Tag: much money
Saint Dismas
Illustrations by Michelle Garcia
Carlito held one end of the rope, Omar the other. The three of us wore orange vests to seem official. Sebastián, our lookout, hid behind some bushes.
“¡Here comes one!” I picked up my shovel and dug out some of the dirt we’d dumped in one of the potholes covering the road. Omar held up a gloved hand, signaling for the car to slow down and stop. Things had gotten more difficult for us recently, … Read more
The Anti-abortion Movement’s Attack on Wanted Pregnancies
In the nearly two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, we’ve witnessed the sober consequences of denying abortions to people who desperately want them. Women have been forced to continue pregnancies that have almost killed them, and given birth to children they can’t afford to care for, children conceived by rape, and children they are simply not ready to have. Now we’re seeing the flip side of the anti-abortion movement’s push to give legal rights to
Lab Diamonds Are Too Perfect for Their Own Good
Last year, a funny thing happened at Ring Concierge’s Manhattan showroom. A bride-to-be brought her engagement ring back to the popular jewelry store after wearing it for a few weeks and wanted to trade out her diamond for a worse one. The woman was worried that the original rock was too clear, too bright, too perfect for its large size, Ring Concierge’s CEO, Nicole Wegman, told me. She wanted to replace it with a lower-quality stone of a
How to Keep Time: How to Look Busy
Many of us complain about being too busy—and about not having enough time to do the things we really want to do. But has busyness become an excuse for our inability to focus on what matters?
According to Neeru Paharia, a marketing professor at Arizona State University, time is a sort of luxury good—the more of it you have, the more valuable you are. But her research also revealed that, for many Americans, having less time and being busy can
Parties, Pills, and Paintings at Miami Art Week
“Miami,” in the art world, is short for Miami Art Week, which is short for a week-long bacchanal of eye candy, nose candy, parties, and pills held in the name of shopping for art. The first week of December marks the kickoff to Miami, which features two or maybe three dozen different art fairs, the most prestigious of them being Art Basel Miami Beach, an import from Switzerland that, if you’re in the know, is simply called “the main
My Father’s House – The Atlantic
In the early 1930s, a few years before I was born, my father bought a summer house. This was an astonishment to all our relatives and friends. For one thing, we were not the sort of people who “summered.” My father was a working stiff; even in the best of times we made do with city parks, the public pool, the fire escape, the air-cooled movie house. For another thing, these happened to be the worst of times,
Is Ben Wikler the Most Important Democrat in America?
The man who has been hailed as “the best state chair in the country” is not a national household name. He’s not even a household name in his own state. But on a recent afternoon in the small village of Grafton, Wisconsin, Ben Wikler might as well have been Bono.
Two dozen middle-aged and retired volunteers stood in line to clutch the hand of the chair of the Wisconsin Democrats. “Thank you for everything you do,” they said, beaming
Saving Local News Could Also Save Taxpayers Money
Zak Podmore did not bring down a corrupt mayor. He did not discover secret torture sites or expose abuses by a powerful religious institution. But there was something about this one article he wrote as a reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune in 2019 that changed my conception of the value of local news.
Podmore, then a staff journalist for the Tribune and a corps member of Report for America, a nonprofit I co-founded, published a story revealing that
A Blueprint for Black Liberation
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.
In the commune I once called home, I was too young to understand what it meant to be born into a Black-liberation movement. I knew only that I lived in an apartment building where everyone loved me, a place where everyone who loved me was Black.
Each
15 Readers on How They’re Cutting Costs
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. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week I asked readers for their best tips on cutting costs in times of economic strain—and, looking back on their lives, what they might consider to have been their most wasteful spending.
Denise leads us off this week as