Tag: different ways
Long COVID Breaks the Rules of Exercise
In the weeks after she caught COVID, in May 2022, Lauren Shoemaker couldn’t wait to return to her usual routine of skiing, backpacking, and pregaming her family’s eight-mile hikes with three-mile jogs. All went fine in the first few weeks after her infection. Then, in July, hours after finishing a hike, Shoemaker started to feel off; two days later, she couldn’t make it to the refrigerator without feeling utterly exhausted. Sure it was a fluke, she tried to hike again—and
The Polite Zealotry of Mike Johnson
In an interview last week on Fox News, the newly elected speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, told host Sean Hannity, “Someone asked me today in the media, ‘People are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.’”
For many politicians, that would be a throwaway line. But not for Mike Johnson. When he told a Baptist newspaper
What’s the Worst-Case Scenario for BA.2.86?
One thing we crave after our collective pandemic experience is certainty. If a potentially powerful new variant is out there, we need some answers about it: How fast is its evolution? Will it spread as quickly and widely as Omicron? And will the vaccine be effective against it?
In this episode, I talk with Atlantic science writers Katie Wu and Sarah Zhang. They know a lot, and they are very honest about all the things they don’t know. A few
The End of Affirmative Action. For Real This Time.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule next week on a pair of decisions about affirmative action in higher education. Both were brought by Students for Fair Admissions, a conservative group dedicated to eliminating “race and ethnicity from college admissions.” One case is against Harvard, likely because anything involving Harvard guarantees some attention. The other is against the University of North Carolina, one of the most prestigious public university systems that hasn’t banned affirmative action yet. Both cases involve Asian
What ‘The Vow’ Really Reveals – The Atlantic
There was a moment a few years ago when I couldn’t help but cringe a little every time I heard the word story, so wantonly was it being bandied about. This was during the Trump administration, when lots of people still sweetly believed that culture could counter raw political power, that protest art could engender a sense of shame among the shameless, even that satire might have the capacity to save the republic. It was no longer enough for
America’s Duty to Help the World’s Vulnerable: 13 Reader Views
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. On Mondays, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week, noting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and the hunger crises forecast in poorer countries, I asked, “What responsibility, if any, do the United States or individual Americans have to
What It Feels Like to Lose a Child in a Mass Shooting
Nicole Hockley has done all of this before. The bewildering phone call in the middle of the day. The anxious drive, followed by the waiting, the endless waiting, alongside other frantic or frozen parents. Then, at last, learning the impossible, mind-numbing news: Your child is dead. The tiny person you made with your own body, whom you fed, dressed, and taught to say thank you, was shot to death in his classroom.
Hockley’s son Dylan was 6 years old
Barack Obama on Disinformation and Ukraine
When they last sat down for an interview, in November 2020, Barack Obama told Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg that disinformation is “the single biggest threat to our democracy.” The threat was not a new one, he said, but it was accelerating. It has continued to accelerate since. A month and a half after that conversation, a violent mob stormed the Capitol, driven by the false belief that the election had been stolen from Donald Trump and
Anne Applebaum: Social Media Made Spreading Disinformation Easy
Atlantic staff writer Anne Applebaum, an expert on Eastern Europe, has long watched social media’s power with great concern. Yesterday, at Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy, a conference hosted by The Atlantic and the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, she spoke with David Axelrod, the founding director of the Institute of Politics, about the dangers these platforms pose to democracy. They discussed Russia’s disinformation efforts, what makes some conspiracy theories so successful, how institutions can rebuild trust, and
Vladimir Putin: Modern Man – The Atlantic
There is a peculiar modern tendency to describe things we don’t like as belonging to the past. The Taliban are medieval, Donald Trump supporters backward, Brexiteers nostalgic for empire. Under this rubric, Vladimir Putin is a Soviet throwback and the war he may soon start in Ukraine, as John Kerry once remarked, is like some 19th-century skirmish transplanted into the 21st.
It is no doubt a comfort to imagine that these things that do not conform to our ideas