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Illustration by Mike McQuade* American Special Ops Forces Are Everywhere
They’ve become a major military player—and maybe a substitute for strategic thinking.
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gblue / Getty / NIH / The Atlantic Small Towns Won’t Know They’re Infected Until It’s Too Late
The demise of local news is a pandemic emergency.
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Illustration: Paul Spella; Michael Heiman / Getty Top Military Officers Unload on Trump
The commander in chief is impulsive, disdains expertise, and gets his intelligence briefings from Fox News. What does this mean for those on the front lines?
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Susan Walsh / AP A Trump-Kim Summit: 'Why the Hell Not?'
Direct talks between America’s and North Korea’s heads of state have never been tried, and nothing else has worked.
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John Cuneo The Man Who Saw Inside Himself
For years, Larry Smarr has used a supercomputer to monitor his health and peer at his organs. Recently, he used his knowledge to help direct his own surgery.
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KCNA via Reuters What Did North Korea's Missile Test Really Change?
When potential death tolls are unthinkably high, it’s like multiplying infinity.
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Donald Trump Is Less Predictable Than Kim Jong Un
Mark Bowden argues that the president is more likely to start a nuclear war than his adversary in North Korea.
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How North Korea Became a Crisis
To understand how the standoff between Pyongyang and the world became so dire, it helps to go back to the country's founding
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Justin Metz 朝核困局：当今最棘手的问题
对付朝鲜无上策可言，只有下策与下下策之分
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Justin Metz How to Deal With North Korea
There are no good options. But some are worse than others.
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The Arrogance of Mitt
The recent Romney documentary succeeds in making its subject more human, but it also makes it clear that the country is better off without him as president.
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Nishant Choksi In Praise of Fancy Words
The pleasures of reading with a dictionary by one’s side
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Reuters What Snowden and Manning Don't Understand About Secrecy
Government often finds bad reasons to keep information hidden, but the recent indiscriminate leaks are foolish.
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AFP / Getty The Killing Machines
How to think about drones
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Library of Congress 'Idiot,' 'Yahoo,' 'Original Gorilla': How Lincoln Was Dissed in His Day
The difficulty of recognizing excellence in its own time
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'Zero Dark Thirty' Is Not Pro-Torture
Saying Kathryn Bigelow's film advocates for "enhanced interrogation" ignores the nuances of the story.
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Grant Delin The Measured Man
Larry Smarr, an astrophysicist turned computer scientist, has a new project: charting his every bodily function in minute detail. What he’s discovering may be the future of health care.
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Dumb Kids’ Class
The benefits of being underestimated by the nuns at St. Petronille’s
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Wilk The Man Who Broke Atlantic City
Don Johnson won nearly $6 million playing blackjack in one night, single-handedly decimating the monthly revenue of Atlantic City’s Tropicana casino. Not long before that, he’d taken the Borgata for $5 million and Caesars for $4 million. Here’s how he did it.
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Brian Stauffer Rebirth of the Guinea Hens
The author’s fowl defy the blogosphere and stage a comeback.
