Writing Fantasy Came Naturally. Reality Was Far More Daunting.

Three years ago, when Oregon voters approved a pioneering plan to decriminalize hard drugs, advocates looking to halt the jailing of drug users believed they were on the edge of a revolution that would soon sweep across the country. But even as the state’s landmark law took effect in 2021,…

Elon Musk released the raw computer code behind his version of an artificial intelligence chatbot on Sunday, an escalation by one of the world’s richest men in a battle to control the future of A.I. Grok, which is designed to give snarky replies styled after the science-fiction novel “The Hitchhiker’s…

In 2021, Chris Gloninger, a television weatherman in Boston with a passion for climate science, was approached with an intriguing prospect. Would he consider a job as chief meteorologist at a television station in Des Moines? It was a smaller market, and talk of global warming would be challenging in…

A strike by University of California academic workers over the treatment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators was temporarily halted by a Southern California judge on Friday after the university argued the walkout was causing students “irreparable harm.” The temporary restraining order, issued by Judge Randall J. Sherman of the Orange County Superior…

BEIJING — My generation of Chinese looked up to the United States. When I was a university student in northwestern China in the late 1990s, my friends and I tuned in to shortwave broadcasts of Voice of America, polishing our English while soaking up American and world news. We flocked…