As recently as two and a half weeks ago, New York Governor Kathy Hochul was bragging about her conviction to stand up to “set in their ways” drivers in order to implement a congestion-pricing plan that would improve New Yorkers’ lives and save them a lot of time stuck in traffic. Yesterday, Hochul suddenly announced that the program would be “paused indefinitely.

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This week, two influential spreaders of Donald Trump’s Big Lie faced trouble. These aren’t the first glitches in the conspiracy-theory universe.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
The cars always win.

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Somehow, Neil Postman saw it coming. His 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, predicted that people would become so consumed by entertainment that they would be rendered unable to have serious discussions about serious issues. Postman was worried about television; he didn’t live to see social media kick those fears into hyperdrive.

At the start of Elizabeth Hobson’s career as an ecologist, she knew to stick to one rule: Never anthropomorphize the animals you study.
For plenty of people, assigning human characteristics to another living creature feels natural enough that we do it as a matter of course. But to many scientists who study animal behavior, anthropomorphism is a cardinal sin, and suggesting that a researcher has tiptoed in that direction is tantamount to saying they’ve resorted to uninformed speculation.

Driving into New York City is a special kind of skill, requiring patience, cutthroat merging, and, sometimes, a willingness to navigate the backstreets of New Jersey. Driving in New York City, and especially in Manhattan, is also a skill, requiring the same patience and cutthroat merging, along with a willingness to pay upwards of $50 a day to park. People do it every day, but of all the places in the United States, Manhattan is perhaps the most hostile to driving.

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Free trials are convenient for consumers—and expedient for companies. But how much of the subscription business relies on people simply forgetting to cancel?
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
The most consequential TV show in history
NASA finally has an alternative to SpaceX.

OpenAI appears to be in the midst of a months-long revolt from within. The latest flash point came yesterday, when a group of 11 current and former employees—plus two from other firms—issued a public letter declaring that leading AI companies are not to be trusted. “The companies are behaving in a way that is really not in the public interest,” William Saunders, a signatory who, like several others on the letter, left OpenAI earlier this year, told me.

“People will die if doctors misdiagnose patients.” This is true as far as it goes. But the recent news that prompted Elon Musk to share this observation on X was not precisely about medical errors. It was about what he might call the “woke mind virus.” A story by Aaron Sibarium in The Washington Free Beacon had revealed complaints that UCLA’s medical school was admitting applicants partly based on race—a practice that has long been outlawed in California public schools.

The day after former President Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies, I sat down for a focus group with nine voters from across the country who voted for him twice and don’t want to vote for him again. They are not, however, all committed to voting for President Joe Biden instead.
[Quinta Jurecic: Trump, defeated]
These are the “double haters”: the chunk of voters who are dissatisfied with both candidates, and are trying to decide which one is less bad.