Section: The Atlantic (USA)
Netflix Believes in the Power of Thumbs
What’s the difference between rating a movie you just watched out of five stars, versus giving it a thumbs-up or thumbs-down? Most people might not see too much of a distinction—but Netflix does. According to the streaming service, you give a star rating to impress other people; it’s a way of channeling your inner critic. But...
Giving the Military More Money Won’t Make It Win More
Donald Trump’s military policy is a win-win proposition: The United States will win, and then it will win some more. Last week, the White House released its proposed budget, which calls for $639 billion in defense spending—a $54 billion increase from 2017 levels—along with massive cuts for diplomacy and foreign aid. Congress is likely to...
Do Liberals Have an Answer to Trump on Foreign Policy?
Chris Murphy sensed well before most people that the 2016 election would largely revolve around U.S. foreign policy. Not foreign policy in the narrow, traditional sense—as in, which candidate had the better plan to deal with Russia or defeat ISIS. Rather, foreign policy in its most primal sense—as in, how America should interact with the world...
Culinary Feminism and Banksy Goes to Bethlehem: The Week in Global-Affairs Writing
Things Only Seem to Change Linda Kinstler | Mary Review “When Ukraine greeted the Euromaidan Revolution in November 2013, memories of the 2004 Orange Revolution, a protest against political corruption that ultimately had little impact on government integrity, still lingered in the public imagination. The country had grown perilously accustomed to...
Can America’s Spies Work With Russia’s?
Among the reasons President Donald Trump has cited for seeking a better relationship between the United States and Russia is the number of common evils the two countries face, including terrorism. “Wouldn’t it be great,” he has mused, “if we actually got along with Russia and other countries?”The furor in the United States over...
Why Sweden Brought Back the Draft
In 2010, Sweden ended a 109-year-old national tradition by abolishing its military draft. At the time, the decision seemed like an obvious one; only 5,000 soldiers were being conscripted into the army—a 10-percent sliver of the mandatory enlistment in Sweden during the height of the Cold War and the 1990s, when most European countries had...
President Trump’s Untruths Are Piling Up
Let’s be clear from the start: There is no evidence that Donald Trump or his campaign coordinated with Russia to hack the Democratic National Committee’s emails or funnel them to Wikileaks; no evidence that they are puppets of Vladimir Putin; and no proof that the Kremlin possesses kompromat on the president.There are suspicions...
What Putin Is Up To
Each year on December 20, the Russian intelligence community pays homage to its enduring guardianship of the Motherland. It was on this date in 1917, six weeks after the Bolshevik Revolution, that Vladimir Lenin established the Cheka, an acronym for “Emergency Commission.” Over the ensuing decades, the commission’s nomenclature and...
The Best Business Reads of February
At the end of every month, editors of The Atlantic’s Business Channel put together a list of the most insightful and interesting pieces of journalism about money and economics from around the web.This month’s picks include a broad investigation about work and labor—why some groups disproportionately fill certain jobs and why some...
Playtime at the Reichstag and Pick-up Football in Ukraine: The Week in Global-Affairs Writing
My Trip to the DMZ Christoph Niemann | The New York Times Magazine “The 60-minute bus ride felt a bit like a school trip. A stern guide lectured us about the Korean War: How the conflict came to an end in 1953 with an armistice establishing a permanent border called the Military Demarcation Line (M.D.L.), from which both armies retreated two...
