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How to reintegrate over a million veterans? Groups in Ukraine are working on it
Many Ukrainian war veterans have physical and mental trauma, and struggle to return to civilian life. Here is a look at some groups trying to help ease them back into the community.
I Thought I Knew Silicon Valley. I Was Wrong
This article details the significant shift in Silicon Valley's political landscape, particularly the tech elite's unexpected alignment with Donald Trump. The author, reflecting on a career covering the industry, expresses disillusionment as tech leaders, once seen as idealists championing progressive values and innovation, increasingly prioritize self-interest and political expediency, aligning with an administration many previously opposed. It explores the reasons behind this pivot, including fears of political repercussions, regulatory challenges, and the transactional nature of the new political dynamic, concluding with a grim outlook on the industry's future and its impact on democracy and innovation.
AI-powered CRISPR promises faster gene therapies
Stanford Medicine researchers have developed CRISPR-GPT, an AI tool that accelerates gene-editing processes, drastically reducing timelines for drug development from years to months. This AI-powered system aims to enhance the development of lifesaving treatments by simplifying experimental design, data analysis, and troubleshooting. It also makes complex gene-editing tasks accessible to novice and experienced scientists, potentially expanding the pool of researchers in biotechnology and medicine. The tool leverages years of published data to optimize experimental design and predict off-target edits, ensuring ethical use through built-in safeguards.
It's Fun to Be a Board-Game Sociopath
This article delves into the author's enjoyment of deceptive and manipulative tactics in board games like Werewolf, Settlers of Catan, and Risk. The author, who admits to a "ruthless game persona," consults experts such as Shane Tilton, Tobias Otterbring, and Rachel Kowert. They explain that the thrill of deception in low-stakes game environments can be a form of "cheater's high" and may even help develop real-world social skills like persuasion and reading people, without negative repercussions. The piece also discusses how aspects of one's real personality can manifest in games and how in-game behavior can still influence real-life relationships, though people generally distinguish between game and reality.
The Uses and Abuses of “Antisemitism”
This article from The New Yorker reviews Mark Mazower's book "On Antisemitism," exploring the historical evolution of the term "antisemitism." It details how the concept shifted from a 19th-century politics of exclusion to a modern political tool, examining events like the Dreyfus Affair and the Holocaust. The piece discusses how Jewish identity and the relationship with Israel were shaped by these historical shifts, and analyzes the contemporary blurring of lines between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, particularly in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and global politics.
A Very, Very Expensive Way to Reduce Crime
This article from The Atlantic criticizes the Trump administration's use of National Guard deployments to reduce crime, arguing that the strategy is inefficient and incredibly expensive. It highlights the significant costs of deployments in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles, with potential for hundreds of millions more for other cities. The author points out that while some crime reduction has occurred, it's questioned whether the National Guard is the most effective or cost-efficient solution, especially given the administration's cuts to more targeted and proven crime-reduction programs like COPS, which provide funding for local law enforcement and community violence intervention.
The U.S. Government’s Extraordinary Pursuit of Kilmar Ábrego García
After a pair of federal judges in Tennessee had cleared the way for Kilmar Ábrego García to be released from pretrial detention, on August 22nd, so that he could spend a couple of days with his family before a scheduled check-in at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore, he was taken directly to a nearby hotel. The first thing he did was change into a new set of clothes that his wife, Jennifer Vasquez, had bought for him. Then he was given some flowers and ushered into a small room where Vasquez, their three children, other relatives, and supporters were waiting. He picked up his youngest son as people chanted, “¡Sí, se pudo!”—something like “Yes, we did!” The child had been in a car with Ábrego García when ICE arrested him, near their home in Maryland, on March 12th. The arrest occurred during the government’s scramble to fly hundreds of people—mostly Venezuelans it claimed were members of the Tren de Aragua gang—to be incarcerated in El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, under the centuries-old Alien Enemies Act. (A federal appeals court in New Orleans has since ruled that President Donald Trump had improperly invoked the law.) Days later, Ábrego García, a Salvadoran native, was sent to CECOT on a plane with some of them, beginning one of the highest-profile campaigns of retribution against an individual person of Trump’s second term. On March 24th, lawyers for Ábrego García and his family filed a civil lawsuit demanding his return, and the courts quickly ruled that he had been deported in error. His entanglement with ICE had begun six years earlier, in March, 2019, when the Prince George’s County police department, in Maryland, arrested him and three other day laborers outside a Home Depot. (More recently, he has been employed as a sheet-metal worker.) He sought asylum and the right to not be refouled, or forcibly returned to a place where one is subject to persecution—in his case, to El Salvador. An immigration judge in Baltimore denied him the asylum request but granted him the latter, in a “withholding of removal,” which allowed him to work in the U.S. without risk of being sent back to his home country. The judge found that he had a “well-founded fear” of persecution there, on account of official corruption and a history of extortionist demands and death threats from a local gang, against both him and his family, who ran a pupusa business.
The old SF tech scene is dead. What it’s morphing into is sinister.
The article, "The old SF tech scene is dead. What it’s morphing into is sinister.", published by SFGATE and authored by Ariana Bindman, laments the transformation of San Francisco's tech landscape. It describes a shift from a "quaint" era of diverse, "mission-based" startups in the mid-2010s to a present dominated by ominous AI companies. The author highlights the pervasive, dystopian AI billboards, widespread layoffs in favor of AI investment, and the perceived indifference of tech executives to the societal and environmental consequences of their creations. The article concludes by expressing deep unease about this unsettling trajectory for San Francisco and the wider world, stating that the tech scene, once a source of absurdity, is now terrifying.
Lorem Ipsum – Generator, Origins, and Meaning
Generate Lorem Ipsum placeholder text for use in your graphic, print and web layouts, and discover plugins for your favorite writing, design and blogging tools. Explore the origins, history and meaning of the famous passage, and learn how Lorem Ipsum went from scrambled Latin passage to ubiqitous dummy text.
Winners of Ocean Photographer of the Year 2025
A showcase of the winning and commended images from the Ocean Photographer of the Year 2025 competition, presented by Oceanographic Magazine and Blancpain. The collection features exceptional coastal, drone, and underwater photographs selected from thousands of global entries, highlighting various aspects of marine life, conservation, and human interaction with the ocean.
The Last Americans Really Paying Taxes
Annie Lowrey's article, 'The Last Americans Really Paying Taxes,' critiques the evolving U.S. tax code under the Trump administration, highlighting how new legislation like the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) and the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) introduce carve-outs and loopholes. While these changes benefit the ultrarich and some working-class individuals through mechanisms like pass-through deductions, tip exclusions, and overtime tax breaks, they also complicate the system, reduce horizontal equity, and shrink the tax base. Lowrey argues that the professional-managerial class, who pay more predictable taxes, might become the sole group reliably contributing, leading to a less fair and potentially unstable fiscal future. The piece also touches on property tax revolts, regressive tariffs, and the IRS's struggles to enforce rapidly changing laws.
The Economy Is Turning Into a Black Box
Sophisticated private sources could provide a fuller picture of the state of the economy. But the government is not even trying to use them.
5 lessons from a house that generates more energy than it uses
This NPR article explores 5 lessons learned from the 'Green Idea House' in Hermosa Beach, California, a net-zero energy home that generates more power than it consumes. It details the challenges and benefits of sustainable remodeling, emphasizing self-power generation, thorough planning, adherence to the plan, adaptability to climate change, and the slow adoption rate of such innovative housing.
UUIDv7 Comes to PostgreSQL 18
This article discusses the introduction of native support for UUIDv7 in PostgreSQL 18, highlighting its benefits as a timestamp-based UUID variant that improves index locality and sortability compared to previous UUID versions. It explains why UUIDs are useful as primary keys in distributed databases, for unguessable public identifiers, and for allowing clients to generate identifiers without server coordination. The post also details how UUIDv7 addresses common concerns regarding UUIDs in databases, such as sorting and index locality, making it a significant enhancement for database design.
Understanding Zionism
This article explores Zionism as a nationalist movement, tracing its origins to the 1897 Basel congress led by Theodor Herzl. It delves into the early diversity of viewpoints within the movement, its pragmatic approach to establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and its evolution through debates on statehood, religion, and the Palestinian Arab population. The author highlights Zionism's complex, multi-faceted nature, emphasizing its dynamic past and ongoing discussions about its future, including advocacy for Palestinian statehood.
Making XML human-readable without XSLT
This article by Jake Archibald explores alternatives to using XSLT for making XML human-readable in web browsers. It details XSLT's limitations, such as its outdated nature, low adoption, and security risks, which are prompting major browser vendors to remove support. Archibald suggests server-side data transformation for improved accessibility and performance, or client-side JavaScript for dynamic rendering. The article provides examples of how to achieve XSLT-like results using modern web technologies and stresses the importance of generating proper HTML elements for semantic correctness and accessibility during XML transformation.
Give footnotes the boot
This article, titled "Give footnotes the boot," argues against the use of footnotes in both print and web media, asserting that they disrupt the reader's flow. It details the poor user experience of footnotes, particularly on the web where they often necessitate extensive scrolling and navigation. Author Jake Archibald proposes several alternatives for presenting supplementary content, such as using parentheses for brief asides, `<section role="note">` for more substantial notes, and `<details>` elements for expandable information. The aim is to provide additional context in a less intrusive and more accessible manner, enabling readers to easily engage with or bypass extra content without losing their position in the main text.
Israel and the U.S. Delivered a Blow to Iran. It Could Come Back Stronger.
This article details how Israel and the U.S. dealt significant blows to Iran's 'Axis of Resistance' in mid-2025, leading to the decimation of proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas, and the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria. Despite these major setbacks, the article argues that Iran's leadership, historically resilient and innovative in its adversarial strategies, is unlikely to abandon its core anti-U.S. and anti-Israel stance. The current period of 'peace' is presented as a temporary phase, with Iran expected to develop new, possibly more covert, methods to continue its campaign of harassment and destabilization in the region, rather than reassess its fundamental priorities.
The Problem With Lottery Housing
This article critiques the use of housing lotteries in major liberal cities as a method for allocating "affordable" housing. It argues that this system, while seemingly fair, creates "hidden markets" that are inefficient, reward bureaucratic navigation, and fail to address the fundamental problem of housing scarcity. The author suggests that demand for below-market-rate housing will always outstrip supply, and that lotteries distract from the need to expand overall housing supply to achieve widespread affordability.
YouTube Bends the Knee
This article discusses how major tech companies like YouTube, Meta, and X are settling lawsuits with Donald Trump over account suspensions, effectively bowing to political pressure. It highlights the financial settlements and the shift towards looser content moderation policies, arguing that these actions represent corporate cowardice and a capitulation to the "Trump era" ideology, where platforms prioritize profit and political expediency over responsible governance and content moderation.
Flushable wipes and Iran: Water treatment facility adds cyberattacks to worry list
Water treatment workers are grappling with a new and evolving threat: hackers burrowing into critical systems to wreak havoc. This article highlights the increasing frequency and severity of cyberattacks on U.S. water infrastructure, citing incidents involving Iranian hackers in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, and concerns about Chinese state-affiliated groups like Volt Typhoon. It details the challenges faced by small towns with antiquated systems and limited resources, and introduces initiatives like Project Franklin that connect cybersecurity experts with water utility operators to protect vital infrastructure.
America Is on the Cusp of a Two-Tier Vaccine System
The article discusses how recent changes by the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), influenced by new members appointed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are poised to create a two-tier vaccine system in America. These changes, including the removal of the joint MMRV vaccine from the childhood schedule and the combination shot from the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program, will disproportionately affect low-income children and those reliant on VFC for free vaccinations. The author argues that this could lead to increased vaccine inequality, mirroring historical health disparities, by creating more inconveniences and potentially limiting access for vulnerable populations.
New York NIMBYs Turn Against Democracy
This article discusses the struggle in New York City to address its housing shortage, specifically focusing on the City Council's attempts to block ballot measures designed to simplify the permitting process and increase housing development. It delves into the concept of "member deference," a discretionary power allowing individual legislators to halt housing proposals in their districts, and critiques how this undermines democratic processes. The piece provides historical context, tracing the evolution of urban planning and citizen participation from the mid-20th century pro-growth machines to the anti-growth mechanisms of today, highlighting how both can lead to dysfunction. It concludes by arguing that voters should have a say in development policies and notes a potential solution in rescheduling municipal elections to coincide with higher-turnout federal and state elections.
How Did Sports Betting Become Legal in the US?
Since 2018, the amount wagered on sports bets has grown exponentially in the US, with a significant percentage of college students and young men engaging in online sports betting. This article delves into the fascinating story of how sports betting became legal, involving four key figures: Bill Bradley, who introduced the PASPA ban in 1992; Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor who fought for its repeal; Jeremy Kudon, a lobbyist instrumental in legalizing fantasy sports and later sports betting across states; and Ted Olson, the constitutional lawyer who successfully argued for PASPA's unconstitutionality in the Supreme Court.
Making semantic sidenotes without JavaScript
Sidenotes can enrich plain text by providing background information or jokes without cluttering the main article. While semantically similar to footnotes, their visual implementation on the web poses challenges. This article by Koos Looijesteijn presents a new and improved approach to creating semantic sidenotes using only HTML and CSS, without JavaScript.
Who Will Save the Dictionary?
The article discusses the existential crisis faced by dictionary publishers like Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com in the digital age, detailing their struggles with declining revenue, technological shifts, and the impact of AI and search engines. Author Stefan Fatsis chronicles attempts by these institutions to adapt, from Merriam-Webster's hybrid online-print model and social media engagement to Dictionary.com's tumultuous journey through acquisitions and staffing cuts. Ultimately, it underscores the urgent need to preserve the role of authoritative dictionaries in an era of rapid linguistic evolution and distrust in traditional authorities.
Inside Uniqlo’s Quest for Global Dominance
This article explores Uniqlo's ambitious pursuit of global dominance in the apparel industry, detailing its 'LifeWear' philosophy, which champions timeless, functional, and democratic clothing designed to improve lives. It delves into the company's unique operational strategies, including its meticulous design process, integration of extensive customer feedback, and advanced manufacturing techniques. The piece also addresses the ongoing debate surrounding Uniqlo's sustainability claims and its efforts to overcome challenges in the American market and enhance its digital presence, ultimately questioning if its collectivist fashion approach can prevail over individualism.
The Debit-Card Rebellion
This article explores the ongoing shift in American consumer spending from credit cards to debit cards, driven by factors such as a historical struggle with credit card debt, legislative changes, and new financial products offering debit card rewards. Author Michael Waters highlights that broader economic conditions, high interest rates, and a cultural aversion to debt—particularly among younger generations—are encouraging greater reliance on debit cards as a tool for financial control. While credit cards still account for a significant portion of transactions, debit cards are increasingly seen as an off-ramp for consumers seeking to manage their spending and avoid accumulating debt.
How Do You Prove Your Citizenship?
This article explores the complexities U.S. citizens face in proving their citizenship to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, challenging Justice Brett Kavanaugh's assertion that such verification is straightforward. It details how the Trump administration's aggressive immigration enforcement has led to the unlawful detention of citizens and legal residents, often based on ethnic appearance or language. The piece highlights the lack of a national database for quick citizenship verification and the unclear guidelines ICE officers operate under, emphasizing the "gray area" for American citizens not legally required to carry identification. Lawmakers are investigating these arrests and discriminatory practices.
Does the news reflect what we die from?
This article investigates the significant disconnect between the actual causes of death in the United States and their representation in news media. Utilizing data from the CDC and Media Cloud for 2023, the analysis reveals that while chronic conditions like heart disease and cancer account for over half of all deaths, they receive a disproportionately small amount of media coverage. Conversely, rare but dramatic events such as homicides and terrorism are vastly overrepresented in news reports across major outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Fox News. The authors argue that this media bias, driven by a preference for novel and emotive stories, distorts public perception of risks and societal problems, hindering an accurate understanding of mortality trends and public health progress.
How Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks
This article from The Verge details how Wikipedia, a vast compendium of human knowledge, navigates and survives constant threats to its neutrality and factual integrity. It explores the platform's unique self-governing mechanisms, including its "neutral point of view" policy and community-driven dispute resolution, which help it combat political attacks, state-sponsored misinformation campaigns, and internal editing conflicts. Despite being a frequent target for those seeking to inject bias, Wikipedia's stubborn adherence to verifiable sources and collaborative editing processes allows it to remain a crucial "factual foundation" in an internet increasingly awash in propaganda and AI-generated content.
This Is What the End of the Liberal World Order Looks Like
This article examines the devastating civil war in Sudan as a prime example of the collapse of the liberal world order, replaced by anarchy, greed, and transactional geopolitics. It details the immense civilian suffering, including violence, displacement, and starvation, exacerbated by the lack of effective international intervention and support. The conflict is fueled by a complex web of local factions like the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and international actors pursuing their own interests, particularly access to gold and regional influence. Despite the bleak situation, the article highlights the resilience of local Sudanese activists and volunteers who are working to provide mutual aid and maintain aspirations for democracy amidst widespread destruction and the withdrawal of global compassion.
You’re Probably Wearing Too Much Deodorant
This article explores the rising trend of whole-body deodorant use in America, attributing its popularity partly to a post-pandemic increase in olfactory anxiety and historical marketing strategies that exploit personal hygiene concerns. It questions the scientific basis for whole-body deodorizing, noting that most body odor originates from specific glands and bacteria. The author highlights the profound, often unconscious, role of natural human scent in identification, health signaling, and pheromonal communication, suggesting that masking it might have unforeseen social and psychological consequences, potentially leading to interpersonal alienation.
How Free Is Free Speech?
The article discusses the escalating "speech war" in the United States, examining how free speech is being interpreted and challenged, particularly by the Trump administration. It critiques the hypocrisy prevalent in the free speech debate and reviews two books: Christopher L. Eisgruber’s “Terms of Respect: How Colleges Get Free Speech Right” and Fara Dabhoiwala’s “What Is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea.” The piece explores the complexities of applying free speech norms in educational and professional settings, the historical evolution of free speech concepts, and expresses concern for the future of established legal precedents like New York Times v. Sullivan amidst contemporary political pressures.
How One Man Is Working to Solve Los Angeles’s Homelessness Problem on His Own
John Alle, a property manager and activist in Santa Monica, has launched a controversial hotline offering one-way tickets home to homeless individuals in Los Angeles. Frustrated by the city's slow progress on homelessness and personally affected by an attack, Alle's program, a two-man operation with minimal bureaucracy, aims for a faster, cheaper solution than traditional methods. The article follows the journey of Jason Narron and his husband, Alterrick Hooker, as they navigate life on the streets of Los Angeles and ultimately use Alle's program to return to North Carolina, highlighting both the hope and the unresolved challenges of such initiatives.
A24's Empire of Auteurs
This New Yorker article, "A24's Empire of Auteurs," delves into the independent film studio's journey from its origins championing small, provocative, auteur-driven films to its current ambition of producing blockbusters. It highlights A24's distinctive approach to filmmaking, characterized by strong relationships with writer-directors such as Robert Eggers and Ari Aster, its innovative and often controversial marketing strategies, and its cultivation of a passionate fan base. The piece explores how the studio navigates the challenges of scaling its operations, including increased budgets and expansion into television and A.I. tools, while striving to preserve its unique artistic identity in a commercially driven Hollywood landscape.
A Single, 'Naked' Black Hole Rewrites the History of the Universe | Quanta Magazine
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has discovered QSO1, a 'naked' black hole weighing 50 million solar masses in the early universe, challenging existing theories of cosmic evolution. Unlike typical black holes found within galaxies, QSO1 appears largely isolated, suggesting it might have formed directly from the primordial soup of the Big Bang, as proposed by Stephen Hawking. This discovery is part of observations of "little red dots" by JWST, which indicate a chaotic early cosmos. Researchers like Roberto Maiolino and Lukas Furtak confirmed its identity and mass, while others, including Priyamvada Natarajan, are exploring various alternative theories for its unusual formation, moving beyond the conventional model of stars collapsing and merging.
UTF-8 is a Brilliant Design
This article by Vishnu Haridas delves into the ingenious design of UTF-8 encoding, explaining its ability to represent millions of characters from diverse languages and scripts while maintaining backward compatibility with ASCII. It details the variable-width nature of UTF-8, how it uses different byte patterns for single and multi-byte characters, and the process of determining character code points. The author provides practical examples, including decoding Hindi characters and text with emojis, and discusses UTF-8 in contrast to other encodings like UTF-16 and UTF-32. The article also introduces a "UTF-8 Playground" tool developed by the author for interactive visualization of the encoding process.
The Story of Creative Technology
This article chronicles the history of Creative Technology, founded in Singapore in 1981 by Sim Wong Hoo. It details the company's evolution from early computer products to its groundbreaking Sound Blaster line of audio cards, which dominated the PC market. The narrative covers Creative's diversification into multimedia, graphics cards, and portable MP3 players (NOMAD series), as well as its strategic acquisitions and significant legal battles. It concludes by describing Creative's current focus on audio products amidst the challenges of integrated motherboard audio and competition from other tech giants, highlighting its enduring legacy among retro-tech enthusiasts.
America Surrenders in the Global Information Wars
This article details how the U.S. government, under the Trump administration, is dismantling vital programs like Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and the Global Engagement Center (GEC), which were designed to counter foreign propaganda and promote free speech globally. This "unilateral disarmament" in the information war is creating a void that authoritarian regimes, particularly China and Russia, are rapidly filling. The author highlights the historical bipartisan support for these initiatives and the ongoing legal battles to prevent their defunding, arguing that these actions undermine U.S. national security and democratic ideals abroad.
Why Are So Many Pedestrians Killed by Cars in the US?
An analysis of pedestrian deaths in the US reveals a significant increase since 2009, unlike other high-income countries. This rise is primarily observed on urban roads and disproportionately affects older age brackets (30-39 and 60-79). While driver behavior and distraction are hard to quantify, the article points to the 'Big SUV hypothesis' as the strongest explanation due to the increased deadliness of pedestrian accidents, even though deaths involving sedans have also risen. Other factors like drug use by drivers and pedestrians are considered, but not as primary causes. The study uses NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data to explore these trends.
Just a little longer
The article, "Just a little longer," reviews Nicholas Dames' book "The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century," written by Joshua Barnes for the Sydney Review of Books. It explores the historical development and evolving function of chapters in literature, from ancient informational headings to their role in shaping narrative time in novels. The review discusses Dames's analysis of authors like Laurence Sterne, William Caxton, Augustine, and the Victorian novelists, examining how chapters create a sense of 'unified discontinuity' and influence the reader's perception of temporality. Barnes highlights Dames's taxonomic approach and his broader inquiry into how literary conventions reflect societal experiences of time, concluding with reflections on the melancholic aspects of literary history and reading.
Why Some Illinois Farmers Are Stuck Raising Crops That No Longer Thrive
Illinois farmers, particularly in Alexander County's Dogtooth Bend, are caught in a cycle of farming flood- and drought-prone land that no longer yields much, primarily due to federal subsidies and crop insurance programs that cushion their losses. Despite federal programs designed to help them retire such land for conservation, these initiatives are often underfunded, slow, and mired in bureaucracy, exacerbated by staff cuts under the Trump administration. This situation forces farmers to continue cultivating unproductive fields to maintain eligibility for insurance, leading to prolonged financial strain and ecological damage, while preventing a transition to more sustainable land use.
Rivals Rub Shoulders in the World of Competitive Massage
The article "Rivals Rub Shoulders in the World of Competitive Massage" details the International Massage Association's annual World Championship in Massage, founded by Jeppe Tengbjerg. Held in Copenhagen, the event brings together massage therapists from across the globe to compete in various categories, showcasing different techniques and innovations. The article explores the motivations of competitors, the judging process, the evolution of massage as a practice, and the growing mainstream acceptance of massage therapy, highlighting both the competitive spirit and the profound human connection inherent in the art of touch.
20 years ago, New Orleans fired its teachers. It's been rebuilding ever since
The article discusses how New Orleans' public education system was rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina, focusing on the firing of most teachers and their replacement, often by new and less experienced educators, including those from Teach For America. It explores the impact of these changes on the city's schools, teacher workforce demographics, and student outcomes, highlighting the efforts to restore experienced, local teachers and the ongoing challenges in special education.
How to Live Forever and Get Rich Doing It
This article from The New Yorker explores the burgeoning field of longevity research and biohacking, focusing on key figures like Peter Diamandis, founder of XPrize and Singularity University. It details the scientific advancements, technological aspirations, and the ethical and philosophical questions surrounding the quest to extend human lifespan indefinitely. The piece delves into various biohacking practices, the role of AI and investment, and the personal sacrifices made by those pursuing extreme health and a longer life, while also highlighting the skepticism and challenges faced by the field.
The History of The New Yorker's Vaunted Fact-Checking Department
This article delves into the intricate history and rigorous practice of The New Yorker's fact-checking department. It describes the meticulous, often adversarial, process of verifying information, the challenges checkers face, and the distinct personalities of editors and checkers throughout the magazine's history, from Harold Ross to Peter Canby. The piece highlights the department's unwavering dedication to accuracy, the complexities of journalistic truth, and the inherent tension between writers and their checkers, ultimately portraying fact-checking as a crucial, though sometimes frustrating, element of editorial integrity.
How Much Is Trump Profiting Off the Presidency?
A comprehensive estimate of how much Trump and his family are making, from hotel mega-deals to crypto schemes, has been elusive—until now.
When Your Kid’s Best Friend Is a Great Big Problem
This article explores the challenging parental dilemma of disliking a child's friends. It advises against outright prohibition, explaining that such actions often backfire due to "Reactance theory," which can make forbidden relationships more appealing. Instead, the author advocates for a long-term approach, emphasizing the enduring power of parental influence through modeling core values, creating a welcoming home environment, and reinforcing family practices. The piece suggests that parents should avoid negative comments about their child’s friends and, even in cases of dangerous peer influence, focus on addressing underlying issues rather than simply removing individuals. Ultimately, it encourages parents to trust the foundation they've built, viewing friendships as a part of adolescent development, and to remain a loving, supportive presence.