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.Donald Trump has hastened America’s decline into a “post-truth” society that privileges feelings over reality, my colleague Megan Garber has argued.
One night in July, a few weeks after my son was born, I lay awake, desperately scrolling through photos of injured feet. The mounting pain from an ingrown toenail in my right foot had become excruciating, and the internet promised to help. I could no longer deny the fact that the exorbitantly expensive Hoka sneakers I’d bought just months before—to prevent pregnancy-related foot pain—had become too small. To my horror, my feet had grown half a size. Permanently.
After nearly seven months of rumors and delays, Google has finally released its most advanced generative-AI model to date: Gemini 1.0, a program the company is advertising as one of the most capable pieces of software ever. It can purportedly solve calculus problems, explain memes, write code, and—in a real example offered by the company—provide feedback on cooking photos to help you decide when your omelet is done.
The renowned television producer Norman Lear, who died yesterday at 101, pursued his craft with an assiduous fervor throughout his seven decades in the entertainment industry. But when I interviewed him back in 2020, for a story that focused in part on his role in ushering in prominent Black television shows of the 1970s, Lear characterized himself as an enthusiastic viewer above all. “My primary role has been to have a great time!” he said, with a laugh.
As Vladimir Putin arrives in Abu Dhabi but does not plan to attend the COP28 summit in Dubai, we speak with Vladimir Slivyak, co-chair for the leading Russian environmental organization Ecodefense, about the climate impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine and the renewed push at the summit to expand nuclear power.
As Democracy Now! broadcasts from COP28 in Dubai, we look at how the United Arab Emirates is using its vast oil money to buy up the rights to land in many African countries in order to sell carbon credits to major polluters, a plan that critics characterize as a new form of colonialism.
Climate activist Harjeet Singh joins us for an update on the U.N. climate summit in Dubai, where fossil fuel lobbyists outnumber many countries’ delegations. “It is deeply, deeply problematic to see how fossil fuel lobbyists are taking over these climate talks,” he says, noting that climate activists’ fears of an industry takeover of the world’s foremost gathering for climate governance appear to have come true.
As Democracy Now! broadcasts from the U.N. climate summit, Amy Goodman attempts to question the oil CEO presiding over the talks. COP28 president and United Arab Emirates oil CEO Sultan Al Jaber is facing criticism over the record number of fossil fuel lobbyists in attendance at the summit, and recently claimed there is “no science” to back up calls to phase out fossil fuels in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
We go to Gaza for an update on Israel’s attack, which is now being described as one of the worst assaults on any civilian population in recent times. As Israeli tanks enter Khan Younis and the Palestinian death toll tops 16,000, we speak with Yousef Hammash.
The firm is deploying its artificial intelligence across the health care spectrum. Its lobbyists are smoothing the way.
Why the law could be harder to repeal in 2025 than it was in 2017.
Public health experts have said the pneumonia outbreak is linked to known diseases.
It’s more likely the bill is coming due for China’s prolonged Covid lockdown than a novel virus emerging.
Expiring Covid benefits and new limits on safety net programs threaten to hit Americans’ pocketbooks — especially among core parts of the Democratic electorate.
Top White House aides reviewed private polling showing Biden’s economic message falling flat and suggesting paths toward a turnaround.
Can Democrats overcome their college-campus branding and reclaim the working class?
The new strategy UAW President Shawn Fain announced Friday signaled the strike could start having broader implications for the economy.
The U.N. climate summit underway in Dubai marks the first time in nine years that representatives from Human Rights Watch have been allowed access to the United Arab Emirates. We speak with researcher Joey Shea about toxic pollution from UAE fossil fuels processing, and the state of political rights in the authoritarian country — especially for migrant workers who constitute 88% of the population but lack many labor protections under the kafala system.
Mark Esper pulled no punches with his “dangerous time” prediction of a second Trump presidency.
Former White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin shares a shocking anecdote about the former president.
“The only global warming we should be thinking about or worrying about is nuclear global warming,” the ex-president said as vilified Biden’s climate envoy.
The former president declined to say if he would use his office to go “after people” if he’s elected again in 2024.
Several of the court’s conservative justices seemed skeptical of an argument against taxing undistributed income from investments in foreign companies.
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.For the second consecutive time, the Oxford English Dictionary crowned an internet-slang term its word of the year. This year’s choice—rizz—is meaningful only to the extent that it reminds us of the dictionary’s role as a responsive, living object.
The size of COP28 is hard to comprehend, even from the ground. More than 97,000 people have registered, according to the massive spreadsheet of expected participants, enough to populate a small city. The campus and its temporary denizens feel like a city too. Meetings are spread out across nearly 100 buildings, all with the freshly built feeling one expects from Dubai.
No one alive has seen a race like the 2024 presidential election. For months, if not years, many people have expected a reprise of the 2020 election, a matchup between the sitting president and a former president.But that hasn’t prevented a crowded primary. On the GOP side, more than a dozen candidates are ostensibly vying for the nomination.
The Belgian empire invaded the Congo rainforest during the late 19th century and swiftly established itself as the cruelest imperial force in Africa. The Congo is the world’s second-largest rainforest behind the Amazon, and King Leopold II treated it like a personal loot box. To strip away and sell its resources, he enslaved the Indigenous population, destroying much of the region’s preexisting culture and politics from the family unit on upward.
This year, there are at least 2,456 lobbyists at COP28, the U.N. climate summit in Dubai — nearly four times as many as last year — from companies like Shell, Total and ExxonMobil. The lobbyists outnumber the delegations of every country other than Brazil and the United Arab Emirates, which is hosting the summit, presided over by the CEO of the UAE’s national oil company, Sultan Al Jaber.
Broadcasting from COP28 in Dubai as Israel continues its bombardment of Gaza, Democracy Now! investigates how militarism and war fuel the climate crisis.
The World Health Organization is warning the crisis in Gaza is getting worse by the hour as Israel intensifies its ground and air assault across all parts of the Gaza Strip, including surrounding the Jabaliya refugee camp and bombing Khan Younis, where many had fled to from the north.