Tag: new focus
American Politics Has a Harassment Problem
By now, the stories are familiar. Most, though not all, start on social media: a post on Facebook or Twitter identifies a name, and then the threats begin. Shortly after the 2020 presidential election, conspiracy theorists focused on a video of a voting-machine technician at work in Gwinnett County, Georgia. One Twitter user published the young man’s name, declaring him “guilty of treason,” along with, according to the Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling, an animation of a swaying noose. Around
The 50 Best Podcasts of 2021 Transcend Genre Conventions
We take podcast ranking seriously. Our process starts with a search. We seek shows anywhere we can find them—sometimes hearing about them directly from producers, other times from a friend of a friend’s mother’s uncle, or sometimes through our own secret methods of rooting out gems. Then we dig in. (Of course, with more than a million podcasts in existence, our extensive listening still makes only a tiny dent.) To track our impressions, we make a spreadsheet with legends, drop-down
China’s Big New Idea – The Atlantic
A common refrain among Americans when faced with China’s export machine—which pumps out 5G telecoms gear, plastic Christmas trees, and just about everything in between—is the complaint that the United States “doesn’t make anything anymore.” Yet the U.S. retains a commanding advantage in one, especially critical export: ideas. From inalienable rights to Iron Man, Americans churn out the concepts and culture that make the modern world tick, more and better than anyone else. China has long strived to close the
Instead of ‘Defund the Police,’ Solve All Murders
After George Floyd’s murder, when sweeping criminal-justice reforms seemed more possible than ever, many Black Lives Matter activists and their allies settled on a rallying cry: “Defund the Police.”
That choice was a disaster. The slogan—shorthand for cutting spending on law enforcement and redirecting it toward social services, or, for more radical proponents, moving toward eventual police abolition—is a political liability, largely due to justified fears that, if implemented, it would lead to many more murders, assaults, and other violent