The online right is stoking an imaginary culture war over sorority-dance videos, Kaitlyn Tiffany writes. But this burst of bizarre posting, she argues, âis less a story about American politics than it is a story about social media and, specifically, X. Whatever else you may say about Elon Muskâs platform, it is the best place to watch a fake drama unfold.â theatln.tc/Wp96xqVv
On TikTok, sorority-dance videosâchoreographed routines that are posted as sororities begin recruiting for the new school yearâhave long been popular. But this year, many of the videos are being presented on X by the online right with a different gloss: âDemocrats, liberals, and leftists are enraged by pretty, mostly white young women who are dancing happily,â Tiffany writes.
âThe only thing that is missing is evidence of seething libs,â she continues. Search around social media, âand you might be surprised how difficult such reactions are to find.â
Read more about what these sorority-dance videos offer the online right at the link in our bio.
đ¨: Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Sources: Sean Rayford / Getty; RichVintage / Getty.
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âDisability memoirs have often been marketed and read for narrow purposesâas dutiful tools of education or empathy building,â Sophia Stewart argues. Thatâs changing with a new crop of writers who arenât interested in inspiring readers: theatln.tc/7SrFNi88
đ¨: Hayley Wall for The Atlantic
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The meeting at the White House yesterday between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky yielded little progress toward peaceâbut it could have been far worse, Tom Nichols argues. theatln.tc/jXTdgsjz
Following his meeting with Vladimir Putin last week, Trump âtried to put a happy face on the failure in Alaska,â Nichols continues. On Friday night, Trump had quietly told Sean Hannity that Zelensky has âgot to takeâ Putinâs deal, âimplying that the United States was endorsing Putinâs demand to freeze the front lines and partition Ukraine,â Nichols writes. âSuch an arrangement would give Russia some breathing space while leaving it free to attack again in the future.â
But Trumpâs attempt to spin the outcome of the U.S.-Russia summit has not swayed âZelensky or several European leaders, who in an extraordinary show of diplomatic concern all rushed to Washington two days after Trumpâs return,â Nichols continues. âThe Alaska summit was never a good idea, especially without some signal from Putin that he was actually ready to stop the killing, but the response from European leaders is the clearest evidence yet that Trump was on a path to selling out Ukraine to the Kremlin.â
Fortunately, Nichols argues, someone at yesterdayâs meeting âappears to have talked Trump out of the idea of trading land for a temporary peace, an especially encouraging change because the White House already had a map of Ukraine in the room that seemed to be color coded almost perfectly in line with Putinâs wishes.â Now Trump has said that he wants to put Zelensky and his team in a room with Putin. But this âmakes little sense,â Nichols argues. âTrump believes that he can arrange a one-on-one meeting, with no mediators, between Putin and the man Putin is trying to kill every day.â
âMeetings require some level of basic agreement among the principals in order to produce results,â Nichols writes at the link in our bio. âWithout the pressure of further U.S. sanctions or more arms to Ukraine, Putin is likely to meet Zelensky only to renew his demands that Kyiv surrender and certify Putinâs gains, an ultimatum to which Zelensky cannot agree.â
đ¸: Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty
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For centuries, locals have claimed that an old Spanish shipwreck is the origin of the Chincoteague ponies. Now DNA from an old tooth hints at where they came from, Sarah Zhang reported in 2022: theatln.tc/G4WVwc2v
đ¸: Jim Watson / AFP / Getty
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As the Chinese economy surges forward, the United States has lost its capacity for physical improvement, Dan Wang argues. theatln.tc/M2gOJvKX
Throughout the 19th century, the U.S. had the musculature of an engineering state. But the countryâs construction boom slowed after the 1960s, when the American public revolted against environmental harms, highways being built through urban neighborhoods, and âindustry regulators who were cozy with big companies,â Wang writes.
Conversely, engineers have quite literally ruled modern China, and huge bursts of construction and infrastructure projects define the country. China has also turned itself into an energy superpower and is prolific at making military goods, including drones and ships.
Today, the United States âhas a government of the lawyers, by the lawyers, and for the lawyers,â Wang writes. âSuccessive American administrations have attempted to counter Beijing through legalismâlevying tariffs and designing an ever more exquisite sanctions regimeâwhile the engineering state has created the future by physically building better cars, better-functioning cities, and bigger power plants.â
Still, the United States should not attempt to copy Chinaâs approach, Wang argues. âLawyers are a guarantor of Americaâs great advantage against China: pluralism, or the ability of diverse cultures to coexist and thrive under equal protection,â Wang writes. Chinaâs success has come at a staggering cost for the country and its citizens: Officials have restricted ethno-religious minorities from practicing their religion, and âBeijingâs efforts to engineer society have made many young people feel adrift, with a substantial portion desiring to emigrate abroad.â
âChina would be better if it could be more lawyerly, which means embracing substantive legal protections for individuals,â Wang continues at the link in our bio. âAmerica needs an engineering culture to build homes, build mass transit, and build the energy systems necessary to decarbonize. Ultimately, if America refuses to build, it will be subject to the whims of countries that do.â
đ¸: Hu Xiaofei / VCG / Getty Images
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Donald Trump has said that he wants to end the war in Ukraineâbut, Anne Applebaum argues, âif the U.S. is not willing to use any economic, military, or political tools to help Ukraine, if Trump will not put any diplomatic pressure on Putin or any new sanctions on Russian resources, then the U.S. presidentâs fond wish to be seen as a peacemaker can be safely ignored.â theatln.tc/yrATc8CO
âThere is not much else to say about yesterdayâs Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska, other than to observe the intertwining elements of tragedy and farce,â Applebaum continues. âIt was embarrassing for Americans to welcome a notorious wanted war criminal on their territory. It was humiliating to watch an American president act like a happy puppy upon encountering the dictator of a much poorer, much less important state, treating him as a superior ⌠Itâs ominous that Trump now says he doesnât want to push for a cease-fire but instead for peace negotiations, because the latter formula gives Putin time to keep killing Ukrainians.â
Ukrainians, Europeans, and Americans may be relieved that Trump did not call for Ukrainian capitulation. âUnless there are secret protocols, perhaps some business deals, that we havenât yet learned about, Anchorage will probably not be remembered as one of historyâs crime scenes, a new Munich Conference, or a Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,â Applebaum writes. âBut thatâs a very low bar to reach.â
âThe U.S. has no cards because weâve been giving them away,â Applebaum argues.
đ¸: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP / Getty
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Eleven Madison Parkâwhich had once been named the worldâs best restaurantâannounced shortly after the COVID pandemic that it would be free of animal products. Daniel Humm, the chef and owner behind the famed restaurant, talked about âgoing plant-based as both an ethical and an artistic imperative,â Ellen Cushing writes. âHe would make a small but decisive correction to a food system that was âsimply not sustainable.ââ theatln.tc/v8aeAzmQ
âFour years later, vegan luxury dining is apparently the thing that wasnât sustainable,â Cushing continues. Humm recently announced that Eleven Madison Park would begin serving âselect animal products for certain dishes,â in addition to their plant-based menu. These products, Humm said, would include meat.
âThe idea of a place such as Eleven Madison Park being on the vanguard of social change was funny even before it was revealed to be temporary,â Cushing writes. âA nice meal is fundamentally a luxury goodâone where no expense is spared, customers are always comfortable, the linens get washed every day, and the appeal is a sense of perfection. It is the opposite of sacrifice, which is what responding to climate change will require from all of us.â
đ¨: Fèlix Vallotton / Heritage Images / Getty
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In the past few weeks, Julie Beck has lived monthsâ worth of compressed mornings and evenings with 5-to-9 vloggers. One way to look at these social-media videos is âas the product of people trying to make the most of the leisure time they have,â Beck writes. theatln.tc/FTXATHhb
Many of these videos are made by people in their early 20s who are new to the workforce and acclimating to the new reality that time is limited. Beck argues that these â5-to-9 video creators end up reproducing a version of the thing they are trying to distance themselves from.â
In many nighttime-routine videos, the threat of wasting time looms. âWhat exactly you accomplish almost doesnât matterâa spotless house, a completed Pilates class, an âeverything showerââso long as youâve been a busy little bee whom no one could accuse of wasting time,â Beck writes.
âConspicuously missing from most of the videos I watched is any kind of socializing,â Beck continues. âOther people can be an obstacle to running your life with the precision of a ticking watch.â
đ¨: Akshita Chandra / The Atlantic. Source: Getty.
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Low overhead is something all manner of middle-class people might find to be a huge relief. Anne Trubek wrote in 2016. âI will never be able to move to New York to some impressive-sounding job in publishing or editing, because it would be unaffordable. But I have made peace with cutting these items from my to-do list, because I value and enjoy my low-overhead lifestyle.â theatln.tc/fK7noWjB
đ¸: Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
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Carrie Bradshawâs last episode of television ended not with a bang but with a flush, which feels appropriate somehow, Sophie Gilbert writes. âHumiliation, more than anything else, has been the theme of all three seasons of âAnd Just Like That,â a cringe comedy without comedy.â theatln.tc/nUEGAknP
âEarlier this year, I wrote about televisionâs current obsession with extreme wealth, and how shows such as âAnd Just Like Thatâ suffer from the diminished stakes that come with easy abundance. When youâre insulated from calamity, maybe, the worst thing that can happen is physical degradationâa reminder that no matter how big your closet, how exclusive your couture, we all share the same basic bodily functions, which can fail and shame us in all the same discomfiting ways,â Gilbert continues. âStill, the casual cruelty with which âAnd Just Like Thatâ treated its castâs bodies as punch lines and visual gags seemed to suggest a deeper unease with what it means to ageâto be undeniably, messily human.â
đ¸: Craig Blankenhorn / HBO Max
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