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World of Warcraft still exists in 2024. The game’s 10th expansion was released in August, and while it doesn’t command quite the same influence as it did during its early-millennium prime, millions of players still step through its portal every day. But the dynamic I’m describing—the complex social contract, the acquaintances waiting to be forged into brotherhood—is nowhere to be found. The chat box that used to chirp with shitposts, gossip, and hyperlocal banter is conspicuously barren. If you do partner up with someone for an adventure, words are rarely exchanged. When the final boss is toppled, everyone leaves the group and dissolves into the ether. It used to be something of a faux pas to play without a microphone, but I honestly can’t remember the last time one of my fellow dwarves has beckoned me to join a voice channel.

This is part of a shift that can be felt across video game culture writ large. Even though some of the biggest franchises in the world—Fortnite, Call of Duty, League of Legends—pit a server’s worth of players against one another in lethal combat, the softer interactions those places once fomented are on the decline. We are all in front of our computers, paradoxically together and separate, like ships passing in the night.

This is a difficult trend to prove empirically, but it certainly has been felt by lifelong gamers. There are multiple somber YouTube video essays about the lack of conviviality in multiplayer lobbies, and most of them bear titles that gesture toward an elemental wound in the culture. (One video, titled “Modern Gaming Is Becoming More and More Isolated,” has over 500,000 views.) A similar despondence has struck the domains of Reddit and GameFAQs, which have historically served as the premier watering holes for fans of the hobby. (“No one uses voice chat these days,” wrote one user. “People don’t chat in gaming anymore,” added another.) On a more macro level, about half of Americans are currently experiencing loneliness, particularly among millennials and Gen Z, who represent the industry’s primary consumers. All of this is evidence of a generation that has come to believe that a reliable source of intimacy—even if it’s down the scope of a sniper rifle—has gone awry. I would find it pathetic if I didn’t totally relate.

Driving the news: English professors across the country say college students are struggling to finish books, The Atlantic reports. That’s in part because middle and high school teachers have noted kids’ attention problem and started assigning poems, short stories or excerpts of books instead of full works.

Kids shows are getting shorter. Episodes of Bluey, one of the most popular kids shows, are about seven minutes long on average, Vulture notes. Pop songs are simpler, shorter and more repetitive to give them a better chance of going viral on TikTok and Instagram in snippet form, Forbes reports.

Zoom out: Studies have linked excessive screen time to problems focusing in kids.

All of us — including kids and teens — have a world of entertainment at our fingertips, and we can just keep scrolling if something doesn’t grab us.

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Food deserts are not an inevitable consequence of poverty or low population density, and they didn’t materialize around the country for no reason. Something happened. That something was a specific federal policy change in the 1980s. It was supposed to reward the biggest retail chains for their efficiency. Instead, it devastated poor and rural communities by pushing out grocery stores and inflating the cost of food. Food deserts will not go away until that mistake is reversed.

Congress responded in 1936 by passing the Robinson-Patman Act. The law essentially bans price discrimination, making it illegal for suppliers to offer preferential deals and for retailers to demand them. It does, however, allow businesses to pass along legitimate savings. If it truly costs less to sell a product by the truckload rather than by the case, for example, then suppliers can adjust their prices accordingly—just so long as every retailer who buys by the truckload gets the same discount. [...] The Robinson-Patman Act, in short, appears to have worked as intended throughout the mid-20th century.

Then it was abandoned. In the 1980s, convinced that tough antitrust enforcement was holding back American business, the Reagan administration set about dismantling it. The Robinson-Patman Act remained on the books, but the new regime saw it as an economically illiterate handout to inefficient small businesses. And so the government simply stopped enforcing it.

The ruling Georgian Dream party’s disputed victory in the country’s Oct. 26 parliamentary election, which was widely seen as a referendum on Georgia’s aspirations to join the European Union, has sparked major demonstrations and led to an opposition boycott of the parliament.

The opposition has said that the vote was rigged with the help of Russia, Georgia’s former imperial master, with Moscow hoping to keep Tbilisi in its orbit.

The government’s announcement that it was suspending negotiations to join the EU came hours after the European Parliament adopted a resolution that condemned last month’s vote as neither free nor fair. It said the election represented another manifestation of Georgia’s continued democratic backsliding “for which the ruling Georgian Dream party is fully responsible.”

European election observers said October’s vote took place in a divisive atmosphere marked by instances of bribery, double voting and physical violence.

Late in the game, Kalel Mullings broke away for a 27-yard run, setting up the Wolverines (7-5, 5-4) at Ohio State’s 17-yard line with two minutes remaining. The drive stalled at the 3, and Zvada came on for the chip shot.

Ohio State (10-2, 7-2, No. 2 CFP) got the ball back but couldn’t move it, with Will Howard throwing incomplete on fourth down to seal the Wolverines’ fourth straight win over their bitter rival.

Afterward an on-field brawl between the teams required the intervention of police with pepper spray.

Research shows that individual acts of kindness and connection can have a real impact on global change when these acts are collective. This is true at multiple levels: between individuals, between people and institutions, and between cultures.

This relational micro-activism is a powerful force for change – and serves as an antidote to hopelessness because unlike global-scale issues, these small acts are within individuals’ control.

• Rebels with the group Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have seized control of large parts of Aleppo, one of Syria’s largest cities, after a surprise offensive this week.
• The renewed fighting in Aleppo marks a new phase in Syria’s long-running civil war, which began in 2011 during the Arab Spring protests.
• The forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had previously held Aleppo, with the support of allies in Iran, Russia and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
• Russia has responded to the rebel offensive with air strikes, though its military resources are expected to be stretched thin due to its continuing war in Ukraine.

The quest to make Eastport energy resilient has put the city at the forefront of Maine’s renewable energy transition and made it a leader in energy independence work for remote communities in the state and beyond.

Now, a community-driven initiative is developing solar and tidal power to feed a microgrid. It would allow the island community to weather hours of outages, detached from the main electrical grid without the high costs and carbon footprint of diesel. The grant launched the feasibility studies and produced the plans for the transition that Eastport is in the middle of building out.

“This very small city on the very eastern edge of the United States is developing what would be a world-class energy facility,” said Nick Battista, the chief policy officer at the Island Institute, a Maine-based nonprofit that assisted Eastport in applying for the grant and is working to continue its implementation.

On the first floor, meanwhile, members of the Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition diligently put together kits to ensure that people who use drugs in Baltimore are as safe as possible. As the city experiences the highest fatal overdose rate in the nation, the nonprofit’s work is invaluable in fighting the crisis — one that has killed 8,000 residents in the last decade.

“Drugs and sex have been a part of human life since the beginning of time,” said Candy Kerr, the organization’s communications manager and policy advocate. “They will always be here. They should always be here. We are not enabling; people are doing these activities, and they’re going to continue to do them. We are going to make sure that they’re doing it in the safest way possible.”

The organization’s mission is to provide people who perform inherently risky acts with safer alternatives, whether it be clean syringes, stems or other supplies. Something such as abstinence, therefore, is neither a prerequisite nor an expectation.

Through a combination of mail-based services and boots-on-the-ground work, the organization has been able to foster relationships with thousands in the community, said services manager Rachel Luce.