In a judgment that could help to shape how transparent the European Union must be on matters of public interest, judges on Wednesday said the bloc should not have denied a journalist’s request for text messages exchanged as a top official negotiated for coronavirus vaccine access. The ruling was issued by the European Union’s second-highest…
In 2012, when Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, cut a $1 billion check to buy the photo-sharing app Instagram, most people thought he had lost his marbles. “A billion dollars of money?” joked Jon Stewart, then the host of “The Daily Show.” “For a thing that kind of ruins your pictures?” Mr. Stewart called the…
Dear readers, I have a confession: I am suffering from an ailment that the younger ones call “brain rot,” the inability to think deeply after too much scrolling on my phone. These days, it’s tough to even finish a book. Plenty of people have this problem. So many, it has birthed a category of minimalist…
Hey, are you sure you want to send that to your group chat? Like, one thousand percent sure? Just checking. Because it’s been a strange week in the history of the group chat, those seemingly intimate text conversations that ping back and forth among friends and family members and, apparently, national security personnel. On Monday,…
Cassandra Orakpo had enough. Too much, in fact. Shopping on her phone had become so easy it had turned into a bad habit. She bought a cake decorating kit, thinking she’d make her own birthday cake, and never even took it out of the box. She has at least 80 bottles of perfume stored in…
It was 45 seconds too late, but the teacher had a plan. A gunman had just barraged her classroom with an AR-15, killing two students and injuring four others before turning to a classroom across the hall. The bullet-riddled walls were crumbling. Ceiling tiles were falling. If the shooter came back to kill more of…
A friend told me he recently removed the email app from his phone. “I used to love in the old days, coming home and checking email — there would be new messages!” he rhapsodized. I felt the pang. Not only would there be new messages, but often, in those early days of email, they were…