1+ hour, 19+ min ago (627+ words) Your Vox Membership goes further this holiday season. When you buy an annual membership, we'll give one to someone who can't afford access. It's a simple way for you to support Vox's journalism and share it with someone who needs it. One of humanity's biggest achievements may be slipping away. Thanksgiving is traditionally a good time to start counting your blessings. And for years, hundreds of millions of people have had this to be thankful for: they live in a time that has made historic progress against the scourge of extreme poverty. And now it may be ending. That's the dire conclusion of a recent post by Max Roser, founder of the website Our World in Data. While Roser projects that the number of people in extreme poverty will decline by about 40 million over the next five years, he writes…...

2+ hour, 36+ min ago (1343+ words) Your Vox Membership goes further this holiday season. When you buy an annual membership, we'll give one to someone who can't afford access. It's a simple way for you to support Vox's journalism and share it with someone who needs it. An entrepreneur explains what's broken about America's system for skilled immigration. President Donald Trump has been walking a fine line when it comes to H-1B visas " the visa that high-skill foreign professionals apply for to work in the US. These visas often go to physicians, software developers, engineers, university professors, and other specialty professions. Earlier this year Trump proposed a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, a move that aimed to restrict the flow of legal immigrant workers into the US. But in a recent interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, the president defended the program and said H-1B visas were necessary "to…...

1+ day, 1+ hour ago (509+ words) Your Vox Membership goes further this holiday season. When you buy an annual membership, we'll give one to someone who can't afford access. It's a simple way for you to support Vox's journalism and share it with someone who needs it. The world is aging out of killing one another. One source of good news " favored both by me and, apparently, venture capitalists " is what's known as a "narrative violation." A narrative violation occurs when everyone thinks one thing, but the actual evidence suggests the opposite. And few narratives are more persistently violated than one common belief: "Violent crime is always going up." A weekly dose of stories chronicling progress around the world. Now, recently updated data from the World Bank looks at the picture from a global perspective and finds something astonishing. Between 2000 and 2023, the international homicide rate fell…...

1+ day, 2+ hour ago (1269+ words) Your Vox Membership goes further this holiday season. When you buy an annual membership, we'll give one to someone who can't afford access. It's a simple way for you to support Vox's journalism and share it with someone who needs it. The entire stock market, and therefore the entire economy, depends on it maintaining pretty impossible growth metrics. As the price of almost everything has increased, and American workers' wages have all but stalled, politicians like President Donald Trump have tried to ease our minds by telling us that the economy is "doing great" and that the stock market is booming. "Record high, record high, record high," Trump said at an event earlier this month in Florida. Still, despite what has been a good year for the stock market, it's hard to find a day in which a podcaster, influencer,…...

2+ day, 2+ hour ago (556+ words) Your Vox Membership goes further this holiday season. When you buy an annual membership, we'll give one to someone who can't afford access. It's a simple way for you to support Vox's journalism and share it with someone who needs it. From Trader Joe's totes to Starbucks Bearista cups, low-end items carry more meaning in the affordability era. A cuddly animal wearing a beanie should not incite violence. And yet, this is what occurred in some Starbucks shops earlier this month after the coffee chain released a limited line of teddy bear-shaped tumblers as a part of their holiday merchandise. For now, these glass critters are being sold on eBay, sometimes for exorbitant prices. Meanwhile, shoppers who managed to procure the Bearista cup in store are posting their wins. In the case of all these conspicuous or wearable commodities, the…...

3+ day, 2+ hour ago (846+ words) Your Vox Membership goes further this holiday season. When you buy an annual membership, we'll give one to someone who can't afford access. It's a simple way for you to support Vox's journalism and share it with someone who needs it. A practical guide to eating on Turkey Day. When it comes to the holidays, we all have different traditions. But there does seem to be one commonality when it comes to Thanksgiving: feeling absolutely terrible after working your way through the turkey and all those sides. Besides chewing our food, what are some other ways to set ourselves up for gastrointestinal success? Pasricha tells us on the latest episode of Explain It to Me, Vox's weekly call-in podcast. Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple…...

3+ day, 16+ hour ago (363+ words) Your Vox Membership goes further this holiday season. When you buy an annual membership, we'll give one to someone who can't afford access. It's a simple way for you to support Vox's journalism and share it with someone who needs it. There's still much we don't know, but the shooting could further inflame concerns about political violence in the US. Welcome to The Logoff: Two National Guard members were shot in downtown Washington, DC, near the White House on Wednesday afternoon. How is the White House responding? In a post to Truth Social, Trump described the shooting suspect as an "animal" who will "pay a very steep price." Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also told reporters Trump had requested 500 additional National Guard troops be deployed to the city. Vice President JD Vance, speaking at a military base in Kentucky, emphasized that…...

3+ day, 17+ hour ago (619+ words) Your Vox Membership goes further this holiday season. When you buy an annual membership, we'll give one to someone who can't afford access. It's a simple way for you to support Vox's journalism and share it with someone who needs it. An end to the war in Ukraine may not be possible as long as Russia's president is still in power." The 28-point peace plan is now a 19-point peace plan. But at this point, nobody seems to have leverage over Putin. Which is why the question of whether this war will end soon comes down to what terms Putin finds acceptable. This raises the depressing question of whether peace is possible at all as long as Putin is alive and in power. The Ukrainians may have little choice but to continue to engage with the US-led peace negotiations, but…...

4+ day, 1+ hour ago (231+ words) In Bangladesh, women's participation in the workforce is low, and only 7.2% of small businesses in the country are owned by women.* For generations, girls have been discriminated against just because they are girls. Too often, they are married off before finishing school, become mothers before they reach adulthood, and spend their lives being dependent [] With support from the European Union, women like Reshma are defining their own futures, proving they can lead, create, and rise on their own terms. For generations, girls have been discriminated against just because they are girls. Too often, they are married off before finishing school, become mothers before they reach adulthood, and spend their lives being dependent on their husbands. Reshma's story began like this. But she managed to change its course. She decided to start her own business by producing apple cider vinegar on…...

4+ day, 1+ hour ago (1614+ words) Your Vox Membership goes further this holiday season. When you buy an annual membership, we'll give one to someone who can't afford access. It's a simple way for you to support Vox's journalism and share it with someone who needs it. Imagine we had cheap and abundant energy. Some radical ideas are actually within our reach. What could you do with energy that's cheap, clean, and near unlimited? This is all speculation, but the pace of improvement in clean energy and the scale of its deployment put these ideas within the realm of possibility. Energy shapes the limits of what a society can build, sustain, and imagine, and the more of it we have at our disposal, the further we can push those boundaries. What we would decide to do with vastly more energy has huge implications for our politics,…...