Tag: first people
I Was There as the World’s Widest Glacier Split Apart
Out on the bow of the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer, the air is dense and almost warm. We have punched through miles of Antarctic ice floes to reach the Amundsen Sea’s foggy interior. I want to honor the remaining distance between us and Thwaites Glacier’s calving front––this place that many scientists suggest could make a catastrophic impact on global sea levels but that no one, as of this moment in February of 2019, had ever before visited by ship––and yet
What’s at Stake for Election Workers
Poll workers serve an essential, if usually uncelebrated, role in American democracy. Organizing and tabulating is the basic business of elections. Or, it was until 2020.
When then–President Trump refused to accept his loss and spread falsehoods about a stolen election, vote-counters were among the first people to face blowback. Poll workers endured combative protestors, threats, and harassment while completing their work. In the two years since, the Big Lie has only grown more central to the Republican brand. In
How Venezuela Became One Big Casino
The monkey entered the casino after midnight. It clung to the arm of a short man with a military haircut. The man stood and watched the action at the roulette tables while the monkey, a capuchin with a brush cut like its owner’s, swiveled its head from side to side. A waiter fed the animal a cold french fry. Once, between spins of the wheel, the monkey leaped onto the baize table and then back into its owner’s arms.
Ben Sasse on America’s Political Addiction Problem.
Ben Sasse is worried about midlife crises. Not just for himself, but for every working American who feels that their future in the face of technological disruption is not as secure as that of previous generations. “We’re the first people in human history that are really going to see the end of lifelong work,” the Republican senator from Nebraska told The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. “That unsettling of community and place raises lots of fundamental questions about