The Atlantic

Kendrick Lamar’s straightforward, punchy, and unsurprising new album can’t be understood without revisiting his battle with Drake, writes Spencer Kornhaber:

For more than a decade, the photographer Bryan Schutmaat traveled across the American West, photographing the environment and the “road dogs” he met along the way. His portraits challenge the region’s mythology, Andrew Aoyama writes:

For all of the airline industry’s very public stumbles in recent years, flying has improved by many measures—but things could soon change. Lora Kelley on how the Trump administration could prove more sympathetic to businesses than to consumers:

Many Americans are about to go through the tribulations of holiday travel—twice. “We’ll pack all our traveling and relative-wrangling and big-mealing into one overstuffed, exhausting month, and for no extrinsic reason,” Ellen Cushing writes of the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas holiday corridor. “There’s a better way to do things, and in fact another country already does it. That country is Canada.” https://lnkd.in/eAYqPsGv “Canadian Thanksgiving is the second Monday of October, though many people observe it over the weekend. To preserve some tradition, I propose we reschedule ours to fall on the Thursday before Canada’s holiday,” Cushing continues. “Superfans of the calendar may notice that this is the same long weekend as Indigenous Peoples’ Day/Columbus Day, which seems fine—they’d each have their own days, and besides, you can probably appreciate that there’s some thematic overlap here … After that, we’d have a whole month to avoid interstate travel and its attendant costs, spiritual and financial.” Holidays are social constructs, Cushing continues, “and Thanksgiving has been changing basically since it was invented. The first Thanksgiving—the one many of us learned about in school, the one with the Pilgrims—is believed by historians to have taken place sometime between September and November, and aside from being a meal, it had almost nothing to do with our modern celebration.” In 1939, Thanksgiving, then celebrated on the final Thursday of November, fell on the last day of the month, which retailers worried would depress sales; it was moved to the second-to-last Thursday of November, which enraged football coaches, who saw “their big-ticket games suddenly moved from a major holiday to a random Thursday,” Cushing writes. “Finally, Congress passed a resolution declaring Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday of November, where it has remained ever since.” “My point is that we as a society are pretty resilient,” Cushing continues. “I think we can handle changing Thanksgiving again. It seems unlikely that retailers will mind much, and I’m sure that if given enough notice, the football coaches can prepare.” Read more: https://lnkd.in/eAYqPsGv ??: The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

More people are ambivalent about having kids. Should liberals care? Jerusalem Demsas speaks with a philosopher who wants to challenge how the left engages with the issue.

Among the details on Target’s product page for the official Taylor Swift Eras Tour commemorative book—256 pages; 500 images and personal reflections written by Swift—was one unusual tidbit buried under the header “Specifications.” Most of Swift’s fans surely glossed over the section, which provided information less relevant than the book’s cost ($39.99) and release date (in stores on Black Friday and online the next day). But the book industry noticed: Her publisher is listed as “Taylor Swift Publications.” The superstar is bypassing traditional publishers and releasing her book herself. In my first piece for The Atlantic's books section, I wrote about what Swift’s project may (and may not!) mean for the industry: https://lnkd.in/gYZE7ZU4

Air travel is a dismal experience in America, Amanda Mull wrote in 2023, and you can’t buy your way out of inconvenience.

“I never seem to complete what I begin,” a reader writes to James Parker. “What’s wrong with me?” Read his advice in this week’s “Dear James”:

Several of Donald Trump’s Cabinet choices face or have faced accusations of sexual impropriety—and to begin his new administration with this slate of picks represents a “remarkable commitment to moral ugliness,” Quinta Jurecic writes. https://lnkd.in/eri_c4Mj Matt Gaetz’s nomination to serve as attorney general lasted just more than a week. “For Donald Trump to have selected him in the first place was shocking, not only because of Gaetz’s total lack of law-enforcement experience but also because, until recently, he had been under investigation for sex trafficking by the same department that he was now being tapped to lead,” Jurecic writes. “It had become apparent that these allegations were too serious for his nomination to move forward.” Gaetz was not the only troubled nominee. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth, also picks for the incoming Cabinet, have been accused of sexual harassment or assault as well, and another—Linda McMahon—has been named in a lawsuit alleging that she enabled sexual abuse. All, including Gaetz, have denied the allegations. None of these allegations was a secret before Trump’s picks. “In a previous political era, a president-elect might have rushed to avoid association with this kind of behavior,” Jurecic writes. “But this is Trump, who has himself been accused by 27 women of sexual misconduct.” Allegations of impropriety in Trump’s Cabinet, too, are nothing new. Take the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court during Trump’s first administration, despite credible sexual-assault allegations against him. “It’s as if Trump looked back at the Kavanaugh confirmation and viewed it not as regrettable, but as a model for what to do next,” Jurecic continues. “Gaetz will not get his hearing, but the others might. And if there’s something Trump loves, it’s watching television.” ??: The Atlantic. Sources: Chris Unger / Getty; Tom Williams / Getty; USA Today Network / Reuters.

Beans! Wonderful food, wonderful culinary and civic potential---also some image problems. For The Atlantic's archives newsletter, I wrote about the promise and perils of the humble bean, and the explorations the legume has inspired over the years: https://lnkd.in/dhu3uC4A