On a Wednesday morning last month, I thought, just for a second, that AI was going to kill me. I had hailed a self-driving Waymo to bring me to a hacker house in Nob Hill, San Francisco. Just a few blocks from arrival, the car lurched toward the other lane—which was, thankfully, empty—and immediately jerked back.
That sense of peril felt right for the moment.

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.
Honor Jones’s debut novel, Sleep, starts with a child’s perception of the world around her. I’ve known Honor, a senior editor at The Atlantic, since we were both children, and reading the book was a little like immersing myself in our own long friendship.

Sign up for Trump’s Return, a newsletter featuring coverage of the second Trump presidency.
Updated at 6:35 p.m. ET on May 13, 2025.
When the welcome ceremony was over, and the Trump officials drove off in their black SUVs, a dozen or so newly arrived South African refugees stepped out into the parking lot of a private terminal at Washington Dulles International Airport yesterday afternoon, still carrying little paper flags they’d been handed. Now it was time for a smoke.

Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.
Don’t want to miss a single column? Sign up to get “Dear James” in your inbox.
Dear James,
I have stage fright. I’ve had it since I was a little kid trying to perform at elementary-school talent shows.

Yasuyoshi Chiba, a photojournalist with AFP, recently spent a rainy day in Jakarta with three men who had coated themselves in metallic paint, becoming “manusia silver,” or silvermen, seeking donations from passersby. Rising prices and growing levels of unemployment have resulted in a recent rise in begging across Jakarta. The group followed here say that on a good day, they can earn as much as 200,000 rupiah ($12).