It’s said that the 17th- and 18th-century polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was the last person to know everything. He was a whiz at philosophy, law, logic, science, engineering, politics—the works. But there was also simply less to know back then; the post–Industrial Revolution knowledge explosion killed the universal genius.
Which is to say that I bet Leibniz wouldn’t know the full oeuvre of K-pop if he were alive today.
In August, an amateur French astronomer, Adrien Coffinet, messaged an email list dedicated to asteroid and comet research with an announcement. He’d identified a new quasi-moon: “2025 PN7 seems to be a quasi-satellite of the Earth,” he wrote. Last week, news of the quasi-moon went mainstream, as a surge of headlines declared that Earth officially had a second moon.
This isn’t exactly right: As several scientists reiterated to me, Earth still only has one real moon.
A record 164,000 people cast ballots in New York on the first two days of early voting in the city’s mayoral race. If elected, Zohran Mamdani would be the city’s first Muslim mayor. In recent days, he has faced a string of Islamophobic attacks.
Israel has carried out repeated attacks in Gaza and killed about 100 Palestinians over the past two weeks since the U.S.-backed ceasefire deal with Hamas came into effect. Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of Drop Site News, is one of the few Western journalists in regular contact with Hamas leaders. “It’s utter malpractice on the part of all of these news organizations that have not regularly been interviewing the leaders, the negotiators of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The Trump administration has now killed at least 43 people in 10 strikes against so-called drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean. The threat of war against Venezuela and the surrounding region is growing as the Pentagon deploys the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, to the Caribbean.
At the headquarters for Donald Trump’s darkest work, a few people are getting under the administration’s skin.
Stealing priceless jewels from the world’s most famous museum may not actually pay that well.
Are the “cockroaches” Jamie Dimon spoke of really a private credit problem or are they a bit closer to home?
It may only be the beginning of a wider crackdown for the Wolverine State’s marijuana industry.
Next week’s rain might be the start of a sinkhole near you.
Bot-made listings are forcing homebuyers and professionals to ask themselves if this is a straight-up deceptive practice.
Despite the Covid experience, nations aren’t proving more willing to help each other or to dig deep to help poor countries.
Two queer religion geeks move to San Francisco. And Easter communion gets real in the age of AIDS.
Troy Perry starts the gay/lesbian Metropolitan Community Church. A young lesbian is a regular at the San Francisco congregation when her friend gets sick.
Rescued archival audio takes listeners into the heart of an LGBTQ+ church during the height of the AIDS epidemic in 1980s and ’90s San Francisco.
The Waves also discusses the Riverside Church controversy and the case of Sarah Milov.
Trump’s strength with Republicans on the economy could prove to be a boon for the GOP.
A survey from the liberal-leaning group Somos Votantes shows Latino voters are souring on the president.
Privately, aides concede voters remain uneasy about prices but argue their policies are beginning to turn things around.
The new short film Criminal highlights the injustices of the criminal legal system with a look at how for-profit bail preys on the poor and mentally ill.
“The Republican Party has really become an extremist movement.” Amid a growing political divide in the Republican Party over the release of federal documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, we speak to former Republican political operative Stuart Stevens about the erosion of support for Donald Trump from some of his most prominent backers.
Israel’s Knesset has advanced legislation that would effectively annex the West Bank, prompting rare criticism from the Trump administration, which says it does not support annexation. We get a report on the state of illegal settlement activity in the Palestinian territory from the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Jan Egeland, who has just returned from the occupied West Bank.
New York mayoral candidates held their final debate Wednesday before the November 4 election, with early voting beginning Saturday. Democratic nominee and front-runner Zohran Mamdani faced off against Republican Curtis Sliwa and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent after losing the primary to Mamdani.
The National Basketball Association is now slime-identified with a crew of upstanders known as “Spook,” “Peso,” “Vez,” “Sugar,” “Black Tony,” “Scruli,” and “Doc,” thanks to the strenuous efforts of FBI Director Kash Patel to generate a headline. “Current and Former National Basketball Association Players and Four Other Individuals Charged in Widespread Sports Betting and Money Laundering Conspiracy,” Patel’s press office blared last week.
Americans who want to bet on sports have many options. There’s DraftKings, FanDuel, ESPN Bet, Caesars, and BetMGM. There’s also BetRivers, Hard Rock, bet365, Fanatics, and Bally Bet. But none of those platforms are available in the 17 states where online sports betting remains illegal, including California and Texas.
Kalshi, a prediction market, doesn’t have that limitation. Gamblers can use it to wager on the outcome of sporting events in all 50 states.
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.
Glass-cutting power tools, priceless crown jewels, and two scooters to escape on. The story of the thieves who targeted the Louvre last weekend could have been ripped from a movie.
The October 13 peace summit in Sharm al-Sheikh—where Donald Trump assembled more than 30 world leaders, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and (for some reason) the international soccer vizier Gianni Infantino—achieved, for about two hours, general agreement on a 20-point plan for Gaza. It had immediately freed the remaining 20 living Israeli hostages, in exchange for almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, plus assurances of an Israeli military withdrawal and an end to the war.
Are the “cockroaches” Jamie Dimon spoke of really a private credit problem or are they a bit closer to home?
