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On this late-summer weekend, read stories on what having a crush can teach you about yourself, the rise and fall of computer-science degrees, and how, exactly, America got so mean.
There Are Two Types of Dishwasher People
And only one of them really knows how to load it.
By Ellen Cushing
In a culture devoid of moral education, generations are growing up in a morally inarticulate, self-referential world. (From 2023)
By David Brooks
The Computer-Science Bubble Is Bursting
Artificial intelligence is ideally suited to replacing the very type of person who built it.
By Rose Horowitch
How to be a billionaire and pay no taxes
By Rogé Karma
A Ticking Clock on American Freedom
It’s later than you think, but it’s not too late.
By Adrienne LaFrance
Private Schools Have Become Truly Obscene
Elite schools breed entitlement, entrench inequality—and then pretend to be engines of social change. (From 2021)
By Caitlin Flanagan
A Crush Can Teach You a Lot About Yourself
There’s no harm in fantasies, even if you know they’ll never come true. (From 2023)
By Faith Hill
The Week Ahead
- The Roses, a comedy movie about a seemingly perfect couple whose hidden tensions explode after the husband’s career falls apart (out Friday in theaters)
- Katrina: Come Hell and High Water, a three-part documentary following the stories of Hurricane Katrina survivors (out Wednesday on Netflix)
- Katabasis, a novel by the best-selling author R. F. Kuang about two graduate students who must set aside their rivalry and journey to hell to save their professor’s soul (out Tuesday)
Essay
What Claire’s Once Gave Tween Girls
By Ellen Cushing
Mostly, I remember the fluffy pens. When I was in elementary and middle school, nothing could be cooler than a fluffy pen, at least until it got covered in backpack grime and started to look like an exceptionally long-tailed subway rat. And no place had fluffy pens in abundance like Claire’s, a chain that sold accessories and other trinkets and, at the time, seemed to exist in every shopping center in America. Mine had an entire wall of fluffy pens, in every color, usually for some kind of absurd deal that allowed even a child to feel the intoxicating rush of acquisition. This was what Claire’s was for. It was a temple to girlhood, a place where everything was frivolous and where tooth-fairy money could make dreams come true.
More in Culture
- What we gain when we stop caring
- A tale of sex and intrigue in imperial Kyoto
- Why is everything spicy now?
- Dear James: Do I need to be nice to my aging stepfather?
- A movie about losing—and reclaiming—your edge
- These books won’t make you a better person.
- The growing cohort of single dads by choice
- A famed director tried to build a fan base for his movie. It was awkward.
- Bobby Hill’s very millennial sorta-adulthood
Catch Up on The Atlantic
- Laura Loomer has become the Trump era’s Joseph McCarthy.
- A “MAHA box” might be coming to your doorstep.
- What Trump actually wants from a Ukraine deal
Photo Album
These photos show a huge, 113-year-old Sami-style Lutheran church in Kiruna, Sweden, being transported three miles from its original site.
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