Summer has only just officially begun, and the world is already sweltering. This week, two counties in northwestern Maine were under their first-ever excessive-heat warning—part of a record-breaking “heat dome” that has settled on the eastern part of the country. Washington, D.C., might hit its first triple-digit high since 2016. Globally, the temperatures this spring have been even more shocking. Last week, the Sonoran Desert hit 125 degrees, the highest recorded temperature in Mexican history.

They run toward Stonehenge in white shirts. Just Stop Oil is emblazoned on the front, marking them as emissaries of a British climate-activism group. The pair—one of them young, the other older—carry twin orange canisters that emit a cloud of what looks like colored smoke (we later learn it’s dyed corn flour). A bystander in a gray coat and baseball hat chases them, screaming, then grabs the man and tries to pull him away from the historic monument in a failing bid to protect it.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
The mall isn’t what it used to be. But that doesn’t mean it’s dead.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Aileen Cannon is who critics feared she was.

This is Atlantic Intelligence, a limited-run series in which our writers help you wrap your mind around artificial intelligence and a new machine age. Sign up here.
Readers of this newsletter have no doubt wondered how the generative-AI wave will affect their lives. Will the bots take your job? Is it all right—you know, ethically—to use ChatGPT to write an email? Should you listen to Google’s searchbot and eat rocks? (No.

Every meal I make begins with a single choice: extra-virgin olive oil or canola? For as long as I’ve cooked, these have been my kitchen workhorses, because they’re versatile, affordable, and—most of all—healthy. Or so I thought.
These days, every trip to the grocery store makes me second-guess myself. Lined up next to the bottles of basics such as canola, vegetable, and corn oil are relatively exotic—and expensive—options: grapeseed oil, pumpkin-seed oil, walnut oil.

The men dominating the Billboard Hot 100 this summer are doing traditional male things: picking fights, playing guitar, bellowing about being saved or sabotaged by the opposite sex. Meanwhile, what are the women of popular music up to? Being brats.
Brat may sound like an insult; Hollywood’s “Brat Pack” certainly didn’t appreciate the term in 1985.

It’s troublingly hot in June, which means the United States is entering the heat-death zone for workers again. We’ve been here before. In San Antonio, on a blisteringly hot June day in 2022, Gabriel Infante, a 24-year-old construction worker, died in his first week on the job, after he entered a state of delirium while laying fiber-optic cable; medics measured his temperature at 109.8 degrees Fahrenheit. That same month, Esteban Chavez Jr.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Donald Trump’s reported idea to replace the income tax with huge tariffs on imports exposes the hollowness of his populism.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
The 1970s movie that explains 2020s America
Trump dreams of a swifter death penalty.

Water gave every living thing on Earth the gift of existence. And yet, of late, it seems determined to wipe us out. The Atlantic hurricane season, widely predicted to be a fierce one, is here, and early this morning the first named storm, Alberto, made landfall in northeastern Mexico and drenched everything in its path.
And in Florida last week, it was as if the heavens had turned on the tap and simply left it running.

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here.
Working on the Books desk of a 167-year-old publication offers incredible opportunities—and dredges up some insecurities.