‘…being good is hard if you live under an authoritarian regime. As the war rages on and anti-Russian sentiment grows, the temptation to see the Russian people as perpetrators rather than victims also grows. But to view them this way obscures something more fundamental: They too are victims, because they have been gradually stripped of their status as free moral agents. This is by design. Authoritarian leaders aim to implicate their own people in their crimes, which in turn allows them to both spread and dilute political responsibility….’

— Shadi Hamid, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and assistant research professor of Islamic studies at Fuller Seminary. via The Atlantic

‘The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that over 30 million cases of the bird flu have been detected in aquatic birds, commercial poultry, and backyard flocks as of April 19, spanning across at least 31 states. Because of this, health officials across multiple states are asking people to take down their bird feeders and baths to do their part to stop the spread….’

— via Lifehacker

‘Have you ever found yourself trying to analyze your own thoughts or feelings about something, only to make yourself more confused? The poet Theodore Roethke once wrote that “self-contemplation is a curse, that makes an old confusion worse.”

And there’s a growing body of psychological research supporting this idea. Thinking, on its own, is surprisingly effortful and even a little bit boring, and people will do almost anything to avoid it. One study found they’ll even shock themselves to avoid having to sit with their own thoughts.

This is a problem for a definition of authenticity that requires people to think about who they are and then act on that knowledge in an unbiased way. We don’t find thinking very enjoyable, and even when we do, our reflection and introspection abilities are rather poor.

Fortunately, our research gets around this problem by defining authenticity not as something about a person, but as a feeling….’

— via The Conversation

‘One of the more surprising footnotes to the awful story of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the transformation of the letter Z into a loaded symbol. Appearing first on Russian tanks and military vehicles, perhaps serving the practical task of distinguishing them from opposing forces, the symbol promptly migrated off the battlefield and into the public sphere, connoting support for the Russian regime’s aggression. 

 

It was a thorough transformation, and it happened with remarkable speed: “It took only a week,” the Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen noted earlier this month, “for the ‘Z’ to become the symbol of the new Russian totalitarianism.” In short, the letter Z (which doesn’t actually exist in the Cyrillic alphabet used in Russia) has been transformed and made toxic; it’s a remarkable example of how swiftly and decisively the meaning of a symbol can be completely reinvented, seeming at random….’

— via FastCompany

‘Does public artwork left in ruin impact community mental health?…’

— via Hyperallergenic

‘A federal judge agreed trump likely committed crimes. Will Merrick Garland?…’

— via Vox