Wiki News Live
Today:
The Backlash Against Data Centers
NEWS | 06 September 2026
On a special edition of Washington Week With The Atlantic, the Atlantic staff writer Josh Tyrangiel joined for a discussion about the future of AI and what, if anything, the U.S. government plans to do to address the rapid development of the technology. Across the country, massive data centers are being built, and they’re “landing themselves without a whole lot of conversation” in American towns, Tyrangiel said last night. “It’s natural that all the fears about AI—about it taking your jobs, about it rendering human beings obsolete, about the values it changes—all are focused on” these data centers, he argued. “And politicians have been incredibly late to wake up to the anger around AI.”“I don’t think people believe that they are going to partake in the wealth that comes from data centers in their community,” Tyrangiel continued. “Every community is going to make different choices, but what I’m sensing is that, particularly from Trump, the politics are out of line with where people are.”Watch Tyrangial’s full conversation with the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, here.

Top Stories:
Rediscover the Ordinary
NEWS | 06 September 2026
As Ian Bogost writes in a new article, we’ve become so focused on making life more productive that we risk treating the present as mere preparation for whatever comes next. Wonder can interrupt that habit, Bogost argues—not just the kind inspired by mountains or sunsets, but the kind available in ordinary things. The Ordinary Miracle of ExistingBy Alan LightmanBeing alive at all is the most extraordinary stroke of good luck any of us will ever experience. Sign up for Ordinary Extraordinary, Ian Bogost’s newsletter on making everyday life vivid. The hidden cost of optimizing everything: Ian Bogost talks with Charlie Warzel on his podcast, Galaxy Brain, about how technology is disconnecting us from life’s small pleasures.

World:
Why Wendell Berry Didn’t Worry About the Future
NEWS | 06 September 2026
Berry didn’t have a cellphone. Berry, who died on Monday at the age of 92, lived a life defined by acts of radical abstention. “This is Wendell Berry.” A giant of Luddism was speaking out of my iPhone. Jesus’s instruction to not worry about the future seemed at odds with much of what Berry had written. “Most of the bad possibilities I have worried about have never happened,” Berry wrote.

Current Events:
J. D. Vance’s Disingenuous Defense of Tucker Carlson
NEWS | 06 September 2026
When J. D. Vance was asked at a press conference on Thursday about his relationship with Tucker Carlson, the media personality and ultra-right-wing conspiracy theorist, he displayed a surprising side of himself: human, vulnerable, almost touchingly naive. Peter Wehner: What J. D. Vance once knewFor one, Vance is not known for cordially disagreeing with people. The difference between Vance’s ex-friends and Carlson is that Carlson is still a useful ally in a Republican factional conflict. Carlson praising a member of the Democratic Party is more threatening to Vance than Carlson praising an apologist for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. “So, yeah, Tucker is a friend of mine.”Suppose Carlson decided to support someone other than Vance for president in 2028.

News Flash:
The Rush-Job Presidency
NEWS | 06 September 2026
The ballroom project, a hulking party venue that overshadows the White House’s main building and its modest neoclassical design, could be another. By October, he’d knocked down the East Wing of the White House without seeking any approvals. A White House spokesperson told me that the project is proceeding with the 20-hour schedule for now. The White House ballroom is needed for security reasons, because it’s connected to a military bunker. This week’s Supreme Court ruling has already prompted at least one federal judge to consider its implications for another Trump project.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 06 September 2026
SmartSync is a mobile application, compatible with any Android smartphone, that syncs your important data to your email. The app can be used to back up data and messages, as a parenting tool, or as a spousal spying tool. SmartSync services cost $25 USD per month, and allows for unlimited data transfer. The app can be found Here

Latest:
Crypto Money Still Matters for the Midterms
NEWS | 06 September 2026
The crypto industry has always moved in cycles: booms and busts; bull markets and harsh, unforgiving “winters.” We’re in something of a lull right now: Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, is worth about two-thirds of what it was last fall. But the crypto industry isn’t dead—as of today, the combined value of all digital currencies is still more than $2.7 trillion—and neither are its political ambitions. Although crypto is no longer as central to the public conversation, it’s still finding ways to flex its power. Executives from several major crypto companies were charged with fraud, but it was FTX’s Bankman-Fried who became, at least for a while, the industry’s criminal mascot. Once in office, he threw his support behind the industry, implementing a deregulatory agenda and signing a major crypto bill into law.

Breaking:
There’s No Such Thing as an AI ‘Lab’
NEWS | 06 September 2026
When did AI companies become AI labs? AI companies themselves have embraced the label: When Chris Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, addressed the pope earlier this year, he repeatedly referred to his company, one of the most powerful AI enterprises in the world, as a lab. As a software engineer working in tech, I’ve seen little evidence that AI companies’ research practices differ significantly from those of the rest of the tech industry. These positive connotations associated with scientific research help the AI industry signal altruism while downplaying their profit-making ambitions. Ultimately, AI companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI aren’t tweedy labs doing arcane research—they’re industry-defining corporations reshaping our workplaces, our schools, and our communities.

Trending:
What Tech Titans Don’t Understand About Sci-Fi
NEWS | 06 September 2026
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. When I read Thomas More’s Utopia in college, the main thing I retained was that the inhabitants of More’s imaginary island worked just six hours a day and earned what we might now call a universal basic income. The punishment for premarital sex, meanwhile, was permanent celibacy; the whole place sounded like a punitive surveillance state. More’s Utopia isn’t all that different; it depicts a society that readers might not actually want to live in. Through each voyager’s distinct perspective, the book explores artificial intelligence, social media, and the effects of extended isolation.

This Just In:
The Meaning of the Lindsay Clancy Mistrial
NEWS | 06 September 2026
During the five weeks of her murder trial, Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother accused of murdering her three young children in 2023, spoke barely a word. Some people have interpreted Clancy’s trial as a referendum on women’s postpartum mental health. Clancy’s case, in her supporters’ imagination, appears to be the sum of all those biological and social hazards. For the past several weeks, Clancy’s case has been heard in the court of public opinion. Prosecutors in Clancy’s case must now decide whether to retry her, negotiate a plea deal, or drop the charges altogether.

Today:
OpenAI Wants to Talk About The Federalist Papers
NEWS | 06 September 2026
And the AI boom has already generated enormous amounts of wealth in just a handful of tech companies—including OpenAI itself. Dean Ball: Fundamentally, political power is the geographically bounded ability to wield the monopoly on legitimate force and violence. Ball: I think the AI industry has actually been pretty good stewards, all things considered. No surprise that I’m saying this, because I’m from the AI industry, but there’s a reason that I am working in it. The AI industry might have to do things that are not in its interest.

Top Stories:
Why So Many Men Are Unraveling
NEWS | 06 September 2026
You’ve got men responding to these changes by bowing out, and then you’ve got these other men who are responding by spiraling. Why is it that so many men are unraveling these days? But I also tell this wider story of unraveling men failing to adjust to changing times. You’ve got men responding to these changes by bowing out, and then you’ve got these other men who are responding by spiraling. Men falling off cliffs; men leaving their babies on restaurant conveyor belts; men being terrible at sex, you know.

World:
A Movie Can’t Be Just Its Own Thing Anymore
NEWS | 06 September 2026
The director Adam Wingard was, once upon a time, a master of the cheap thrill. Onslaught initially suggests a more back-to-basics turn for the director, a return to R-rated indies that are unencumbered by cinematic universes. That mission, however, seems to have been a little corrupted by what Wingard’s been working on in the meantime. Rebecca Hall, another Godzilla alum, is Dr. Kammler’s domineering wife, Hanna—a stiletto-clad, cigarette-smoking badass boasting some mysteriously derived authority. Perhaps Onslaught will be a big enough hit to get a similar treatment, even on a smaller scale.

Current Events:
Introducing: The Permanent Questions With David Brooks
NEWS | 06 September 2026
Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTubeHow do you find your purpose? There are a lot of podcasts about the latest developments in politics and finance, health and wellness, entertainment and tech. The Permanent Questions is a new show about the topics that never go away. Each week, the Atlantic staff writer David Brooks speaks with the world’s deepest thinkers about matters of enduring human concern. The Permanent Questions premieres on Sunday, September 13, and new episodes will appear every Sunday after that.

News Flash:
Photos of the Week: Nomad Games, Pushkin Puppet, Lunar Simulation
NEWS | 06 September 2026
Scott Olson / GettyAn aerial view shows the likeness of Dolly Parton carved into a corn maze at All Seasons Orchard in Woodstock, Illinois, on August 28, 2026. Plans for the tribute to Parton, who died on August 25, had been in the works for nearly three years before being finalized in January. The maze was cut into the corn earlier this summer. A portion of the proceeds will go to Parton’s Imagination Library.