It was sunny in southern Afghanistan on June 1, 2010, and the temperature quickly reached 104 degrees. Sophia Bruun was the gunner on a Piranha combat vehicle, guarding two platoons conducting a patrol near the town of Gereshk. They were looking for information from locals about the Taliban.
One of the Piranhas in Sophia’s battle group had hit an IED first thing in the morning, blowing off a wheel, but no one was injured. At the outskirts of a village, they were fired on by the Taliban.

In 2025, new data show, the volume of child pornography online was likely larger than at any other point in history. A record 312,030 reports of confirmed child pornography were investigated last year by the Internet Watch Foundation, a U.K.-based organization that works around the globe to identify and remove such material from the web.
This is concerning in and of itself.

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Today, Donald Trump announced that he is considering using the Insurrection Act to send the U.S. military to Minneapolis if state officials do not quell anti-ICE protests there.

The Save gas station on the west side of Gary, Indiana, wants customers to know that they can pay for their groceries with food stamps. When I pulled into the parking lot last week, the first thing I saw was a blinking neon sign that read EBT for electronic benefits transfer, the prepaid cards used by food-stamp recipients. Inside, I spotted coolers packed with drinks, and shelves and shelves of snacks.

Could the Trump administration really cancel an election? President Trump once again mused about the possibility, telling Reuters recently that he’s accomplished so much that “we shouldn’t even have an election.” This isn’t the first time the president has flirted with the idea of forgoing the midterm elections, and his repeated remarks on the matter have turned what many previously dismissed as a fringe conspiracy theory into a real concern.

Even with a nearly $1 trillion budget, the U.S. military can only do so much. Pentagon officials are privately warning that the United States may not be able to threaten Venezuela’s regime, support protesters seeking to topple Iran’s government, and protect its interests in the Asia-Pacific without being overstretched.

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The most notable, and perhaps most effective, ad of the 2024 presidential campaign featured footage of the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, voicing her support for gender-affirming treatment for inmates in federal prisons. “Kamala is for they/them.

If the story of journalism’s 21st-century decline were purely a tale of technological disruption—of print dinosaurs failing to adapt to the internet—that would be painful enough for those of us who believe in the importance of a robust free press. The truth hurts even more. Big Tech platforms didn’t just out-compete media organizations for the bulk of the advertising-revenue pie. They also cheated them out of much of what was left over, and got away with it.

Updated with new questions at 5:25 p.m. ET on January 14, 2026.
Welcome back to Atlantic Trivia! Are you hungry for more?
I hope that while I’ve been away, you have been enjoying plenty of food for thought—literally. Research shows that berries help improve memory and that a walnut-heavy diet is associated with higher cognitive performance. Fatty fish and leafy greens are linked to slower cognitive decline. Caffeine is a brain boost too.