambling behaviors.” – Professor Andy Lane, University of Wolverhampton

The difference today is access. “The advent of online gambling platforms and mobile apps has removed many of the barriers that once made such behavior more difficult or more visible,” Professor Lane explained. These days, elite athletes often have money to spend, downtime between games or seasons, and a natural craving for adrenaline. With gambling apps just a tap away on their phones, the temptation is always right there in their pocket.

“The largest single-year increases for all presented service and treatment utilization data were observed between 2021-22, following the implementation of legalized mobile sports betting in January 2022,” said the state’s Office of Addiction Services and Supports, which helps people dealing with gambling-related problems and disorders.

Right now, 22% of Americans have a mobile sports betting account. That number jumps to 48% for men between the ages of 18 and 49, according to the Siena College Research Institute.

Why is sports gambling so popular and has it increased temptation?

Dr. Greg Gomez, Clinical Director at The Oasis Recovery in California, sees this reflected in his own therapeutic work: “The accessibility of gambling apps, combined with marketing, has normalized gambling somewhat. It’s especially common in the sports world.” He added, “If an athlete is off-season, or injured, they may seek out gambling as a substitute for thrill seeking.”

It’s not just how easy it is to place a bet that pulls athletes in. A lot of it has to do with their mindset. “Elite athletes often exhibit traits such as high sensation-seeking, risk tolerance, and competitiveness,” Professor Lane noted. These traits may fuel their success in sport but also “make them more susceptible to gambling behaviors.”

“There really aren’t enough safeguards. Access to mental health support and education are still somewhat limited in the professional sporting environment.” – Dr. Greg Gomez, The Oasis Recovery Clinical Director

Dr. Gomez echoed this, stating, “There is an overlap between gambling behavior and the mindset of many professional sports players. Many have a very competitive mindset. This can play into gambling, as well.”

Lester Morse, director of Rehabs UK, offered another psychological dimension: “For individuals prone to addiction, the brain’s baseline emotional state… doesn’t function normally, leaving them with a feeling of chronic dissatisfaction.” Morse warned that professional sport can become a temporary fix, but the rush fades. “The brain quickly builds a tolerance… and gambling, with its high stakes and unpredictability, can become the next outlet.”

“It’s important to clarify: not everyone who gambles has a gambling addiction,” Morse stressed. “The difference lies in self-control.” However, for those who do suffer from addiction, the consequences can be devastating. “We often say in recovery: ‘If your gambling is costing you more than money, you may have a problem.’ For an athlete, that cost is their career and reputation, but the addiction can overpower even that.”

Is there enough support out there?

Morse is also critical of current societal responses: “Our society is failing to treat addiction successfully across the board, and sports is no exception. We focus on the symptoms: the gambling, instead of the cause.”

Even with all the risks, most experts agree that professional sports organizations aren’t really doing enough to tackle the problem. Dr. Gomez was blunt: “There really aren’t enough safeguards. Access to mental health support and education are still somewhat limited in the professional sporting environment.”

Professor Lane elaborated further: “While some governing bodies have monitoring systems and education programmes in place, it’s questionable whether these are proactive or robust enough. Too often, interventions occur after reputational damage has been done.”

He suggested that a “more psychologically informed approach” is needed – one that combines mental health support, digital literacy, and meaningful education. “Confidential access to mental health professionals, workshops on financial and digital literacy, and stronger role modelling from governing bodies could all contribute to better prevention,” Professor Lane added.

The growing number of gambling scandals involving pro athletes appears to point to a deeper, more systemic issue that’s being driven by technology, culture, and psychological factors that often go unchecked. The intense competitive drive that helps athletes succeed can also make them especially vulnerable, and the systems meant to protect them just don’t seem strong enough to handle it.

In the words of Professor Lane: “This is not an entirely new issue, but the landscape has changed significantly.” And unless sports organizations evolve their approach to match this new reality, the headlines may only get worse.

Featured image: Grok

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The clubby insular world of corporate law has entered the culture war.

First, Elon Musk started railing against Delaware, which for more than a century has been known as the home of corporate law, after the Delaware Chancery Court chancellor, Kathaleen McCormick, rejected his lofty pay package last year.

Eventually he switched where Tesla is incorporated to Texas.

Now, Dropbox has announced shareholder approval to move where it is incorporated to outside Delaware, and Meta is considering following suit. Others are also evaluating whether to make the move, DealBook hears.

Musk’s ire against the state where nearly 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies are incorporated brought what would usually be an esoteric issue to the national stage and framed it, alongside hot button issues like diversity, equity and inclusion programs, as one further example of overreach.

“You can blame McCormick or you can blame Musk — or you can say it’s a combination of the two of them — but it has turned it into a highly ideologically charged political issue, which it never, ever was before,” said Robert Anderson, a professor at the University of Arkansas School of Law.

The drama over court rulings could have huge consequences for the economy and politics of Delaware, which counts on corporate franchise revenue for about 30 percent of its budget — and more, if you count secondary impacts like tax payments generated by the legal industry.

At issue is a longstanding question in corporate America: How much say should minority shareholders have, especially in a controlled company? One side argues that founders like Mark Zuckerberg are given controlling shares, which give them outsize influence in a company, with the belief that they know what is best for a company. And minority shareholders buy into a company knowing their limitations. The other side argues these controlling shareholders are not perfect.

The disagreement has now been amplified as founders have become increasingly comfortable voicing their own views loudly. At a time when Trump has promised reduced government regulation, they’d also like to minimize the power of minority shareholders in corporate governance.

This isn’t the first time Delaware has come under heat. Frank Shawe, the C.E.O. of the language and business services company TransPerfect, mounted a multiyear campaign against Delaware after the court effectively seized his business during a fight with his ex-wife and co-owner. That campaign included a lawsuit against one of the Delaware court judges, a $2 million advertising campaign and support for a $1 million PAC opposing Bethany Hall-Long, a candidate for governor last year, arguing that Hall-Long had “failed to support judicial diversity” in her time as state lieutenant governor. (Hall-Long lost in the Democratic primary.)

But Musk has made the spotlight brighter. McCormick, who first sparred with Musk over his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, rejected the entrepreneur’s massive compensation in January, arguing that shareholders had not been properly informed and that Tesla’s board members were not sufficiently independent. In December, she again ruled against the package, even after shareholders showed their support by voting in favor of it.

That latter decision, in particular, got some pushback from the legal community. And, unsurprisingly, Musk and Tesla shareholders descended. “Absolute corruption,” Musk wrote of the decision.

Other blows followed. In a major decision last year, the Delaware court’s vice chancellor, J. Travis Laster, ruled that company boards cannot effectively hand over power on key issues — like deals and executive compensation — to a controlling shareholder. That ruling, which centered on the power bequeathed by board members to Ken Moelis, the controlling shareholder of the investment bank Moelis, put Delaware and its advisers into a tizzy.

Then, in an extraordinary move, the court effectively undid that decision, passing an amendment this summer that allowed companies to enter such agreements. A heated debate over that amendment on the floor of the state legislature soon evolved into a contentious argument about the direction of Delaware’s corporate law.

“Right now, the corporate market is not feeling good about Delaware,” a former state judge, William Chandler, said on the House floor, pinning that sentiment on “the uncertainty and unpredictability of a few decisions by just two judges,” referring to McCormick and Laster.

That debate has turned into a soap opera of corporate interests. Law school professors, who feel ardently about the law — and, perhaps, more cynically, about their relationship with Delaware judges — wrote passionate defenses. The judges, facing inordinate glare, threw social media punches.

And Delaware’s Democratic governor, Matt Meyer, who has been studying ways to handle the backlash legislatively, has gone on a media spree assuring companies Delaware is working to remain hospitable for their business.

The stakes for Delaware are huge. A mass exodus of businesses “would be crippling,” said Jonathan Macey, a professor at Yale Law School.

Moving a company’s incorporation is not prohibitively expensive. And it was just made easier by a ruling involving TripAdvisor’s decision to move away from Delaware, which declared that controlling shareholders would not be liable for damages that shareholders argue are incurred by the move if they moved their incorporation out of the state. (The message: Delaware isn’t Hotel California.)

Delaware’s governor has been trying to underline the nonfinancial costs, in particular the risk of losing Delaware’s bounty of case law and experience.

And he is offering the prospect of potential concessions, like the once inconceivable possibility that judges could get less discretion over the cases they choose. (As the head of the Delaware Chancellor Court, McCormick gets first dibs on all cases.)

Companies and their lawyers “feel like they get the same judge every time when they come to Delaware business court, and they don’t feel like they’re getting a fair hearing,” Governor Meyer told CNBC.

“If you feel like every day you’re getting the same recess proctor no matter what — when there are a number of people who can preside over the case — maybe we need to look at that.”

— Lauren Hirsch

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Elon Musk continued his blitz through Washington. He and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency have moved quickly to gain access to systems, and shutter programs across the government, including by firing almost 10,000 at the United States Agency for International Development (a move partly delayed by a federal judge yesterday). President Trump said yesterday that Musk’s next cost-cutting target would be the Pentagon, which has billions of dollars in contracts with Musk’s SpaceX and other companies.

Trump waded into the U.S. Steel deal. President Trump announce yesterday that Nippon Steel was planning to make a major investment in U.S. Steel after the Biden administration moved to block the Japanese company’s $14 billion takeover bid last month on the basis that it was a threat to national security, a decision backed by Trump. But, with scant details, Trump announced the investment plans at a news conference with Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba of Japan at the White House.

January jobs data showed a slowing but solid labor market. According to data released by the Labor Department yesterday, the U.S. economy added 143,000 jobs last month, slightly fewer than expected. But the unemployment rate fell to 4 percent and wages rose more than expected.

Tech giants doubled down on A.I. spending. The rise of DeepSeek, a Chinese start-up that developed its artificial intelligence model while spending much less than its U.S. counterparts, has raised questions about whether U.S. tech companies would continue their A.I. spending spree. But Amazon this week said it planned to spend $100 billion in 2025, mostly on A.I. Microsoft, Google and Meta have all said they would increase spending on A.I. this year.

Is Trump’s sovereign wealth fund a new idea?

Whatever comes of Donald Trump’s executive order to draw up plans for a sovereign wealth fund, it will not fit the traditional mold. Countries like Norway and Abu Dhabi power their sovereign wealth funds with surplus revenue from oil exports, but the U.S. federal government has a deep and growing budget deficit. In other words, no sovereign wealth.

Trump has said tariff revenue could be one source of funding for a U.S. sovereign wealth fund. But it’s also possible that something less shocking could emerge from the directive — a financial tool with a less exciting name that many have proposed before.

What is a sovereign wealth fund anyway? “It’s been a fight,” said Paul Rose, the dean of the law school at Case Western Reserve University, who has researched sovereign wealth funds for decades, about defining the term. But basically, it’s a government-owned fund that makes investments with the goal of increasing returns.

Typically there’s a specific objective, like diversifying the assets of a country that is heavily dependent on one resource, and thus particularly vulnerable to commodity prices.

It may surprise many to know the U.S. already has several sovereign wealth funds run by states. The best known, and largest, is the Alaska Permanent Fund, which pays a dividend to residents each year. Other states including New Mexico, Wyoming, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas have investment funds, typically funded by oil or mineral rights revenues.

It’s not clear what purposes a federal sovereign wealth fund would serve.

Strategic investment funds invest with a policy goal in mind, usually alongside private investors. Some consider them a subset of sovereign wealth funds.

The U.S. already has a narrow version of such funds. Take In-Q-Tel, a private nonprofit venture capital firm set up and financed by the Central Intelligence Agency, which invests in technology that could advance national security.

“It’s trying to catalyze development of some particular industry. It’s using government funds, and it has a government policy objective attached to it,” Rose said.

For Trump’s proposed fund, there would be some obvious targets. Some have proposed a strategic investment aimed at keeping a technological edge. For vital technologies such as lithium processing and semiconductor chips, “the capital required is too large for traditional venture capital, yet too risky for traditional project finance,” the venture investor Jan Jaro wrote in November.

Others have suggested funds that target large-scale infrastructure investments, which have been a key talking point for Trump in the past.

Saule Omarova, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School whom Biden nominated to be comptroller of the currency, but withdrew her nomination, has proposed a new institution to help fund long-term public projects, which involves a venture capital and asset management arm (one difference from a strategic investment fund: this entity would sell stakes in its funds to private investors).

“I think people would say, OK, that makes sense, that there’s not enough investment in U.S. infrastructure and this can catalyze that,” Rose said. A Norway-style fund in the United State, he said, “it’s just a head scratcher.”

The madness of Super Bowl economics

This year, for the first time, you can watch the Super Bowl free online on a Fox-owned service called Tubi. You’ve been able to tune in online for a fee for years. But what took so long for a free streaming option? It’s complicated.

Before getting to all that, some housekeeping. You can watch the Super Bowl on Sunday Feb. 9 at 6:30 Eastern time on Fox or Tubi. Who’s playing? It’s the Kansas City Chiefs going for a three-peat against the Philadelphia Eagles (Fly, Eagles. Fly!).

The Big Game illustrates a tug-a-war happening among entertainment giants, with broadcasters trying to serve cable companies at the same time as they move on to streaming services. It’s a delicate dance that is about to get more difficult.

The National Football League has sold most of its events to the broadcasters. ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox are the most widely distributed networks, and they’re free to watch, which helps the N.F.L. reach the biggest audience possible. (ESPN and Amazon Prime, which cost money, also have games.)

But those rights are costly. In 2021, the league scored a $110 billion agreement over 11 years from CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN and Amazon to air their games. For the broadcasters and ESPN it’s likely the single biggest cost item in their lineup.

To pay for those rights, the broadcasters take advantage of something called retransmission fees, which require TV distributors like Comcast or Dish to pay to carry their broadcast signals. Anyone, for example, can pick up CBS with a digital antenna, but if a cable or internet TV carrier picks it up, they have to pay for it. These fees are a boon to the broadcasters.

Cable companies can’t buy only sports channels. They’d probably like to: sports are one of the last programs that still draw big live audiences. But when CBS or NBC or ESPN sell their content to distributors like Comcast or Dish, they tend to price them in a bundle. CBS, for example, is part of Paramount which also has Nickelodeon and MTV.

Hence the high cable fees.

With the erosion of cable (and those fees), broadcasters now want to stream sports directly, but it’s a difficult dance. Last year saw a record low number of households paying for television, around 56 million. At its peak the pay-TV industry captured 100 million households.

By now all the major TV networks have created a streamer or acquired a companion streamer. Fox, for example, bought Tubi. They had to. Netflix was taking too many customers away. The risk is always that by selling directly to consumers, networks like ESPN or Fox would anger their distribution partners like Comcast and Dish.

Recently, Disney, Fox and Warner Bros., attempted a joint venture called Venu to sell a skinny bundle of sports channels online that would appeal to cord cutters, but it never got off the ground.

The endgame. Later this year, Disney plans to sell ESPN directly to consumers, which poses the biggest threat to the cable TV universe. ESPN underpins most of the economics of pay television. We don’t know how the ESPN service will be priced, but if it’s competitive with a basic cable package, it would severely cut into pay-TV revenue, and hence the fees they pay to the networks like ESPN. And round and round it goes.

Thanks for reading! We’ll see you Monday.

We’d like your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.

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