Tag: Last month
The Fight Against Robotaxis in San Francisco
A few weeks ago, Dan Afergan, a software engineer, met a few friends at 540 Rogues, a bar in San Francisco’s Inner Richmond neighborhood. As Afergan and his companions nursed their drinks, someone walked in with some unusual news: “There’s a Cruise out there with a cone stuck on it.”
Afergan stepped outside to check it out. Sure enough, a self-driving cab from the company Cruise, which is majority-owned by General Motors, stood frozen in the middle of the
College Football’s Power Brokers Are Destroying It
The kickoff to the college-football season is a few weeks away, but fans are already seeing 2023’s biggest showdown—one that pits the long-term interests of schools and conferences against their own insatiable greed.
When a major football power switches from one conference to another—disrupting existing rivalries in favor of new opponents less familiar to fans—it’s always controversial. But numerous recent conference changes have disrupted the landscape to an unusual degree. Amid widespread complaints that college players’ newfound ability to profit
When Alabama killed Jimi Barber
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After a series of botched executions, Alabama recently managed to execute a prisoner without incident. What does that mean for the future of capital punishment in the state?
First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:
A Killing Without Incident
Late last
The Trump Indictment Puts the GOP on Trial
Updated at 7:45 p.m. ET on August 1, 2023
Earlier today, Donald Trump was indicted for a third time, on the charge that he attempted to subvert the 2020 presidential election. The indictment, filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith, accuses Trump of a conspiracy to defraud the United States by “using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit”; a conspiracy to “corruptly obstruct and impede” an official proceeding of the U.S. government and for actually partaking in that obstruction; and a
UFO Fever Is Taking Over Congress
Earlier today, three witnesses came before Congress to testify about their experiences with unidentified flying objects. A former Navy pilot spoke of the mysterious objects that he has seen with his own eyes and through radar, and how frequently pilots encounter them in the air. A retired Navy commander described the time he pulled his jet up to a Tic Tac–shaped object hovering over the ocean, then watched it suddenly speed up and vanish.
The most anticipated remarks, however, came
What Goodreads Is Doing to the Publishing World
This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.
When Megan Nolan published her first novel, fellow authors warned her in “ominous tones” about the website Goodreads. The young Irish writer looked at the book’s listing there in the winter of 2020, the day the first proof copy arrived at her house. “Nobody but me and the
Oregon Tried a Bold Experiment in Drug Policy. Early Results Aren’t Encouraging.
This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.
Three years ago, while the nation’s attention was on the 2020 presidential election, voters in Oregon took a dramatic step back from America’s long-running War on Drugs. By a 17-point margin, Oregonians approved Ballot Measure 110, which eliminated criminal penalties for possessing small amounts of any drug, including
The Problem With Comparing Social Media to Big Tobacco
Last month, the surgeon general released a lengthy advisory calling attention to social media and its effects on the mental health of teenagers. Historically, a warning from the surgeon general pointed a big neon sign at an issue that we might not be sure how much to worry about: cigarettes, AIDS, drunk driving. But people are already worried about social media—and they’re acting on those concerns. School districts are suing social-media companies for “knowingly” harming children. Legislators are grilling tech-company
Why the lab-leak and mask debates are such a disaster
This is Work in Progress, a newsletter by Derek Thompson about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Sign up here to get it every week.
In the past few weeks, the conventional wisdom about COVID seems to have been upended.
Early in the pandemic, several mainstream news outlets dismissed theories that COVID came from a Chinese lab. But recently The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported that the Department of
Elaine Hsieh Chou: ‘Background,’ a Short Story
Gene called them his good-day-bad-day bagels. When he was having a good day, he’d allow himself a bagel, and when he was having a bad day, he’d also allow himself a bagel. How he landed on bagels was a matter of both convenience and health: New York had no shortage of them and doughnuts upset his blood sugar. But bagels, on the other hand—they possessed an inoffensive, neutral quality. The problem was he sometimes swerved between good and bad so