The Atlantic Constantly
Written March 25, 2021.
I am reading The Atlantic right now, an online American magazine founded in 1857. It more preceded than anticipated the Internet, but still.
The article is “Malaysia 370, Day 10: One Fanciful Hypothesis, and Another That Begins to Make Sense,” by James Fallows. Really, it’s a blog post, a phrase that would have befuddled Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the two other* triple-named founders (James Russell Lowell and Oliver Wendell Holmes).
If at any point during my perusal of his insights into this most mysterious flight I grow bored or impatient with Mr. Fallows, The Atlantic conveniently offers a few suggestions right here on the page. You gotta look for them, but they’re there.
There’s James Hamblin’s “The Toxins That Threaten Our Brains” plus “Making the Big Bang Seem Human,” by Megan Garber. There’s a “JUST IN” crawl that reads “Man Who Thought He Signed Up for Obamacare Now Owes $407,000 in Medical…” I assume the last word is “Bills,” and that it will get no play in the conservative press. There’s a banner below The Atlantic logo up at the top offering a few categories: “Politics,” “Business,” “Tech,” “Entertainment,” “Health,” “Education,” “Sexes” (YES), “National,” “Global,” “Video,” and “Magazine.” Each offers six headlines, from “Why Isn't the Fourth Amendment Classified as Top Secret?” to “How to Make a Simple Cup of Coffee: It's subtler business than you might think.” The “Video” offered right now in a box beside Fallows’s title is “Computer Syndrome on You: Save Your Eyes. Take Breaks.” They evidently have a store because the top left corner says “SHOP The Atlantic.”
Beside Fallows’s article/blog post is a list of Atlantic writers with links: Alexis C Madrigal, Conor Friedersdorf, the aforementioned James Hamblin, Mr. Fallows himself, Emma Green, Megan Graber, Peter Beinart, Derek Thompson… An arrow pointing down encourages me to search for more and when I do a whoooole ‘nother list of motherfuckers scrolls up. Beneath each writer’s name is the title of their most recent post. Christopher Orr’s is “The Sober Frivolity of The Grand Budapest Hotel.” Sounds contradictory!
Below this list of suggested reads is “More in Technology.” Choose from, “What It's Like to Be Right About the Big Bang: Genesis of a Viral Video,” “Malaysia 370, Day 10: One Fanciful Hypothesis, and Another That Begins to Make Sense,” (hey, wait a second!), and “An Amazing App for Learning Music.”
“In Focus,” a photoblog within The Atlantic and linked here, offers “Winners of the 2014 Sony World Photography Awards, Part I.” A) The photo looks like a drawing of a flying wildebeest and I need to go check it to make sure it is real… OK, I think it is. B) Of course there is a Part II.
If I manage not to get distracted and finish the article, and if Fallows’s bullshit-slaying aeronautical expertise impresses me enough, I can really spend quality time with the man by choosing among the books listed below the heading “From This Author.” There’s “Looking at the Sun: The Rise of the New East Asian Economic and Political System,” “Breaking The News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy,” “On the Frontlines: Doing Business in China,” and “The Colon: How One Dot above Another Dot Can Make Any Title Longer.” No, I am kidding about that. The other three books are “Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China,” “Blind Into Baghdad: America's War in Iraq,” and the quaintly succinct, “China Airborne.”
Fallows fans in their millions may sift through a tag list of more categories within this very blog. There are 133. “Afghanistan,” “Airline,” “al-Dura,” “Flu,” “France,” “False Equivalence,” “Obama in Asia,” “Obesity, “Walk Like an American,” “Year end pensee,” and about a hundred and twenty-four more. Give or take, I don’t feel like counting.
But fuck all that. I mean, right? I love Fallows but not today. Today I am sick as hell of the same old witty, lapidary style on topics as diverse as “False Equivalence” and “Year end pensee.” No offense, Jim—it’s just that today I want to know if there are differences between Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy stances and Obama’s, or maybe I want to know if moms without jobs have healthier babies than the opposite kind (i.e., those with). Frankly, I am not finding it here.
As luck would have it, The Atlantic offers links to not only, “A Tougher Hillary Clinton Distances Herself From Obama,” but also “Moms Without Jobs Have Healthier Babies.” (If you click the latter, the headline over the article is “Do Moms Who Work Less Have Healthier Babies?” Haha! Jokes on you, The Atlantic. You already told me the answer in the previous headline! Not reading the article.)
“Prime is the Future of Amazon,” “Don’t Tell Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Retire,” Let’s Stop Accusing Russia of Violating International Law,” “America Has a Black-Market Problem, Not a Drug Problem,” (can’t it be both?), “Would You Take a One-Way Ticket to Mars?” “The Secret Lives of Inner City Black Males.”
Did you know that The Atlantic Media has partnerships with websites The Wire, The Atlantic Cities, Quartz, NationalJournal {sic}, and Longreads {also sic}? They do. Three articles/post for each site are linked at the bottom of the page. The Atlantic Cities offers no less than “9 Charts That Tell You Where Life is Pretty Terrific.” The NationalJournal asks “What’s the Value of a $10,000 Degree?” in two duplicate links. Someone better get fired. And The Longreads, or perhaps it’s just Longreads, suggests, “Stories About Ghosts: A Reading List.” (Beware: all of them take a “long” time to “read,” hence...)
“Who are the sponsors and what are the ads?”
Don’t know. I use an ad-blocker ‘cause I like a clean webpage when I read.