All posts tagged: lost

‘A Terrible Irony’: How the Media Lost Trust

‘A Terrible Irony’: How the Media Lost Trust

Americans have record-low trust in the media. They’re reading traditional news less. Platforms, too, have broken up with news organizations, making it harder for them to attract readers to their stories. Many 20th-century media companies are outmoded in a landscape where independent sites, influencers, and podcasters are finding large, passionate audiences, especially among adults under 30. Surveying this landscape recently, my colleague Helen Lewis wrote, unsparingly, “The ‘Mainstream Media’ has already lost.” I feel the same way. We are living through a period of deep distrust in institutions, which many Americans feel no longer serve their interests. There is a palpable anger and skepticism toward corporate media, and many have turned to smaller publications or individual creators whom they feel they can trust, even if these groups are not bound to the rigor and standards of traditional outlets.Those who reject traditional news sources feel that something needs to change and that legacy media organizations must find ways to reconnect with audiences, listen to them, and win back their trust. The question is where to begin. …

How America lost its taste for the middle

How America lost its taste for the middle

TGI Fridays, Denny’s, and other restaurants in the country’s middle tier are struggling. Tryphosa Ho / Alamy December 5, 2024, 6:25 PM ET 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. It’s been a rocky year for the type of restaurant that could have served as the setting for an awkward lunch scene in The Office: the places you might find at malls and suburban shopping developments, serving up burgers or giant bowls of pasta and sugary drinks. The “casual dining” sector—the name the restaurant world gives the sit-down establishments in the middle cost tier of the dining market—has seen some of its heroes fall this year. The seafood chain Red Lobster filed for bankruptcy in May (though a new owner has since emerged to attempt to save it). Another family-friendly giant, TGI Fridays, filed for bankruptcy last month, and the casual Italian-food chain Buca di Beppo …

Lost and Lassoed by Lyla Sage: Love, Family, and Redemption

Lost and Lassoed by Lyla Sage: Love, Family, and Redemption

Lost and Lassoed marks the eagerly anticipated third installment in Lyla Sage’s Rebel Blue Ranch series, following the success of Done and Dusted and Swift and Saddled. This enemies-to-lovers romance brings us the story of Teddy Andersen and Gus Ryder, two characters whose antagonistic relationship has been simmering in the background throughout the series. Setting the Scene: Welcome Back to Meadowlark Nestled in the heart of Wyoming, Meadowlark continues to charm readers with its small-town dynamics and the sprawling beauty of Rebel Blue Ranch. Sage’s descriptive prowess shines as she paints vivid pictures of mountain vistas, aspen groves, and the raw beauty of ranch life. The setting serves not just as a backdrop but as a character itself, integral to the story’s emotional core. Character Development: More Than Meets the Eye Teddy Andersen Teddy emerges as a masterfully crafted character whose complexity unfolds layer by layer. Initially known for her loud personality and seemingly carefree attitude, we discover a woman grappling with feelings of stagnation and the fear of being left behind. Her journey from …

Apple Lost the Plot on Texting

Apple Lost the Plot on Texting

For a brief moment earlier this month, I thought an old acquaintance had passed away. I was still groggy one morning when I checked my phone to find a notification delivering the news. “Obituary shared,” the message bluntly said, followed by his name. But when I opened my phone, I learned that he was very much still alive. Apple’s latest software update was to blame: A new feature that uses AI to summarize iPhone notifications had distorted the original text message. It wasn’t my acquaintance who had died, but a relative of his. That’s whose obituary I had received. These notification summaries are perhaps the most visible part of Apple Intelligence, the company’s long-awaited suite of AI features, which officially began to roll out last month. (It’s compatible with only certain devices.) We are living in push-notification hell, and Apple Intelligence promises to collapse the incessant stream of notifications into pithy recaps. Instead of setting your iPhone aside while you shower and returning to nine texts, four emails, and two calendar alerts, you can now …

De La Soul’s Mistake and Hip-Hop’s Lost Opportunity

De La Soul’s Mistake and Hip-Hop’s Lost Opportunity

In 1991, only one album into its career, De La Soul tried to pull off an unusually audacious move. The hip-hop trio’s 1989 debut, 3 Feet High and Rising, was a dense but accessible bricolage of dad-rock samples and flip-it-and-reverse-it nursery-rhyme syntax, establishing the group as innovators with commercial muscle. Two years later, De La Soul publicly renounced the album, dumping everything that made it an instant classic in an act of self-nullification from which the band never really recovered. The follow-up album, De La Soul Is Dead, sounds like an insecure crew taking wild swings at perceived enemies—Vanilla Ice, MC Hammer, the West Coast gangster-rap insurgency—and missing badly. The beats are sluggish, and 3 Feet High’s sample surprises (Hall & Oates! Steely Dan!) are absent, giving the record a thin, attenuated feel. It begins inauspiciously, with a skit involving a kid finding a copy of 3 Feet High in a trash can, and falls further into dispirited score-settling. It is also entirely too long, and both jokey and humorless. And worst of all, it …

The Lake of Lost Girls by Katherine Greene—Book Review by TBE

The Lake of Lost Girls by Katherine Greene—Book Review by TBE

Katherine Greene’s “The Lake of Lost Girls” is a meticulously crafted psychological thriller that deftly navigates between two timelines: 1998, when college student Jessica Fadley vanishes without a trace, and 2024, when her younger sister Lindsey finally begins unraveling the truth. The novel’s greatest strength lies in its ability to maintain suspense while delivering a profound commentary on family dynamics and the true crime genre’s impact on real victims’ stories. The authors (A. Meredith Walters and Claire C. Riley, writing under the pen name Katherine Greene) demonstrate remarkable skill in creating an atmosphere of mounting dread that permeates both timelines. The story’s setting—the small town of Mt. Randall, North Carolina, and its hill-perched Southern State University – becomes a character in itself, with the ominously named Doll’s Eye Lake serving as the perfect backdrop for this tale of buried secrets. Writing Style & Structure The novel employs an innovative structure, incorporating transcripts from a true crime podcast titled “Ten Seconds to Vanish” alongside conventional narrative chapters. This multimedia approach feels authentic rather than gimmicky, reflecting …

Apple may update Find My to let you share locations of lost items

Apple may update Find My to let you share locations of lost items

Apple could soon let users share the location of lost or missing items — such as an iPhone, Macbook, or something with an Airtag attached — via the Find My app with people who are not in their contacts using a link. Macrumors spotted the updated feature in the iOS 18.2 developer beta, and noted that Apple says it’s intended to help locate your lost items by sharing the location with people such as a cab driver or an airline employee. The Find My app on the iOS 18.2 developer beta has a new “Share Item Location” option, which gives you a shareable link to the location of the missing item. People can open the link on any device (including non-Apple devices) to try and track it. The link automatically expires after a week or when the item is back with you. There’s also a “Share Contact Info” option that lets any phone connect with an item and open a website, which will show your phone number and email — if you’ve added those details …

How a PhD Student Discovered a Lost Mayan City From Hundreds of Miles Away

How a PhD Student Discovered a Lost Mayan City From Hundreds of Miles Away

A new Mayan city, lost in the dense jungle of southern Mexico for centuries, has been discovered from the computer of a PhD student hundreds of miles away. This is the story of how he did it. The settlement, named Valeriana after a nearby freshwater lagoon, has all the characteristics of a classic Maya political capital: enclosed plazas, pyramids, a ball court, a reservoir, and an architectural layout that suggests a foundation prior to 150 AD, according to a newly published study in the journal Antiquity. And how did Tulane University graduate student Luke Auld-Thomas find it? The answer lies in lasers. Until recently, archaeology was limited to what a researcher could observe from the ground and with their eyes. However, the technology of detecting and measuring distances with light, known as lidar, has revolutionized the field, allowing us to scan entire regions in search of archaeological sites hidden under dense vegetation or concrete. Let’s travel back in time. It is 1848 and the governor of Petén, Guatemala, Modesto Méndez, together with Ambrosio Tut, an …

Kurt Vonnegut’s Lost Board Game Is Finally for Sale

Kurt Vonnegut’s Lost Board Game Is Finally for Sale

Kurt Von­negut’s life was not with­out its ironies. Fight­ing in World War II, that descen­dant of a long line of Ger­man immi­grants in the Unit­ed States found him­self impris­oned in Dres­den just when it was dev­as­tat­ed by Allied fire­bomb­ing. To under­stand the rel­e­vance of this expe­ri­ence to his lit­er­ary work, one need only know that his cap­tors made him live in a slaugh­ter­house. It’s not sur­pris­ing that anti-war sen­ti­ments would sur­face again and again in the books he wrote after com­ing home. But one would hard­ly expect him to have spent his time away from the writ­ing desk on a mil­i­tary-themed board game. “After releas­ing his first nov­el, Play­er Piano, in 1952, to pos­i­tive reviews and poor sales, he need­ed oth­er streams of income to sup­port his grow­ing fam­i­ly,” writes the New York Times’ Julia Carmel of the young Von­negut. Of all his endeav­ors — which includ­ed pub­lic rela­tions, a car deal­er­ship and a very brief stint at Sports Illus­trat­ed — he was most pas­sion­ate about design­ing a board game called Gen­er­al Head­quar­ters.” Read­ers of Von­negut’s …

Scientists discover troubling brain changes in COVID-19 patients who lost sense of smell

Scientists discover troubling brain changes in COVID-19 patients who lost sense of smell

A new study published in Scientific Reports sheds light on long-term neurological consequences of COVID-19. Researchers found that individuals who had anosmia (the loss of smell) during COVID-19 showed alterations in brain functionality and even physical structure during recovery. This study is among the first to link COVID-19-related loss of smell to significant brain changes. COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has been primarily known for its impact on the respiratory system. However, over time, many patients, even those with mild cases, reported cognitive issues such as memory problems, confusion, and difficulties with concentration, which raised concerns about the virus’s effects on the brain. Neurological symptoms like headaches, brain fog, and loss of smell emerged as common issues for COVID-19 survivors. Anosmia, the loss of smell, became one of the earliest and most recognizable symptoms of COVID-19, often occurring suddenly. While most patients recovered their sense of smell after a few weeks, some experienced longer-lasting olfactory dysfunctions. Previous research also suggested that loss of smell could signal broader neurological involvement in diseases like Alzheimer’s and …