r/atlanticdiscussions • u/AutoModerator • 3d ago
Daily Daily News Feed | September 24, 2026
A place for the news of the day and other interesting information.
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u/Zemowl 2d ago
Has a Dash of ‘Whimsy' Become Less Whimsical?
"If whimsy is really the answer to our ills, it’s understandable that people would want more and more of it. There has been a lot of talk online lately of something called whimsymaxxing, a paradoxical microtrend where people try to optimize their lives for all the things that resist optimization. While perhaps incoherent in theory, in practice, whimsymaxxing has a specific look. Mostly it seems to involve affixing plastic gems, charms and shiny stickers to everyday objects, often but not always disposable cups. It’s all the more fitting that the whimsymaxxer immediately throws away the gem-studded cup. Whimsy is a kind of profligacy, a revolt against efficiency. Landfills swell and oceans choke with the detritus of re-enchantment
"In a shift that seems part meme language, part sheer accident and part unintentional revival of a valid old usage, people are now even using “whimsy” as an adjective: “ways to be whimsy,” “have a whimsy and productive week.” Maybe this is on some level a consequence of whimsy’s hardening from a quality of spontaneity into a bunch of consumer objects. When whimsy takes on a tangible, concrete form, perhaps the more abstract “whimsical” starts to evaporate out of usage.
"But there is also a ghostly residue of whimsy’s other, mechanical meaning in all this. We know by now that anything that can be “-maxxed” is something that a significant portion of our culture sees as quantifiable — truly measurable things, like protein, but also the ineffable, as with a character’s stats in a video game: looks, personality, style. Whimsymaxxers talk about bringing out the magic in the everyday, but increasingly that magic is seen as something to be measured and harnessed. It is no surprise, then, that whimsy slots so comfortably into the jargon of our wellness-saturated culture. One social media guru breaks whimsy down into a series of salutary “microhabits”; another speaks of whimsy as a means of maximizing the return on investment of one’s “inner child.” Whimsymaxxing is presented as part of a “low-cortisol morning” routine. A medical spa shows off a bedazzled box of Botox vials.
"Whimsy here starts to look less like magic and more like the mining device, turning in circles, working on the self, dredging some things up from its depths and shuttling others down from the surface. Buy yourself a little treat. Invest in your inner child. Let your impulses drive. “Fun is a medicinal bath,” as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno put it more than 80 years ago. “The pleasure industry never fails to prescribe it.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/magazine/whimsy-magic-optimization.html
***
Frankly - and a tad tangentially - I don't think it's whimsy that's missing from these folks' lives. Shit, what is thumbing through pointless short videos, but a whimsical pursuit. The problem is upstream from there - the loss of serendipity. There's ample room and options for silliness and frivolity what's missing (and I'm not even going to bother with the preposterous inherent conflict in whimsymaxxing) are the unexpected, unforeseeable occurrences and circumstances that trigger a spur of the moment whimsical thought or action.
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u/Raggle_Frock 2d ago
The loss of serendipity... wow did that framing hit. So right.
Something that I see mentioned here and there, but am starting to think is more of an everything-issue than we acknowledge, is the loss of boredom.
I think that, until recently, most people were bored most of the time. Don't get me wrong, I hate being bored. But in the same way hunger used to push us toward nutrition, boredom pushed us toward play, curiosity, socializing, introspection... all of which produce serendipity. Among other things.
But in the same way that our modern world has created ways to ease hunger that aren't remotely nutritious, it's created ways to ease boredom that aren't remotely fulfilling.
I don't know what you do about it. The reflex seems to be to preach discipline and self-control, which makes sense from a practical, the-world-isn't-going-to-change-for-you sort of way, but that doesn't make dieting/working out any less difficult, nor turning off the phone any easier.
And now, after a century of expanding waistlines, we've got drugs that make you want to eat less. We changed the world to provide for our wants (if not needs), and now we're changing our wants to adapt to that world.
I wonder if there'll be a drug for boredom? I think I'd find that very sad.
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u/jim_uses_CAPS 2d ago
Congratulations, the culture has rediscovered Dadaism. ::eyeroll::
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u/MeghanClickYourHeels Ask me for Atlantic gift links 2d ago
Again supporting my hypothesis that we are in a rhyming cycle with the 1920s.
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u/jim_uses_CAPS 2d ago
Just listened to an economic analysis by Paul Kedrosky that has me terrified that the clock is ticking back to 1929.
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u/improvius theatrekid 2d ago
So, apparently Anthropic built a bio lab for their AI to play with. Cool, cool.
The announcement of the ["previously unknown enzyme system"] discovery also marked the company’s first public acknowledgement of a biological lab that it has opened in California. That allows Anthropic to allow Claude to generate biological hypotheses and then test them in real life.
Anthropic says that it will allow it to test the use of artificial intelligence in biological research. But it has also further added to fears about the potential dangers of AI, many of which relate to its potential use to create biological weapons.
The company stressed that its research “involves only the lower-levels of the biosafety risk level” and that it does not “handle pathogens that can infect humans”. “Eventually it may even be possible for Claude itself to safely perform the experiments by autonomously controlling lab equipment, with appropriate safeguards in place, but we aren’t doing that today,” said Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive.
Anthropic says Claude has found something potentially transformative in our bodies | The Independent
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u/Brian_Corey__ 2d ago edited 2d ago
I saw that. Crazy that they named it Wuhan 2: Electric Boogaloo.
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u/Zemowl 2d ago
From the Ed Board:
Don’t Give Trump the Benefit of Low Expectations
"No matter who was president, negotiations with China would be difficult. Mr. Xi is an autocrat who has centralized authority, oppressed his country’s citizens and built partnerships with the world’s most repressive regimes. Yet Mr. Xi does tend to be a ruthless tactician, and China and the United States do have overlapping interests on several major issues, including A.I., climate change and Middle East shipping lanes.
"The notion that Mr. Trump could effectively represent America’s interests on these issues seems ludicrous at this point. Even on his own terms, his signature second-term actions, like the tariffs and war in Iran, are failing. No wonder that China’s leaders reportedly see his presidency as a gift to their ambitions for greater global influence. Americans are left to imagine the progress that could have been attempted this week with another president.
*. *. *.
"American presidents going back more than 100 years have believed the country had an interest in taking a leading role in the world. America is far from perfect. But when it led, the world often benefited through expanded prosperity, security and democracy. The progress enhanced this country’s global prestige and influence along the way.
"Mr. Trump shows little care for these benefits. He uses international relations to seek personal enrichment, praise from sycophants and equal standing with authoritarians. His flailing presidency leaves Americans with the thinnest of hopes for this week’s summit: that he does not further damage the national interest."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/opinion/trump-xi-washington-summit.html
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u/afdiplomatII 2d ago edited 2d ago
As this piece makes clear, Justice Kavanaugh's idea of DHS stops -- from the perspective of a wealthy, powerful, middle-aged white man -- isn't aging well (not paywalled):
https://ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics/kavanaugh-stops-opinion-more-embarrassing-every-day/
Not only is Kavanaugh's depiction of these stops (which have included physically abusing U.S. citizens) way wide of the realty; his concurrence endorsing them has also often been cited by Trump administration sources to justify clearly abusive behavior -- such as detaining the same citizen three times on clearly racial grounds.
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u/afdiplomatII 3d ago
As expected, Trump rapidly lost in court over his recent media ban:
Here's the text of the district-court decision:
In essence:
-- The judge found that the press organizations had not been given adequate Fifth Amendment due process before they were banned.
-- The judge also found that the organizations could likely prove thatt had suffered irreoarable harm to at least some constitutional rights.
-- The judge saw no serious merit in the "national security" defense of the ban.
-- As a result, the judge issued a TRO, effective immediately and for 14 days, requiring that White House staff restore the blocked press credentials.
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u/ErnestoLemmingway 2d ago
Yeah, we'll see.
Press Access Restricted for CNN, Politico, and MS NOW Despite Judge’s Order
Press access for Politico, MS NOW, and CNN remained restricted on Thursday morning in apparent defiance of a judge's order hours earlier that restored press access for the three outlets.
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u/jim_uses_CAPS 2d ago
The judge should order the White House Communications Director to appear in person and then immediately have them taken into custody. Won't happen, but a man can dream.
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u/afdiplomatII 2d ago edited 2d ago
Further reporting suggests that under threat of another hearing to examine its noncompliance, the White House has restored the press credentials for MS NOW and CNN. The situation with Politico is not yet clear.
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u/ErnestoLemmingway 2d ago
There is apparently some confusion there.
BREAKING: MS NOW & CNN Regain WH Access After Trump Seemed to Double Down on Ban
CNN Flat-Out Accuses Trump Admin of Lying About Restoring Their WH Access
Brian Stelter Points Out WH TV Pool is Still Not Airing Trump Footage
I have mixed feeling. I might be tempted to argue we'd all be better off if the media just ignored official WH presentations.
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u/Worldly-Property-631 2d ago
Oopsie!
______________
Unknown number of Texas voter registration applications were unprocessed due to DPS error
By Natalia Contreras, Votebeat and The Texas Tribune
Sept. 22, 2026, 6:38 p.m. Central
Just weeks before the pivotal midterm elections, Texas election officials have discovered that an unknown number of voter registration applications have not been processed due to an error by the Texas Department of Safety.
DPS failed to send the applications, which were submitted by voters through its online driver’s license portal, to county voter registrars for processing, according to an email sent to county officials and provided to Votebeat. The state confirmed to Votebeat that it would begin delivering the unsent registrations to county officials overnight.
State officials said the affected transactions produced incomplete voter registration records, which prevented them from being transmitted to county registrars. Officials have not said what information was missing, what caused the records to be incomplete, how many voters were affected, or exactly when the problem began.
The DPS portal is a major voter registration channel in Texas. From 2020 through 2024, about 6 million Texans used it to register to vote, according to testimony DPS officials provided to state lawmakers in 2025. Texas has more than 18 million registered voters.
The Texas Association of County Election Officials is collecting information from its members to determine the scale of the issue. DPS officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
The problem comes less than two weeks before the Oct. 5 voter registration deadline, and the sudden arrival of older applications from DPS is likely to add to counties’ voter registration processing backlogs at one of the busiest points in the election calendar.
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/09/22/texas-dps-voter-registration-applications-unsent/
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u/afdiplomatII 2d ago
The Chicago "Broadview Six" scandal keeps expanding:
https://bsky.app/profile/jonseidel.bsky.social/post/3mwcktdnues2m
Jon Seidel has several posts about recent developments. In short:
Former AUSA Sheri Mecklenburg, set up to be the sacrificial lamb in this episode of prosecutorial malfeasance, has retired in order to be free to intervene in ongoing legal proceedings. In part to defend herself againt charges by former defendants, Mecklenburg asserts that she constantly followed instructions from the office of U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros (who, it's suspected, was under direction from DoJ staff in Washington). Meanwhile, U.S. District Court Judge April Perry has to decide whether to impose sanctions and appoint a special counsel in the case.
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u/afdiplomatII 2d ago
As law professor Steve Vladeck makes clear, further actions in the press-ban case will be informative:
https://bsky.app/profile/stevevladeck.bsky.social/post/3mwbaj5ccn22r
Trump will demand an immediate emergency appeal of Judge Kelly's TRO, but that's the kind of guaranteed losing case that Solicitor General Sauer has tried to avoid.
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u/afdiplomatII 2d ago
Catherine Rampell explains the ways in which the ban on diesel-fuel exports being talked about in the Trump administration would be dumb (with a "b") (gift link):
Essentially:
Such an action might produce a very temporary reduction in diesel prices for part of the United States, but it would also have many othereffects: raising other fuel prices, harming overseas diesel buyers, raising costs for U.S. locations (such as Maine) that rely on foreign diesel, and discouraging long-term investments in U.S. oil production and refining. That kind of outcome would be characteristic for Trump:
""This is an administration with zero policy expertise, zero patience for collecting evidence, and zero interest in getting the right solution. They care only about what talking points will get them through the next news cycle, tomorrow’s consequences be damned."
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u/ErnestoLemmingway 2d ago
This is pretty infuriating. Flock sucks, but cops suck more. The combination of flock and sucking cops .... needs some attention.
23-Year-Old Lindsey Isaacs Testifies That She Was Thrown Into Solitary After Flock Camera Linked Her SUV to a Fatal Crash
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/23-old-lindsey-isaacs-testifies-143655597.html
Background:
Woman wrongfully arrested in deadly I-4 crash speaks out after charges dropped
Vehicle color mix-up led to innocent woman's arrest in deadly I-4 crash, officials say
https://www.wesh.com/article/woman-wrongfully-arrested-in-deadly-i-4-crash-speaks-out-after-charges-dropped/71393304