Today's Liberal News

Caroline Mimbs Nyce

Why California Can’t Catch a Break

This winter, storm after storm after storm dumped rain and snow on California, and now, as the spring poppies bloom, the state is lush. Hillsides once prickly with dry vegetation have softened. Ski resorts, once thawed out and closed by late spring, are buried under record snow and planning to stay open into July. Satellite photos show a state transformed from brown to green, streaked from top to bottom with bright-emerald patches.

The New ‘Transparent’ Twitter Isn’t Very Transparent

For the past decade or so, the social internet has been largely controlled by secretive algorithms. Designed by tech companies to capture attention and drive engagement, they determine which posts end up in your feeds and which sink like a rock, never to be seen again. These algorithms play a role in polarization, rocketing ordinary people to overnight fame, and the spread of extreme, violence-provoking content.

The Real Taylor Swift Would Never

AI Taylor Swift is mad. She is calling up Kim Kardashian to complain about her “lame excuse of a husband,” Kanye West. (Kardashian and West are, in reality, divorced.) She is threatening to skip Europe on her Eras Tour if her fans don’t stop asking her about international dates. She is insulting people who can’t afford tickets to her concerts and using an unusual amount of profanity. She’s being kind of rude.But she can also be very sweet.

Nine AI Chatbots You Can Play With Right Now

If you believe in the multibillion-dollar valuations, the prognostications from some of tech’s most notable figures, and the simple magic of getting a computer to do your job for you, then you might say we’re at the start of the chatbot era. Last November, OpenAI released ChatGPT into the unsuspecting world: It became the fastest-growing consumer app in history and immediately seemed to reconfigure how people think of conversational programs.

Why the Tesla Recall Matters

More than 350,000 Tesla vehicles are being recalled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration because of concerns about their self-driving-assistance software—but this isn’t your typical recall. The fix will be shipped “over the air” (meaning the software will be updated remotely, and the hardware does not need to be addressed).Missy Cummings sees the voluntary nature of the recall as a positive sign that Tesla is willing to cooperate with regulators.

Band Breakups Are No Simple Thing

“Sometimes a journey must end for a new one to begin,” the Panic! at the Disco lead singer Brendon Urie wrote in an Instagram post last month announcing the band’s separation after 19 years. Urie, the band’s only remaining original member, said that he and his wife were expecting their first child (who has since been born), and that, going forward, his focus would be on family.

The Case for a Four-Day Workweek in Maryland

The Maryland State Capitol building is older than America. It is the only state capitol to have also served as the nation’s capital; in the country’s earliest days, Congress met in its chambers. To work in Annapolis is to operate in the shadow of history. So maybe that explains why, 246 years into the American project, one state lawmaker sees his four-day-workweek bill as carrying on in the tradition of the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.

‘Scar Girl’ Is a Sign That the Internet Is Broken

The scar first appears on Annie Bonelli’s TikTok on March 18, 2021. In the video, she is in a car, earbuds in, lip-synching to the song “I Know,” by D. Savage. The mark on her cheek is blurry and soft, like a smudge of dirt. She is bobbing her head underneath a caption about how it feels when someone accidentally likes a social-media post that’s more than a year old.

J. Kenji López-Alt Thinks You’ll Be Fine With an Induction Stove

Gas stoves are a new front in the culture wars. This month, an errant comment from a bureaucrat caused a full-blown conservative panic over whether such stoves would be banned, eventually prompting a White House statement that effectively walked the whole thing back.Amid all this posturing, a more practical concern is getting lost: How much does gas actually matter when it comes to cooking? Are there some dishes that just can’t be made on electric stoves?I called up J.

‘You Get to See Violence’

The day after Damar Hamlin collapsed during what began as a normal game on Monday Night Football, the radio host Garrett Bush was frustrated.Bush had watched as other commentators offered “thoughts and prayers” and speculated about when the game would be rescheduled. But all that seemed inconsequential to Bush. Here was a young man, he thought, who may never play football again.

Making a New Year’s Resolution? Don’t Go to War With Yourself

New Year’s resolutions are a time for reflection—a chance to think about the limited time we have on this Earth and how to use it wisely.Oliver Burkeman is a writer who focuses on this nexus of mortality and productivity. He is the author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mere Mortals (4,000 weeks is about the length of the average American’s life span).

‘The Universe Doesn’t Care That We Have Holidays’

If an asteroid were to gain sentience and set a course for Earth, might it pick a time like the holidays in order to catch the humans off guard? Well, that’s not going to work: Someone is monitoring space for incoming objects, holidays or not.Kelly Fast manages the Near-Earth Object Observations Program at NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which funds observatory teams at U.S. institutions using telescopes located around the world.

The Mauna Loa Eruption Is a Gift for Science

The world’s largest volcano is erupting for the first time since 1984. Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, a giant mound of a volcano that looks so much like Mars that researchers actually hold Mars simulations there, has stirred. Authorities say the eruption does not threaten any local communities; no evacuation orders have been issued.For scientists, it’s an exciting development.

We Still Don’t Know What Fundamentally Causes Canker Sores

A canker sore—a painful white ulcer inside the mouth—might be brought on by stress. Or the wrong toothpaste. Or certain foods: tomatoes, peanuts, cinnamon. Or an iron deficiency. Or an allergy. Or a new prescription. Or an underlying autoimmune disease.Even though millions of people suffer from them every year, researchers still don’t know much about what fundamentally causes these sores.

When Black Friday Is Your Super Bowl

After the turkey comes the pumpkin pie; after the pumpkin pie, the sales.Black Friday is America’s biggest shopping day, with some consumers lining up in the wee hours of the morning to get first grabs at the discounts. But an equally chaotic celebration takes place online.

What Managers Can Do About Burnout

Large numbers of American workers are reporting feeling stressed and exhausted on the job. Some of that is beyond the reach of the workplace—people have been living through more than two years of a global pandemic, and, more personally, most people have stressors at home that are hard to leave behind when the workday starts. But some elements of burnout do lie within an employer’s control, because they can result from the way jobs and workplaces are structured.

The Halloween Scare That Won’t Go Away

Every October, Joel Best starts getting calls from journalists, and he knows exactly what they want to talk about: candy. Specifically, they want to discuss the stubborn fear that bad actors might tamper with children’s trick-or-treat stashes by lacing candy with razors or fentanyl.

One Store’s Decision to Leave San Francisco Over Crime

Hayes Valley is an aspirational neighborhood located in central San Francisco, the main strip of which is lined with trendy stores and restaurants. It’s also a neighborhood where, according to Davis Smith, the CEO of the outdoor-gear brand Cotopaxi, retailers have begun to lock their doors during the day for fear of being robbed in broad daylight.

Escaping Hurricane Ian

This week, Ian slammed into southwestern Florida as a Category 4 (almost 5) hurricane. The state is still very much in the process of assessing the damage: Emergency teams have rescued hundreds of stranded people, while some 1.9 million people remain without power. Officials have identified as many as 21 dead, and that number may still rise.Ahead of the storm’s landfall, Florida officials ordered the evacuation of about 2.5 million people.

Is Biden the Most Pro-Union President in History?

For now, the country’s railroads will continue to run. A national strike—which would’ve started at midnight tonight and disrupted both freight and passenger rail—was averted by a tentative deal between union leaders and railroad management. That deal still needs to be ratified by the union members themselves.President Joe Biden praised the agreement as “a big win for America.

‘The Cure for Burnout Is Not Self-Care’

The first thing you need to know about quiet quitting is that it’s not actually quitting. Instead, the quitter keeps their job and chooses to do only the bare minimum rather than go above and beyond. The second thing you need to know is that the term is brand new, so everyone is still figuring out the rest. To cite the Oxford English Dictionary of our very online times, Google searches for quiet quitting were basically nonexistent until this past August.But now it’s everywhere.

‘The Opposite of a Raid’

Two days after FBI agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, details about the underlying investigation are still scarce. News reports suggest that it is connected to concerns around presidential record-keeping—that Trump White House documents that should have been in the hands of a professional archivist somehow ended up on vacation at the former president’s Florida home.

A Guide to The Atlantic’s Coverage of Guns in America

“Like everyone, and I’d say especially like every parent, I am of course saddened and horrified by the latest mass shooting-murder. My sympathies to all,” James Fallows, a longtime correspondent for this magazine, wrote nearly a decade ago on July 20, 2012. That day, a gunman had opened fire on theater-goers in Aurora, Colorado. A dozen people were dead.

The Atlantic Daily: Most Americans Don’t Hate Their Job

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.The country’s latest jobs report is a dose of good news for an economy still struggling with inflation: The United States added more than 400,000 new positions in March, continuing its rebound from dramatic losses in the spring of 2020.

The Atlantic Daily: Six Poems to Bring You Comfort This Winter

We’re fumbling our way through another challenging January. Writers and editors from around our newsroom share the poems that they’re turning to this month. Then: Here’s what else to read, listen to, and watch this weekend.“I Could Be a Whale Shark” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
It’s been a difficult couple of pandemic years for parents of young children.

The Atlantic Daily: What Covid Could Look Like One Year From Now

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.The United States is logging record-setting numbers of coronavirus cases in the final week of 2021. The country is now averaging more than 300,000 new cases per day as it prepares to enter a third calendar year spent battling the pandemic.

The Atlantic Daily: What Covid Could Look Like One Year From Now

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.The United States is logging record-setting numbers of coronavirus cases in the final week of 2021. The country is now averaging more than 300,000 new cases per day as it prepares to enter a third calendar year spent battling the pandemic.