The Atlantic Media Bias

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No One Really Knows Why People Stutter - The Atlantic

Nearly every decision in my life has been shaped by my struggle to speak. I’ve slinked away to the men’s room rather than say my name during introductions. I’ve stayed home to eat silently in front of the TV rather than struggle for a brief moment at a restaurant. I’ve let the house phone, and my cellphone, and my work phone ring and ring and ring rather than pick up to say hello.
The Atlantic     Jan 12, 2023

Is Defying Parents the Only Ethical Alternative?

Meet Michael, a 4-year-old who “usually comes to school in jeans and a T-shirt but always goes to the dress-up area as soon as he arrives and puts on a dress or skirt.” The preschooler is the subject of a 2019 case study in the education journal Young Children’s “Focus on Ethics” column, a recurring feature about how educators ought to respond in fraught situations––in this real case, a parent objecting to their child’s gender expression.Take off that skirt, Michael’s mother tells her child one day while volunteering in the classroom. She orders him instead to put on firefighter gear, a cowboy hat, or “something that boys do,” the authors Stephanie Feeney, Nancy K. Freeman, and Katie ...
The Atlantic     Jan 11, 2023

A Chance for a Reset on Venezuela

The long-running misadventure of Juan Guaidó’s so-called interim presidency in Venezuela has finally come to an end. Guaidó is the former legislator who declared himself Venezuela’s rightful president in January 2019 in a high-stakes bid to force out the country’s strongman ruler, Nicolás Maduro. But Guaidó was a fictitious president in charge of a fictitious government and, despite the full-throated support of President Donald Trump, his crusade was a chimera—it went nowhere as it lurched from one ill-prepared maneuver to another.The ordinary Venezuelans who initially came out in thousands in the hopes that Guaidó had hit upon a formula to rid them of the despised Maduro soon lost interest.
The Atlantic     Jan 11, 2023

A Blueprint for Black Liberation

Each morning, to combat the Detroit winter, my mother would swathe me in layers of too-big clothing, capping off the baggy outfit with a white T-shirt that read Alkebu-lan Academy in red letters. We’d walk down the hall on scalloped red carpet, saying hello to chatty neighbors lingering in doorways. The elevator was as old and cantankerous as a grandpa who had earned the right to be. We’d ride it down to the lobby, where the guard’s desk sat front and center. Then my mother would take me to the Alkebu-lan Academy nursery, through a set of metal doors heavy enough to sever the tips of a child’s fingers.
The Atlantic     Jan 11, 2023

Pope Benedict XVI and the Church After the Fall

Corruption in the Catholic Church long predated the eight-year papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, which began in 2005. The Protestant reformers hammered their critique of Catholic greed and treachery into history several centuries before this pope. The churn of time proved no cure for the Church’s failings. When Hannah Arendt published her reflections on the life and death of Pope John XXIII in 1965, she hung her consideration on the questions posed to her by a canny Roman chambermaid: “Madam, this Pope was a real Christian. How could that be? And how could it happen that a true Christian would sit on St.
The Atlantic     Jan 11, 2023

The Atlantic Debuts Atlantic Editions, New Book Imprint With the Independent Publisher Zando

The first three books are publishing today from Atlantic Editions, a first-of-its-kind book imprint launched as a partnership between The Atlantic and the independent publisher Zando, with titles from staff writers Megan Garber and Sophie Gilbert (a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Criticism) and senior editor Lenika Cruz. This new line of paperback books features definitive essays by Atlantic authors; each is themed on a single consequential topic. The imprint draws from The Atlantic’s rich literary history and represents a new venue for publishing Atlantic writers, incorporating both contemporary articles and classic storytelling from the magazine’s robust archive. The first three books are Megan Garber’s On Misdirection: Magic, Mayhem, American Politics; Sophie Gilbert’s On ...
The Atlantic     Jan 11, 2023

The Last of Us Makes the Apocalypse Feel New Again

gaming

In the landscape of video-game adaptations, a specific quandary comes up again and again as the medium grows in ambition: How do you translate a game that was itself clearly inspired by film and television? When The Last of Us was released on PlayStation in 2013, I marveled at its cinematic verisimilitude. It updated a familiar zombie-apocalypse aesthetic with some clever scientific twists; the game’s world is overrun by a fungal infection that turns its victims into mindless, violent monsters. But what made The Last of Us even more immersive was how it implicates players in the lead character’s own morally dubious actions.
The Atlantic     Jan 11, 2023

The Buy Now, Pay Later Bubble Is About to Burst

food

As familiar as Americans are with the concept of credit, many of us, upon encountering a sandwich that can be financed in four easy payments of $3.49, might think: Yikes, we’re in trouble.Putting a banh mi on layaway—this is the world that buy-now, pay-later programs have wrought. In a few short years, financial-technology firms such as Affirm, Afterpay, and Klarna, which allow consumers to pay for purchases over several interest-free installments, have infiltrated nearly every corner of e-commerce. People are buying cardigans with this kind of financing. They’re buying groceries and OLED TVs. During the summer of 2020, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, they bought enough Peloton products to account for 30 percent of Affirm’s ...
The Atlantic     Jan 11, 2023

Amazingly, George Santos Is a Member of Congress

politics

Remember Herschel Walker, the Georgia football star who was a shoo-in for a Senate seat—until the press discovered the children he didn’t acknowledge and the abortions he’d allegedly paid for? The Republican Party decided to tough it out with Walker, but the humiliation was too much for voters in a state that sent Marjorie Taylor Greene to Congress, and Walker narrowly lost.
The Atlantic     Jan 11, 2023

The Sports Scandal Almost Nobody Is Talking About

1k 🔥       sports

When the head of a major sports organization is caught on video slapping his wife multiple times, his career should be in jeopardy. But other than a few days of remarkably mild criticism, Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White appears to be avoiding any real professional consequences.
The Atlantic     Jan 11, 2023

All the Pretty Republicans

And there were men there in attendance there with double faces, as they had been sutured one face to another with catgut and diabolic needle, and women with the nostrils of dragons.Monstrosities of democracy they came forth in their pomp in the noon of the day. From the backwoods, from the boggy peninsulas. From the gleaming mall-lands. From the sucking swamps. Sun it did throb like a thumb in the eye of God. And the chamber was a cauldron of mockery, bepopulate with jeerers and carousers.He would be Speaker of this chamber. O he would. Most keenly. To wield the gavel was his life’s whole grail and summit.
The Atlantic     Jan 10, 2023

Twitter Was the Ultimate Cancellation Machine

Whatever else it is, Twitter is a place where the average person can subject others to their displeasure. They have been mistreated by Southwest Airlines. They have been angered by the comments of a man who sells beans. They have learned, to their horror, that the father of their favorite indie-pop star previously worked for the U.S. State Department. In posting about these things in a venue where the target of scorn might actually see the complaint—along with perhaps millions of other people—the aggrieved may experience some instant relief. If you want accountability on social media, you tweet.Which raises a weird question: If Twitter withers under Elon Musk, where will we go with our beefs?
The Atlantic     Jan 10, 2023