Tag: better way
The Last Days of the Barcode
Once upon a time, a restless cashier would eye each and every item you, the consumer, purchased and key it into the register. This took skill but also time—and proved to be an imperfect way to keep track of inventory. Then one day, a group of grocery executives and inventors came up with a better way: what we now know as the barcode, a rectangle that marks items ranging from insulin to Doritos. It’s so ubiquitous and long lived that
The Republican Betrayal of PEPFAR
Twenty years ago, a Republican president, George W. Bush, created the most successful, life-giving global-health program in history. This year, House Republicans appear determined to undermine it. If they succeed, it will be an act of extraordinary recklessness, done even while claiming to be the pro-life party.
In 2003, nearly 30 million Africans had AIDS, including 3 million under the age of 15. In some countries, more than one-third of the adult population carried the disease. More than
Greta Gerwig’s Lessons From Barbie Land
This article contains spoilers for the film Barbie.
As soon as I asked a question about Ken, my call with Greta Gerwig dropped. When the writer-director of Barbie returned, she had no idea what happened. I suggested that of course merely mentioning Ken—the pining and overlooked doll played by Ryan Gosling—would cause a failure of some sort. Gerwig agreed. “The world was like, I don’t care,” she joked.
But the world cares very much about the movie he’s
Confessions of a Luxury-Wedding Planner
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Sunday mornings, for wedding planners, are reserved for prayer. Not because it’s a particularly pious profession but because that’s the day when clients who were married on Saturday figure out if they’re happy or not. Should they choose unhappiness, Sunday is when they decide whom to
Prepare for the Political Pollsterbots
Even a halfway-decent political campaign knows you better than you know yourself. A candidate’s army of number crunchers vacuums up any morsel of personal information that might affect the choice we make at the polls. In 2020, Donald Trump and the Republican Party compiled 3,000 data points on every single voter in America. In 2012, the data nerds helped Barack Obama parse the electorate to microtarget his door-knocking efforts toward the most-persuadable swing voters. And in 1960, John F. Kennedy
‘How to Start Over’: When Partnership Is Not the Destination
In a society dominated by romantic couples, it can be hard to accept your unpartnered state for what it is. But for the “single at heart,” the desire for partnership is nonexistent—replaced with a sense of self-sufficiency, satisfaction, and robust friendships.
In this episode of How to Start Over, we explore misconceptions about singlehood and what explains a broad perception of it as an unwelcome fate. We also talk about how social and economic structures orient themselves around couples, and
Tumblr Is Everything – The Atlantic
The CEO of Tumblr—a social platform that was once worth more than $1 billion, and in its time was among the internet’s most popular and talked-about cultural spaces—quietly worked his last day on January 21. The company has not explained Jeff D’Onofrio’s departure, nor even referenced it publicly; I learned about it incidentally, several weeks after speaking with him, in a “wanted to let you know” email from a company spokesperson. Five days after that, Matt Mullenweg, whose company, Automattic,
Chesa Boudin and Rising Crime in San Francisco
Late one recent afternoon, Chesa Boudin logged onto Zoom to have a conversation with me while his wife was in labor. His critics see the 41-year-old San Francisco district attorney as a symbol of the progressive legal-reform movement’s excesses. But Boudin has also attracted national attention because his personal story is so extraordinary: When he was barely a toddler, his parents, David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin, left him with a babysitter so they could rob a Brink’s armored car with
Emily Oster on How Parents Became Obsessed With Data
Emily Oster is a popular target for irrational hatred. When I was reporting a story on how progressive communities have approached COVID-19 lockdown restrictions this spring, she showed me an email she got from a random person who had written to all of her bosses at Brown University, accusing her of promoting genocide. To be clear, Oster does no such thing: She’s an economist who has become semi-famous for her books on data and parenting decisions. Recently, she has also