Artificial intelligence has in recent years proved itself to be a quick study, although it is being educated in a manner that would shame the most brutal headmaster. Locked into airtight Borgesian libraries for months with no bathroom breaks or sleep, AIs are told not to emerge until they’ve finished a self-paced speed course in human culture. On the syllabus: a decent fraction of all the surviving text that we have ever produced.
Mark Sklansky, a pediatric cardiologist at UCLA, has not shaken a hand in several years. The last time he did so, it was only “because I knew I was going to go to the bathroom right afterwards,” he told me. “I think it’s a really bad practice.” From where he’s standing, probably a safe distance away, our palms and fingers are just not sanitary. “They’re wet; they’re warm; they’re what we use to touch everything we touch,” he said.
In many West African cultures, griots are the keepers of memory, their oral traditions simultaneously positioning them as fabulists, historians, genealogists, entertainers, and messengers. To serve as a voice for a people is a heavy burden—colonization has dispossessed many Indigenous communities of the cultural artifacts that hold their history, and the triangular slave trade decimated the landscapes and kingdoms of various ethnic groups.
We speak with philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, who has recently written two widely acclaimed books: “Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)” and “Reconsidering Reparations,” which focuses in part on the climate crisis.
The growing problem of crushing medical debt was raised by Senator Bernie Sanders in a national address Tuesday on the American working class. We hear from patients and discuss the fight to stop hospitals from suing patients, garnishing wages and putting liens on homes of people facing medical bills they can’t afford.
This Sunday marks what would have been the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion. But the landmark decision was overturned by the ultraconservative Supreme Court just over six months ago in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. The court’s removal of the right to safe, legal abortions has led to total abortion bans in 12 states.
The Biden administration plans to widen testing of bathroom waste when international flights arrive.
The agencies said the surveillance signal “is very unlikely” to represent a “true clinical risk” and said they continued to recommend the vaccine.
Architect of the administration’s mass vaccination campaign will exit amid preparations for end of the emergency response
The Biden administration is forwarding lists of senior facilities with zero people vaccinated to state regulators for review and possible penalties.
Fed officials are signaling that they’re determined to keep their vise-like grip on the economy through the end of 2023.
People close to Yellen said she had considered leaving for family reasons and because the Treasury job is highly political — and would become more so with Republicans in control of the House.
Even with last month’s further easing of inflation, the Federal Reserve plans to keep raising interest rates.
Today is the federal holiday that honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was born January 15, 1929. He was assassinated April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just 39 years old. While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War.
Twenty-four volunteer rescue workers connected to the group Emergency Response Centre International face trial for human smuggling in Greece for giving life-saving assistance to thousands of migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, fleeing violence, poverty and persecution. A European Parliament report described the trial as Europe’s “largest case of criminalization of solidarity.” We’re joined by New Yorker staff writer Alexis Okeowo.
Critics on Twitter taunted the far-right lawmaker over her promise.
The New York congressman allegedly raised $3,000 for the service dog’s surgery and disappeared, Patch reports.
Other critics also mocked Santos for being named to two House committees despite an extensive history of lying.
Nearly two years ago, Democrats removed the Republican representatives from their committees because of violent and offensive remarks or actions.
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.Recent breakthroughs in generative AI, such as the image generator DALL-E and the large language model ChatGPT, are “potentially akin to the release of the iPhone in 2007, or to the invention of the desktop computer,” Derek Thompson told me in December.
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he 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.
The day after Damar Hamlin collapsed during what began as a normal game on Monday Night Football, the radio host Garrett Bush was frustrated.Bush had watched as other commentators offered “thoughts and prayers” and speculated about when the game would be rescheduled. But all that seemed inconsequential to Bush. Here was a young man, he thought, who may never play football again.
In Elena Ferrante’s The Lying Life of Adults, the narrator—an adolescent girl named Giovanna—begins her story by recounting the time she heard her father tell her mother “that I was very ugly.” This statement is technically untrue, and an introduction to the novel’s tricky manipulations. What she actually overhears her father say is that she’s “getting the face of Vittoria,” his estranged sister.
The Justice Department and Congress are facing new calls to investigate Donald Trump’s financial ties to Saudi Arabia. The latest controversy centers on a new golf tournament owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign Public Investment Fund, which is chaired by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. LIV has paid millions to golf resorts owned by Donald Trump, who has publicly supported the new league which is attempting to compete with the PGA.
The death toll from two weeks of flooding in California has reached at least 20. As climate scientists are predicting more extreme weather linked to climate change over the next two years, outrage is growing over how fossil fuel companies were fully aware of the link between fossil fuel emissions and global warming but spent decades obscuring the science in order to make maximum profits.
The agencies said the surveillance signal “is very unlikely” to represent a “true clinical risk” and said they continued to recommend the vaccine.
Architect of the administration’s mass vaccination campaign will exit amid preparations for end of the emergency response
The Biden administration is forwarding lists of senior facilities with zero people vaccinated to state regulators for review and possible penalties.
Fed officials are signaling that they’re determined to keep their vise-like grip on the economy through the end of 2023.
