Matt Warshaw still vividly remembers the shock he experienced when he noticed the camera on the flagpole. It was September 2000, ten years after he left his job as Surfing magazine editor and relocated from Southern California to the solitary waves of San Francisco’s Ocean Beach. His initial anger towards the camera and its broadcasting …
In 1988, when August Wilson’s play “The Piano Lesson” premiered at the Huntington Theatre in Boston, my mother, her friend Renée, and I were engrossed by the compelling story of a brother and sister grappling with the destiny of a family heirloom—an intricately carved piano created by their enslaved ancestor. The play’s vernacular dialogue, ethereal …
This article contains spoilers for the film Oppenheimer. Richard Rhodes is widely regarded as one of the most insightful authors to write about the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer. His book, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986, is considered the definitive account of the Manhattan Project. Rhodes’s comprehensive …
In May, Elon Musk made a subtle but significant change to Twitter’s home page. The prompt that once read “What’s happening?” was altered to “What is happening?!” under Musk’s influence. This change perfectly captures the chaotic and puzzling nature of the platform under its new leadership. Recently, Musk decided to rebrand Twitter entirely, erasing 17 …
Doom hides in every corner of Richard Rhodes’s home office, where he keeps a collection of chilling artifacts related to the atomic bomb. A framed photo of soldiers manipulating what seems to be ordinary water heaters are actually thermonuclear weapons. A black-and-white print captures the haunting image of an amoeba-like figure right after an atomic …
In his concurrence with the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action, Justice Clarence Thomas presents an absurd and perplexing argument. He suggests that the term “freedmen” used in the 1866 Freedmen’s Bureau Act was a “formally race-neutral category” and an “underinclusive proxy for race.” Thomas uses this argument to claim that the Fourteenth …
The inclination to prohibit books in schools appears to stem from adults wanting to shield children from content that they deem distressing or offensive. Unfortunately, these adults often fail to recognize the educational and artistic value of the books, focusing only on harsh language or gruesome imagery. They fail to understand that such elements can …
AL.com’s team of four journalists was recently awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting for their investigation of a local police force in Alabama. The team included a father-son duo, John and Ramsey Archibald. In a piece for The Atlantic, the Archibalds detail their experience working together and how their relationship has evolved in …
The Mona Lisa’s size is smaller than three feet tall and about two feet wide, and it hangs in the biggest exhibition room at France’s Louvre Museum. However, in recent weeks, some vigilante AI artists have decided it should be bigger. They are using Adobe Photoshop’s “generative fill” beta tool, which allows users to fill …