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Early in 1948, Raymond Chandler had two main gripes. One was with the Oscars; the other was with The Atlantic’s editorial department. The famous detective novelist and screenwriter had written an essay for the magazine excoriating the motion-picture industry and its tolerance for—indeed celebration of—mindless mediocrity.

One of Pete Hegseth’s first actions after taking charge at the Pentagon was to fire top lawyers in the Army, Navy, and Air Force—senior officers who the defense secretary said functioned as “roadblocks” to the president’s orders. The former National Guardsman has a history of hostility toward military lawyers and the legal restraints they impose on the use of military might. They are known as judge advocates general. Hegseth calls them “jagoffs.

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Audrey Pascual Seco of Team Spain crashes during run one of the para Alpine-skiing-women’s giant-slalom sitting on Day 6 of the 2026 Winter Paralympic Games at Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre, on March 12, 2026. Pascual Seco, who has already won two gold medals and one silver earlier in these Paralympic games, was able to cross the finish line on her own.

The death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of the Iran war generated hope that the regime change the Trump administration and Israel yearned for would come to pass, perhaps with a more moderate new leader stepping up. That, after all, is what happened two months ago in Venezuela, where Delcy Rodríguez assumed power after her boss, Nicolás Maduro, was captured by U.S. forces.

Three days after President Trump announced his “Complete and Total Endorsement” of the Louisiana congressional candidate Blake Miguez, the Republican contender posted a video from outside the West Wing boasting of his close relationship with Trump and his team. “I just got done having some great meetings with the White House,” he told his supporters on February 7.

As Iranian missiles and drones exploded above Dubai in the first days of the Iran war, the city’s legions of social-media influencers started posting. “Your boy is currently in the middle of World War III right now,” the day trader Mike Babayan, who posts under the handle “Nitrotrades,” said into his camera on February 28, a clip that garnered 1.1 million views on Instagram Reels. It was a departure from his usual fare of filming fancy sports cars and stock-trading strategies.

The Islamic Center of Columbia, Tennessee—a small city about 45 miles south of Nashville—had been around for only a few years when white supremacists burned it down. On a Saturday in early 2008, three young men went to the mosque armed with spray paint and Molotov cocktails. According to a federal indictment, they first defaced the exterior walls with swastikas and phrases including White Power. Then they broke into the building and set it aflame.

More than a year before his recent standoff with the Pentagon, Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, published a 15,000-word manifesto describing a glorious AI future. Its title, “Machines of Loving Grace,” is borrowed from a Richard Brautigan poem, but as Amodei acknowledged, with some embarrassment, its utopian vision bears some resemblance to science fiction.