~vox | Bookmarks (546)

We all know someone — maybe it’s a friend, a co-worker, a family member — who always manages to be the voice of doom. The person who always knows that something is pointless or won’t succeed. If no one immediately springs to mind, I regret to inform you that it’s possible that you’re this person […]

At the 76th Emmy Awards, the biggest surprise was perhaps the most telling. At the end of a night in which The Bear, arguably not a comedy, swept most of the comedy categories, it lost the crucial trophy for Best Comedy Series itself.  The winner ended up being Hacks, another long-time Emmys favorite that is […]

This past week, Republicans amplified a barrage of strange and racist claims about Haitian immigrants, including falsely suggesting that they’re consuming people’s house pets.  The unfounded attacks came from official party social media accounts, lawmakers, and from both members of the GOP’s presidential ticket. Vice presidential candidate JD Vance said Monday that “Haitian illegal immigrants” […]

Fueled by a late-summer heat wave, several large wildfires have been burning across the Western US, forcing thousands of people to flee their homes and turning the sky in parts of Southern California an eerie orange. This is of course bad for pretty much everyone. Except for Melanophila beetles. These insects, which are roughly the […]

OpenAI, the company that brought you ChatGPT, is trying something different. Its newly released AI system isn’t just designed to spit out quick answers to your questions, it’s designed to “think” or “reason” before responding.  The result is a product — officially called o1 but nicknamed Strawberry — that can solve tricky logic puzzles, ace math tests, and […]

In recent days, the Republican presidential ticket has decided to promote incendiary lies about a roughly 15,000-person immigrant community in one small Ohio city. Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance introduced this line of messaging Monday, when he declared that “Haitian illegal immigrants” are “causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio,” and that “people have had […]

At 12:01 am on Friday, 33,000 Seattle and Portland area Boeing workers with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) went on strike.  It’s the first time since 2008 that workers at Boeing, one of the world’s two major commercial aircraft suppliers, have walked off the job. The strike won’t affect commercial air […]

When Donald Trump flew to Pennsylvania for a 9/11 anniversary event this week, he brought an unusual companion: a 9/11 conspiracist named Laura Loomer.  Loomer has been a quasi-journalist on the fringe right for about a decade, with a penchant for saying things that make even hardened MAGA types recoil. She is a self-described “proud […]

Since it was attacked by Houthi rebels in Yemen three weeks ago, a tanker carrying roughly 1 million barrels of crude oil has been immobilized and on fire in the Red Sea. The MV Sounion is still intact, but may not be for long, and should it sink it could lead to one of the […]

Please cover your eyes if you aren’t prepared to be spoiled: The eponymous, beautiful pair at the heart of Netflix’s The Perfect Couple isn’t perfect, nor is the show specifically about said couple.  To be clear, the series largely exists because if you squint and only pay half attention to it while scrolling your phone, […]

In the Purity Chronicles, Vox looks back at the sexual and gendered mores of the late ’90s and 2000s, one pop culture phenomenon at a time. Read more here. In an election year full of unprecedented events and weirdness, there’s been another notable oddity: Whenever a new hot girl enters the zeitgeist — say, actor […]

It’s probably been a minute since you saw Larry David, Tom Brady, or Matt Damon on TV extolling the benefits of crypto. That’s because the era of feverish crypto hype — interrupted by a cascade of highly publicized scandals — has largely passed since its heyday in 2021.  But there’s one critical place where the […]

Billionaire Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis completed the first privately funded spacewalk Thursday — a critical aspect of a risky, somewhat troubled mission designed to test new SpaceX technology, gather valuable data about high-altitude space travel, and generally push the limits of space exploration.  The mission, called Polaris Dawn, was supposed to launch in […]

Could we solve climate change if we just accepted being dramatically poorer, forever?  As I’ve written before, the answer is 1) no, not really, and 2) we can also solve climate change without that, and that will be better for everyone — especially those who are already poor — so we should do that instead. […]

Do kids still play? Specifically, do they play in active, imaginative, kid-directed ways, off screens and in the real world? It’s a question I’ve gotten in many forms since I started this newsletter, from the reader who asked if kids are still learning “Ring Around the Rosie” to the dad who wondered if it’s possible […]

New college admissions data for the first group of admitted students since the US Supreme Court sharply limited affirmative action last year suggests that the decision has had a negative impact on Black enrollment at some universities. While some colleges have seen major fluctuations in the enrollment of students of color in the class of […]

There’s something eerily familiar in Donald Trump’s and JD Vance’s lies about Haitians eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio. Part of it is that American nativists have a long track record of fearmongering about what immigrants eat — with jeers about dog meat, in particular, regularly showing up in bigotry directed at new Asian […]

It’s hard to think of a more iconically American company than US Steel. It’s right there in the name.  But it’s more than that. The company emerged from Andrew Carnegie’s Pittsburgh-area steel mills, which produced one of the largest fortunes and were the site of one of the bloodiest and most brutal industrial strikes in […]

Aysenur Eygi, a 26-year-old Turkish American activist, was killed by an Israeli soldier last Friday while protesting Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank; according to witnesses, she was shot in the head. She’s just the latest American to be killed by the Israeli military with no clear consequences from the US. The US […]

US forces in the Red Sea had a busy day on Tuesday. According to a statement from US Central Command (CENTCOM), in less than 24 hours they had “destroyed five Iranian-backed Houthi uncrewed aerial vehicles and two missile systems in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.”  CENTCOM posted that statement shortly after Vice President Kamala Harris declared […]

Taylor Swift, always noted for her flair for dramatic timing, finally endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race Tuesday night.  Moments after the first debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump, Swift posted her endorsement to Instagram, with a picture of herself posing with her now almost-equally famous cat. Meanwhile, Harris walked […]

If you are reading this, you probably knew who you were going to vote for long before Tuesday night’s presidential debate.  The reason for this is simple: The minority of American voters who lack a strong attachment to either party tend to pay less attention to politics than partisans do. Any political actor trying to […]

When you think about the defining voices of the Trump-era Republican party, Harvard political theorists aren’t typically at the top of the list. But Harvey Mansfield should be an exception.  He is, in some ways, the godfather of the Trumpist right’s current approach to gender and masculinity — an increasingly open celebration of the virtues of […]

Republicans at the highest levels of government and politics — including former President Donald Trump — are pushing a bizarre message: that Haitian immigrants are killing and eating pets. The claim is false, but that didn’t stop Trump from spreading it during Tuesday evening’s presidential debate, declaring that “the people that came in” are “eating […]