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.

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.