It’s been a odd week for Your Weekend Reader correspondent, what with a daughter and her fiancé coming up for a few days (we visited the coast and the Portland Zoo, and yes, the baby elephant was up and about — which was a good thing, since virtually every other animal at the zoo, taking note of the chilly weather, had wisely decided to spend the day snoozing). Then we all came down with the norovirus or some other stomach bug — at first, we thought that the oysters from the coast the fiancé had gulped down were the cause of his violent illness, but then we all got sick. I still threw away the rest of the oysters, though. I learned recently that norovirus is sometimes referred to as “winter vomiting disease,” which makes up for what it lacks in imagination with sheer accuracy.

Anyway, I’m better now — that Lipton noodle soup has never tasted better, even though I couldn’t help but notice this week that Lipton is a little cagey about the actual ingredients. I’m armed with a big bottle of Gatorade and other easy-on-the-stomach foodstuffs. But I haven’t been keeping tabs on the week’s events as I usually do, so let me open up the doomscroll and —

Oh, dear Lord.

This is the week we learned that our institutions of higher learning are unlikely to put up much of a fight against attacks from the Trump administration.

Earlier in the week, Christopher L. Eisgruber wrote in The Atlantic to explain part of what’s at risk in the administration’s continued attack on universities — which will only pick up speed now that Columbia has folded.

And our top-dollar law firms seem like they won’t be putting up much resistance to the administration, either. It makes you wonder what the late lamented TV series “The Good Fight” would have made of all this — although there’s no chance that Paramount Global would green-light anything like that these days, with its merger with Skydance still needing approval from the Federal Communications Commission.

Despite all this, more registered voters say the country is on the right track than at any point since 2004, according to a new poll. So The New York Times brought together four of its conservative columnists — perhaps the Times’ only conservative columnists, but at least they’re there — to discuss matters. It’s a long conversation — you won’t agree with much of it, but that’s sort of the point — and it’s worth reading.

Speaking of resistance, you might recall that when Trump took over leadership of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, many of the artists who had been scheduled to perform there canceled their shows. They had good reasons. But many artists did not cancel — and it turns out they had good reasons as well.

Meanwhile, the general uncertainty surrounding the flow of federal money to Oregon has tossed another wrench into the always complicated legislative process of crafting a state budget. Oregon potentially has roughly $39 billion at stake — it works out to about a third of the state budget. After that funding freeze, Hillary Borrud of The Oregonian/OregonLive reports, most of the money has started flowing again to the state — but no one knows how long or if that will last, and some alarming freezes are still in place.

Perhaps you were amused recently when President Trump floated the idea of a “gold card,” at a price of $5 million, for wealthy foreigners who wanted to live in the United States with what the president called “green-card privileges, plus.” Experts in the field of “millionaire migration” — and yes, there is such a thing — expect few takers for the Trump gold card. And, in fact, as Atossa Araxia Abrahamian explains in this fascinating Atlantic article, Trump has it exactly backward: Rich foreigners aren’t flocking to the United States. But rich Americans are exploring their escape options at an unprecedented rate.

All right, that’s enough of this stuff for right now. Let’s pull back and look at the long view — I mean, the really long view, as in, what’s the final fate of the universe? Scientists this week presented new information suggesting that dark energy — the mysterious force that makes up some 70% of the universe — might be weakening. And this matters to your life because — well, it doesn’t; it has no practical impact on you whatsoever. But dark energy is the force that’s pushing all the stars and galaxies apart from each other at an accelerating pace. If dark energy were to remain constant, scientists say our universe will remain expanding forever, growing ever colder, lonelier and still, in the words of this evocative Associated Press story. But if dark energy is waning (and no one is sure yet), the universe could one day stop expanding and collapse on itself in an event cosmologists cheerily call “The Big Crunch.” Which option do you prefer? Discuss among yourselves.

I thought that Conan O’Brien did a terrific job hosting the Oscars — maybe the toughest show-business gig of all — and I’m apparently not alone: He’s already signed on to be the host of the 2026 ceremony. David Sims in The Atlantic argues that O’Brien’s long-running success is in part due to his ability to straddle the silly and the erudite, and that sounds about right to me.

It’s easy to find health advice on social media. What’s harder is trying to separate the wheat from the chaff — especially since the chaff actually could be harmful to your health. This AP story will help you evaluate the health information that’s ubiquitous (if not always accurate) you find online.

Here’s hoping that your spring break is free from the norovirus and any other health ailments — and may you be blessed with just a smidgen of sunny weather. Let’s meet back here next week to compare spring break notes.