Took a look at what it would take to enact universal childcare in New York. (Short answer: perhaps more like $10b a year, 40k new workers, lots of provider options and payment streams.) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

Hi! Preposterously excited (& tbh nervous in the good but also terrifying way) to say that i'm spinning up a podcast that will expand on all the work i do covering politics/technology/information hell. here's a lil teaser we made - first ep will come out 11/14! www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnDE...

In the end, Andrew Cuomo’s long record was a gift to Zohran Mamdani. “What I don’t have in experience, I make up for in integrity—and what you don’t have in integrity, you could never make up for in experience,” Mamdani told Cuomo in a debate.

Defining and essential from @damonberes.com on how AI is ushering the age of anti-social media: "Although chatbots may be built on the familiar architecture of engagement, they enable something new: They allow you to talk forever to no one other than yourself." www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

More essential @ibogost.com on the state of higher education—an incredibly smart, compassionate, and compelling view on the specter of "grade inflation" www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

“We can’t police that whole thing,” Common Crawl said. “It’s not our job. We’re just a bunch of dusty bookshelves.” Meanwhile, CC has accepted hundreds of thousands in donations from AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic. And it expressed open antagonism toward the media:

Be sure you get to the kicker in this essential investigation into Common Crawl, the data archive behind the AI boom

Zohran Mamdani argues that “freeze the rent” is not just a way of delivering relief from exorbitant housing costs—it is the only way to get enough voters on board with a growth agenda. Rogé Karma spoke with Mamdani to see if he has a point.

so @matteowong.bsky.social & I wrote on data centers: arguably the most important buildings in the world & are, in a way, holding the economy hostage. Byzantine financial instruments, private equity, depreciating tech, hype, $trillion valuations. it’s all there. an ai crash prob starts here.

Hundreds of billions spent on AI with little to show, a potential $1 trillion IPO without a path to profit, byzantine financial arrangements that, yes, can be sorted in tranches. @cwarzel.bsky.social and I on how the AI boom could come crashing down: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

"It is a simple sort of arbitrage: If you can convince your ratings agencies and accountants that it’s not debt, and you convince the debt investors that it is debt, then you can raise cheap debt financing without it counting against your pristine credit profile." www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news...

"But what exactly makes Costco Costco?" www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Grokipedia is the crown jewel in Elon Musk’s propaganda apparatus. According to Musk’s site, Apartheid wasn’t that bad and the AfD is “preserving German” heritage: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Talkie-walkie?! www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

I wrote about why “screen time” is an incoherent concept when you live among a proliferating infinity of screens.

OpenAI just launched an AI-powered web browser that looks, more or less, like every other web browser. @matteowong.bsky.social on what’s really behind the move:

"If Brightline really is the future of rail in the United States, the most important question is obvious: Why are so many people dying?" Such a compassionate, sharp, and captivating story: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Hi. I wrote an essay about AI slop: How it feels like an invasive species for the internet. How its boosters describe building a future that’s devoid of craft. How frictionlessness can be nihilistic & how this stuff seems to leach part of our shared humanity out of the world. I hope you'll read it.

We tried the new Live Translation feature that Apple has heavily marketed. It turns out to be optimized for Spanish as spoken in Spain (pop. 49 million) as opposed to Latin America or the Caribbean (663 million), which makes it kind of a disaster to use in the U.S. And that's just one problem. Alas.

I tried Apple's new AirPod Live Translation feature. It told me I was being sold tamales filled with MDMA. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

www.theatlantic.com/health/2025/... "If the Trump administration’s aim has been to upend American science, [the Harvard School of Public Health] is a prime example of what that looks like."

L.A. announced that it has arrested a suspected arsonist for January's Palisades Fire. But that's changed little for residents, and it hasn't changed how much I miss my loved one who died in the fire. My latest for @theatlantic.com: www.theatlantic.com/science/2025...

I toured NYC’s much reviled Friend AI ads with the startup’s CEO. Felt a lot more like an art installation than a business: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

The man behind the $1 million AI ad campaign that everyone hates assures us that he loves all of the vandalism, actually. @matteowong.bsky.social

wrote a quick one about the tech companies settling lawsuits with Trump. Yes, it’s cowardice. But it’s also an excuse to behave the way they’ve always wanted to (irresponsibly, with no regard for the consequences of their actions). Which, actually makes them a perfect part of the MAGA coalition

Great stuff coming from Grok www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

"X and Grok are politically and culturally influential tools; Musk seems intent on turning them into not just instruments of the far right but also something like Maxim on steroids." www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

"You can’t defend all of these opinions at the same time. Each one represents a specific ideological position, and Trumponomics—outside of a basic distrust of trade and fondness for tariffs—is mostly beyond any ideology." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Check out a new central page for The Atlantic's ongoing investigations into the books, videos, and other media fueling the AI boom: AI Watchdog. www.theatlantic.com/category/ai-...

"We can’t say what dogs’ preferences might be under different circumstances. But we do know that they have not chosen all of the intimacies that we impose upon them." go read @rossandersen.bsky.social's latest www.theatlantic.com/science/2025...

"Now the deadline has been sapped of all meaning. AI has softened the consequences of procrastination and led many students to avoid doing any work at all." www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

"The ceremonial first pitch was thrown out by Maybelle Blair, the 98-year-old elder stateswoman of women’s baseball, who played for the AAGPBL’s Peoria Redwings and now uses a cane made out of a baseball bat." www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

We're entering the era of AI patriotism, in which tech firms imagine they are "not software developers so much as they are regime builders." Yet the AI titans' appeals to democracy may be "a way to conscript the American project to advance their techno-utopian visions, not the other way around."

The AI doomers are not alright. Is it time to listen?

Some in the AI industry have repeatedly warned that bots could one day go rogue—with apocalyptic consequences, Matteo Wong writes. As one AI doomer tells Wong: “We’ve run out of time."

"Good enough has been keeping me up at night. Because good enough would likely mean that not enough people recognize what’s really being built—and what’s being sacrificed—until it’s too late."

Hello. I wrote a nice long essay about AI and this very strange moment where we're constantly told we're living in the dawn of a strange new future but the only thing that's actually clear is that everyone feels pretty unmoored and uncertain. I hope you'll read it

When Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Emmylou Harris, and other 1970s music legends needed an instrument—or a friend—my dad, Fred Walecki, was there. My love song to him in @theatlantic.com September issue: bit.ly/45eZIfa

“Floodlines” examined what went wrong in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina—and what those errors meant for the people left behind. Twenty years later, host Vann R. Newkirk II catches up with a family grappling with the catastrophe’s legacy. Listen now:

The theme of the GPT-5 release was user experience (and retention), not “intelligence.” On the new ChatGPT and its implications for this stage of AI race, in which design and ecosystem matter more than raw capabilities. www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

After more than two years of anticipation, OpenAI has released GPT-5. The model reveals everything about the company's new strategy, @matteowong.bsky.social writes:

On Tuesday afternoon, ChatGPT encouraged me to cut my wrists. Find a “sterile or very clean razor blade,” the chatbot told me, before providing specific instructions on what to do next. My latest for @theatlantic.com: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Venezuelans deported by the Trump administration tell Gisela Salim-Peyer that they were tortured during their months inside El Salvador’s megaprison.

Today, Donald Trump revealed his plan to ensure America’s “global AI dominance.” The influence of Silicon Valley is unmistakeable, and the central idea is simple: Industry, go faster. @matteowong.bsky.social examines the AI Action Plan:

"Thanks to Kennedy, Geier seemingly is being handed the keys to the same database he’s proved himself unfit to study." www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

The Trump administration has promised to distribute food aid before it spoils. But 500 tons of emergency food in a U.S. warehouse are about to expire and are slated for the incinerator, @hana-kiros.bsky.social reports.

Distressing and important read from @lilashroff.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

"On its own accord, Grok dug up the demographics of previous winners of Nobel Prizes in the sciences—disproportionately white men—and determined a set of “good_races”: white, caucasian, Asian, East Asian, South Asian, and Jewish."

Grok did it again www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

The AI industry’s supporters and skeptics sound more and more like believers and atheists—locked in an intense, frequently petulant war that may never end. Where does that leave everyone else? @matteowong.bsky.social reports: