In China, you can buy a heavily discounted “used” electric car that has never, in fact, been used. Chinese automakers, desperate to meet their sales targets in a bitterly competitive market, sell cars to dealerships, which register them as “sold,” even though no actual customer has bought them. Dealers, stuck …
Late last month, Elon Musk launched Grokipedia, an AI-generated encyclopedia with 855,279 articles, no human editors, and no way for users to request improvements beyond a suggestion box addressed to its eponymous chatbot author. The tech entrepreneur is eager, he has said, to “purge out the propaganda” that he argues …
During the five years I worked as an environmental-studies professor at a progressive private college, I undertook a small, semesterly rebellion: I had students read “Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist,” a 2011 essay by the British writer and former green radical Paul Kingsnorth. In it, Kingsnorth chronicles his disenchantment with …
The fall of Constantinople wiped the last living Roman civilization from the Earth. The city’s refugees fled west, helping spark the Renaissance; its legacy shaped the religious traditions of millions and the modern map of Europe and the Middle East. The fall also inspired a book, which inspired a …
Quiet American is an oxymoron for most people, at least those outside the United States. The British writer Graham Greene used the phrase as the title of his 1955 novel, describing a soft-spoken and well-meaning CIA agent who nevertheless causes havoc abroad. In my native Canada, our reserved self-image has …
On the subway in Brooklyn the other day, I spotted yet another Gen Z person dressed in the predominant queer-chic style: a brown mesh top and baggy pants, with a tuft of tight and shiny curls, and a handbag lolling from their wrist. What caught my eye was their bag …
Donald Trump is clearly frustrated with his failure to end the Russia-Ukraine war. He thought he could strike a deal with a simple transaction that recognized Russia’s territorial gains and appealed to its economic interests. He did not understand how committed Vladimir Putin was to the destruction of an independent …
The country gave its citizens the right to die, Elaina Plott Calabro wrote in the September issue. Doctors are struggling to keep up with demand.
I had two sisters in their mid-90s who availed themselves of Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying program. Both were incapacitated; they …
Since last month’s cease-fire, Gaza has been divided by a yellow line splitting Hamas-controlled Gaza to the west from Israeli-occupied Gaza to the east. At first, the line was invisible. But after Israeli soldiers repeatedly opened fire on Gazans who crossed it, Israel began to give the line a physical …
This is how the government shutdown was always going to end.
For the past 30 years, the party that has forced federal agencies to close their doors in a funding fight has never actually achieved the policy outcome it was demanding. Republicans did not successfully pressure then-President Barack Obama …
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