There’s a familiar mood in American life right now, a frustration that feels both personal and ambient. The bridge doesn’t get fixed. The train line doesn’t get finished. The housing never gets built. The permits drag on. The timelines slip. The price tags balloon. And even when everyone agrees in principle that we really, really […]

As competing narratives and interpretations of viral videos muddy the investigations of the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis last week, there’s at least one thing that can’t be denied: The Department of Homeland Security’s operations in American cities are a sharp departure from how its […]

If this cold and flu season seem especially sneezy-coughy-fevery to you, it is not your imagination. Flu is surging in 45 states and outpatient doctor visits for flu-like symptoms are the highest they’ve been since we started keeping track of the data.  It’s not like the flu is new: Literally every year we have to […]

This past month I, like many Americans, flew back home for the holidays. On the first leg of that trip, from New York to Los Angeles, a dog in a “service dog” vest barked at me at the gate. The dog (not its given name), looked to be a stout French bulldog, paced back and […]

According to the French music streaming service Deezer, there are about 50,000 fully AI-generated songs uploaded to its platform every day. Many of these songs won’t reach a wide audience, but over the past year, a few have gained millions of listens.  Which raises the question: If our future is going to be filled with […]