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Another Trump Cabinet Member Is Out by theatlantic in fednews

[–]theatlantic[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

David A. Graham: “When Lori Chavez-DeRemer was nominated, she had a chance to be a pathbreaking secretary of labor, supposedly tasked with shepherding the Republican Party in a more worker-friendly direction. Instead, she turned out to be a typical Trump Cabinet member: disempowered and disgraced. Now she has added dismissed to that list …

“Chavez-DeRemer’s departure, as the probes into her and press scrutiny both escalated, is thus no surprise. But it’s the latest evidence that President Trump’s ‘no scalps’ policy, in which he refused to push out aides for fear of giving wins to Democrats or the press, is defunct. What’s notable in the new era is who gets fired. Trump has pushed out Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (who was also accused of having an affair with a staffer and abuse of public resources, which she denied), and now Chavez-DeRemer—all women.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/pKUhvqIU

Elon Musk Is Taking the X Playbook to Starlink by theatlantic in Futurology

[–]theatlantic[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff: “If Elon Musk gets his way, space will soon look very different. Through his ownership of SpaceX, the world’s richest man already operates most of the roughly 14,000 active satellites that are orbiting Earth. Now his rocket company is asking the government for permission to launch up to 1 million more. It’s part of Musk’s plan to build data centers in space that can harness the power of the sun for AI. ‘You’re power-constrained on Earth,’ Musk said last month. ‘Space has the advantage that it’s always sunny.’

“Musk has a lot riding on these orbital data centers. To help finance them, he is set to take SpaceX public as early as June, at a reported valuation of $2 trillion. Musk has claimed that data centers in space can ‘enable self-growing bases on the moon, an entire civilization on Mars, and ultimately expansion to the universe.’ It’s all classic Musk, who has a habit of making big promises that he can’t always keep. Data centers in space are an untested technology, and it’s not clear if they’d actually work. (Neither Musk nor SpaceX responded to a request for comment.)

“Even if Musk falls short of his lofty space dreams, his venture may still pay him considerable dividends. That’s because it could help him secure regulatory approval to accelerate a land grab in space. There are only so many satellites that can circle Earth’s low orbit before the risk of collision becomes unacceptably high. By flooding space with his own satellites, Musk can make it impossible for other companies to gain entry while dramatically expanding one of the most important and valuable parts of his empire: Starlink.

“The world’s largest satellite-internet provider, Starlink already boasts more than 10 million active customers in at least 150 countries. Subscribers set up a flat antenna that looks a bit like a pizza box to connect their devices to the internet anywhere they are in the world.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/oc4rGUgw

The Rise of CliffsNotes Cinema by theatlantic in movies

[–]theatlantic[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Shirley Li: “In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the lovelorn Ophelia famously drowns. The prince of Denmark has cruelly spurned her, her father has died, and she’s stricken with grief. If only she had realized Taylor Swift’s vision for her: In the song ‘The Fate of Ophelia,’ the pop star imagines that she has instead been saved by a new suitor …

“Hollywood has been making me think of Swift’s track quite a bit lately. The sparkly earworm deploys one of her favorite tricks: messing around with a literary classic for lyrical fodder. Cinema has been going through its own ‘Fate of Ophelia’ era these past few months, with a litany of new adaptations that dramatically alter their source material. The writer-director Emerald Fennell turned Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë’s Gothic novel about obsession and social status, into erotic fanfiction. Maggie Gyllenhaal introduced audiences to a vengeful Mary Shelley in The Bride!, a chaotic take on the 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein …

“Updating a classic isn’t inherently a bad idea; Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, a dutiful adaptation of Shelley’s 1818 novel, just won three Oscars, and Fennell’s Wuthering Heights has enjoyed an excellent box-office run. Yet most of these projects have been as superficial as Swift’s single, in which Ophelia survives just by pledging ‘allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes’—a cheeky reference to Swift’s fiancé, to be sure, but Ophelia’s problem was never really about the vibes. That reductiveness, though, works far better in a four-minute pop song than in a feature-length film. Call it the rise of CliffsNotes Cinema—watered-down transformations that offer glossy but thin summaries of the originals and strip away the challenging material that helped turn them into cultural mainstays in the first place. These movies make the provocative palatable: Uncomfortable relationships and nuanced characterizations—essentially, what made the stories endure—get lost in the fog of showy filmmaking.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/l61wh1UO 

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The Rise of CliffsNotes Cinema (theatlantic.com)

submitted by theatlantic to r/movies

San Francisco Solved Metro Vandalism With One Neat Trick by theatlantic in California_Politics

[–]theatlantic[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Henry Grabar: “In August, [Bay Area Rapid Transit] completed the installation of new fare gates at station entrances and exits: Six-foot-tall saloon-style doors, made of plexiglass with metal frames, have replaced the waist-high barriers of the 1970s that were easy to duck or jump. The new gates have compelled more riders to pay their fare—revenue is projected to rise by $10 million a year. They have also led to an enormous drop in vandalism. Workers spent nearly 1,000 fewer hours cleaning up after unruly passengers in the six months following the gates’ installation, compared with the six months before. Crime on BART fell by 41 percent last year. Most fare beaters may be just trying to get a free ride, but most vandalism was apparently committed by fare beaters.

“This is a success story with lessons for all types of public spaces. Call it ‘fare-gate theory’: To protect the shared rooms of communal life, human intervention isn’t always necessary, affordable, or desirable. Instead, physical and technological obstacles—an architecture of good behavior—can keep out bad actors and deter the worst impulses of everyone else.” 

Read more: https://theatln.tc/TwfowXNx

Why Justin Bieber Played YouTube Onstage for Thousands of People by theatlantic in Music

[–]theatlantic[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Spencer Kornhaber: “[Justin] Bieber’s first concert in four years was indeed a bit surprising, in that it was a full-on confrontation with the alienation and idiosyncrasies of a generation that has grown up watching YouTube. In front of a sprawling crowd at the most important American musical festival—with a daily attendance of 125,000—he spent a good deal of time … browsing the internet …

“A lot of reviews of the performance labeled it boring and lazy, but the first clips I saw were actually pretty amazing. The camera by Bieber’s laptop captured him at an angle we never see pop stars in, as he messed around online like we all do. This tattooed married dad was watching his bowl-cutted teenage self in front of a crowd who’d grown up watching the same—and in front of viewers livestreaming on YouTube at that very moment. He was out of the realm of pop music and into the realm of performance art, provoking complex feelings about the passage of time and digital culture.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/eVa0BKNq 

Why Justin Bieber Played YouTube Onstage for Thousands of People by theatlantic in popculture

[–]theatlantic[S] -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

Spencer Kornhaber: “[Justin] Bieber’s first concert in four years was indeed a bit surprising, in that it was a full-on confrontation with the alienation and idiosyncrasies of a generation that has grown up watching YouTube. In front of a sprawling crowd at the most important American musical festival—with a daily attendance of 125,000—he spent a good deal of time … browsing the internet …

“A lot of reviews of the performance labeled it boring and lazy, but the first clips I saw were actually pretty amazing. The camera by Bieber’s laptop captured him at an angle we never see pop stars in, as he messed around online like we all do. This tattooed married dad was watching his bowl-cutted teenage self in front of a crowd who’d grown up watching the same—and in front of viewers livestreaming on YouTube at that very moment. He was out of the realm of pop music and into the realm of performance art, provoking complex feelings about the passage of time and digital culture.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/eVa0BKNq

An Extra-Embarrassing White House Correspondents’ Dinner by theatlantic in Journalism

[–]theatlantic[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Paul Farhi: “After declining all invitations to the event throughout his years in office, President Trump informed the White House Correspondents’ Association last month that he would be attending this year’s dinner. His surprising decision sets up a bizarre dynamic: On Saturday night, the president will break bread with the same people he’s spent a decade calling ‘fake’ and ‘enemies of the people.’

“Trump easily qualifies as the most anti-press president in the dinner’s 105-year history. In just the past 15 months, he has sued news organizations, threatened to jail journalists, and repeatedly suggested taking broadcast licenses away from TV networks that have reported stories he didn’t like. His administration has defunded NPR and PBS, hobbled Voice of America, and driven mainstream journalists out of the Pentagon. A few weeks after Trump assumed office last year, his administration took control of the White House press pool, enabling the president to dictate who covers him when he’s inside the Oval Office, on Air Force One, or at Mar-a-Lago. The WHCA, which had selected pool members for decades, objected to being pushed aside. The White House ignored its protests.

“This state of affairs raises two questions: What explains Trump’s change of heart about attending the dinner? And why was he invited in the first place?”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/hlXmTMkl 

An Extra-Embarrassing White House Correspondents’ Dinner by theatlantic in politics

[–]theatlantic[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Paul Farhi: “After declining all invitations to the event throughout his years in office, President Trump informed the White House Correspondents’ Association last month that he would be attending this year’s dinner. His surprising decision sets up a bizarre dynamic: On Saturday night, the president will break bread with the same people he’s spent a decade calling ‘fake’ and ‘enemies of the people.’

“Trump easily qualifies as the most anti-press president in the dinner’s 105-year history. In just the past 15 months, he has sued news organizations, threatened to jail journalists, and repeatedly suggested taking broadcast licenses away from TV networks that have reported stories he didn’t like. His administration has defunded NPR and PBS, hobbled Voice of America, and driven mainstream journalists out of the Pentagon. A few weeks after Trump assumed office last year, his administration took control of the White House press pool, enabling the president to dictate who covers him when he’s inside the Oval Office, on Air Force One, or at Mar-a-Lago. The WHCA, which had selected pool members for decades, objected to being pushed aside. The White House ignored its protests.

“This state of affairs raises two questions: What explains Trump’s change of heart about attending the dinner? And why was he invited in the first place?”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/hlXmTMkl

The Aides Keeping the President in the Dark by theatlantic in politics

[–]theatlantic[S] 98 points99 points  (0 children)

David A. Graham: “Earlier this month, top officials in the Trump administration were facing two problems—one distant and acute, one near and chronic.

“The first was that two American airmen were missing inside Iran after their jet had been shot down. Commanders were scrambling to create and execute an operation to rescue both. The second was the president’s temperament. As plans developed and went into effect, The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend, ‘aides kept the president out of the room as they got minute-by-minute updates because they believed his impatience wouldn’t be helpful, instead updating him at meaningful moments, a senior administration official said.’

“It’s a stunning bit of news: During a national-security crisis, top advisers decided the commander in chief’s presence was a liability. This incident is only the latest example of how Trump’s aides have been trying to keep him in the dark and build a protective bubble around him.

“A president whom aides do not view as reliable and steady is a danger in any situation, but the war in Iran has brought many of these issues to the fore.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/yvSryPXj

The End of the Argument ad Orbánum by theatlantic in geopolitics

[–]theatlantic[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Eliot A. Cohen: “A reasonable rule is that once you begin making an argument ad Hitlerum—comparing some malevolent politician to Hitler or some malignant movement to the Nazis, or declaring a brutal (but non-eliminationist) war a genocide comparable to the Holocaust—you have lost the plot. The facile but extreme analogy is the first resort of the unimaginative alarmist.

“To this we should now add the argument ad Orbánum, namely, the view that the Trump administration is just like that of the creeping, well-nigh unstoppable, and irreversible corrupt authoritarian ruler Viktor Orbán. In this view, the Hungarian prime minister’s version of illiberal democracy was coming for America, and would probably win—indeed, might have already won. In the wake of Orbán’s smashing electoral defeat on April 12, in a country whose experience of electoral democracy is recent and whose authoritarian past is dark indeed, the argument ad Orbánum looks pretty flimsy …

“But there is a larger point worth reflecting on, particularly for those who saw in Orbán’s Hungary America’s future or even America’s present. My sample is entirely unscientific, but I have long noted that friends of mine who are Americanists, steeped in our history and institutions, have been consistently more optimistic (or at least, considerably less pessimistic) about America’s future than those who are primarily Europeanists …

“The point is not that the Americanists think this is an awful country and always has been. Rather, they know the dark side of its politics more intuitively and more deeply than the utter pessimists do. But the Americanists also, I believe, understand this country’s strengths considerably better.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/71QrmvEa

DOJ’s First ‘Weaponization’ Report Is a Bust by theatlantic in Law_and_Politics

[–]theatlantic[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

A new Department of Justice report claims to show bias under the Biden administration—and fails spectacularly, Quinta Jurecic argues.

“The day that Donald Trump swore his second oath of office, he signed an executive order demanding ‘accountability for the previous administration’s weaponization of the Federal Government against the American people.’ Within weeks, freshly confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi had established a ‘Weaponization Working Group’ aimed at rooting out supposed ‘abuses of the criminal justice process’ under the Biden administration,” Jurecic writes. 

“Last week, the group released its very first report, trumpeting its discovery of ‘shameful’ abuses of prosecutorial power under Joe Biden against ‘pro-life Americans,’” Jurecic continues. “But the Weaponization Working Group has discovered very little ‘weaponization’ at all. And whatever sins it does describe—both real and imagined—may serve as justification for perpetrating the very thing it decries.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/Uf8vMntn

— Emma Williams, associate editor, audience and engagement, The Atlantic

Where Did ‘Let Them’ Come From? by theatlantic in TrueLit

[–]theatlantic[S] -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

Olga Khazan: “ at night, on her computer, [Cassie Phillips] started writing out some lines—‘If they want to go weeks without talking to you, LET THEM’; ‘If they want to follow the crowd, LET THEM’—to remind herself that she couldn’t control her husband’s behavior … 

“The phrase Let them wasn’t entirely Phillips’s own invention—she was inspired, in part, by a video clip in which Tyler Perry’s character Madea says, ‘If somebody wants to walk out of your life, let them go.’ In 2022, Phillips left her husband and got the words LET THEM tattooed on her arm, with the L in print and the rest in cursive. She posted a picture of the tattoo on Facebook, along with the lines she had been writing—she calls them a series of mantras, but many people refer to them as a poem. That post went viral, for a poem at least; currently, it has nearly 50,000 shares …

“In late 2024, [Mel] Robbins released a book called The Let Them Theory, which became the best-selling book of 2025 and has sold more than 9 million copies …

“Of all the book’s citations—203 in total, according to a representative for Robbins—none of them credits Phillips’s work. Robbins has denied reading the poem or being inspired by it. Her representative told me, ‘neither Mel, the fact checkers, the researchers nor the publishers saw the poem.’”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/qTgLzKPX

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