Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics

: Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo won his sixth gold medal — the first athlete in any sport to achieve this at a single Winter Games. Team USA took women's hockey gold in overtime. Spain won the first-ever Olympic ski mountaineering title. The Olympics provide the scheduled pulse of human excellence that balances the dissolution elsewhere. The gaze processes this gratefully: six golds is comprehensible, beautiful, complete.

The gap: none. This is the signal that needs no thermostat. Excellence metabolises cleanly.