Well, that was a nice idea in theory. Paris held the first-ever Olympics opening ceremony to take place outside a stadium—and on one of the loveliest settings in the world, the Seine. Athletes paraded not by foot but by boat, waving flags from sleek cruising pontoons, as pageantry unfolded on bridges and riverbanks. The aquatic format promised to do...

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.The current political climate is suffused with nostalgia for supposedly better times. I remember my own childhood, and those days weren’t better—but they...

François-Xavier Marit / AFP / GettyFollowing the Parade of Nations on the Seine River, athletes and spectators watch as lasers light up the sky around the Eiffel Tower, at the Trocadero venue, during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on July 26, 2024.

This is Atlantic Intelligence, a newsletter in which our writers help you wrap your mind around artificial intelligence and a new machine age. Sign up here.Yesterday OpenAI made what should have been a triumphant entry into the AI-search wars: The start-up announced SearchGPT, a prototype tool that can use the internet to answer questions of all kinds....

Yesterday, NASA announced that one of its Mars rovers had sampled a very, very intriguing rock. At first glance, the rock looks much like the rest of the red planet—rugged, sepia-toned, dry. But it’s arguably the most exciting one that robotic space explorers have ever come across. The rock, NASA said in a press release, “possesses qualities that fit...

What makes someone a parent? It’s not the most pressing question facing the country. But in the days since President Joe Biden dropped his reelection campaign and endorsed Kamala Harris to be the Democratic nominee, Republicans have lobbed a personal and notably misogynistic attack against the vice president: that she’s unfit to be president because...