The surprisingly subdued resurrection of Abercrombie & Fitch

It’s bachelorette season in America. A couple of months ago, I was at one such party in Florida: nine women, one house, a zillion group activities to get dressed for. And something strange started to happen. Almost every time I complimented someone’s outfit — a cute jumpsuit or matching set — inevitably the response was: […]

How would we even know if AI went rogue?

As the frontier of artificial intelligence advances at a breakneck pace, the US government is struggling to keep up. Working on AI policy in Washington, DC, I can tell you that before we can decide how to govern frontier AI systems, we first need to see them clearly. Right now, we’re navigating in a fog. […]

Why Democrats aren’t talking much about one of their biggest issues

Climate change remains a major platform issue for Democrats, but you’d hardly know it listening to the hours of speeches at the Democratic National Convention last week in Chicago.  Vice President Kamala Harris, accepting her party’s nomination for president, gave a brief nod to the fundamental freedom to “live free from the pollution that fuels […]

Why I changed my mind about volunteering

Last fall, a reader asked me what they could really do, as one person, to aid people living on the streets. “I often feel helpless to enact change,” they wrote. I’d been covering homelessness in America and knew that even the sprawling support organizations that have been working on outreach for decades had failed to […]