Something strange has been happening on YouTube over the past few weeks. After being uploaded, some videos have been subtly augmented, their appearance changing without their creators doing anything. Viewers have noticed “extra punchy shadows,” “weirdly sharp edges,” and a smoothed-out look to footage that makes it look “like plastic.” Many people have come to the same conclusion: YouTube is using AI to tweak videos on its platform, without creators’ knowledge.
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
One of the more common clichés of modern travel is calling any trip—even a subway ride to an Instagram-famous coffee shop—a pilgrimage. The word originally applied to journeys made to holy places by people so devout that they were willing to endanger their lives to get there.
Family and community members are mourning 52-year-old Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, a father and grandfather from Guatemala who died while attempting to escape an anti-immigrant raid at a Home Depot in California last week. Montoya, a day laborer who had lived and worked in the United States for about three years, was struck and killed by a car while fleeing across a nearby freeway.
Shahed Ghoreishi was fired from his position as a press officer for Israeli-Palestinian affairs at the U.S. State Department earlier this week. While no official explanation was given, Ghoreishi was involved in multiple departmental disputes over how to characterize U.S. positions on Israel’s forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and the killings of Palestinian journalists.
Democrats and Republicans are locked in a historic battle over congressional representation as Texas Republicans gerrymander the state’s district maps to flip five Democratic seats, at the request of President Trump. California Governor Gavin Newsom says he is fighting “fire with fire,” signing legislation to hold special elections for the public to approve a new gerrymandered map of their own.
Some healthy people may have to prove they have an underlying condition, or get a prescription.
Elizabeth Spiers is joined by Matt Sekerke and Steve H. Hanke to discuss their book Making Money Work.
From TSA Clear to seat selection, the airlines are trying to monetize giving you more time.
Wealthy crypto holders are being targeted for their digital funds with IRL violence.
The American Academy of Pediatrics had earlier urged parents to get young children vaccinated against Covid — pushing back against the health secretary’s stance.
Nearly 2 in 3 Black children are enrolled in the program.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement is taking off in red — and blue — states, even as health experts condemn some of his actions.
A well-connected drug company and Laura Loomer wanted Kennedy ally Vinay Prasad gone. Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles got his job back.
Brian Blase has pushed the GOP to make deeper cuts to the safety-net health program.
The Waves also discusses the Riverside Church controversy and the case of Sarah Milov.
What we say matters, especially depending on whom we say it to.
The Waves also discusses the case against Jeffrey Epstein and Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman Is in Trouble.
Bill Beach said the president’s suggestions that the jobs report was rigged betrayed a misunderstanding in how those numbers are assembled.
The monthly jobs report showed just 73,000 jobs in July, with big reductions to May’s and June’s numbers
We speak with ACLU lawyer Eunice Cho about a new federal lawsuit brought on behalf of immigrants held at the detention center in the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.” The detainees allege being routinely subjected to human rights abuses, denied due process and access to legal counsel, while families have complained of being unable to find their loved ones “disappeared” into the facility.
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Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spent the past six months working fast to embed his Make America Healthy Again creed into American life.
Target bent the knee to MAGA—sinking profits and shaking up leadership along the way.
In the summer of 1930, the U.S. secretaries of war and the Navy developed War Plan Red, a 94-page document laying out detailed plans to strangle the naval and trade capabilities of the United Kingdom in a hypothetical future that involved the U.S. and U.K. at war with each other.
Nate Soares doesn’t set aside money for his 401(k). “I just don’t expect the world to be around,” he told me earlier this summer from his office at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, where he is the president. A few weeks earlier, I’d heard a similar rationale from Dan Hendrycks, the director of the Center for AI Safety. By the time he could tap into any retirement funds, Hendrycks anticipates a world in which “everything is fully automated,” he told me. That is, “if we’re around.
“The museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE.’ The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been – Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. We are not going to allow this to happen.
The Atlantic is announcing four new members of its editorial staff: Emily Bobrow and Katie Zezima will join as senior editors, both as part of the politics, global, and ideas team; Will Gottsegen was hired as a staff writer for The Atlantic’s flagship newsletter, The Daily; and Jonathan Lemire, who has reported extensively on the Trump administration this year as a contributing writer, becomes a staff writer.
More details from our editors about all four journalists follow:
First, Emily Bobrow.
The sports network is finally releasing a revolutionary new product—that it doesn’t want you to buy.
President Trump said Tuesday the Smithsonian Institution was too narrowly focused on negative aspects of U.S. history, including “how bad slavery was.” Trump’s social media post minimizing the horrors of chattel slavery came after the White House ordered a far-reaching review of Smithsonian museum exhibitions in order to ensure they align with Trump’s interpretation of U.S. history.
