Today's Liberal News

What Many Americans Misunderstand About Israel’s Unrest

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.On Sunday, news broke that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had abruptly fired the country’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, after Gallant pleaded for a delay in the judiciary-overhaul plan put forward by Netanyahu’s government.

Dungeons & Dragons and the Return of the Sincere Blockbuster

The best sessions of Dungeons & Dragons walk the line between stirring tales of teamwork and achingly nerdy jokes. A barbarian, a bard, a sorcerer, and a druid walk into an inn—what happens next? Why, deeds of derring-do, of course, or at least a bit of hearty axe-swinging. The collaborative tabletop game invites every player to get creative; the most inspired renditions plop players into a fantasy world and ask them to improvise their way through.

Why You Fell for the Fake Pope Coat

Being alive and on the internet in 2023 suddenly means seeing hyperrealistic images of famous people doing weird, funny, shocking, and possibly disturbing things that never actually happened. In just the past week, the AI art tool Midjourney rendered two separate convincing, photographlike images of celebrities that both went viral. Last week, it imagined Donald Trump’s arrest and eventual escape from jail.

To Understand Anti-vaxxers, Consider Aristotle

Among the many difficulties imposed upon America by the pandemic, the scourge of anti-vaccine sentiment—and the preventable deaths caused as result—ranks among the most frustrating, especially for infectious-disease doctors like me.People who are hospitalized with COVID-19 rarely refuse therapy, but acceptance of vaccines to help prevent infection has been considerably more limited.

Hanna Rosin named host of The Atlantic’s weekly podcast, Radio Atlantic

The Atlantic has named a new host for its flagship podcast, Radio Atlantic: Hanna Rosin, a former Atlantic writer who was a co-host of NPR’s Invisibilia and most recently the editorial director for audio at New York magazine. Hanna will bring her formidable talent and deep curiosity to Radio Atlantic, which will relaunch in the spring.Radio Atlantic will resume a weekly cadence in late May.

Randall Robinson (1941-2023) on Haiti’s Unbroken Agony, from U.S. Coups to Haiti’s “Debt” to France

We continue to remember the lawyer and human rights activist Randall Robinson, the founder of the racial justice group TransAfrica, who died last week at age 81. Robinson was a leader in the U.S. movement against South African apartheid and was a prominent critic of U.S. policy in Haiti, including the U.S.-backed coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004.

Nashville Mourns 6 Killed in 129th U.S. Mass Shooting This Year, After Tennessee Loosens Gun Laws

Nashville is in mourning after a gunman killed six people at a private Christian elementary school Monday before being killed by police. The victims were three adults who worked at the school and three 9-year-old students. Police identified the shooter as 28-year-old Audrey Hale, a former student, who entered the school through a side door armed with two assault-style weapons and a handgun.

Palestinians to Pay the Price as Netanyahu Pauses Judicial Overhaul While Further Empowering Far Right

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to delay a push to overhaul and weaken Israel’s judiciary until the next parliamentary session. The retreat came after months of unprecedented mass protests and a general strike on Monday that shut down much of Israel. Netanyahu had earlier fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for suggesting a delay to judicial changes.

Trump Sings a Song of Sedition

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.At his rally in Waco this weekend, Donald Trump stood at attention as a choir of jailed January 6 rioters sang an anthem of sedition, and media outlets barely blinked.

Nine AI Chatbots You Can Play With Right Now

If you believe in the multibillion-dollar valuations, the prognostications from some of tech’s most notable figures, and the simple magic of getting a computer to do your job for you, then you might say we’re at the start of the chatbot era. Last November, OpenAI released ChatGPT into the unsuspecting world: It became the fastest-growing consumer app in history and immediately seemed to reconfigure how people think of conversational programs.

Netanyahu Flinched

Last night, hundreds of thousands of Israelis poured into the streets, believing their country’s democracy to be in peril. The immediate precipitant for this popular protest was the firing of Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister. A former general tasked with overseeing the Jewish state’s security, Gallant had called for his own coalition to pause its attempted overhaul of the Israeli judicial system, arguing that division around the plan was undermining national cohesion.