Gertrude Stein was born 148 years ago today. She spent more than a decade submitting her work to The Atlantic and (thank goodness) was undeterred by the many, many rejections she received. (1/4) Her correspondence with then-editor Ellery Sedgwick began with her inadvertently addressing him as “miss,” and carried on for years of affectionate disagreement. (2/4)

I’ve spent the past several weeks reading the Facebook Papers, a gigantic collection of internal documents from Facebook unlike anything I’ve encountered. A few observations:
(1/8)
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… The sheer amount of material is astonishing and frankly hard to characterize. We’re talking thousands upon thousands of pages of internal chats, research documents, and more. They’re highly technical. I can’t wait for academics to spend time with these documents.
(2/8)

Good morning! I’ve been digging into Louisa May Alcott’s history with @TheAtlantic and this story is too good not to share. (1/15) @TheAtlantic In 1861, Alcott submitted a manuscript to The Atlantic called “How I Went Out to Service,” a fictionalized account of her own (weird, short-lived) experience as a servant. (2/15)

The internet is a miracle. But the social web is so badly broken. My latest feature is about the core problem at the center of that brokenness. (1/7) I’ve been thinking for years about what it would take to mitigate the harm caused by platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Google, and Twitter. (2/7)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the people who choose to serve in the military and to run for public office. [1/12] Senator Daniel Inouye comes to mind. He was the first Japanese American in Congress. He died in 2012, when he was 88 years old. [2/12]

Hear hear. @TheAtlantic's @zeynep is extremely good at getting the most complicated things right. Just a few examples... (1/6) nytimes.com/2020/08/23/bus… Her story about mask-wearing in April was so far ahead of so much else out there. “Think of the coronavirus pandemic as a fire... spread by infected people breathing out invisible embers every time they speak, cough, or sneeze.” (2/6) theatlantic.com/health/archive…

I’ve been writing about conspiracy theories and misinformation for more than a decade. But QAnon, which first emerged in 2017, always seemed different. (1/10)
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… I set out to report this story because I wanted to understand who really believed in Q, and why. What I learned surprised me. (2/10)

Today @TheAtlantic launched a new series about this weird limbo we’re all in. We're taking stock of what we've lost in the world left behind, and imagining the world already being remade in its place. I’ll keep updating this thread. Here's @JamesFallows on what flying will be like for the next many years. Turns out the last two decades of air travel, which so often seemed undignified and awful, actually represented the golden age of flying: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

Want to read something spectacular that has nothing to do with what's going on today? I'll keep updating this thread... Someday the illusion that diamonds are valuable will disintegrate, remembered only as a historical curiosity. It's weird that tiny crystals of carbon are universally recognized tokens of wealth, power, and romance—but it's not an accident.
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

In an October 2016 editorial, @TheAtlantic described Donald Trump as a “demagogue, a xenophobe, a sexist, a know-nothing, and a liar,” unfit to be president.

At the two-year mark of Trump's presidency, @JeffreyGoldberg writes: “In retrospect, we may be guilty of understatement.” This morning we are launching a big project we’re calling #TrumpUnthinkable. We asked 50 writers to reflect on 50 moments that would have been unthinkable in any other presidency, Democratic or Republican.

Mass shootings have become an accepted part of American life. @IsabelFattal and @stetyjohn talked to nearly a dozen people about their experiences. Heartbreaking, essential.

“The fact that I’m a survivor of a school shooting is not something he knows.” theatlantic.com/family/archive… “I did just want to move on and get back to normal. But you can’t. These are things that will impact you for the rest of your life and will affect you.” theatlantic.com/family/archive…