Reading

A 2023 Column Contest grand-prize winner, Laurence Pevsner’s Sorry Not Sorry investigates why we’re sick of everyone apologizing all the time—and how the collapse of the public apology leaves little room for forgiveness and grace in our politics and culture.

Last week, you probably got a New York Times alert saying that the pope had apologized. But Pope Francis didn’t really apologize—his spokesperson did.

The situation was a little odd. After a closed-door meeting of Italian Bishops, local papers reported that the pope had said gay men should not be allowed to train for the priesthood. Pope Francis supposedly argued that, while it was important to embrace everyone in the Church, it was too likely that a gay person might risk leading what he calls a double life—the idea of practicing both the priesthood and non-celibacy, including homosexuality.

On May 29 New Delhi was 52.9 degrees Celsius (127.2 F), only 1.5 degrees less than the world record from Death Valley.

Records are being set all over the world:

Mamenchisaurus: I know I shouldn’t, but I still find myself going through the picture books, looking at all the brachiosauruses and apatosauruses and brontosauruses—and knowing that I’ll never be in there. It’s hard to take. I mean, come on, my neck is huge. I’m basically all neck. When kids draw a diplodocus, they always go way too big on the neck, so nine times out of ten, what they end up with could be on my driver’s license. But when The Land Before Time was casting a “long-neck,” where was my phone call? It just makes me feel invisible, you know?

Utahraptor: I try to practice gratitude. When there’s an A-to-Z of dinosaurs needing to be done—for a song, maybe, or a bedspread—I’m pretty much nailed on for that. So people see me, sure… but I don’t feel seen. They clock the name and think they have me all figured out, but do they know the first thing about me? Hell no. For starters, I’m a Methodist.

Knowingly or otherwise, all workers who strike in Britain today — including the hundreds of thousands of nurses, teachers, doctors, civil servants, train drivers, and others who have taken industrial action in the past twenty months to defend their livelihoods — are following in the giant footsteps of the miners, who fought arguably the most […]

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

- by Steven Mithen

Read at Psyche

- by Roger Luckhurst

Read at Aeon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

We need to talk about what bombs do in war. Bombs shred flesh. Bombs shatter bones. Bombs dismember. Bombs cause brains, lungs, and other organs to shake so violently they bleed, rupture, and cease functioning. Bombs injure. Bombs kill. Bombs destroy. Bombs also make people rich. When a bomb explodes, someone profits. And when someone profits, bombs claim more unseen victims. Every dollar spent on a bomb is a dollar not spent saving a life from a preventable death, a dollar not spent curing cancer, a dollar not spent educating children. That’s why, so long ago, retired five-star general and President Dwight D. Eisenhower rightly called spending on bombs and all things military a “theft.” The perpetrator of that theft... Read more