Companies like OpenAI say their chatbots are optimized to be useful, not to keep you hooked. Totally coincidentally, they pose endless follow-up prompts to keep the conversation going. By @lilashroff.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

I would really like to know what editorial judgments led to the choice of wording here

Great reporting here www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/b...

Ground meat implies the existence of sky meat

Seems like a bit of a constitutional issue to suppose that the sitting president can sue people and news organizations in his individual capacity in federal district court.

It's interesting how some people act as if breaking up a company (say, Google) is akin to a death sentence, but out in the real world, corporate juggernauts choose to break themselves up all the time

🧵 Earlier this year, I traveled to East Asia for a story about whether South Korea and Japan will pursue nuclear weapons as China continues its nuclear build-up and the U.S. becomes a (much) less reliable ally. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

The greatest freestyle rapper of all time is a YouTuber named Harry Mack, who had the misfortune of coming up at a time when people don't really care about freestyling anymore. But he has essentially perfected the form.

ruh roh www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

I enjoyed MATERIALISTS aside from the acting, writing, and directing.

"Listen: Blake Masters is a creepy weirdo," Chris Murphy told me, "but a lot of the stuff he was getting into in 2022—about the emptiness of American life when all that matters is how much you buy and how good a consumer you are—really, it spoke to me.” www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

Weird to think, as I approach middle age, that I have spent just over 50 percent of my adult life living in the Trump era www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

"My article, titled 'Year of the Pigskin,' was natural Hollywood bait," Christopher Beam writes. "Now a Chinese studio appeared to have simply lifted the idea":

This is quite the yarn by @chrisbeam.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

It seems bad that higher interest rates, a tool meant to reduce inflation, mechanically cause inflation to increase in certain very important categories www.axios.com/2025/06/02/a...

One of many things I learned from this article: one of Trump's phone backgrounds is an image of HIS OWN FACE www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

What would we do without philosophers?

Accusing our opponents of "ignoring tradeoffs" is really hot right now — I wonder when we'll go back to just saying they're wrong?

"A critical mass of the nation’s politicians, news outlets, and major brands regularly post content for free to the exclusive streaming platform for the Ye song 'Heil Hitler.'"https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/05/stop-using-x/682931/

It's good to read the text of an executive order before publishing an article about it in a leading newspaper

"The jobs that we lost to China 20 years ago: We’re not getting those back," Autor says. "China doesn’t even want those jobs anymore. They are losing them to Vietnam, and they aren’t upset about it."

This is a really interesting interview with David Autor, the economist behind the famous "China Shock" research, who believes that both the old free-trade consensus AND the Trump tariff blitz are disastrously wrong www.theatlantic.com/economy/arch...

Trump's big "pause" can't undo the damage from swinging back and forth on tariff policy, and also, the average tariff level is actually higher now www.theatlantic.com/economy/arch...

I got flipped off 17 times in the making of this story www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Ayn Rand gave Leonard Peikoff everything—her ideas, her copyrights, and her money. Then he fell in love with his caregiver. My deep dive on the battle for Ayn Rand’s estate: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

This story is incredible: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Amazing: the executive order attempting to close the Department of Education literally claims that the problem is that the agency is *too small*

"I suspect that, with the right ascendant politically and culturally, bad-boy podcasters have run short of DEI sacred cows to skewer. Now, in an effort to keep churning out provocative content, they’re pivoting toward antisemitism."

According to Ruth Marcus, her column criticizing Bezos's edict was spiked because it was speculative to suggest that Bezos's edict would lead to columns being spiked www.newyorker.com/news/essay/w...

As @jonathanbchait.bsky.social points out, talking about Trump–Russia may have come to be seen as cringe, but today's events are exactly the kind of thing that people were warning about all along: www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

Tremendous reporting here by my colleague @katherinejwu.com

Historically, the brightest, most ambitious students from other countries have come to American universities to study and do research. It's a huge part of the American success story. It would be a neat trick if Trump manages to reverse the trend and turn the inflow into a brain drain.

As @joshuabenton.com observes, a newspaper owner is entitled to run the opinion section the way he wants. What's ridiculous about the Post situation is the hypocrisy of saying the paper must avoid all appearance of bias, only to now triple down on a specific bias: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Fascinating: "Even as the unemployment rate has hovered around 4 percent for more than three years, the pace of hiring has slowed to levels last seen shortly after the Great Recession, when the unemployment rate was nearly twice as high." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

my story on intergenerational home-sharing is now outside the paywall It’s an underrated idea that bridges generations, boosts needed housing supply, and helps more people afford to age in place www.vox.com/housing/3960...

Like every take I've ever written*, this one could be wrong. But from the deranged replies to this—calling me a fascist bootlicker, saying I should die, etc.—you'd think the article argued for genocide. Really depressing stuff. *other than "cheese is good for you"

Hoo boy, the Bluesky community did NOT like this one www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

I've spent the past year talking to James Murdoch about his father's "twisted" behavior, the mind games at the family-counseling retreat, how Fox News really works, and the war over his family's media empire. My cover story for The Atlantic's April edition: theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

Very clarifying piece by @lilashroff.bsky.social

Update: I'm told Kendrick Lamar and this Drake fellow don't much care for each other

America doesn't have an affordable housing crisis—we've got a mobility crisis. The first excerpt of my book "Stuck" is out this morning, as @theatlantic.com's March cover story. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

You heard it here first*: Drake will be a surprise guest at the Super Bowl halftime show *I will delete this when it is inevitably proven wrong

"The Democratic Party, at least in theory, is an organization dedicated to winning political power through elected office, though this might seem hard to believe on the evidence provided by its official proceedings," @jonathanbchait.bsky.social writes: www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

The end of affirmative action was expected to cause a drop in Black and Latino enrollment at elite colleges, Rose Horowitch writes. "And yet, when the numbers came in, several of the most selective colleges in the country reported the opposite results."

I wrote about the new empty nesting — seniors opening up their spare bedrooms to younger renters looking for a cheaper option. It’s an underrated idea that bridges generations, boosts needed housing supply, and helps more people afford to age in place www.vox.com/housing/3960...

"We need the best and brightest," declared Pete Hegseth www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

@giladedelman.bsky.social: “What we have here is a classic case of marketing that makes sense to the people selling the product, but not to the people buying it.”

We need to talk about Kelvin. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Dry January: racist? www.nytimes.com/2025/01/14/o...

I don't know how Eagles fans can have any self-respect left after that atrocious smooth-jazz saxophone National Anthem