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Back in 1999—the good old days—a Canadian band that called itself Great Big Sea released a wonderful song titled “Consequence Free.” It was a gentle poke at social conformity, guilt, and, yes, perhaps even what was then called political correctness.
Photographs by Andrej Vasilenko
In 1999, a remarkable book was published in Poland. Its author, Kazimierz Sakowicz, had died 55 years earlier, and it’s not clear whether he hoped, let alone expected, that what he had written would ever be published. The first edition appeared under the one-word title Dziennik (“Diary”), with the explanatory subtitle “Written in Ponar From July 11, 1941, to November 6, 1943.
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.
Over the past week or so, my X feed has been overtaken by Moo Deng, the baby pygmy hippopotamus whose glistening skin, jaunty trot, and rippling neck rolls have won the internet’s devotion.
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Living in the days of climate change means we are living in the era of ecological grief. The emotional phenomenon has inspired funerals for glaciers in Iceland, Oregon, and Switzerland. Scientists have reported feeling shock and loss with each consecutive return to the Great Barrier Reef, as new expanses of coral bleach and desiccate.
Ellen DeGeneres has been raising chickens. She loves those chickens, and the feeling, she thinks, is mutual. She watches them play on a little swing. It’s been two years since the comedian was last in the public eye, and she’s eager to chat about what she’s been doing in the interim. “Let me see what else I can tell you about that’s been going on,” she muses in her latest—and, according to her, last—stand-up special, Netflix’s For Your Approval. She’s stopped getting Botox injections, she notes.
We speak with Brett Murphy, the ProPublica reporter behind a blockbuster exposé that revealed the Biden administration ignored warnings from its own experts about Israel blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza in order to keep supplying the country with weapons. USAID, the U.S.
Israel is continuing its bombardment of Lebanon and preparing for a possible ground invasion of the country, with the Netanyahu government rejecting a proposed 21-day ceasefire put forward by the United States, France, Canada, Australia, Japan, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams faces mounting pressure to resign after becoming the city’s first sitting mayor to be indicted on federal charges. The indictment remains sealed as of Thursday morning, but The New York Times reports the federal investigation has focused at least in part on whether Adams took illegal campaign donations from the Turkish government. Many of Adams’s top aides are also facing federal investigations. “New Yorkers deserve better.
The Treasury secretary is defending her legacy — and warning that the stability of the U.S. economy is at stake.
There’s been a subtle, crucial shift that reflects the growing sense that Washington must intervene to create more housing.
The company’s direct-sales model didn’t factor in that women might actually be successful in the workplace.
Good tidings for inflation.
After she profiled him, things apparently got personal.
Slow Burn Season 10 reveals the network’s real origin story.
Some see the politicking as a moral obligation, but others see a threat to the doctor-patient relationship.
The case is part of a concerted effort by the Biden administration to lower drug prices.
As Trump pitches himself as a “leader on IVF,” GOP senators dismiss the legislation as a Democratic stunt.
A plan to expand access to the drug treatment is hung up on fears of a black market, despite bipartisan support.
The state lost millions in federal funding because it refused to offer patients a national hotline number for information about abortion.
Interest rate cut “is not a declaration of victory, it’s a declaration of progress.
The move signals that the central bank is growing nervous about the declining labor market.
Biden is determined to convince a skeptical public that he strengthened the economy.
He was Trump’s policy whisperer to key voting blocs. Now, he’s fueling rumors that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are eating cats and dogs.
The state of Missouri is set to kill Marcellus Williams tonight. Williams has always maintained his innocence in the 1998 killing of St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Lisha Gayle during a robbery. The jurors, prosecutors and victim’s family are all supporting Williams’s bid for clemency, which has been denied by Missouri’s Republican governor and state Supreme Court.
It was her first solo interview with a national network as the Democratic presidential nominee.
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.
For a new feature article, my colleague Franklin Foer interviewed two dozen participants at the highest levels of governments in both the U.S. and the Middle East to recount how “11 months of earnest, energetic diplomacy” have so far ended in chaos. Since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, the U.S.
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In addition to these data, the report details The Atlantic’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion through our daily work and in our workplace.
Something weird is happening on my Instagram feed. Between posts of celebrities with perfect skin are pictures of regular people—my own friends!—looking just as good. They’re in their mid-30s, yet their faces look so smooth, so taut and placid, that they look a full decade younger. Is it makeup? Serums? Supplements? Sleep? When I finally inquired as to how they’d pulled it off, they gladly offered an explanation: “baby Botox.
Donald Trump’s former longtime adviser Michael Cohen has said of the ex-president, whom he has likened to a Mob boss: “He speaks in code.” Trump used the code last week to send a warning to American Jews. “If I don’t win this election,” he said, “the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss.”
Flanked by American and Israeli flags, Trump delivered this warning at an event in Washington organized by the Republican mega-donor Miriam Adelson.
Last year, in July, Reine Protacio’s experiments suddenly stopped working. Every scientist encounters baffling results from time to time; you chalk it up to error, repeat the experiment, and hope for the best. But in this case, the problem didn’t resolve and in fact spread to other members of the lab: Their yeast, which normally multiples with such intense fecundity that 500 colonies might bloom across a single laboratory dish, had become stunted.