Is AI going to kill us all? In Silicon Valley, it’s not such a novel question. But after Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon quit his job last week and posted on X that AI “could kill us all by the end of the decade,” a lot more people are asking. “This is not a marketing stunt,” […...
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. I logged onto Slack this morning to find an incredible and indecipherable message from one of my coworkers. I briefly thought he ...
Why do I cry when I see a donkey? It’s completely involuntary. As if my heart’s defenses are swept aside by a giant wave of compassion and I’m left unnerved by the intensity of love that I feel: raw and a little foreign. I wonder about this because I’m not a big animal guy. Ther...
On stage at Davos in the Swiss Alps earlier this year, Bill Gates, before an audience of the global do-gooding elite, announced a $50 million partnership between his foundation and an unlikely new ally, OpenAI, aimed at improving healthcare in Rwanda. Just a month earlier, the Ga...
If you felt a gust of wind late on Friday, it came from hundreds of immigration lawyers who simultaneously exhaled after the Supreme Court announced it would not hear a case known as Genalo v. Black. That case asked whether certain immigrants could be held in immigration detentio...
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: President Donald Trump can’t put his name on the Kennedy Center — so he’s c...
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. The recent history of mail voting in the United States has more twists and turns than an Emmy-winning drama. But for the cause of...
Two years ago, Marineland of Canada — a theme park in Niagara Falls that trained beluga whales, dolphins, and other animals to perform acrobatic tricks for entertainment — closed its doors. The decision came after years of financial turmoil, along with journalistic investigations...
Anti-Muslim messaging has been on the rise among Republican elected officials for a while, and last week it took center stage at the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas, Texas, where speakers warned that leftists and “Islamists” were joining forces. “We are witnessing a new and da...
Everyone is suddenly freaking out about AI. While AI researchers have been warning about their creations’ capabilities for many years, recent events have made those alarms newly tangible. In the spring, Anthropic announced that AI was beginning to speed up the work of building b...
On Monday evening, the Supreme Court handed down its long-awaited decision in United States Postal Service v. California — the case involving President Donald Trump’s attempt to sabotage voting by mail in the United States. If Trump’s attack on mailed ballots had succeeded, it w...
If there is one thing Democratic politicians can agree on right now it’s this: Rich people should pay more in taxes. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has made it a centerpiece of his agenda. Texas Senate candidate James Talarico is bringing it up on the stump. And Georgia Sen. Jon O...
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: Everyone but President Donald Trump is freaking out about artificial intell...
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. If you’d asked me yesterday what Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders had in common, I might have said “white hair.” But after a wild ...
The weather forecast might still be screaming “summer,” but the calendar betrays the truth: The holidays are going to be here before you know it. What’s usually billed as a jolly time of year can inspire dread — all the planning, all the spending, all the gathering can be exhaust...
President Donald Trump has spent years making false claims about election fraud, including his refusal to accept that he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. Since that election, Republicans who denied or questioned the results have taken positions on local election ...
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Diesel prices hit an all-time high on last week. Then another, and another. According to AAA, the average price of diesel as of September 10 stands at a staggering $5.9...
There’s a funny game I’ve been playing with my three-year-old iPhone lately. The objective is to drain my battery as often as possible to degrade its health enough that Apple Care covers the replacement. A new battery would make my phone feel brand new — or at least new enough to...