After Musk's mass layoffs, X says it's expanding safety and election teams

X, the social network that most people still call Twitter, says it is adding staff to its safety and elections teams as it starts allowing more political advertising.

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A Robotaxi Experiment

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Driverless taxis have arrived on the streets of San Francisco. The self-driving car companies Cruise and Waymo got the green light to expand their robotaxi fleets in the city earlier this month. The cars’ arrival was met with creative protests, curiosity, and long waitlists to take a ride. I spoke with Caroline Mimbs Nyce, an Atlantic writer covering technology, about her trip to San Francisco to give the robotaxis a try.

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India's beloved mosur dal

The everyday dish of simmered lentils known as dal is more than just food to most Indians; it is comfort, it is nourishment and very often, it is the taste of home."For me, dal is comfort food and I have it every day. When I am tired, or when I'm having a bad day, dal with rice uplifts my mood in a way that nothing else can, not even coffee or chocolate," said cookbook author Archana Pidathala.

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The Pumpkin Spice Latte Turns 20

Heat waves may have swept across the country last week, but for Starbucks, fall has officially arrived. On August 24, the coffee chain began offering its lineup of seasonal drinks—fronted, of course, by the pumpkin spice latte, which turns 20 this year.Since 2003, the drink, sometimes known as a PSL, has become an autumnal harbinger for Starbucks customers and a major moneymaker for the company. It’s Starbucks’ most successful seasonal drink, and hundreds of millions have been sold since its launch, reports Dee-Ann Durbin of the Associated Press (AP).

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Invitation sent: Apple will debut the iPhone 15 in September livestream

As previously rumored, Apple plans to reveal the next iteration of the iPhone and the Apple Watch on September 12 in a livestream. The company confirmed the date with invitations sent out to members of the press this morning.

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The Fourteenth Amendment Fantasy

The Constitution won’t disqualify Trump from running. The only real-world way of stopping him is through the ballot box.Eminent jurists are promising that it will. They argue that language in the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, should debar the coup-plotting ex-president from appearing on a ballot for any office ever again. Their learning is undisputed. Their conclusions are another story. The project to disqualify Trump from running for president is misguided and dangerous. It won’t work. If it somehow could work, it would create problems worse even than Americans already face. In an ideal world, Trump’s fellow Republicans would handle this matter by repudiating his crimes and rejecting his candidacy for their presidential nomination. Failing that—and it certainly seems as if that hope is failing—opponents of Trump must dig deep and beat him at the polls one more time. There is no cheat code to win this game.

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Oppo's Find N3 Flip fashion phone is ready for its close-up

Oppo's newest flip phone is the Oppo Find N3 Flip, a 6,799 yuan (~$932) foldable debuting in China but heading to the rest of the world soon. The Find N3 Flip will be taking on the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Motorola Razr, and while both of those phones have tried to power up with a big front screen, the N3 Flip's front display is basically the same size as last year. Oppo is making up for that with a pretty big spec sheet, though.

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10 churches around the world given amazing new life

In a 19th-Century church built for the British Navy on an island in the Thames Estuary, one cantilevered staircase has been rebuilt, and the other has been conserved as a ruin. For the project's architect Hugh Broughton, this acts as a metaphor for his thinking behind a new use for this church.Completed in 1828, the grade II* listed Sheerness Dockyard Church had languished as a ruin since it was ravaged by fire in 2001. It now has a new lease of life as a workspace hub for young entrepreneurs on the Isle of Sheppey, one of the most deprived parts of Kent in the south of England.

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Google escapes Play Store class action after finding more persuasive expert

A US district judge has reversed course, revoking a 2022 class-action status order for 21 million Google Play Store customers who alleged that Google “artificially inflated” prices for Android apps that could have been downloaded cheaper outside the Play Store.

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Judicial orders restricting Trump's speech seek to balance his own constitutional rights

In each of former President Donald Trump’s four indictments, he has been allowed to stay out of jail before his trial so long as he abides by certain conditions commonly applied to most people accused of crimes in the U.S.In the New York state case regarding alleged falsification of business records, Trump has been ordered “not [to] communicate about facts of the case with any individual known to be a witness, except with counsel or the presence of counsel.” In the federal case in Florida, about his handling of classified documents, he is under a similar order. In the federal case in Washington, D.C., he is under a protective order with the same types of restrictions, barring him from speaking to people involved in the case except through or with his lawyers.

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The 10 drugs up for Medicare price negotiation have seen steep price hikes

The first 10 prescription drugs up for Medicare price negotiations have had years of price hikes that have ratcheted up costs for US taxpayers—which totaled $50.5 billion in gross Medicare Part D coverage costs in the past year and $3.4 billion in out-of-pocket costs in 2022.

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How Bad Could BA.2.86 Get?

Until the future of the new COVID variant becomes clear, three scenarios are still possible.Since Omicron swept across the globe in 2021, the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 has moved at a slower and more predictable pace. New variants of interest have come and gone, but none have matched Omicron’s 30-odd mutations or its ferocious growth. Then, about two weeks ago, a variant descended from BA.2 popped up with 34 mutations in its spike protein—a leap in viral evolution that sure looked a lot like Omicron. The question became: Could it also spread as quickly and as widely as Omicron?

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We now know who killed the "Lady of the Dunes"

Last year, after nearly 50 years, the FBI finally identified the murdered woman known as the "Lady of the Dunes," found in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in 1974: Ruth Marie Terry. And now the Massachusetts State Police have officially closed the case after identifying her killer: Terry's husband, Guy Rockwell Muldavin, who died in Salinas, California, in 2002.

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Reader Questions for the GOP Candidates

Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Last week I asked readers, “If you could pose one earnest question to any of the Republican candidates, what would it be?”

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Butter-poached scallops with coconut sauce

In Jamaica, "run down" – or rondón, run dun or rundung as it's also known – is a meltingly tender seafood stew or sauce made by cooking down coconut milk with spices and fish like salt cod or mackerel. It's traditionally served with Jamaican staples like yams, bananas and plantains. The dish is called run down because the fish is cooked down until it essentially falls apart. It's comfort food that chef Andrew Black grew up eating in his hometown of Barracks River, St Mary in Jamaica.Today, run down forms the foundation for a stunning dish of scallops in coconut sauce that is featured on the tasting menu at Black's Grey Sweater restaurant in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. This is a city long overlooked as a dining destination, but this perception is changing thanks to chefs like Black, who was awarded Best Chef: Southwest from the James Beard Foundation this past June.

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FDA's greenlighting of maternal RSV vaccine represents a major step forward in protecting young babies against the virus

With the Food and Drug Administration’s Aug. 21, 2023, approval of the first vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, for use during late pregnancy, the U.S. will soon have a major new tool at its disposal to protect infants against the highly contagious virus. RSV is the most common cause of lower respiratory infections in young children and can be especially severe for infants under 6 months of age. It is the leading cause of infant hospitalization in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Each year, RSV is associated with half a million emergency room visits, nearly 100,000 hospitalizations and 300 deaths in young U.S. children.

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Hypodermics on the Shore

The “syringe tides”—waves of used hypodermic needles, washing up on land—terrified beachgoers of the late 1980s. Their disturbing lesson was ignored.The first tide of syringes washed ashore on Thursday, August 13, 1987. Hundreds of unmarked hypodermic needles spilled out of the surf that afternoon, accompanied by vials and prescription bottles, along a 50-mile stretch of New Jersey beaches during peak tourist season. By the next morning, New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, an environmentalist Republican with national ambitions, was aloft in a helicopter surveying the floating slick of medical waste and other garbage that now stretched from Manasquan to Atlantic City. Disembarking onto Island Beach State Park for a press conference, Kean vowed in front of a huddle of news cameras that New Jersey would join legal action to “sue in federal court to have the guilty party pay every penny of damage that this tide of garbage has caused.”

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Sports leagues ask US for "instantaneous" DMCA takedowns and website blocking

Sports leagues are urging the US to require "instantaneous" takedowns of pirated livestreams and new requirements for Internet service providers to block pirate websites.

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It's a Weird Time for Driverless Cars

The robotaxi is recording me sitting in the backseat, and I am recording it. Someone in the neighboring car is recording us both.It’s an unusually hot day in San Francisco, and I am in a self-driving car named Charcuterie, operated by Cruise. Next to me is William Riggs, a professor at the University of San Francisco who studies self-driving cars. The front seats are both empty, and the wheel silently shifts as the car maneuvers itself along a thoroughfare next to Golden Gate Park.

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iFixit tears down a McDonald's ice cream machine, demands DMCA exemption for it

McDonald’s soft-serve ice cream machines are regularly broken, and it’s not just your perception. When repair vendor and advocate iFixit was filming a video about the topic, it checked tracking map McBroken and found that 34 percent of the machines in the state of New York were reported inoperable. As I write this, the nationwide number of broken machines is just above 14 percent.

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Drought in Texas Reveals World War I Shipwreck

Plagued by scorching temperatures and drought, the Neches River in southeast Texas has revealed the remains of a World War I shipwreck.The man who stumbled upon it, Bill Milner, was jet skiing on the river when he ran into something. He looked down and saw the remains of what appeared to be a large wooden boat. Milner took 250 photos and videos, then got in touch with the experts at the Ice House Museum in Silsbee, Texas.

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Turtle Shells Keep a Record of Humans' Nuclear History

Scientists can measure uranium isotopes in tortoise and turtle shells to understand the environmental impact of past nuclear events, a new study reportsNuclear explosions can have far-reaching consequences on the environment and people surrounding a detonation site. After a nuclear weapon test, for example, particles and gases from an explosion called nuclear fallout contaminate the environment and leave lingering radionuclides—atoms with unstable nuclei.

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The moral mystery of serial killers with no evident mental illness or trauma

Earlier this month, the face of serial killer Lucy Letby appeared on the front pages of almost all of the UK’s newspapers. Letby is a former nurse who was found guilty of murdering seven babies under her care. She has no known history of abuse, no known underlying mental health conditions, and no known association with extremist groups. By all accounts, she was raised in a normal household in a rich country that afforded her a comfortable middle-class upbringing. And yet she murdered babies. It’s commonly supposed that people are not born wicked — that our moral propensity for good and evil stems from our upbringing and environment. So how are we to reconcile the existence of evil people who were raised in a caring, nurturing environment? Although the debate over “nature vs. nurture” is far too complex an area to answer here (if we even can answer it), a look at history’s philosophers and sages might shed some light on the issue and teach us where our own intuitions lie.

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Google's $30-per-month "Duet" AI will craft awkward emails, images for you

On Tuesday, Google announced the launch of its Duet AI assistant across its Workspace apps, including Docs, Gmail, Drive, Slides, and more. First announced in May at Google I/O, Duet has been in testing for some time, but it is now available to paid Google Workspace business users (what Google calls its suite of cloud productivity apps) for $30 a month in addition to regular Workspace fees.

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The 1957 pandemic your grandparents forgot about

The symptoms came on without warning. “We had dipped out of the dissecting room at St Thomas’s for a mid-morning break and strolled along the Embankment to Lambeth Bridge,” wrote microbiologist T. H. Pennington of a particular day in medical school. “Going there I felt fine. Coming back was terrible because of fever and aching limbs.” Ed Susman, a newspaper delivery boy in upstate New York, was hit even more suddenly: “I distinctly recall feeling very warm in one of the tenement houses where I had a number of customers. I walked out on the back porch, and I literally felt as if I had been hit by a moving wall. My knees buckled and I fell back against the wall of the building. I truly do not remember how I finished the route.”

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International ransomware gangs are evolving their techniques. The next generation of hackers will target weaknesses in cryptocurrencies

In May 2023, the Dallas City Government was hugely disrupted by a ransomware attack. Ransomware attacks are so-called because the hackers behind them encrypt vital data and demand a ransom in order to get the information decrypted. The attack in Dallas put a halt to hearings, trials and jury duty, and the eventual closure of the Dallas Municipal Court Building. It also had an indirect effect on wider police activities, with stretched resources affecting the ability to deliver, for example, summer youth programmes. The criminals threatened to publish sensitive data, including personal information, court cases, prisoner identities and government documents.

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