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.An expedition to see the remains of the Titanic turned into a tragedy. How did it go so wrong?First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:
Why not Whitmer?
The ghost of a once era-defining show
How the vape shops won
Go ahead, try to explain milk.
In the long and checkered history of possibly terrible impulse decisions, here’s one for the ages: A few years ago, the comedian Alex Edelman decided on a whim to show up uninvited to a casual meeting of white nationalists at an apartment in New York City, and pose as one of them. Why? He was curious. He wanted to see what it would be like to be on the inside of a gathering that would never have knowingly included him, given that he is Jewish.
The dreadful saga of the missing Titanic submersible is finally drawing to a close. On Sunday, the vessel, called the Titan, was supposed to take five people on an hours-long, 12,500-foot-deep journey to the wreckage of the Titanic, which rests at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Instead, less than two hours into the tour, the submersible lost contact with its support ship. At a press conference this afternoon, the U.S.
Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
We speak with Dr. Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, who met this week with President Biden in a closed-door discussion with other artificial intelligence experts and critics about the need to explore the promise and risk of AI. The computer scientist and coding expert has long raised alarm about how AI and algorithms are enabling racist and sexist bias.
Officials in Beijing have denounced U.S. President Joe Biden for describing Chinese President Xi Jinping as a “dictator,” calling it a breach of diplomatic protocol. Biden’s remark at a fundraising event this week came just days after Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited China to help thaw relations at a time of growing competition and suspicion between the two superpowers.
President Joe Biden is hosting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a four-day state visit this week amid growing concerns about the Indian leader’s human rights record. Modi has been prime minister since 2014, during which time he has cracked down on dissent, curtailed the free press, targeted Muslims and other minorities and pushed an aggressive form of Hindu nationalism that violates the pluralistic vision of modern India’s founders.
Fifteen states have banned access to the procedure in most situations.
Not everything played out the way people expected.
District Judge Jay Moody issued a permanent injunction against the Arkansas law.
The blockbuster weight loss drugs’ access to a key market — older Americans — is limited, as Medicare is banned from covering weight loss drugs as part of the Part D program.
The agency followed the guidance of its independent advisory committee, which identified a commonly circulating strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Mandy Cohen’s experience parrying GOP assaults is seen as a key attribute she’ll need in leading the CDC.
Inflation slowed to just 4% in May.
The Fed is paying particular attention to so-called core prices, which exclude volatile food and energy costs and are regarded as a better gauge of longer-term inflation trends.
POLITICO asked a panel of strategists and elected officials what under-the-radar issue they think could play an outsize role in 2024.
“Who are you holding accountable?” asked Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) as he defended Adam Schiff before a GOP-led vote to censure the California Democrat.
The Florida governor and Trump rival in the GOP presidential race seemed to make a reference to a supposed strange habit.
A lawsuit that PhRMA filed Wednesday is the latest fusillade against one of the president’s biggest domestic achievements.
During the exchange, Greene accused Boebert of copying her articles of impeachment, according to sources who spoke to The Daily Beast.
After failing last week, a milder admonishment of the California Democrat has been approved with only Republican votes.
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 more than a week now, Reddit moderators have been using the site’s tools to protest proposed business changes. The stalemate reveals how much power the site’s users have accumulated over the years—and just how much the site depends on its moderators’ free labor.
In the beginning, the chatbots and their ilk fed on the human-made internet. Various generative-AI models of the sort that power ChatGPT got their start by devouring data from sites including Wikipedia, Getty, and Scribd. They consumed text, images, and other content, learning through algorithmic digestion their flavors and texture, which ingredients go well together and which do not, in order to concoct their own art and writing. But this feast only whet their appetite.
On paper, Pixar’s new film, Elemental, seems like the kind of wildly inventive, visually dynamic project that has made the company such a consistent success in the animation world. The studio’s formula is clear enough: Take an inanimate, perhaps abstract thing (a toy, a car, a feeling, a human soul) and personify it, even as a talking blob of sorts, building out a representational world that nonetheless feels familiar.
Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Last week I asked readers what they experience or observe personally that is most at odds with what they see portrayed in the media.G. is a 77-year-old woman:
I’m not seeing the real me.
Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, is pleading guilty to federal tax offenses and a separate felony gun charge for which he is avoiding prosecution, according to a plea agreement with the Justice Department announced Tuesday. The deal caps a multiyear probe by the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Delaware.
We speak with Minneapolis City Councilmember Robin Wonsley, the first Black Democratic Socialist on the City Council, about the Justice Department’s newly released probe into the city’s police department that found systemic problems with discrimination and excessive force and concluded: “The patterns and practices we observed made what happened to George Floyd possible.
The Democratic majority in Minnesota’s state Legislature, along with Democratic Governor Tim Walz, have enacted sweeping progressive reforms this year, with many praising the ambitious agenda as a “Minnesota Miracle.
In New York, a battle is brewing over a bill called Coverage for All that would use a surplus of federal funds to pay people who are undocumented to enroll in the state’s Essential Plan under the federal Affordable Care Act, potentially granting 250,000 people access to healthcare.
Jews, Episcopalians, Unitarians, Satanists and other people of faith say the laws infringe on their religious rights.