Category Archives: Society

In counties with more Black doctors, Black people live longer, ‘astonishing’ study finds

STAT reports: Black people in counties with more Black primary care physicians live longer, according to a new national analysis that provides the strongest evidence yet that increasing the diversity of the medical workforce may be key to ending deeply entrenched racial health disparities. The study, published Friday in JAMA Network Open, is the first to link a… Read More »

As AI booms, lawmakers struggle to understand the technology

The New York Times reports: In recent weeks, two members of Congress have sounded the alarm over the dangers of artificial intelligence. Representative Ted Lieu, Democrat of California, wrote in a guest essay in The New York Times in January that he was “freaked out” by the ability of the ChatGPT chatbot to mimic human writers. Another Democrat, Representative… Read More »

The invisible victims of American antisemitism

Yair Rosenberg writes: Last week, a gunman shot two Jews at close range as they departed morning prayer services in Los Angeles. The first victim was shot in the back on Wednesday. The second was shot multiple times in the arm on Thursday, less than 24 hours later. The attacks sent fear pulsing through the… Read More »

Biophobia hurts nature and humans

Emily Harwitz writes: When Masashi Soga was growing up in Japan, he loved spending time outside catching insects and collecting plants. His parents weren’t big fans of the outdoors, but he had an elementary schoolteacher who was. “They taught me how to collect butterflies, how to make a specimen of butterflies,” Soga recalls. “I enjoyed… Read More »

Syria’s White Helmets work miracles after earthquake

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: This is not how editorial discussions normally go. This morning I contacted Fared Al Mahlool over WhatsApp for a potential story on the catastrophic earthquake that hit Turkey and northern Syria on Monday. Fared is an internally displaced Syrian living in Idlib. He’s a photojournalist who has contributed to New Lines… Read More »

A pitiless catastrophe devastates Turkey and Syria

Kareem Shaheen writes: Last night, as my wife and I were getting ready for bed, she started receiving voice messages from her family back in Aleppo, Syria. It was just after 3 a.m. their time, so it could not have been good news, and it wasn’t. They were out on the street, woken up in… Read More »

Ignoring antisemitism only makes it stronger

Toby Lichtig writes: Antisemitism is back in vogue. Books, plays, exhibitions, academic studies and New Lines magazine essays alike are grappling with this age-old hatred and why it continues to morph and flare up in our present day. As I write this piece in London, some of my fellow citizens are contemplating their evening plans… Read More »

The narcissism of angry young men

Tom Nichols writes: Some years ago, I got a call from an analyst at the National Counterterrorism Center. After yet another gruesome mass shooting (this time, it was Dylann Roof’s attack on a Bible-study group at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, that killed nine and wounded one), I had written an article about… Read More »

Black like me

Colin Grant writes: It is commonly agreed that race is a social construct. If, as sociologists such as Alondra Nelson tell us, there is more difference within groups than between groups – so that, as the child of dark-skinned Jamaican parents, I have more in common genetically with a red-haired Scot than a sub-Saharan African… Read More »