Today's Liberal News

We Programmed ChatGPT Into This Article. It’s Weird.

ChatGPT, the internet-famous AI text generator, has taken on a new form. Once a website you could visit, it is now a service that you can integrate into software of all kinds, from spreadsheet programs to delivery apps to magazine websites such as this one. Snapchat added ChatGPT to its chat service (it suggested that users might type “Can you write me a haiku about my cheese-obsessed friend Lukas?”), and Instacart plans to add a recipe robot. Many more will follow.

Elon Musk Is Spiraling

In recent memory, a conversation about Elon Musk might have had two fairly balanced sides. There were the partisans of Visionary Elon, head of Tesla and SpaceX, a selfless billionaire who was putting his money toward what he believed would save the world. And there were critics of Egregious Elon, the unrepentant troll who spent a substantial amount of his time goading online hordes. These personas existed in a strange harmony, displays of brilliance balancing out bursts of terribleness.

Opposition Grows to Atlanta “Cop City” as More Forest Defenders Charged with Domestic Terrorism

Prosecutors in Atlanta have charged 23 forest defenders with “domestic terrorism” after their arrests late Sunday at a festival near the site of Cop City, a massive police training facility being built in the Weelaunee Forest. The arrests followed clashes between police and protesters on Sunday afternoon and came less than two months after Atlanta police shot and killed Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, a 26-year-old environmental defender.

“Plantation Politics”: How White Mississippi Lawmakers Want to Seize Power in Majority-Black Jackson

Mississippi’s Republican majority in the state Legislature has put forth a slew of bills in recent months to put the majority-Black capital of Jackson under a white-led superstructure. Under the proposed bills, the Capitol Police would be expanded and given greater authority over much of Jackson without being accountable to local leaders or residents, and a separate court system would be set up in the city, composed of judges appointed directly by white state officials.

“Corrupt”: DOJ Report Slams Louisville Police for Abuse, Discrimination After Breonna Taylor Killing

The Department of Justice has released a scathing report accusing the Louisville, Kentucky, police department of unlawfully discriminating against the city’s Black population, as well as against people with behavioral health disabilities. The report concludes an investigation that began after the police killing of Breonna Taylor, who was shot dead in her own home during a no-knock police raid on March 13, 2020.

The Kari Lake Effect

Kari Lake, who’s still trying to overturn her November election loss in Arizona, is one of four women Trump is considering for VP, according to a new report from Axios. Lake is flirting with another possibility too.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
A view of American history that leads to one conclusion
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s last act
Prepare for the textpocalypse.

What Ordinary Family Photos Teach Us About Ourselves

In our family, my aunt Burnette was the designated photographer. Or at least that was what I thought when, as a child, I’d page through the family photo albums at her home. Her beautiful portraits—of my cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and great-grandparents in southeastern Wisconsin—captured silly faces, warm cuddles, flawless stunting. She documented the fact of us.

Prepare for the Textpocalypse

What if, in the end, we are done in not by intercontinental ballistic missiles or climate change, not by microscopic pathogens or a mountain-size meteor, but by … text? Simple, plain, unadorned text, but in quantities so immense as to be all but unimaginable—a tsunami of text swept into a self-perpetuating cataract of content that makes it functionally impossible to reliably communicate in any digital setting?Our relationship to the written word is fundamentally changing.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Last Act

Photographs by Ryan PflugerArnold Schwarzenegger nearly killed me.I had joined him one morning as he rushed through his daily routine. Schwarzenegger gets up by six. He makes coffee, putters around, feeds Whiskey (his miniature horse) and Lulu (his miniature donkey), shovels their overnight manure into a barrel, drinks his coffee, checks his email, and maybe plays a quick game of chess online.

“Torture”: El Salvador’s Abortion Ban Condemned, Highlights Horrors Facing U.S. After Roe Overturned

As we mark International Women’s Day on March 8, we look at the criminalization of abortion with filmmaker Celina Escher, who directed the award-winning documentary Fly So Far about abortion in El Salvador, which has enforced an abortion ban since 1998, and dozens of people have been convicted and imprisoned after having miscarriages, stillbirths and other obstetric emergencies.

“Women, Life, Freedom”: Iranian Women Continue Protests Amid Crackdown & Poisonings at Girls’ Schools

Iranian parents and teachers have been holding protests in Tehran and other cities following a spate of apparent poisonings at girls’ schools since November. According to the group Human Rights Activists in Iran, there have been at least 290 suspected school poisonings in recent months, sickening at least 7,000 students with symptoms including headaches, fatigue and more.

“Stand Up for Afghan Women”: U.N. Calls Afghanistan World’s Most Repressive Country for Women, Girls

A top United Nations official said Wednesday that “Afghanistan under the Taliban remains the most repressive country in the world regarding women’s rights.” Since taking power nearly 19 months ago, the Taliban has moved systematically to erase women from public life by banning women and girls from schools, from working with nongovernmental organizations and from traveling without a male relative.

International Women’s Day: Roots in Radical History, Labor & Reproductive Rights

March 8 marks International Women’s Day around the world, seeking to end gender discrimination, violence and abuse. We start the show by looking at the day’s roots in socialism, and what it means for the movement for reproductive justice in the United States. Our guest is Nancy Krieger, renowned professor of social epidemiology at Harvard University’s School of Public Health and director of the Interdisciplinary Concentration on Women, Gender, and Health.