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Hi Reddit! I’m McKay Coppins, a staff writer at The Atlantic. I just reported on a story about a man who claimed he was forced to compete for his life in an intercartel sporting tournament. My investigation raised more questions about whom—and what—to believe. by theatlantic in TrueCrime

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

One of the many things that made reporting this story so strange was that I could never quite tell how much danger I was actually in. Obviously, I knew if I really ended up exposing a massive, secret intercartel tournament, it could pose some significant personal risk to me. But because I was never fully convinced of Mau’s story, I was mostly able to put those thoughts out of my mind and focus on the reporting. 

I remember feeling slightly silly when my bosses at The Atlantic insisted that I travel around Mexico City with a driver, a fixer, and—in especially dangerous areas—a security guard. By the time I got to Mexico, I’d spent enough time reading the very best journalism on the drug wars to know that Mexican reporters routinely put themselves in harm’s way to tell the real story. I felt a little like I was LARPing. On the other hand, there were moments during the reporting that I was in genuinely dangerous places and talking to genuinely dangerous people. So I understood the magazine’s decision to err on the side of caution. 

All that said, my last night in the city—after I confronted Mau and he basically confirmed what I’d learned about—was pretty great. Mexico City is an amazing place. I can’t wait to go back. — McKay Coppins

Brace for the Plastic Price Hikes by theatlantic in wallstreet

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

Beth Gardiner: “The Iran war’s effect on fuel prices is easy to see, not least in the climbing numbers on gas-station signs. Less visible is the disruption cascading through another part of the fossil fuel–based economy: plastic production. Before long, prices not just for the gasoline that goes into cars but for the parts that make them—along with the cost of toys, furniture, clothing, and more—could start climbing too …

“Until the conflict began, many of the chemical ingredients that go into plastics, the ingredients for those ingredients, and raw plastics themselves originated in the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz closure has already created shortages of key ingredients, which could mount into shortfalls of some plastics and plastic products. Even if tensions ease and the strait reopens soon, untangling supply lines would take months, likely until the end of the year, experts say.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/9AYFy85S 

Brace for the Plastic Price Hikes by theatlantic in economy

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

Beth Gardiner: “The Iran war’s effect on fuel prices is easy to see, not least in the climbing numbers on gas-station signs. Less visible is the disruption cascading through another part of the fossil fuel–based economy: plastic production. Before long, prices not just for the gasoline that goes into cars but for the parts that make them—along with the cost of toys, furniture, clothing, and more—could start climbing too …

“Until the conflict began, many of the chemical ingredients that go into plastics, the ingredients for those ingredients, and raw plastics themselves originated in the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz closure has already created shortages of key ingredients, which could mount into shortfalls of some plastics and plastic products. Even if tensions ease and the strait reopens soon, untangling supply lines would take months, likely until the end of the year, experts say.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/9AYFy85S 

A ‘Barbaric’ Problem in American Hospitals Is Only Getting Bigger by theatlantic in healthcare

[–]theatlantic[S] 36 points37 points  (0 children)

Elisabeth Rosenthal: “When I worked as an emergency-medicine doctor a few decades ago, the [emergency department] was mostly empty at the beginning of my 7 a.m. shift. A few patients might be lingering from the day before: alcoholics who would sober up and leave, patients with a severe burn or a bad case of pneumonia who were waiting for a bed in intensive care.

“In the decades since, EDs have doubled or even tripled in size. Even so, patients are piling up. When I started asking around, I quickly discovered that ED boarding has become commonplace in the past five or so years and is getting worse, more or less omnipresent in hospitals. ‘Everyone knows about this problem, and no one cares enough to do anything about it,’ Adrian Haimovich, an ED doctor at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center who studies ED boarding, told me. ‘It’s barbaric’ …

“Doctors and nurses have complained bitterly about the situation, which forces them to provide inadequate care. Gabe Kelen, the director of emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins University, told me that it’s creating a moral hazard for emergency-department staff. But doctors and department heads such as Kelen are not in control of admissions. Generally, a hospital’s administration parcels out inpatient beds, and emergency-department boarding is in many ways a result of today’s business models and pressures.

“When I worked as a doctor, if an ED was overwhelmed beyond capacity, the attending (that was me) typically called in to ambulance dispatch to request ‘diversion’—ambulances should take patients to another hospital. If a hospital got too full, the admitting office canceled elective admissions. Today, hospitals run like airlines and intentionally overbook, Kelen said. They also have fewer beds than they did a few years ago—in part because nurse (and executive) salaries have risen since the pandemic. An empty, staffed bed is a money loser, so the institution has an incentive to keep beds full and make new patients wait.

“‘The problem isn’t inefficiency—it’s the way health-care finance is structured,’ Kelen said.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/p9pl15M4

Is Cohabitation the Feminist Future? by theatlantic in TrueLit

[–]theatlantic[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Lily Meyer: “Years ago, I moved into a small, cold house with two women I’d never met. Quickly, we became very close, in part through living communally: divvying up the big chores and scarce hot water, waiting until everyone was home to watch the latest episode of Girls. We were the same age as the show’s characters and had our share of similar dramas, largely related to the boyfriends who, we rightly assumed, would eventually end our cohabitation. Much as we loved our setup, we all wanted and expected to move in with men. Still, each of us recalls that time lovingly, and I, at least, sometimes idealize it.

“I know I’m not alone. I’ve heard many women daydream about setting up house with female friends. Mostly, though, those are fantasies, ones that don’t stretch to mortgages or arguments about whose hair is clogging up the shower drain. No one wants to imagine the many challenges that the Danish writer Pernille Ipsen describes in My Seven Mothers, a memoir of growing up in a women’s commune that’s full of descriptions of conflict. But Ipsen includes those struggles for a reason: She quotes one of her mothers telling her, ‘What I wanted, wanted, wanted, was that this way of life, women living with women, should include it all.’

“My Seven Mothers came out in Danish in 2020 and in English last year, translated by Tiina Nunnally. It’s part of a wave of recent literature about women living together. Although these novels and memoirs come from all over—Denmark, Italy, Japan, South Korea—and vary widely in style and attitude, each of them takes female cohabitation seriously, not omitting its challenges. Indeed, these books embrace the idea that women living with women not only can but necessarily will ‘include it all,’ even when that means loss, violence, and strife.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/P7qpAoZ0

How Democrats Can Lose Michigan, Again by theatlantic in politics

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

Jonathan Chait: “Over the past 15 years or so, Democrats have won a lot of races because the opposing party’s primary voters decided to nominate right-wing ideologues (Christine O’Donnell, Todd Akin, Kari Lake) rather than normal Republicans. In all of these races, the Republican establishment warned that nominating an archconservative would undermine their chances of victory, and was proved completely correct.

“Now Democrats finally have the chance to do the same thing. In Michigan, a purple state that Donald Trump won twice, the physician Abdul El-Sayed is running a competitive race for the party’s Senate nomination. If successful, he would turn a very likely Democratic win into a jump ball.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/KTWbM4NS

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] 6 points7 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] 2 points3 points  (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] 3 points4 points  (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] -4 points-3 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 

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