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2024 was supposed to be the year MDMA, perhaps better known as “ecstasy” or “molly,” got its big break.  Until this summer, it was on track to rise out of the underground and into mainstream mental health care. Amid a lack of novel treatments for PTSD and staggering rates of veteran suicide, results from late-stage […]

J.K. Rowling’s supporters frequently claim the author has never actually said or done anything transphobic. It’s a position you can see on social media, in the pages of the New York Times, and even on a new podcast with Rowling herself. It’s also an easily debunked lie. Some of this confusion around Rowling’s opinions can […]

As a young man in the 1990s, walking to school in New Delhi, Anant Sudarshan would watch the vultures perched along telephone wires, waiting for the discards of nearby leather tanning factories. So when the birds started to disappear, he couldn’t help but notice. What Sudarshan, who now researches environmental policy and economics at the […]

Welcome to Money Talks, a series in which we interview people about their relationship with money, their relationship with each other, and how those relationships inform one another. Nicole Alesi is a 42-year-old New York native who has been running Nicole Marie Paperie, a stationery company, since 2013, and whose cards are featured in more than […]

We all know the medal winners for the competitions that have taken place so far in the 2024 Paris Olympics (or, rather, they’re all a single click away).  The US women’s gymnastics team reclaimed gold for the team all-around after a second-place finish in Tokyo, while the men’s team won its first medal in the […]

It has been a meme-heavy election so far this year, with a fire hose of content about Kamala Harris’s “Brat” summer and J.D. Vance’s undeniable weirdness. But another meeting of politics and the internet has flown a little more under the radar, in the form of a Senate race that includes, for the first time, […]

Despite being a time when people from all over the world come together in equality and peace, the Olympics are still uncertain territory for transgender athletes. There are no transgender athletes who are competing outside of the gender they were assigned at birth at this year’s Games. Transgender women who transitioned after puberty aren’t allowed […]

Technology is on its way to getting a little bit safer.  The US Senate on Tuesday passed a pair of bills — the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) — designed to protect kids online. It’s shockingly bipartisan: The vote to approve the package of […]

Look around and you might see it: the telltale signs that the #Resistance has been born again. A-list celebs are rallying for and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris; Zoom calls of Black, Latino, female, and young voters are reaching capacity; the coconut-tree and brat memes keep coming. Even cringe and earnest #Resist merch is back […]

Nearly two months after launch and almost 50 days after they were initially supposed to return to Earth, two astronauts stuck at the International Space Station finally appear to be closer to their homeward voyage. That they were trapped by troubles with their Boeing Starliner spacecraft has only raised fresh doubts about the company’s technological and engineering […]

The conversation went off the rails within the first few minutes. Speaking Wednesday to three Black female reporters at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention, former President Donald Trump was expected to make an appeal to Black voters, contrast his appearance with Vice President Kamala Harris’s absence from the event, and, of course, […]

Joyce Poole and Michael Pardo recently published a groundbreaking study on elephant communication: Using a machine learning model, they were able to show strong evidence that African savannah elephants have unique names for one another. The statistical model they used — known as a random forest model — is nothing new or snazzy. It’s been […]

Over the past few months, events in the Middle East have been giving the world a crash course in escalation management — or, more accurately, the failure to manage escalation.  Despite the ongoing carnage in Gaza, the region is not quite in the state of all-out war that many have feared since last October. But […]

Editors note: In July 2024, while speaking at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) conference, former President Donald Trump questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’s racial identity, saying: “She was always of Indian heritage. She was only promoting Indian heritage, I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened […]

Kamala Harris has reportedly narrowed her list of potential running mates down to three: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. All these contenders have their upsides. Walz is a Midwestern veteran who plays a great no-nonsense, folksy dad on TV and repeatedly won a Republican-leaning, rural congressional district […]

On TikTok, thousands of women are panicking over a new kind of ailment. “I’m kind of scared to ask the internet this, but I need to know,” content creator @niessaxoxo_ said in a TikTok earlier this month. “Do I have blush blindness?”  To understand “blush blindness,” one has to understand  “eyebrow blindness,” a term coined […]

Call them a vibe shift, the coconutpilling of America, or the next stage of “brat summer,” but the burst of memes that accompanied the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign matter. They have not just breathed new humor and life into the Democratic Party’s hopes of beating former President Donald Trump, but have […]

Since his selection as former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance has developed a reputation for being a bit strange.  News articles and social media alike are riddled with strange Vance comments: his belief that “childless cat ladies” are running America into the ground, his hostility to no-fault divorce, and his choice to […]

Abortion was always slated to be a top issue in the 2024 presidential election. But virtually no one predicted that politicians would be openly blasting those ambivalent about having children.  “We are effectively run in this country … by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices […]

On Monday, President Joe Biden announced three proposals to reform the Supreme Court: term limits for justices, a binding code of Supreme Court ethics, and a constitutional amendment overturning the Court’s decision allowing sitting presidents to violate the criminal law. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, also endorsed the proposals. But […]

After years of turmoil, Venezuela held national elections on Sunday. Voters of various political affiliations hoped the contest would put an end to the political strife and economic difficulties that have gripped the country for a decade. But with most of the votes counted, both current Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and opposition candidate Edmundo González […]

In their opening wave of attacks on the Democrats’ likely presidential nominee, some Republicans are homing in on Vice President Kamala Harris’s race and gender — despite certain party leaders’ pleas for them to steer clear. Members of the religious right have dubbed her a “jezebel,” while other conservative activists suggested that she’s slept her […]

From Massachusetts to California, transportation departments are pursuing controversial plans to widen highways, expansions that are sure to compel more people to drive, thus increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Yet state and federal officials are, absurdly, justifying such projects by claiming that they can help fight climate change.   Consider a report issued last fall, in which […]

A new trailer has reignited controversy over a comic book character Marvel Studios intends to introduce onscreen in next year’s Captain America: Brave New World, the fourth installment of the franchise.  The upcoming film will feature Ruth Bat-Seraph, also known by her alter ego, Sabra. In the comics, Sabra is an agent for Mossad, Israel’s […]