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These apps promise to help you make new friends. Could it work for me?

vox.com

On a Wednesday morning in September, I was partaking in a sacred tradition known to millennials everywhere: trying to write the perfect Bumble bio. Something that said “spontaneous, but likes to be in bed by 11” or “loves to hang out on weeknights, but I’m not desperate.” Something that downplayed my earnestness, but didn’t paint me as a “cool girl.” I finally settled on “Journalist and triathlete based in Brewerytown. Obsessed with karaoke, terrible jokes, and gossip. Always down for a cocktail, a show or spontaneous wandering. I promise I’m more fun than this bio!!” My meticulous wordsmithing wasn’t an attempt to attract the perfect partner. No, it was to find, possibly, the perfect friend. At 32, I find myself in the oh-so-common intersection of “wants to make new friends” and “wow this is hard.” I’m fortunate to have deep, long-term friendships dating back to high school, as well as tremendously fulfilling relationships I forged in early adulthood. But my late 20s were spent in a pandemic-induced social limbo that lasted long enough for me to realize I hadn’t really made any new connections in nearly half a decade. For the last few years, I’ve worked hard to maintain my existing friendships, while also pushing myself to expand my social circle. But there was a final frontier I hadn’t broached yet, a form of connection that promises a best friend is just a swipe away: the apps. At 32, I find myself in the oh-so-common intersection of “wants to make new friends” and “wow this is hard.” Given that online dating has been a cultural mainstay for at least a decade, a pivot toward apps geared entirely toward platonic relationships isn’t entirely surprising. Dating apps skyrocketed in popularity during the pandemic, effectively topping the list of places to find love. In the years following, apps for platonic relationships entered the fray: Bumble unveiled its friend-finding service as a standalone app in 2023 and Timeleft, another app to meet friends, hosted its first dinner among strangers that same year. These apps arguably help fulfill a dire need for connection. Emerging from the pandemic, nearly half of Americans were not satisfied with the number of friends they had, according to a 2021 survey. Just this year, an American Psychiatric Association poll found 30 percent of adults said they felt lonely at least once a week. But there do seem to be a few bright spots in this landscape: A 2023 survey commissioned by Bumble found that two-thirds of Gen Z respondents said they met a friend online. And findings in 2024 showed that more Americans were now satisfied with the number of friends they had — 75 percent. More digital tools than ever before have come to market to address the ongoing loneliness epidemic. But I wanted to see for myself: Are they effective at fostering a friendship you want to work for? Do they connect you to those worth spending time with outside of a chatbox? Or are they plagued by all the same problems of online dating — flighty matches, algorithms designed to keep you on the apps, and a lot of heartache and dissatisfaction? So for one month, I threw myself into courting new friends through the apps: swiping through profiles, coordinating hangouts, and hoping to form real friendships with people I might not have met otherwise. I used three apps — Bumble for Friends, Timeleft, and Hey! Vina — all designed for platonic connection, and sought out people with whom I had shared interests, but who had qualities that were unique compared to my current pals. What I learned is that despite app users’ good intentions, a desire to make friends and actually putting in the work to do it are not one and the same. In fact, to consider someone a close friend, you’ll need to spend 200 hours together, research shows. Matching on an app and exchanging small talk indefinitely won’t push you across that threshold. Despite my frustrations, I, ironically, was guilty of the pitfalls of failing to keep the conversation going or initiating follow-up plans. The thing is, making even one genuine friend is hard and involves a kind of indescribable alchemy, whether you meet at a book club or through a screen. Here’s what transpired during my experiment with internet friend dating. The apps Bumble for Friends: Initially launched in 2016 as a feature on Bumble known as BFF, the typical user is a young woman who has just graduated from high school or college or moved to a new city, a Bumble spokesperson told me. Nearly identical to the dating app version, users upload photos, write a bio, and answer prompts, such as “The three things that make a friendship great are…” Hey Vina!: Similar to the user interface on Bumble for Friends and founded the same year, you set up a profile and swipe. Billed as the “Tinder for female friends,” the app is open exclusively to women, and allows users to add specific tags to their profiles about their interests, like “women who code,” “jetsetters,” and “fashionistas.” (Hey Vina! did not respond to a request for comment.) Timeleft: Timeleft, founded in 2020, connects you with strangers for Wednesday night dinners at a restaurant in 275 participating cities. Upon signing up, users answer questions about their interests and personality, such as “How often do you feel lonely?” and “How important is humor to you?” The app then connects you to others with similar traits, about whom you know nothing until you meet in person. A majority of Timeleft users are in their 30s and early 40s, according to a Timeleft spokesperson. More than half of Timeleft users are women (60 percent). Looking for my perfect match If the worst part of online dating is swiping, consider the act doubly terrible when it comes to making friends. Sifting through dozens of profiles was a massive time-suck, but a necessary evil. I clicked on every profile, scrolled past the photos, and made a digital beeline to their bios. Red flags: any mention of brunch and/or bedrotting, “looking for my partner in crime,” people that were extremely into camping. Otherwise, I tried to be open-minded. Very quickly, I began amassing matches on Bumble for Friends. Still, I initiated most conversations; if I didn’t make the first move, the chat stayed dormant. On Hey Vina!, it took two days to get my first match and within two weeks, I’d swiped through all available profiles. Timeleft was looking all the more appealing: Within 10 minutes of signing up and answering the personality questions, I was booked for a dinner party the following Wednesday. I wouldn’t know where it was or who the other dinner party guests would be until the day of. Was I being catfished? Alas, I’ll never know because she never replied again. For apps whose express purpose is to help people find friends, my matches seemed overwhelmingly uninterested in chatting, let alone meeting up. After some getting-to-know-you chat with one woman on Hey Vina!, I suggested hanging out. We made tentative plans. When I attempted to solidify the details, I struggled to find our chat history since her photo had changed to a virtually unrecognizable person. Was I being catfished? Alas, I’ll never know because she never replied again. Another woman on the same app bailed a few days before our hangout because of work and personal stress. I felt for her — you can’t expect to connect with someone when you aren’t feeling your best — but was surprised she’d opened up to a virtual stranger about her struggles. “LMK if you ever wanna grab happy hour to blow off some steam lolol,” I told her. I didn’t hear from her again. My friend-finding mission was hardly a bust, though: The apps ended up introducing me to a range of people, from a scientist to a young mom. Everyone I hung out with agreed to appear in this story and I’ve changed their names to protect their privacy. The hangouts Friend date No. 1 The only thing I had in common with Janine — the first person to reach out on Bumble for Friends — was the neighborhood where we live. Still, she invited me to a house party she was throwing that weekend. After those plans fell through, she suggested meeting at a bar nearby with a small group. When I arrived, my two best friends in tow, a solo Janine appeared frazzled and outnumbered. Sensing her low-grade panic, my friends moved a few seats down at the bar, leaving me and Janine to get into it. Janine has the kind of face where I swore I’ve met her before, an openness and familiarity that makes for easy chit-chat. Like virtually all of the people I connected with, she was a recent transplant and initially used Bumble for Friends to find a roommate. Out of her three other friend dates, she told me she’d probably hang out with only one again. “I want to find someone in my area who has my values and likes the things I like to do,” she told me. High on her list of priorities were getting married and starting a family, salsa dancing, and her faith. I couldn’t relate. Red flags: any mention of brunch and/or bedrotting, “looking for my partner in crime,” people that were extremely into camping. Despite our differences, Janine was easy to talk to, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that we’d skipped the serendipitous run-ins and jumped right to the meat of a friendship. We lived in the same neighborhood, went to the same coffee shop — wouldn’t our paths have crossed at some point? Couldn’t we decide after a few weeks of small talk that we wanted to hang out? I felt like I knew too much, too soon. After about two hours, we settled up and parted ways. A few weeks later, she invited me and another Bumble for Friends match to a local salsa meetup that none of us ended up attending anyway. I haven’t seen or heard from her since. Friend date No. 2 In the back of an Uber during rush hour, I panicked: Of course I was running late to my Timeleft dinner. By the time I arrived, a group of about 10 people had gathered outside, staring at their phones. The restaurant designated as our meeting spot had permanently closed a few days prior. Two women who had clearly done this before steered us to a packed Mexican restaurant that squished us into two separate tables in a corner. Cici, one of the Women in Charge, told me this was her 13th Timeleft dinner. She even started a WhatsApp group where over 50 Timeleft-ers could coordinate plans off the app. Across from Cici was Angela, another Timeleft vet (this was her seventh meal); the two met at dinner a few weeks prior and hung out independently. Neither of them knew they’d be paired up again for tonight’s feast. Over giant margaritas, they told me they like the predictability of Timeleft — dinners are every Wednesday. Angela told me that a girl’s gotta eat anyway, so why not make some friends in the process? Angela has lived in the city for a few years, but Cici and David, our other tablemate, had recently moved and were using the app to meet new people. In the weeks following our dinner, I noticed David was especially active on the WhatsApp group, frequently initiating and accepting plans with complete strangers. Angela told me that a girl’s gotta eat anyway, so why not make some friends in the process? Everyone at the table, myself included, was in a comparable stage of life: early 30s, established careers — in law, academia, and business consulting — similar political views, slightly nerdy, an interest in House and Suits and Les Miserables. They were enthusiastic and inquisitive, inspiring me to respond in kind. The group dynamic eliminated the pressure to be always on, to perform, to pepper unsuspecting subjects with questions as I’m wont to do. Just a few days after drinks with Janine, I was starting to think a multi-person hangout was how I preferred to meet people. After all, I do love an audience. I could also save my energy for moments when I felt it worthwhile to add to the conversation. Energized from our dinner, I joined the WhatsApp group and promised Cici, David, and Angela I’d definitely register for another Timeleft dinner. (I haven’t.) Currently, I have 100 unread messages in the thread. Every Wednesday, I tell myself I’ll sign up for another Timeleft dinner. Maybe I will. Friend date No. 3 The moment I read Ariana’s Bumble for Friends bio, rife with colorful language like “soft-bodied mammal” and “WFH hell,” I knew we were afflicted by the same internet brain rot (complimentary). The conversation flowed unlike others I’d had on the apps, and I had butterflies in my stomach as I frequently checked my phone to see if she’d written back. Ariana told me she signed up for Bumble for Friends after her sister told her of a friend’s success on the app. She’d been on two coffee dates, making our hangout her third, and sought out potential friends based on unique profiles and shared interests, like knitting with one match and writing with me. (Ariana went to grad school for poetry, which means she’s both cooler and smarter than me.) Her second friend date was fine, she said, but the woman was “younger — and feels younger,” she told me, “we’re not at the same place in life.” Ariana was close with her sister and cousins but because she works from home, days will go by with her having only interacted with her partner. Ariana was endearing and quick-witted and I got the sense she was interested in getting to know me beyond the perfunctory small talk. The moment I read Ariana’s Bumble for Friends bio, I knew we were afflicted by the same internet brain rot (complimentary). When I finally looked at my phone during our first hangout, I realized we’d been at the bar for four hours. Not wanting to further monopolize her night, I quickly closed out. I told her how much fun I had and immediately worried if I was coming on too strong. Despite my reservations about another one-on-one hang after declaring group hangs my thing post-Timeleft, spending time with Ariana was effortless and renewed my hope for the apps. I could keep swiping if everyone was a bit more like her. Over the ensuing days, we exchanged texts about Caroline Calloway and the hurricane, about how deranged you’d have to be to make friends at a writing workshop. We’ve gotten together three additional times, my first repeat hang from the apps. Friend date No. 4 Early in my time with Tricia, she asked me if she could send a quick text. Her husband wanted to know that I wasn’t a total freak — or worse, trying to kill her. We were at the bar in a fancy hotel restaurant, a location that definitely felt more like a date-date than any of my prior meetups. Tricia had just moved to the area from Florida and didn’t have any suggestions as to where to go. She lived out of state, about 45 minutes away, and wasn’t comfortable driving on highways, so I offered to meet closer to where she was. But I was nearly as unfamiliar with her neighborhood as she was. The first, and only, place that came to mind was this hotel restaurant. Still, a salad and one negroni later, my energy stores had run out. Tricia hadn’t heard about Hey Vina!, where we first connected, until she Googled “apps for friends.” We had come to similar conclusions about the app: People weren’t super active there — she’d also swiped through everyone — and they didn’t seem willing to take the chat offline. Once her nervousness subsided, Tricia opened up about her 5-year-old son and 13-year-old stepson, the fun fact that she and one of her brothers share a birthday, and some juicy gossip about one of her friends’ dating lives. I giggled every time she exclaimed “Giiiiiiirl!” Tricia is so sweet I can hardly imagine anyone saying a bad word about her. Still, a salad and one negroni later, my energy stores had run out. The looming drive home took the wind out of my sails. Tricia showed me a few TikToks parodying how people flag down waiters for the check before I finally walked to the end of the bar to grab the bill. As with most of my friend dates, I left feeling grateful that literally anyone was willing to spend time with me, but unsure if we’d ever see each other again. The line between “pleasant encounter” and “life-affirming experience” was beginning to crystalize. Perhaps due to the difficulty I had making friends as a kid, I’d cling onto any relationship even if it was just barely functional. This experience provided some much-needed clarity. I don’t need to spend countless hours with someone just because they’re nice enough. My experience on friend apps was similar to that of dating apps in a way: It’s easy for one or both people to let things fizzle if the sparks aren’t flying immediately. But friendships bloom during the in-between moments. After enough time together, you realize it just happened — one day you’re friends, and that’s that. It’s hard to replicate that slow burn when two people who might’ve never crossed paths are forcing themselves into each other’s lives. How much did I want to force it? Tricia texted me the next day saying she started listening to the podcast I’d recommended. If nothing else, we at least had that.

What to buy before Trump makes everything more expensive

5 h

vox.com

The morning after Trump’s big election win, an exodus started. Left-leaning stragglers on X, formerly Twitter, started saying goodbye and posting their new handles for Bluesky, a decentralized Twitter clone. X helped elect Trump, and who knows what will happen on the platform once Trump takes office. So people are fleeing X by the hundreds of thousands. This is just one of many ways people are safeguarding the technology in their lives from the inevitable change that will come with the second Trump presidency. It’s still early and it’s not exactly clear what Trump’s tech policy will look like, but we do have a sense of some of his priorities based on what he’s said. We know that Trump promises to impose strict tariffs on imported goods, which he says he’ll do on day one. This will make your next laptop, smartphone, or video game console more expensive. Trump is also expected to repeal President Biden’s executive order on AI soon after his inauguration, and whatever Trump plans to do next, it will affect how you use the technology. Trump’s pledge to rescind any unspent funds under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) could put an end to the big rebate you’d get for buying climate-friendly technology, like heat pumps or solar panels. He’s even threatened to get rid of the $7,500 tax credit you currently get for buying certain EVs. Again, we don’t actually know what Trump will do when he takes office. The former president and current president-elect has a track record of following through on certain promises, even the most controversial ones, so it would be prudent to brace yourself. One straightforward way to do that: Buy some stuff before Trump’s incoming policies make them more expensive. Buy a gadget Trump has proposed a 10 to 20 percent tariff on all goods imported into the United States in an effort to lower prices and create jobs. Goods from China would face an additional 60 percent tariff. He’s also threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on imports from Mexico, one of America’s largest trading partners, if the country doesn’t stop immigrants from crossing the border. It almost goes without saying that this would raise prices for consumers. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that the tariffs would cost the average American household up to $7,600 a year with initial price hikes as high as about 5 percent. But if you look specifically at goods coming from China, where many consumer electronics are manufactured, those numbers get worse. The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) estimates prices for laptops and video game consoles would rise by 46 and 40 percent, respectively, if the cost of the tariffs were passed through directly to the consumer. Smartphones would go up 26 percent. A new iPhone 16 Pro, for instance, has a sticker price of $1,000 right now, but if you want to buy the new model next year, it could cost more than $1,250 if Apple passed the cost of the tariff onto you. While it’s not guaranteed that prices will skyrocket as much as some estimates say they will, there’s a very good chance Trump will follow through on these tariffs. After all, he did exactly that in 2016. “Everyone’s taking the tariffs threat seriously,” said Ed Brazytwa, vice president of trade for the CTA. “He made a campaign promise to impose these tariffs, and we anticipate that he wants to follow through with it.” There is a chance that the Supreme Court could stop him, which would save the country from a certain amount of economic pain. But even if the tariff plan fails, inflation is expected to make an unwelcome return due to Trump’s promised mass deportations. So, if you were already thinking of getting a new laptop or upgrading your phone, you might consider doing that sooner rather than later. And hey, Black Friday is just around the corner, so you might get an extra special pre-tariff deal. Buy a heat pump or an EV (or both!) The Inflation Reduction Act is “among the most significant government investments in the US economy since President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal,” according to William Tobin at the Atlantic Council. The landmark legislation could drive $3 trillion in investment for renewable energy, and lead electric vehicle sales to surpass their gas-powered counterparts before the end of the decade. And it’s also done a lot to make the latest climate technologies more accessible for millions of people: The IRA provides nearly $9 billion in rebates for households that install energy efficient appliances, heat pumps, solar panels, or even new windows for your home. Trump wants to take a lot of this money away. The president-elect has said that he “will terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam” and “rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.” The IRA and the Green New Deal are not the same thing. Nevertheless, the next Trump administration could try to dismantle Biden’s historic climate legislation, although it would not be easy to do for a number of reasons. Chief among them is that Trump would need Congress to cooperate in order to rescind the funds, and taking free money away from constituents would probably not be a popular thing for lawmakers to do. “It would also negatively impact many people who are his supporters,” Scott Hardman, assistant director of the Electric Vehicle Research Center at the University of California Davis. “ A lot of the benefits have gone to red states, so it seems like it would be a little bit of a strange decision to change it.” Another thing Trump is hostile towards: electric vehicles. In his speech at the Republican National Convention in July, Trump said he’ll end “the electric vehicle mandate on day one” as part of his broader plan to snuff out “the Green New Scam.” That plan would include eliminating the $7,500 tax credits and other incentives the Biden administration put into place to make EVs more affordable for more Americans. This seems to contradict the interests of Trump’s biggest supporter, Elon Musk, who was recently appointed to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency. Musk also runs the world’s most valuable electric vehicle company, Tesla. Tesla has benefited greatly from government subsidies over the years. Some think Musk will change Trump’s mind about EVs, but it’s also possible that Musk thinks Tesla stands to benefit. On one hand, after years of taking government subsidies to help it grow, Tesla is now a trillion dollar company making billions in profits every quarter. It doesn’t need the subsidies any more, according to Hardman. “Another school of thought,” Hardman said regarding Musk and EV subsidies, “is that he will not support them, because that will harm the competitors to Tesla, and it will help Tesla become even more sort of dominant in the EV space.” Maybe don’t buy crypto You may have noticed the prices of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are currently skyrocketing thanks to Trump’s win. Trump embraced the crypto community during his campaign, and many crypto investors think his second administration will streamline regulation and establish a national crypto stockpile, kicking off a crypto renaissance. It may be tempting to buy in but don’t bet the farm. We’ve seen hot and frothy crypto markets in the past, and we’ve seen them turn into crypto winters. The crypto industry has also turned into an incredibly powerful lobbying force, helping elect pro-crypto candidates with a 100 percent success rate in this year’s cycle. That said, it’s still unclear what crypto is even for other than financial speculation. So unless you’re an expert in the space, maybe consider buying a heat pump that will heat your home before throwing a few thousand dollars into the crypto ring. This is not financial advice — I’m just saying some technology actually does stuff, which is worth something. One more thing I’ll say about all of this discouraging information about what Trump might do to America’s climate policy highlights one very important truth: He hasn’t done it yet. Biden’s tax credits and rebates are still in place. So if you were already thinking about getting a heat pump, making the switch to an EV, upgrading your iPhone, or frankly, buying anything imported, that means you’ve got just over two months to do it before Inauguration Day. “As a consumer myself, I would definitely want to buy something before January 20, if it meant that I’m going to pay less for it,” Brzytwa, from the CTA, told me. And I’m planning on it. I love a deal. A version of this story was also published in the Vox Technology newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss the next one!

Scientists just discovered a sea creature as large as two basketball courts. Here’s what it looks like.

17 h

vox.com

A view from above of the newly discovered “mega” coral in the Solomon Islands. | Seve Spence/National Geographic Pristine Seas In the warm blue waters of the Solomon Islands, an island chain in the South Pacific, lies one of the world’s largest sea creatures. Roughly the size of two basketball courts, it’s neither a whale nor a giant squid. It is a single piece of coral. On Wednesday, a team of researchers and filmmakers exploring the Solomon Islands revealed that they found what they claim is the world’s largest individual coral colony. The coral, a communal organism comprising millions of animals called polyps, is 34 meters wide and 32 meters long — and so large it can be seen from space. A typical coral reef is made of many different coral colonies, most of which are genetically distinct, whereas this is just one individual. In new photos shared by the research team, the coral, a species known as Pavona clavus, looks like a lumpy brown mound covered in knobs. Closer views reveal bits of yellow, green, and purple. Given its size and the slow speed at which corals grow, this individual is likely several centuries old. “It’s a dream to see something unique like this,” Manu San Félix, an underwater photographer and marine biologist who first saw the coral last month in the Solomon Islands, told Vox. “When Napoleon was alive, this thing was here.” San Félix discovered the coral while filming near an island called Malaulalo for an ongoing National Geographic expedition. The expedition, a collaboration with the Solomon Islands government, is part of National Geographic’s Pristine Seas project, which aims to help countries establish more marine parks, in part by documenting sea life. Malaulalo is mostly uninhabited and its waters are largely unexplored, according to Dennis Marita, a member of the Po’onapaina Tribe of Ulawa. The tribe oversees Malaulalo’s marine territory. “This is something huge for our community,” Marita, who’s also the director of culture at the Solomon Islands’s ministry of culture and tourism, said in a press conference Tuesday. No other coral in the public record is larger than this one, though it’s possible that there are bigger colonies in remote stretches of the ocean that have yet to be discovered. The previous record-holder for the world’s largest coral was a colony in American Samoa that was roughly 22 meters wide. “Many of the world’s coral reefs are remote and not well explored,” Stacy Jupiter, executive director of marine conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society, who was not involved in this expedition, told Vox. Humans have only surveyed about 5 percent of the planet’s marine realm, she mentioned. “So it is not surprising at all that we continue to make new discoveries, even of large creatures,” Jupiter said. “Beacon of hope” The discovery comes at a time when coral reefs around the world are vanishing. Climate change is warming the oceans, and warm water kills corals. Coral gets its color and much of its food from symbiotic algae that live inside polyps. When seawater gets too warm, that algae disappears, and the coral turns white — or “bleaches.” Bleached corals are essentially starving to death. Coral reefs globally are facing the most extensive bleaching crisis on record. Three-quarters of the world’s coral reefs have experienced enough ocean heat to cause bleaching since early 2023, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Many corals have died. Meanwhile, new research suggests that more than 40 percent of hard corals — those that build reefs, like the recently discovered colony in the Solomon Islands — are at risk of extinction. This is a problem, to put it lightly. Reefs dampen waves that hit the shoreline during hurricanes, they are home to a significant portion of commercial fish that people eat, and they are the engine of tourism economies in many coastal regions. Hundreds of millions of people depend on coral reefs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the National Geographic team discovered a lot of dead coral in the shallows of the Solomon Islands, likely due to excessive heat in the ocean, said Molly Timmers, a marine ecologist and the expedition’s lead scientist. That was discouraging, she said. In the face of that loss, this discovery was a “beacon of hope,” Timmers told Vox. “It’s like, holy crap! This is amazing!” Large coral colonies provide homes for marine critters like crabs, snails, and small fish. More importantly, they seed the ocean with baby corals when they spawn, or reproduce, helping damaged sections of reef recover. Plus, this particular coral may be resilient to stress, including excessive marine heat. The research team estimates that it’s between 300 and 500 years old, meaning it’s lived through multiple global bleaching events and survived. Unlike some of the coral closer to shore, this individual — which was more than 10 meters deep — appeared healthy, perhaps because it was in deeper, cooler water or because it has some built-in genetic tolerance to heat. So the spawn it produces could be resilient too. “Anything old is really good at surviving,” said Maria Beger, a marine ecologist at the University of Leeds, who was not involved in the discovery. Discovering a hulking colony of coral is not, by itself, all that impressive, said Beger. To support marine life and withstand threats like climate change, it’s more important that reefs have a diverse array of coral species in all shapes and sizes, rather than one big one. “At the same time, if a report like this gets people excited about coral reefs,” she said, “maybe that’s a good thing.” The discovery could also help the Solomon Islands conserve their waters more effectively, Marita, of the ministry of culture and tourism, told Vox. While his tribe has been informally conserving Malaulalo for a decade on its own, he said, the island would benefit from an official marine protected area recognized by the Solomon Islands government. Marita has been campaigning to make that happen. “This will certainly boost the conservation initiative that we have been working on,” he told Vox, referring to the discovery. “This mega coral will help bring much-needed visibility and recognition from the government and other stakeholders. This is really a gain for us.”

How People’s “Sexiest Man Alive” entered its flop era

19 h

vox.com

John Krasinski attends the UK premiere of “IF” on May 7, 2024, in London, England. | Karwai Tang/WireImage This week, a number of social media users were, once again, disappointed by the selection of a certain man to a coveted position. Actor John Krasinski — yes, Jim from The Office — was given the title of People’s “Sexiest Man Alive.” It’s a choice that’s less egregious than genuinely perplexing. It’s not that Krasinski isn’t an objectively handsome man. In his most recent television role — on the Prime Video show Jack Ryan, which ended in 2023 – he played a buff, butt-kicking CIA agent. It’s more that his career has rarely ever required him to display any sort of sex appeal. His most crush-worthy role to date was arguably more than a decade ago on The Office as the funny and approachable Jim Halpert. Since then, the most female attention he gets on social media is when he’s posing with his wife, actress Emily Blunt, on a red carpet. Plus, it’s not exactly his year for visible hotness: His work in 2024 was almost entirely behind the scenes, directing the children’s film IF and producing A Quiet Place: Day One. Introducing PEOPLE’s 2024 #SexiestManAlive, @JohnKrasinski. ? Pick up your issue on newsstands this week. https://t.co/H792MltVUC ?: Julian Ungano pic.twitter.com/2rLAbwpRBx— People (@people) November 13, 2024 All this to say, in a pop culture landscape practically infested with “internet boyfriends,” Krasinski was a baffling choice. Amid look-alike competitions being held for Hollywood’s hottest young men across the United States and Europe — your Timmy Chalamets, your Paul Mescals — the lack of excitement around this issue has never felt so loud. What does it even mean to be People’s sexiest man alive in 2024, if it means anything at all? And why are we still so invested? For readers who witnessed Patrick Dempsey receive this honor just last year, it must be pointed out that the “Sexiest Man Alive” issue didn’t always feel this arbitrary and untimely. From its (now-cursed) inaugural issue in 1985 with box-office star Mel Gibson up until Channing Tatum’s spread in 2012, the titular “man” felt representative of the tastes of the average (straight white) woman. Plus, it was often a star who was dominating at the box office. In the past, the cover served as the ultimate advertising vehicle for “it” guys who were either newly cementing themselves as full-fledged movie stars, like Brad Pitt in 1995 and George Clooney in 1997, or major celebs reassuring the public that they were still hot commodities, like Harrison Ford in 1998. While these selections have been overwhelmingly white, at least they once felt relevant. People is a stalwart in an industry weathering difficult times, and this special issue is arguably one of the things keeping the magazine on newsstands. According to Digiday, the sexiest man issue has “a rate base, or guaranteed circulation, of 3.7 million, compared to a regular issue of the magazine, with a rate base of 3.5 million.” Strategically published during the fourth quarter when consumers are doing Thanksgiving and Black Friday shopping, it’s proven to be a huge cash cow for People’s parent company, Dotdash Meredith. In the 2010s, though, the issue started to receive some blowback — or, more accurately, the advent of social media allowed these complaints to be expressed in a hypervisible way. It wasn’t just that only two men of color, Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves, had received the award until 2016, when Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson graced the cover. The choosing of celebrities like Adam Levine, a rockstar with a reputation for being a so-called “douchebag,” raised eyebrows in 2013 and also performed relatively poorly on newsstands. His co-star on The Voice Blake Shelton has maybe done the most damage to the issue’s reputation. The unveiling of his cover in 2017 sent the internet into hysterics for days. John Legend (another judge on The Voice) in 2019 felt almost equally random. Even Benny Blanco’s appearance in the current issue as an honorable mention was strongly objected to online. Year over year, the “Sexiest Man Alive” has become less of a trusted assertion and more of a platform for debate. The details of the selection process for this issue have largely been kept under wraps. In a 2012 interview with USA Today, former editor Julie Jordan said People temperature-checks in a few ways, including asking female celebrities, consulting focus groups, and observing social media. There are constant rumors, including in the case of Krasinski, that the title can be bought or won by a convincing publicist. It’s easy to forget, though, that the selected men also have to be willing to participate in this extremely public form of objectification. The less impeachable Ryan Gosling reportedly turned down the offer twice. Even with an increasingly questionable reputation, social media has remained invested in this frivolous honor, particularly this year. Maybe it’s because People did a good job of incessantly teasing the reveal on social media with the help of dominant X accounts like FilmUpdates and PopCrave. Maybe it’s because the public needed a distraction from a much more crucial and devastating election. In the midst of political tumult, Krasinski is ultimately a “safe,” fairly inoffensive option, a celebrity that millennials obsessed with The Office have a level of affinity for. Despite questions about his political affiliation, he hasn’t been mired in any real controversy. Whatever relevance the title holds, the sport of debating and crowning famous men as “sexy” and “hot” has never really gotten old. Like awards shows, it’s one of the last examples of celebrity monoculture for consumers to collectively engage with. In an overly skeptical social media landscape, it also seems as though half of the fun of the issue is negotiating whether the awarded person is a genuine attempt to reflect consumers’ taste or some elaborate PR play being fed to us. However meaningless the issue has become these days, it’s been successful in producing two things: revenue and a good, hollow debate.

“Your body, my choice”: The misogynist MAGA attack, explained

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vox.com

Donald Trump leaves a campaign event on September 17, 2024. Donald Trump is headed to the White House, again, so it’s not surprising that Americans are again contending with a rise in hate speech. This time around, one of the attack lines is “your body, my choice.” Attributed by some to an election night post on X by white supremacist Nick Fuentes that read “Your body, my choice. Forever,” the phrase transforms the longstanding feminist and abortion-rights slogan “My body, my choice” into an attack on women’s autonomy, and, at worst, a threat of rape. In the days following the election, TikTok creators have reported seeing the phrase crop up in comments on their videos, according to a report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a global nonpartisan think tank that studies disinformation and extremism. One creator said she had to delete a video because commenters were “saying they couldn’t wait until I get raped or ‘your body my choice.’” Girls and young women are also hearing the line in schools, according to family members, with one mom posting on Facebook that her daughter had heard it three times on campus, and that boys told her to “sleep with one eye open tonight.” Instances of the phrase increased 4,600 percent on X between last Thursday and Friday, according to the report. Meanwhile, Fuentes’s original post has been reposted more than 35,000 times. The spike in sexist hate is a reflection of one of the dominant narratives of the election: that it was essentially a triumph of men over women. Trump tailored much of his campaign to disaffected American men — especially young men, many of whom feel they are victims of discrimination and who have expressed resentment against feminist movements like Me Too. For a lot of these men, the election feels like vindication, and for some, it’s more than that: a chance to put women back in their place. For anyone on the receiving end of the misogynist insults in the last few days, meanwhile, the phrase feels like a scary harbinger of things to come. At the same time, experts told Vox that Americans have experienced this kind of hate speech before, particularly in the aftermath of Trump’s first election in 2016 — and that history can hold lessons for navigating the present. The phrase is part of a larger pattern of misogyny The feminist phrase “my body, my choice” was used regularly in chants at rallies by 1970, though it’s not clear who originally coined it, said Laura Prieto, program director of Our Bodies Ourselves Today, a digital platform that is an iteration of the iconic reproductive health book Our Bodies, Ourselves. In the years before Roe v. Wade, it was a call for abortion rights, but it was also “a statement about women demanding their right as equal human beings to have decision-making power over what happened to them,” Prieto said. The term has become less popular on the left in recent years, especially after it was adopted by anti-vaccine activists. Now “my body, my choice” has been co-opted by Fuentes and others, who have transformed it into a tool to harass and intimidate women. Others aren’t using the phrase, but are echoing the idea that with Trump’s election, women must submit to the will of men. On social media, posts have ranged from “more coded misogyny” to “very direct threats of rape,” Isabelle Frances-Wright, director of technology and society at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and one of the authors of the report, told Vox. Many of the sexist posts stem from “manosphere” influencers like Andrew Tate and their followers, according to the report — Tate, for example, posted on X on November 7, “I saw a woman crossing the road today but I just kept my foot down. Right of way? You no longer have rights.” “Manosphere” creators are part of a larger online ecosystem directed at men that’s lurched hard to the right in recent years, and helped carry Trump to victory, Vox’s Rebecca Jennings reported. Fifty-five percent of male voters cast their ballots for Trump this year, compared with just 45 percent of female voters, according to exit polling by the Washington Post. (Though we ought to note that exit polling is preliminary, and therefore unreliable, data.) Online, that gender divide emerged before the election. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue reports spotting a rise in misogynistic posts (including calls to repeal the 19th amendment) starting in October, apparently in response to the Harris campaign’s focus on women voters and reproductive rights. The spread of the posts “demonstrated the influence of an increasingly vindictive set of online actors, who appear to be using the election results as a permission structure to more overtly and aggressively espouse narratives about curbing women’s rights,” Frances-Wright and co-author Moustafa Ayad write in their report. A similar pattern emerged after Trump’s first election in 2016, when civil rights groups and law enforcement agencies saw a spike in hate speech and attacks on women and people perceived to be Muslim or immigrants — all groups Trump explicitly or implicitly denigrated in his first campaign. The harassment even made its way into classrooms; a BuzzFeed analysis found more than 50 incidents of a student invoking Trump’s name or message to attack a classmate during the 2016-17 school year. The fact that the attacks aren’t new doesn’t make them less scary for the people on the receiving end. “It is very traumatic, particularly the younger that you are,” Frances-Wright said. Implicit threats of rape can feel doubly frightening in a country where Trump just cruised to victory despite multiple allegations of sexual assault. How to counter post-election hate Since the harassment people are experiencing today is part of a longstanding pattern, however, there’s an existing playbook to counteract it. Some organizations, including schools and bookstores, have issued statements in recent days clarifying that they will not tolerate discrimination or harassment. How to report harassment If you or someone you know is experiencing harassment right now, help is available: The National Sexual Violence Resource Center has a list of resources for dealing with online harassment. Our Bodies, Ourselves Today maintains a list of groups fighting gender-based violence. The Anti-Violence Project works against hate directed at LGBTQ and HIV-affected communities. It’s also a time to remember the long history of “my body, my choice,” and everything it stood for — including hardships for women that must have seemed, at times, impossible to overcome, including a lack of many basic rights like the ability to open credit cards in their names or serve on juries. “A lot of things that we take for granted, just because they seem to be really powerful right now, it doesn’t mean that they always will be,” Prieto said. “The one thing you can count on is that things are going to change.”

Could Trump actually get rid of the Department of Education?

22 h

vox.com

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks to guests during a rally at Clinton Middle School on January 6, 2024, in Clinton, Iowa. | Scott Olson/Getty Images While campaigning, President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to dismantle the US Department of Education (DOE), on the basis that the federal education apparatus is “indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material.” “One thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, DC, and sending all education and education work it needs back to the states,” Trump said in a 2023 video outlining his education policy goals. “We want them to run the education of our children because they’ll do a much better job of it. You can’t do worse.” Closing the department wouldn’t be easy for Trump, but it isn’t impossible — and even if the Department of Education remains open, there are certainly ways Trump could radically change education in the United States. Here’s what’s possible. Can Trump actually close the DOE? Technically, yes. However, “It would take an act of Congress to take it out,” Don Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, told Vox. “It would take an act of Congress to radically restructure it. And so the question is whether or not there’d be appetite on the Hill for abolishing the department.” That’s not such an easy prospect, even though the Republicans look set to take narrow control of the Senate and the House. That’s because abolishing the department “would require 60 votes unless the Republicans abolish the filibuster,” Jal Mehta, professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, told Vox. Without the filibuster rule, legislation would need a simple majority to pass, but senators have been hesitant to get rid of it in recent years. With the filibuster in place, Republicans would need some Democratic senators to join their efforts to kill the department. The likelihood of Democratic senators supporting such a move is almost nonexistent. That means the push to unwind the department is probably largely symbolic. And that is the best-case scenario, Jon Valant, director of the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy, told Vox. According to Valant, dismantling it would simultaneously damage the US education system while also failing to accomplish Trump’s stated goals. Closing the department “would wreak havoc across the country,” Valant said. “It would cause terrible pain. It would cause terrible pain in parts of the country represented by congressional Republicans too.” Much of that pain would likely fall on the country’s most vulnerable students: poor students, students in rural areas, and students with disabilities. That’s because the department’s civil rights powers help it to support state education systems in providing specialized resources to those students. Furthermore, much of what Trump and MAGA activists claim the agency is responsible for, like teaching critical race theory and LGBTQ “ideology” isn’t actually the purview of the DOE; things like curriculum and teacher choice are already the domain of state departments of education. And only about 10 percent of federal public education funding flows to state boards of education, according to Valant. The rest comes primarily from tax sources, so states and local school districts are already controlling much of the funding structure of their specific public education systems. “I find it a little bewildering that the US Department of Education has become such a lightning rod here, in part because I don’t know how many people have any idea what the department actually does,” Valant said. Even without literally shutting the doors to the federal agency, there could be ways a Trump administration could hollow the DOE and do significant damage, Valant and Kettl said. The administration could require the agency to cut the roles of agency employees, particularly those who ideologically disagree with the administration. It could also appoint officials with limited (or no) education expertise, hampering the day-to-day work of the department. Trump officials could also attempt changes to the department’s higher education practices. The department is one of several state and nongovernmental institutions involved in college accreditation, for example — and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) has threatened to weaponize the accreditation process against universities he believes to be too “woke.” Finally, Trump could use the department’s leadership role to affect policy indirectly: “There’s power that comes from just communicating to states what you would like to see” being taught in schools, Valant said. “And there are a lot of state leaders around the country who seem ready to follow that lead.” Trump’s plans for the department will become clearer once the administration nominates a Secretary of Education. Once that person is confirmed, Kettl said, “They’re just gonna be off to the races on the issue again.”

Trump 2.0, explained

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vox.com

Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on November 5, 2024. Donald J. Trump is headed to the White House again. He’ll have the help of a Republican Senate, almost certainly a Republican House, and a conservative Supreme Court that includes three justices he appointed the first time around. The former president made plenty of pledges on the campaign trail — now it’s time to see what’s actually possible. Vox explains the agenda for Trump’s second term. We take a look at what Trump’s victory means for reproductive freedom and antipoverty programs, how his calls for tariffs will transform the economy, the realities of a plan for mass deportations, and more. We track Trump’s promises and policies — on everything from artificial intelligence to Middle East policy — and how Americans are reacting in the wake of his historic win. We hope this coverage will cut through the chaos of the post-election months. Please keep checking back as we add stories and build out a guide to what to expect for the next four years. Trump won. So what does that mean for abortion? Following Trump’s victory, some women consider swearing off men Trump proposed big Medicaid and food stamp cuts. Can he pass them? Health care and the social safety net Following Trump’s victory, some women consider swearing off men Trump proposed big Medicaid and food stamp cuts. Can he pass them? What happens if another pandemic strikes while Trump is president? Trump won. So what does that mean for abortion? Trump’s health care plan exposes the truth about his “populism” Trump just opened the door to Social Security cuts. Take him seriously. Taxes, tariffs, and the economy Trump’s tariffs could tank the economy. Will the Supreme Court stop them? Elon Musk assures voters that Trump’s victory would deliver “temporary hardship” AI, social media, and Big Tech Trump’s techno-libertarian dream team goes to Washington AI is powerful, dangerous, and controversial. What will Donald Trump do with it? Immigration and the southern border A Trump second term could bring another family separation crisis This one chart foreshadows Trump’s immigration crackdown Would Trump’s mass deportation plan actually work? Trump’s immigration policies are his old ones — but worse Russia, China, and the Middle East Why Ukraine thinks it can still win over Donald Trump How the second Trump presidency could reshape the world The global risks of a Trump presidency will be much higher this time What Trump really thinks about the war in Gaza

The system failed us. We’ll still miss it when it’s gone.

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vox.com

The enormous fireball from the “Apache” device used in Operation Redwing, which was detonated in 1956 on a barge in the crater left by a previous explosion on Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. It doesn’t take a political genius — whose ranks seem to have grown lately, based on the sheer number of very confident post-election takes over the past week — to see that many, many Americans have voted to blow up the system. Donald Trump has, if nothing else, incarnated a belief that the way America was being run was fundamentally broken and needed to be overhauled from top to bottom. That, more than any policy specifics around taxes or immigration or foreign policy, was my takeaway from November 5. A (bare) majority of Americans wants to take a wrecking ball to everything. But those feelings and the anger that feeds them runs deeper than just Trump voters. One bit of news that caught my attention this week was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) asking her Instagram followers why some of her constituents cast ballots both for her and for Trump. What I see in these answers is that frustration with the system isn’t something that can be attributed just to one party or another, even if it is currently concentrated in the GOP. An avowed leftist like AOC and President-elect Trump are about as far apart as two American politicians can be, but large segments of their supporters are united by anger at the way things are and by a thirst for radical change of some sort. I can understand their point. In the nearly 25 years that I’ve been a professional journalist, I’ve seen a catastrophic overreaction to 9/11 lead to a two-decade war on terror; thousands of dead American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of dead civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere; and a Middle East that remains chaotic. I’ve seen the 2008 Great Recession and the years of economic misery that followed. I’ve seen the failure to prepare for a major pandemic that many people saw coming, and I’ve seen the failure to learn from it in a way that prepares us for the next one. I’ve seen political barriers harden to economic and technological progress that could meaningfully improve people’s lives. And I’ve seen very few people in power held accountable for those failures. Depending on where you fall on the political spectrum, you can undoubtedly add your own points to this list. I may believe, as I have written repeatedly, that the long run has seen human life improve immeasurably, and I retain confidence that better days ultimately lie before us. Yet I can still understand why voters on both the right and the left would look at the wreckage of the past 20 years and pull a lever for radical change, consequences be damned. Here’s the thing, however, about radical change. It is, as our more numerate readers might say, a “high-variance strategy,” meaning that the range of possible outcomes is far wider than what we might expect from more incremental, within-the-system change. Perhaps we nail the jackpot and manage to hit upon the political choices that really can create something meaningfully better out of a broken system. But just as likely — perhaps more likely if you know anything about political revolutions in recent history — is that radical change will leave us worse off, and it will turn out that the system so many had come to despise was, in fact, our last line of defense against something much, much worse. The night is dark and full of terrors If you, like much of the electorate, think things couldn’t possibly get worse, I have some reading for you. Less than a week before the election, the pointy-heads at the RAND Corporation published a 237-page report on Global Catastrophic Risk Assessment. (I did not say it would be light reading.) The report is a response to the 2022 Global Catastrophic Risk Management Act, which required the Secretary of Homeland Security and the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to assess really big risks to human survival and develop and validate a strategy to safeguard the civilian population in the face of those risks. If the ultimate purpose of government is to keep us safe in a dangerous world, that law is meant to prompt the US government to anticipate and prepare for the most dangerous risks of all.The RAND report breaks down catastrophic risk into six main possibilities: asteroids and comet impacts; supervolcanoes; major pandemics (both natural and human-made); rapid and severe climate change; nuclear conflict; and, of course, artificial intelligence. (I’d call them the Sinister Six, but I suspect that might send Marvel’s trademark office calling.) What these six have in common, the report notes, is that they could “significantly harm or set back human civilization at the global scale … or even result in human extinction.” It’s important to pause for a moment on what that really means. We just finished an election in which a majority of Americans indicated that they were very unhappy with the way things are going. They’re mad about high prices, mad about immigration, mad about Joe Biden, or mad about Donald Trump. Despite all the fury, however, these are fairly ordinary things to be mad about, ordinary political and economic problems to suffer through. Thinking about catastrophic risks helps put them in some perspective. A nuclear war — a possibility that is more likely now than it has been in decades — could kill hundreds of millions of people, and leave the planet so battered that the living would envy the dead. We already know from Covid the damage a pandemic with a relatively low death rate could do; something more virulent, especially if it were engineered, could resemble something out of dystopian fiction — except the possibility is very real. The risk from out-of-control powerful artificial intelligence is almost entirely unknowable, but we would be fools to completely dismiss the dire warnings of those in the field. And with the exception of asteroids and comets — where actual, intelligent space policy has helped us better understand the threat and even begin to develop countermeasures — the RAND report judges that the threat of all of these risks is either static or increasing. (Supervolcanoes, the one risk that remains unchanged, is largely outside human prediction or control, but thankfully we know enough to judge that the probability is very, very low.) The system matters So why are the risks from nuclear conflict, major pandemics, extreme climate change, and artificial intelligence all increasing? Because of human decisions, otherwise known as policy. Will we act as though climate change is the catastrophic threat so many of us believe it to be and engineer our society and economy to mitigate and adapt to it? Will we reverse the collapse of global arms control treaties and edge back from the brink of nuclear conflict? Will we actually learn from Covid and empower the policies and unleash the science to stop the next pandemic, wherever it comes from? Will we do anything about AI — and can we?The answers aren’t easy, and no one political party or candidate has a monopoly on all the best ways to handle catastrophic risk. Reducing the risk of extreme climate change may mean getting serious about the consequences of what we eat and what we drive, in a way sure to anger Republicans — but it may also mean taking the brakes off rapid energy development and housing construction that have too often been defended by Democrats. Minimizing the danger of future pandemics may require defending the global health system, but it may also demand cutting the red tape that often strangles science. Above all, it will demand dedication and professionalism in those we choose to lead us, here in a country where that’s still possible; men and women who have the skill and the understanding to know when caution is required and when action is inescapable. And from us, it will demand the wisdom to recognize what we need to be defended from. The system has failed us. But there are far worse things than the failure we’ve experienced. As we continue down a 21st century that is shaping up to be the most existentially dangerous one humanity has ever faced, we should temper the pull of radical change with an awareness of what can go wrong when we pull down all that we have built.

In times of defeat, turn toward each other

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vox.com

Donald Trump’s election victory evoked disappointment and distress for millions across the country. Many people fear for the future of reproductive justice, immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, tariffs, labor unions, the environment, and much more. Some feel so hopeless about the future that they want to give up. Others are fired up and ready to get more involved in local issues or politics, but they may have no idea how or where to start. Why I wrote this In August 2020, I moved to Washington, DC. Outside of my roommates, I didn’t know anyone there. I was feeling alone and anxious about the world, so I decided to search for local organizations and see what was around me. I ended up joining two local groups, and over the course of a couple years, I got pretty involved with community organizing. It was a lot of work, but it was also a big source of joy for me. I learned a lot about local issues and made lifelong connections. Today, I’m hearing a lot of valid concern about where our world is heading and what to do about it. I wanted to write something for those people and give them a framework I wish I’d had. I hope you find your community and that the work is as rewarding as it was for me.Have questions? Email me at samantha.delgado@voxmedia.com. All of those reactions are valid. But if people are serious about improving our flawed democracy, they must participate — and not just by voting. Voting is an important aspect of civic life, but presidential elections happen only once every four years. If we want to make a change beyond the ballot box and find meaning in these challenging times, we need to engage with the people around us. Look at the social movements of the past that created lasting impact, like the Civil Rights movement securing legislation to outlaw segregation and discrimination, or the labor movement establishing weekends and the 8-hour workday. Powering these campaigns were longstanding relationships between different people with different skills and roles, forged together into a collective by their shared values and a desire for a better world. They built communities that were able to create sustained public pressure for change outside of the presidential election cycle. Despite the need for real community networks, our country’s social fabric has been fraying. According to the US Surgeon General’s 2023 report on the “loneliness epidemic,” approximately half of US adults have reported feeling lonely. People are spending more time alone and less time with others. We’re more online than ever before, yet we feel more disconnected. We trust each other less. Belonging to a community provides the interpersonal support human beings naturally need to survive and thrive. But building a real social network doesn’t happen overnight. It requires consistently showing up, being willing to give and take, and managing uncomfortable disagreements. “There is no Amazon one-click for community,” says Katherine Goldstein, a writer who covers care and a fellow for the Better Life Lab at New America. Creating community takes time. It demands discipline. But it’s not impossible — and there are many other people out there looking for the same connections and sense of purpose. The civic, health, and practical benefits of community In 1970, American political scientist Robert Putnam was in Rome studying Italian politics when a unique research opportunity opened up. The Italian national government had relinquished some of its power and delegated a wide range of responsibilities to 20 new regional governments. These institutions were structured nearly identically, but each region had different economic, political, and cultural dynamics. For Putnam, this was a perfect situation to study what makes successful (and unsuccessful) democratic institutions. He found that the governments that were able to effectively operate internally, propose relevant policy, and implement legislation all shared a deeply embedded sense of trust and cooperation among their citizens. “Some regions of Italy, we discover, are blessed with vibrant networks and norms of civic engagement,” he wrote in his 1993 book about his research, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, “while others were cursed with vertically structured politics, a social life of fragmentation and isolation, and a culture of distrust.” Does the latter environment sound a little familiar? When Putnam came back to the US years later, he noticed a trend that disturbed him: American social life seemed to be disappearing. Membership in groups and clubs was declining. Across unions, religious groups, sports leagues, and political groups, people were reporting less time spent participating and being in these spaces. Putnam wrote the influential book Bowling Alone, published in 2000, in which he claimed that the social structures these groups provided were key to our physical and civic health. A 2023 documentary called Join or Die

Why the attempt to deplatform Trump failed so utterly

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vox.com

President-elect Donald Trump takes the stage for his last rally of the election year at Van Andel Arena on November 5, 2024, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The 2024 election has conclusively proven something that we really should have known since 2016: America’s gatekeepers have failed. The premise of “gatekeeping,” as a political enterprise, is that there is a mainstream consensus that can be enforced by institutions designed to protect it. It works not by outright violent repression, but by deplatforming and shunning certain ideas, people, movements, and the like. Gatekeeping, when successful, involves a collective of recognized authority figures declaring that something is out of bounds — and then that thing actually getting consigned to the fringes. No politician will engage with it, no talk show hosts will give it a respectful hearing, and only a tiny number of citizens will have heard of it. Think of how nearly everyone agreed, after 9/11, that conspiracy theorizing about the attack deserved scorn. Trump’s wins are proof that gatekeeping doesn’t really work anymore. Immediately after the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, there was a brief moment when leaders across the political spectrum agreed Trump was too dangerous to be allowed to remain in politics — and even tried to drive him out. In a January 8 email, Rupert Murdoch wrote that “Fox News [is] very busy pivoting … We want to make Trump a non person.” Yet Murdoch failed, pivoting back to pro-Trump coverage almost immediately. Every other attempt to shun Trump into political nonexistence has met with similar failure. This isn’t just a Trump phenomenon. His chief allies and messengers — like Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and Steve Bannon — have all been shunned or blacklisted to varying degrees. X/Twitter suffered a post-Musk ad revenue collapse, liberal musicians pulled their music from Spotify to pressure the streaming giant to drop Rogan, and Bannon just spent four months in federal prison (for good reason). None of these tactics have durably eroded these figures’ influence. Nor is the failure of deplatforming even a famous person thing. I’ve written extensively and repeatedly about the influence of obscure radicals on the mainstream Republican Party — the way that, for example, Vice President-elect JD Vance has explicitly cited someone who openly wants to topple American democracy as a key influence in his thinking about the executive branch. I’m hardly the only one: There’s a whole cottage industry of journalism devoted to tracing the linkages between the true fringe — internet weirdos with names like Bronze Age Pervert — and the Republican mainstream. Such links are no longer hidden, but out in the open. Yet, with a few exceptions, this kind of reporting doesn’t seem to have hurt, and it sometimes even helps the targets of the gatekeepers’ ire by raising their profiles. Again and again, we’ve seen the gatekeepers’ efforts to deplatform their enemies into oblivion fail. And I think it has a lot to do with a mistaken analysis of power — specifically, a failure to appreciate just how much people with devoted followings can get away with in the 21st-century political-media environment. Trumping the gatekeepers In the past, the American mainstream consensus was enforced through bipartisan political agreement and a cultural apparatus dominated by elite institutions: a shared set of norms in those environs helping to define the rules of the political game. If you broke those rules, either by (for example) insulting the troops or particular ethnic groups, you could risk electoral defeat or even being exiled from polite public life. Trump’s 2016 rise to power and 2024 political resurrection help us see why neither political nor cultural elites can enforce their old rules anymore. Anyone who heads one of the two major parties already has a baseline floor of about 46 to 47 percent of the electorate. The most important voters in deciding the general election are swing voters. In a highly polarized country with two very different parties, swing voters tend to be people who definitionally don’t have very strong partisan preferences, seeing both parties as potential options. Candidates like Trump who enjoy unified support of a major party cannot truly be gatekept. They are definitionally part of the mainstream, and thus potentially electable thanks to the basic gravity of a two-party political system. All of this raises the question: How is it that Trump, an extremist, managed to seize control of the Republican Party in the first place? For reasons I’ve documented extensively, including in my book The Reactionary Spirit, Trump managed to build a direct bond with a critical mass of GOP primary voters rooted in shared resentments and fears. These voters, like Trump and unlike Democratic partisans, were largely disdainful of any elite attempts to gatekeep him — either from the cultural mainstream or even the alternative elites of the Republican Party, which back in 2016 tried and failed to stop his initial rise in power. In other words, Trump short-circuited the gatekeeping capacity of both the Republican Party and mainstream media. After January 6, when some Republican elites tried again to break with Trump, they faced immense backlash from their base. Three days after his “non-person” email, Murdoch was walking things back — telling his son Lachlan that “we have to lead our viewers, which is not as easy as it might seem.” Fox’s viewers actually forced its CEO to reboard the Trump train. So it’s Trump’s personal support, his mass following, that gives him and aligned Republicans the power to resist gatekeepers. The death of the old political-media order There’s something else too. Shifts in the media landscape have allowed his allies in the cultural space to survive and even thrive for similar reasons. In the past, it used to be hard enough to create a mass media enterprise that only a handful of people — the sorts who could operate television stations and mass newspaper distribution networks — could do it. Today, anyone can find fans on social media and work to monetize that following. Given direct access to a mass audience, unpopularity among cultural gatekeepers is far less of a concern than it used to be. Joe Rogan has millions of dedicated fans; those fans like him much more than the people trying to make listeners feel bad for enjoying his show. Steve Bannon’s War Room show is super popular among the Trump faithful, and remains so despite (or perhaps because of) his stint in prison. Nick Fuentes’s weird and creepy fans don’t really care if the mainstream media calls them weird and creepy for stanning a Nazi incel. All enjoy a level of influence and power because of their ties to Republicans who are unwilling to be shamed for said connections. This fragmented landscape means there’s not enough cultural unification to ever really expel anyone from the discourse. When Fox News fired Tucker Carlson, many wondered why it took them so long: it was Fox that held the power, not its popular but increasingly difficult employee. Yet Carlson’s post-Fox trajectory — a successful turn to Twitter/X broadcasting that earned him a seat next to Trump at the Republican National Convention — reveals that even the Murdoch empire couldn’t cancel someone with Carlson’s devoted following. Even if someone doesn’t have the personal draw of a Carlson or a Rogan, there are institutions dedicated to serving ever more extreme audiences that might be willing to hire you. If you get “canceled” at a mainstream outlet, you can go to Fox. If you get kicked off Fox News, NewsMax and One America News Network are out there waiting. To be clear, there are benefits to the end of gatekeeping. By concentrating power in a smaller number of people and institutions, the old consensus encouraged groupthink, resulting in, for example, widespread cheerleading for the 2003 Iraq War. The era of gatekeeping was also meaningfully less democratic, in that it gave elites far more power than the people as a collective to set the terms of public debate. The creator economy, for all its faults, gives citizens the ability to financially empower voices they believe are unfairly cut out of public life. Yet those faults are undoubtedly immense. Donald Trump, a man who literally incited a riot on the Capitol and has openly vowed to attack democratic institutions in his second term, is president-elect largely — if not primarily — because he built a following that allowed him to short-circuit elite gatekeepers in both parties. And the gatekeepers, for all their flaws, adhered to basic standards of evidence and decency that simply can’t be enforced in our new political-media environment. Does anyone really think this country is better off now that someone like Fuentes has the juice to secure dinner with the once and future president? Regardless of how you normatively evaluate these trade-offs — ones that I think point to thorny conceptual problems for liberalism itself — we need to be clear on where we’re at empirically. And the fact is that Trump and aligned Republican extremists clearly can’t be criticized into defeat. Nor can Musk be shamed into managing X more responsibly or Rogan ignored into political oblivion. Their opponents need a new tactic.

The most dangerous roads in America have one thing in common

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vox.com

A pedestrian crosses Roosevelt Boulevard in Philadelphia, a maze of chaotic traffic that passes through some of the city's most diverse and low-income neighborhoods. | Julio Cortez/AP Photo Some 110 years ago, a picturesque new road known as Roosevelt Boulevard began ferrying vehicles across the nascent but burgeoning neighborhoods of North and Northeast Philadelphia. At first, traffic was light, but it rapidly thickened as car ownership rose and the surrounding area developed. By the 1950s, when the boulevard expanded to meet the new Schuylkill Expressway, it was lined with row houses and shops. Today, what was initially a bucolic parkway has become a traffic-snarled, 12-lane thoroughfare snaking its way through neighborhoods that house 1 in 3 Philadelphians. It is, by all accounts, a mess. Dubbed the “corridor of death,” Roosevelt Boulevard has been named the most dangerous street in the city (and among the most dangerous in the nation). In 2022, 59 pedestrians were killed there. Residents “want to get across the street to the pharmacy to get their medication or get across the street to the supermarket,” Latanya Byrd, whose niece and three nephews were killed in a crash on the boulevard in 2013, said in a video produced by Smart Growth America. “It may take two, maybe three lights, for them to get all the way across.” It’s not just pedestrians who loathe Roosevelt Boulevard. “People who walk, drive, or take public transit are all pretty badly screwed,” Philadelphia’s public radio station declared in 2017. Aware of the road’s shortcomings, city officials have long sought design changes that would reduce crashes. But they are powerless to act on their own, because the boulevard is controlled by the state of Pennsylvania. That situation is common across the United States, where many of the most deadly, polluting, and generally awful urban streets are overseen by state departments of transportation (DOTs). Often they were constructed decades ago, when the surrounding areas were sparsely populated. Although only 14 percent of urban road miles nationwide are under state control, two-thirds of all crash deaths in the 101 largest metro areas occur there, according to a recent Transportation for America report. In some places, this disparity is widening: From 2016 to 2022, road fatalities in Austin, Texas, fell 20 percent on locally managed roads while soaring 98 percent on those the state oversees. “The country is littered with roads that are a legacy of the past, that don’t work very well, and that drive people crazy,” said US Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), who calls them “legacy highways.” Instead of fixing such roadways, state officials tend to keep them as they are, citing limited resources or a need to maintain traffic speeds. In doing so, they constrain the capacity of even the most comprehensive local reforms to respond to urgent problems like car crash deaths, which are far more widespread in the US than among peer countries, or unreliable bus service. Unless state DOTs recognize that a successful urban road must do more than facilitate fast car trips, that problem will persist. Why we have state highways In the early 1900s, states from coast to coast created transportation agencies to build smooth, wide roads that enabled long-distance car trips. New high-capacity roadways traversed forests and farmland, often terminating at what was then the urban edge. When Americans went on a car-buying binge after World War II, states like Michigan widened their highways with the goal of keeping traffic moving quickly, a prime directive for engineers. High-speed roadways fed rapid suburbanization, with new developments mushrooming on the city periphery. Columbus, Ohio, for instance, roughly doubled in population from 1950 and 2000, while its land area quintupled. Sprawling cities in the South and Southwest emerged seemingly overnight, while new suburbs encircled older metropolises in the North. In these newly urbanized areas, state highways that had previously meandered through the countryside were now lined with retail and housing. Their designers had initially paid little attention to transit, sidewalks, or tree cover — features that are often afterthoughts for rural roads, but crucial in more densely populated areas. As with Philadelphia’s Roosevelt Boulevard, the width and traffic speed of state roads in urban neighborhoods now frequently clash with local desires for street safety, quality transit service, and pedestrian comfort. But revising them is rarely a priority for state DOTs engaged in a Sisyphean battle against traffic congestion. “If a state agency’s primary focus is on moving vehicles, they’re looking at reducing delays and building clear zones” that remove objects such as trees next to a road, where errant drivers might strike them, said Kristina Swallow, who previously led the Nevada DOT as well as urban planning for Tucson, Arizona. “At the local level, you’re looking at a bunch of other activities. You have people walking or on a bike, so you may be okay with some congestion, because you know that’s what happens when people are coming into an economically vibrant community.” City-state tensions over state highways can take many forms. Roadway safety is often a flashpoint, since fixes frequently involve slowing traffic that state officials want to keep flowing. In San Antonio, for instance, the city negotiated for years with the Texas DOT to add sidewalks and bike lanes to Broadway, a state arterial with seven lanes. Last year the state scuttled that plan at the 11th hour, leaving Broadway’s current design in place. Local efforts to improve transit service can also face state resistance. In September, Madison, Wisconsin, launched its first bus rapid transit (BRT) line, a fast form of bus service that relies on dedicated bus lanes. But much of its route runs along East Washington, an arterial managed by Wisconsin, and the state transportation department prevented Madison from making the entire BRT lane bus-only during rush hour. That could sabotage the new service out of the gate. “These dedicated bus lanes would serve the bus best in the heaviest traffic, so it’s counterintuitive to typical BRT design,” said Chris McCahill, who leads the State Smart Transportation Initiative at the University of Wisconsin and serves on Madison’s transportation commission. Wisconsin’s DOT did not respond to a request for comment. The whole point of fast transit programs like BRT is to get more people to ride transit instead of driving, thereby increasing the total human capacity of a road since buses are much more space-efficient than cars. But that logic can escape state transportation executives oriented toward longer, intercity trips instead of shorter, intracity ones, as well as highway engineers trained to focus on maximizing the speed of all vehicles, regardless of how many people are inside them. Even sympathetic state transportation officials may not fix dysfunctional urban roadways due to limited resources and competing needs that include expensive upgrades to bridges and interstates. Critical but relatively small-dollar projects, such as street intersection adjustments that better serve pedestrians or bus riders, can get lost in the shuffle. Lacking the authority to make changes themselves, city officials are stuck. “How do you create connected networks when you don’t own the intersection, and to fix it you have to compete at the state level with 500 other projects?” said Stefanie Seskin, the director of policy and practice at the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO). As an example, Seskin cited the state-controlled St. Mary’s Street bridge in Brookline, a dense suburb adjacent to Boston. “It’s the only way to get to and from Boston that isn’t on a major, super busy arterial,” she said. “It’s not structurally deficient, but from the position of those walking, biking, and using transit, it’s just not functioning well. It requires a reconstruction” — something that Massachusetts has not done. The beginnings of a paradigm shift in transportation policy With deaths among US pedestrians and cyclists hitting a 40-year high in 2022, a growing number of state DOTs are starting to acknowledge that maximizing vehicle speed is not the only goal that matters on urban roadways. The Pennsylvania DOT, for example, is now working with Philadelphia to at last bring lane redesigns, bus lane improvements, and speed cameras to Roosevelt Boulevard. On the other side of the country, the head of the Washington state DOT has requested $150 million from the state legislature to address the shortcomings of legacy highways. “I think there are people in every single state DOT who want to be more proactive and to plan for safer streets for people who are moving, no matter what mode of transportation they use,” Seskin told me. “I don’t think that that was necessarily the case 20 years ago.” Still, fixing the deficiencies of state roadways requires a paradigm shift within state DOTs, with senior officials accepting that maximizing car speeds jeopardizes crucial local priorities like accommodating pedestrians, enabling rapid transit service, or supporting outdoor dining. Such nuance can escape state highway engineers trained with a myopic focus on vehicle speed. “Many of the people doing roadway design work for states are still stuck in the old model,” said Billy Hattaway, an engineer who previously held senior transportation roles in the Florida DOT as well as the city of Orlando. McCahill, of the State Smart Transportation Initiative, empathized with those toiling within state DOTs. “Think about their position as engineers,” he said. “They’ve got their federal highway design guidelines, they’ve got their state guidelines. They’ve been conditioned to be conservative and not try new things.” Historically, those roadway design guidelines have prioritized free-flowing traffic. Making them more malleable could empower engineers to get more creative. Instead of applying one-size-fits-all rules for elements like lane widths and traffic lights, “context-sensitive design” encourages engineers working in urban settings to add pedestrian crossings, narrow lanes, and other features that can support local transportation needs. McCahill applauded Florida’s DOT for recently “rewriting” its design guide to incorporate such context-sensitive layouts. Federal money could help finance such redesigns — if state officials know how to use it. “There’s a lack of knowledge about the flexibility of federal dollars, with misunderstandings and different interpretations,” said NACTO’s Seskin. Recognizing the issue, over the summer, the Federal Highway Administration published guidance and held a webinar highlighting dozens of federal funding programs available to upgrade legacy highways. Then there is an alternative approach: Rather than revise problematic roads themselves, states can hand them over to local officials, letting them manage improvements and maintenance. Washington state, for instance, in 2011 transferred a 2.5-mile strip of state road 522 to the Seattle suburb of Bothell. But such moves are not always financially feasible. “The risk is that when you transfer a highway to local government, you take away the capacity to properly fund it over the long term” because the city becomes responsible for upkeep, said Brittney Kohler, the legislative director of transportation and infrastructure for the National League of Cities. Unless the revamped road spurs development that creates new tax revenue, as it did in Bothell, cash-strapped cities may be unable to afford the costs of retrofits and ongoing maintenance. States and cities can work together to fix legacy highways — and federal support can help In Portland, Oregon, pretty much everyone seems to agree that 82nd Avenue, a major thoroughfare that the state manages, is a disaster. Originally a little-used roadway marking the eastern edge of the city, 82nd Avenue has developed into a bustling arterial. It’s been a dangerous eyesore for decades, with potholed pavement, insufficient pedestrian crossings, inadequate lighting, and minimal tree cover, said Art Pearce, a deputy director for the Portland Bureau of Transportation. According to city statistics, from 2012 to 2021, crashes on the thoroughfare caused 14 deaths and 122 serious injuries. At least two-thirds of crash victims were pedestrians, bicyclists, or occupants of cars turning left at intersections without traffic signals. During winter storms, Pearce said state workers would often clear nearby Interstate 205 but leave 82nd Avenue unplowed, leaving the city to do it without compensation. “Our priority in snow and ice is to keep public transit moving, and 82nd Avenue has the highest transit ridership in the whole state,” he said. Nearby residents and business owners have been begging local officials to revamp 82nd Avenue for decades, said Pearce and Blumenauer (whose congressional district includes Portland). The state was willing to transfer the roadway to the city, but the local officials wanted more than a handshake. “We were like, if you give us $500 million, the city will take over 82nd Avenue and fix it,” Pearce said. “The state officials answered, ‘We don’t have $500 million, so hey, good meeting.’” A breakthrough came in 2021, when the American Rescue Plan Act offered states and cities a one-time influx of federal funding. Matching that money with contributions of their own, the state and city negotiated a transfer of seven miles of 82nd Avenue from the Oregon DOT to Portland. Some $185 million will go toward new features including sidewalk extensions, trees, a BRT line, and curb cuts for those using a wheelchair or stroller. Blumenauer, who said that reconstructing 82nd Avenue has been a personal goal for 35 years, led US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on a tour of the roadway last year. The success story is “a bit of a one-off,” Blumenauer admits, reliant on stimulus dollars tied to the Covid-19 pandemic. But a dedicated federal funding source could enable similar roadway reboots nationwide. At the moment, President-elect Donald Trump and incoming congressional Republicans show little appetite for transportation reforms, but a golden opportunity will come during the development of the next multiyear surface transportation bill, which is expected to be passed after the 2026 midterms. Although Blumenauer did not run for reelection this month, he said he hopes the future bill will include a competitive grant program that invites state and local officials to submit joint proposals to upgrade state highways in urban areas, with federal dollars acting as a sweetener. Otherwise, these state roads will continue to obstruct urban residents’ most cherished goals of safety, clean air, and public space. Flourishing cities cannot coexist with fast, decrepit roads. Too many state officials have not yet learned that lesson.

Why libraries need librarians

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vox.com

Beyond books, some public libraries offer everything from musical instruments to seeds for patrons to check out. | Ho Ming Law/Getty Images Vox reader Alexia Cherry asks: I work at a public library and I think a lot of the talk about libraries is generally uninformed about what librarians actually do. So many people that I interact with are shocked that you need to have a master’s degree to be considered a professional, and many people don’t know about the wide variety of library jobs available. People do indeed seem to find librarians oddly mysterious! In August, Western Illinois University laid off its entire librarian faculty and at the same time insisted the university would still have “adequate coverage in the library.” The school seemed to be operating under the belief that librarians are only warm bodies who exist to check books in and out, and that they only have master’s degrees in order to artificially jack their wages up. Anyone, this line of thinking goes, could keep a library running without much work. They just need to know how to scan a barcode. But then, libraries are undervalued in general, perhaps because they are such radical institutions. The truism is that if you tried to invent the public library today, the right would never let you get away with it — giving so many things to the public for free, and subsidizing them all with taxes, imagine. How many other spaces do we have left where a person can go and spend hours on end and still not be expected to buy anything? Perhaps on a subconscious level, we tend to undervalue libraries culturally in order to keep them from reaching their full potential. If we pretend that they’re bizarre federally subsidized bookstores, we don’t need to think about how they’re enormous warehouses full of knowledge available to anyone who walks in, staffed by professionals highly trained in sorting, extracting, and preserving that knowledge. What do librarians actually do? Let’s take a brief look at what libraries need and how librarians provide those needs. All libraries, from the public to the academic to the corporate, need to be cataloged in order for anyone to know what books are in them, where each kind of book is, and what those books are useful for. In the library sciences, cataloging is its own highly esoteric specialty, closer to coding than anything else, and it requires careful technical training. Catalogers describe each notable aspect of a book, then classify each aspect so it’s searchable. To do it, you have to learn not just multiple classification systems, but also get training in how to describe a book you may have not read, what parts of it are most important, and which categories will supersede others depending on the library you’re classifying for. A cataloger must make judgment calls on whether to code in spoilers (do you classify a spy novel as “double agent” even if that’s the big twist at the end?) and how far down you should keep subdividing. Cataloging is such a rigorous and precise form of information processing that it’s one of a librarian’s most lucrative skill sets in the information era. Some librarians, after grad school, go off to work in corporate archives, where they catalog and preserve information about the company’s history for internal usage. (Not a particularly glamorous job, but the private sector tends to pay better than the public.) Fresh library school graduates can use the same skill set to process papers at historical archives, but there they’ll also need to know how to handle fragile antique documents without damaging them, and potentially how to repair books at the end of their lifespans. All libraries also need acquisition specialists, who are the ones facing heavy scrutiny in our book-banning era. The acquisitions department is responsible for deciding where the holes in a library’s collection are and how to fill them. They make the call as to whether it’s a good idea to bring in a book full of errors — say, a book on creationism — if patrons are requesting it, or whether it’s worth it to keep around a book on a controversial subject — say, teen sex ed — if patrons are protesting against it. Most libraries need research specialists who can help patrons figure out how to access what they’re trying to look up. If you’re trying to flesh out your family tree, a research librarian can usually tell you what newspaper archives to consult, and get you access to those archives free of charge. If you’re trying to write an academic paper, a research librarian can walk you through the process of which databases best serve your specialty and how to navigate them. How are public libraries different? Public libraries require all these specialties, too, and more. Most public libraries have a mandate to serve the communities in which they exist, and so they offer more resources than many people are probably aware exist. Public libraries in places with a large immigrant population will frequently offer free ESL and citizenship classes. Many libraries help connect patrons to social workers, food banks, public health, and legal resources. Many others will let patrons check out things like cooking equipment, musical instruments, board games, and even seeds. Because public librarians are one of the only third spaces left that don’t charge money, librarians find themselves working as de facto social workers for unhoused people — in addition to the literal social worker that many libraries now have on staff. Many libraries train their staff in using Narcan to revive people overdosing on opiates. Some offer hygiene kits and clean clothes for unhoused people. All of that is despite the low salaries public librarians can expect. The average salary at the New York Public Library system is just around $52,000 per year, under the $69,000 estimated to be the cost of living in New York. A library is both a vast, complex technology designed to preserve and organize information and a physical space that exists in order to serve its community in whatever ways it can. The people who work there have to go through enormous amounts of training in order to do both — even if their labor is often invisible to those of us who enjoy its fruits.