The e-commerce giant added at least nine new warehouses in the city over the past year as 2.4 million packages a day strained the nation’s largest urban delivery system
By Matthew Haag and Winnie Hu
NEW YORK — When the pandemic gripped New York City, it propelled an enormous surge in online shopping that has not waned, even in a metropolis where stores are rarely far away. People who regularly bought online are now buying more, while those who started ordering to avoid exposure to the virus have been won over by the advantages.
The abrupt shift in shopping patterns has made New York a high-stakes testing ground for urban deliveries, with its sheer density both a draw and a logistical nightmare.
It has also highlighted the need for…
A new service is designed to help formalize relationships that are typically forged through personal connections or cold DMs
By Taylor Lorenz
The business of influence is professionalizing. Content creators are signing to major talent agencies. In February, SAG-AFTRA, the largest union in the entertainment industry, expanded coverage to people who make sponsored content. And now, a new service wants to make it easier for creators to apply to work with brands, and for companies to hire them.
“We’ve created a simple way for brands to create what is essentially a careers page for influencers,” said 36-year-old James Nord, founder and CEO of Fohr. …
In the heart of coal country, the town of Rawlins will soon be home to one of the nation’s largest wind farms. But pride in the fossil fuel past remains a powerful force.
By Dionne Searcey
RAWLINS, Wyo. — The coal-layered underground helped bring settlers to this scrubby, wind-whipped part of southern Wyoming, where generations found a steady paycheck in the mines and took pride in powering the nation.
But now, it is energy from the region’s other abundant energy resource — the wind itself — that is creating jobs and much-needed tax revenues in Carbon County.
Despite its historic ties to coal, as well as local denialism about climate change, the county is soon to be home to one of the biggest wind farms in the nation.
Vicarious food shopping, from collectible Mini Brands to “Supermarket Sweep,” simulates a lost pleasure
By Amanda Hess
On my desk is a detailed miniature shaker of McCormick Crushed Red Pepper flakes. The bottle is small enough to pinch between my thumb and index finger; it looks as if it was made to fit the spice rack of an anthropomorphic hedgehog.
I keep it around for its brain-soothing properties. There is something oddly relaxing about a banal item inexplicably shrunken into a fetish object. …
Many employers are not making a decision until many workers are vaccinated. And some are making plans for “hybrid” work arrangements.
By Julie Creswell, Gillian Friedman and Peter Eavis
A year and a pandemic ago, over 100,000 people filled the central business district in Charlotte, North Carolina, pouring out of offices, including several recently built skyscrapers, and into restaurants, bars and sports venues. Then as the coronavirus sent employees to their homes, much of the city center quickly went quiet and dark.
The return of those employees to their offices has been halting and difficult. Last fall, Fifth Third Bank began bringing back workers but soon reversed course. LendingTree, which is moving from the suburbs to the city, is waiting for…
Mutual aid groups are evolving into a long-term effort to help with food, clothing and counseling. “It’s about building the world we want to see,” one volunteer said.
By Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura
NEW YORK — Ariadna Phillips was close to panicking. It was nearing midnight in the Bronx, and she was scrambling to find food for an older woman in the neighborhood who was going hungry after deliveries of federal food aid had run out.
For the past few weeks, Phillips, 40, who organizes a mutual aid group in the South Bronx, had been working frantically to gather enough food donations for those left in the lurch after a federal program stopped temporarily at the start of the year, and then again, a few weeks later, when it…
Regaining my sense of smell is tedious and slow, but I’m using the only therapy proven to work
By Tejal Rao
Back in Jamaica, when Trudy-Ann Lalor and her siblings caught a cold, their mother burned Seville oranges over a fire in the backyard, cut the charred peel away and gave them the hot, juicy pulp with sugar, to eat with a spoon.
It always made them feel better. Maybe it was the comforting aroma of the citrus, the deliciousness and warmth of the fruit, the dose of vitamin C. …
As jockeying begins for 2024, rank-and-file Republicans say they are most drawn to leaders who both pledge fealty to the former president and appear to showcase a distinct political identity
By Elaina Plott
ORLANDO, Fla. — Theoretically, Sen. Tom Cotton was hitting the right notes.
Midway through his speech to hundreds of conservative activists Friday, Cotton, a R-Ark., channeled former President Donald Trump as he castigated President Joe Biden’s immigration policies. “They have halted deportations for all illegal aliens,” Cotton said gravely, and falsely. “Murderers, rapists, terrorists, MS-13 gang members are not being deported.”
His cadence quickened: “They stopped building a wall around our border, and they put up a wall around your United States Capitol.” …
Frustrated with remote learning, parents in the Philadelphia area are running for office, suing, relocating and retreating to private school
By Dana Goldstein
Aquené Tyler, a mother and hair stylist in North Philadelphia, has been disappointed in her neighborhood’s public schools for many years. There were too few books and computers. Even before the pandemic, some schools were shuttered for asbestos removal.
Now her 9-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter have been learning online for nearly a year, even as masked children gather boisterously at local private schools. Tyler’s children are lonely, and Mya, who is in eighth grade, seems depressed and overwhelmed by her class work. She has begun seeing a counselor remotely.
So Tyler is planning a radical change…
A vote on whether to form a union at the e-commerce giant’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, has become a labor showdown, drawing the attention of NFL players, and the White House
By Michael Corkery and Karen Weise
Players from the National Football League were among the first to voice their support. Then came Stacey Abrams, the Democratic star who helped turn Georgia blue in the 2020 election. Actor Danny Glover traveled to Bessemer, Alabama, for a news conference last week, where he invoked Martin Luther King Jr.’s pro-union leanings in urging workers at Amazon’s warehouse there to organize. Tina Fey has weighed in, and so has Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Then on Sunday, President Joe Biden issued a resounding declaration of solidarity with the workers now voting on whether to form a…
