Today's Liberal News

I Have Cancer. I Can’t Put My Kids First Anymore.

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 February, two months before my 40th birthday, my left breast became swollen and painful. I chalked it up to the catchall pile of indignities known as perimenopause. But March and April came and went, and my breast seemed worse. May arrived, and I scrambled to schedule a mammogram.

“We Demand Respect”: Actors Join Writers on Strike, Grinding Film & TV Production to a Halt

Television and film actors are going on strike after a breakdown in negotiations between the SAG-AFTRA union and Hollywood studios. More than 160,000 members of the union are taking part in the first major actors’ strike since 1980. This also marks the first time since 1960 that actors and screenwriters have been on strike at the same time, with members of the Writers Guild of America on the picket lines since early May.

“Cobalt Red”: Smartphones & Electric Cars Rely on Toxic Mineral Mined in Congo by Children

The Democratic Republic of the Congo produces nearly three-quarters of the world’s cobalt, an essential component in rechargeable batteries powering laptops, smartphones and electric vehicles. But those who dig up the valuable mineral often work in horrific and dangerous conditions, says Siddharth Kara, an international expert on modern-day slavery and author of Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives.

NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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Lauren Boebert filed articles of impeachment against Biden. That doesn’t mean he was impeached

CLAIM: President Joe Biden was impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors in June 2023.

THE FACTS: Biden has not been impeached.

US sets a grim milestone with new record for the deadliest six months of mass killings

Slain at the hands of strangers or gunned down by loved ones. Massacred in small towns, in big cities, inside their own homes or outside in broad daylight. This year’s unrelenting bloodshed across the U.S. has led to the grimmest of milestones: The deadliest six months of mass killings recorded since at least 2006.

From Jan. 1 to June 30, the nation endured 28 mass killings, all but one of which involved guns.

Cleanup

They won’t stop. Leaves, slick, wet—
Curled around shrubs, blanketing
the funeral garden where ravens rest.
Why am I married to longing & lament?
I’d like to slap the face of my unseemly
devotion. Wake up. Don’t be afraid. Wag
your beauty like a dirty dog. Trees shed their pious
costumes. Wind unfurls & as if in ecstasy
more scatter to mock my loyalty. Yes,
cleanup’s messy, imperfect, a disaster.
My limbs hurt. My back aches.

Even North America’s Elk Have Regional Dialects

This article was originally published by High Country News.It’s a crisp fall evening in Grand Teton National Park. A mournful, groaning call cuts through the dusky-blue light: a male elk, bugling. The sound ricochets across the grassy meadow. A minute later, another bull answers from somewhere in the shadows.Bugles are the telltale sound of elk during mating season. Now new research has found that male elks’ bugles sound slightly different depending on where they live.

Goodbye to the Prophets of Doom

During the Great Recession, public discourse about the economy underwent something of a Great Disappointment.For much of the country’s history, most Americans assumed that the future would bring them or their descendants greater affluence. Despite periodic economic crises, the overall story seemed to be one of progress for every stratum of the population.