All posts tagged: long time

Joe Biden and Donald Trump Have Thoughts About Your Next Car

Joe Biden and Donald Trump Have Thoughts About Your Next Car

Published by skeptic

Get ready for the EV election. Doug Mills / The New York Times / Redux March 20, 2024, 6:32 PM ET The Biden administration earlier today issued a major new rule intended to spur the country’s electric-vehicle industry and slash future sales of new gas-powered cars. The rule is not a ban on gas cars, nor does it mandate electric-vehicle sales. It is a new emissions standard, requiring automakers to cut the average carbon emission of their fleets by nearly 50 percent by 2032. It would speed up the transformation of the car industry: The simplest way for automakers to cut emissions will likely be to shift more of their fleets to electric and hybrid models, and the Biden administration estimates that the rule would result in electric vehicles making up as much as half of all new cars sold by 2032. It also gives the country more of a chance of meeting the administration’s goal of cutting U.S. emissions in half by 2030 and eliminating them by 2050. The final rule is a less …

The persistent mystery of protein intake

The persistent mystery of protein intake

Published by skeptic

Scientists still aren’t sure how much we actually need. Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani. Sources: Getty. March 14, 2024, 3:57 PM ET This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here. If nutritional information were a slice of bread, we’d be living in a world full of dense 24-grain-and-seed loaves. The internet is stuffed with listicles, tips, and tricks for consuming the right ratio of “macros” (fats, carbs, and proteins). Rows and rows of vitamins and supplements fill pharmacy aisles. Calorie-counting apps track every savored crumb. But in 1918, the answer to the question “What and how much should we eat?”—the title of an Atlantic article that year—was just beginning to be scientifically understood. Published in The Atlantic in the waning days of World War I, the story is in part a reaction to living in a resource-strapped country. “Let us first consider the question how much energy is really needed; or, to put it the other way, how little …

The Eternal Scrutiny of Kate Middleton

The Eternal Scrutiny of Kate Middleton

Published by skeptic

Kate Middleton has been reduced to her body. By which I mean: Many weeks into her recovery from surgery, and many years into her life as a royal, the physical form of Catherine, Princess of Wales, has become a commodity that the public feels entitled to consume. Her image has been on screens and in print for the past 20 years, so scrutinized and idolized that now, while she’s out of sight, newspaper columnists and intrepid TikTokers are fixated on not just where she is but also how she might look. Middleton hasn’t been photographed in public—with the exception of two dim (and disputed) paparazzi shots of her in cars—since December. Kensington Palace’s only explanation for her absence has been a “planned abdominal surgery,” which at first caused mere murmurs and polite concern for her health. But in the absence of more information, people started demanding to see a brand-new photo of her. Last weekend, the palace released a picture of her and her children, which turned out to have been digitally altered, only increasing …

Ben Affleck is more than a Dunkin’ Donuts meme

Ben Affleck is more than a Dunkin’ Donuts meme

Published by skeptic

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Gilad Edelman, a senior editor at The Atlantic who has written about the rising cost of English muffins (and the source of our economic discontent), the stubborn survival of crypto, and the case for weather being the best small-talk topic. Gilad is a self-described “Letter Boxed head” and a staunch Ben Affleck defender (he recommends The Way Back and—curveball—Zack Snyder’s Justice League as some of the finer examples of Affleck’s talents). He also challenges anybody to find a more reliable actor than Seth Rogen—or to quote a good Oasis lyric. First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic: The Culture Survey: Gilad Edelman An actor I would watch in anything: If I’m answering literally, …

Ozempic Is a Brain Drug

Ozempic Is a Brain Drug

Published by skeptic

When scientists first created the class of drugs that includes Ozempic, they told a tidy story about how the medications would work: The gut releases a hormone called GLP-1 that signals you’re full, so a drug that mimics GLP-1 could do the exact same thing, helping people eat less and lose weight. The rest, as they say, is history. The GLP-1 revolution birthed semaglutide, which became Ozempic and Wegovy, and tirzepatide, which became Mounjaro and Zepbound—blockbuster drugs that are rapidly changing the face of obesity medicine. The drugs work as intended: as powerful modulators of appetite. But at the same time that they have become massive successes, the original science that underpinned their development has fallen apart. The fact that they worked was “serendipity,” Randy Seeley, an obesity researcher at the University of Michigan, told me. (Seeley has also consulted for and received research funding from companies that make GLP-1 drugs.) Now scientists are beginning to understand why. In recent years, studies have shown that GLP-1 from the gut breaks down quickly and has little …

How anti-Semitism threatens American democracy

How anti-Semitism threatens American democracy

Published by skeptic

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. In our April cover story, my colleague Franklin Foer explores how anti-Semitism on both the right and the left threatens to end a period of unprecedented safety and prosperity for American Jews—and the liberal order they helped establish. Frank and I chatted last week about the past and future of anti-Semitism, and about some lesser-understood moments in American Jewish history. First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic: What Liberalism Did Isabel Fattal: You write that “part of the reason I failed to appreciate the extent of the anti-Semitism on the left is that I assumed its criticisms of the Israeli government were, at bottom, a harsher version of my own.” How did October 7 change this thinking for you? Franklin Foer: For a long time, I didn’t actually think that anti-Semitism was an American problem. And then …

The Pandemic’s ‘Ghost Architecture’ Is Still Haunting Us

The Pandemic’s ‘Ghost Architecture’ Is Still Haunting Us

Published by Sam

Last Friday, in a bathroom at the Newark airport, I encountered a phrase I hadn’t seen in a long time: Stop the spread. It accompanied an automatic hand-sanitizing station, which groaned weakly when I passed my hand beneath it, dispensing nothing. Presumably set up in the early pandemic, the sign and dispenser had long ago become relics. Basically everyone seemed to ignore them. Elsewhere in the terminal, I spotted prompts to maintain a safe distance and reduce overcrowding, while maskless passengers sat elbow-to-elbow in waiting areas and mobbed the gates. Beginning in 2020, COVID signage and equipment were everywhere. Stickers indicated how to stand six feet apart. Arrows on the grocery-store floor directed shopping-cart traffic. Plastic barriers enforced distancing. Masks required signs dotted store windows, before they were eventually replaced by softer pronouncements such as masks recommended and masks welcome. Such messages—some more helpful than others—became an unavoidable part of navigating pandemic life. Four years later, the coronavirus has not disappeared—but the health measures are gone, and so is most daily concern about the pandemic. …

As a Tactic, Self-Immolation Is Often Counterproductive

As a Tactic, Self-Immolation Is Often Counterproductive

Published by Sam

In 1963, the monk Thich Quang Duc soaked himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire to protest the government of the Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem. Within a few years, dozens more had killed themselves the same way. A Quaker named Norman Morrison stood outside Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s office, handed off his 1-year-old daughter to a stranger, and cremated himself. Back in Vietnam, a nun named Nhat Chi Mai wondered to a friend whether the tactic had lost its power through overuse. “Fasting and even self-immolation no longer wake people up,” she said. “We have to be imaginative!” She suggested they take part in a mass public disembowelment. Her friend said she’d think about it. In 1967, Nhat knelt before statues of the Virgin Mary and Quan Am, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, and stuck with Plan A. She was 33. This past weekend, a 25-year-old U.S. Air Force enlisted man livestreamed his self-immolation in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. He said he could no longer abide being “complicit” in …

Two theories for Americans’ dire economic outlook

Two theories for Americans’ dire economic outlook

Published by skeptic

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Even as many measures show that the economy is thriving, Americans have been feeling down lately—especially about grocery prices. I spoke with my colleague Rogé Karma, a staff writer focused on the economy, about how to understand the gap between consumers’ attitudes and standard economic measures, and how political polarization shapes Americans’ outlook on these issues. First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic: Two Theories Lora Kelley: Why are food prices so central to perceptions of the economy, and why do some inflation measures fail to capture that? Rogé Karma: Food prices are what we see every day—at the grocery store, when we’re ordering takeout or eating at restaurants. In a recent poll that we commissioned at The Atlantic, we asked respondents what factors they consider when deciding how the national economy is doing. The price of …