Here are the five most interesting stories I found today instead of relying on social algorithms.
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- “Defeated in Syria, ISIS Fighters Held in Camps Still Pose a Threat” (The New York Times) – How do you stop the cycle of sprawling American military detention facilities serving as the cradles of the next wave of radicalization?
- “Little Spartas” (The Nation) – Historian David A. Bell looks at why radicalization happens in some places but not in others: “Radicalization, by contrast, tends to take place in relatively small, contained spaces, where like-minded people can exchange news and ideas, reinforce their shared passions, and magnify their outrage at their opponents.”
- “The Man Who Foresaw the West’s Fantasia” (The American Conservative) – Sociologist Daniel Bell asked, in the words of Gilbert T. Sewall, what if modernism and luxury encourage the breakup of values that make bourgeois comfort and order possible?
- “Captured USS Pueblo displayed as N. Korean propaganda prize” (Associated Press) – North Korea is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the capture of a U.S. Navy vessel. “She looks down with satisfaction at a crumpled American flag kept in a glass case on the bridge and waves her hand at copies of confessions hanging on the wall.”
- “Swiss mummy identified as ancestor of Boris Johnson” (Associated Press) – The mystery of who a mummy discovered in Switzerland decades ago was has been solved. It is the U.K. foreign minister’s great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, of course.