The Atlantic Daily: Information Blackout After the Sri Lanka Terrorist Attacks
Plus: Gambling for record-breaking game-show winnings, the fuss about Allbirds sneakers, Elizabeth Warren’s free-college plan (and idea for how to pay for it), and more
What We’re Following
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Bombings at churches and hotels in Sri Lanka killed nearly 300 people on Easter Sunday. The attacks were a grisly reminder that the religious tensions that fueled the country’s civil war are still lingering—and a sign that the relative peace in the decade since the war ended has been tenuous. After the attack, the Sri Lankan government took an unusual step: It shut down social media. That move was intended to tamp down any retaliatory killings, but Graeme Wood argues that information blackouts nearly always turn into authoritarian tools, whether they started that way or not.
+ The photo editor Alan Taylor compiled these photographs of the devastation and mourning in Sri Lanka.
Elizabeth Warren is out with a sweeping free-college plan. The senator and 2020 aspirant has been releasing policy proposals at a breakneck pace, and her latest plan looks to make college more affordable with a slate of ambitious proposals that include cancelling student debt, universal free public college, and greater support for historically black colleges and universities. Though free-college proposals are now virtually an entry fee for serious Democratic presidential contenders, Adam Harris writes that Warren is “setting the bar for the most radical reimagining of higher education among the Democrats in the 2020 race.”
Who is James Holzhauer? On Monday, the Jeopardy contestant won the game show for the 13th time (Holzhauer has won nearly $1 million so far). If he keeps up his pace, he’ll break the record for most winnings ever, in half the time of Ken Jennings’s unprecedented run as Jeopardy king. But what is Holzhauer’s success doing for Jeopardy’s finances? The hoopla is probably drawing in more viewers, and though Holzhauer’s winnings are surely a strain on the show’s accountants, the show itself is likely doing just fine: Prize budgets aren’t the program’s biggest expense.
Snapshot
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After finding out that her infant daughter has a rare genetic disorder, Julie Kim realized she needed to radically readjust her expectations for her new baby’s life.
Evening Reads
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The dress code of the digital creative class is hazy, and Silicon Valley thinks it has an answer. Disrupt … shoes:
In another time, developing manufacturing or textile technologies and licensing them to existing brands might have been the whole story of these new companies. But the upheaval in the American wardrobe has let outsiders into fashion’s territory, according to the fashion historian Nancy Deihl. “The idea of ‘careerwear’ is so dispersed and a little less determined,” says Deihl, a professor at New York University. “The career office [at NYU] has these little workshops on what to wear to interviews and things because there isn’t this kind of monolithic style guidance out there.”
Not only has the American office gone more casual, but work itself has changed since Dockers started pushing business-casual dressing in 1992. More women than ever before are living full professional lives, and they need shoes that do much more than just look appropriately conservative with a skirt suit.
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When families are deeply divided over vaccinations, can they find a way to open a door for reasonable conversation?
Compelling narratives can also have a much more potent effect on a listener, Dubé [a medical anthropologist and researcher] says, than a deluge of statistics and scientific facts. One of the worst things family members who disagree over vaccinations can do to one another is engage in what she calls “facts ping-pong,” in which “you push one side, and then the other will reply with, ‘Well, I saw this video on YouTube, and it showed blah blah blah.’”
“I think it’s really an emotional topic, much more than a scientific topic. And those people who are questioning vaccines, it’s kind of part of their identity,” Dubé continues, noting that populations that doubt the efficacy or safety of vaccines—despite plentiful, credible evidence that demonstrates both—often mistrust government or medical authorities on other subjects, too.
The Atlantic Crossword
(Araki Koman)
Have you tried your hand at our daily mini crossword (available on our website, here)? Monday is the perfect day to start—the puzzle gets bigger and more difficult throughout the week.
→ Challenge your friends, or try to beat your own solving time
Concerns, comments, questions, typos? Email newsletters editor Shan Wang at swang@theatlantic.com
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