There is a particular kind of silence that disturbs more than any scream. It is the silence of men walking without destination in mind, yet with absolute purpose in their hearts.
In Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital frozen in its terrible beauty, generators hum without cease. The city's churches no longer shine in the night, conserving a resource more precious than their gilded domes: electricity. Children attend school sporadically, when the power holds. In the apartments, thousands of families endure three hours of electricity in the morning and three in the afternoon—if they are fortunate. The rest is darkness and cold.
The moral architecture of our age collapses beneath the weight of atrocities that arrive with such terrifying velocity that human consciousness itself becomes overwhelmed. We find ourselves inhabiting a moment where catastrophes cascade faster than grief can accommodate them, where the editorial mind—that fragile vessel meant to process civilization's traumas—struggles merely to register the magnitude of each successive horror before the next arrives. The soul grows depleted; tears become a finite resource exhausted before their purpose is fulfilled.
The transformation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement into what increasingly resembles a paramilitary force reveals something fundamental about how democracies fail. It happens not through sudden coup but through incremental normalization—each transgression preparing the ground for the next, each violation establishing a new baseline of acceptable state violence.
Europe had fallen into a deep slumber beneath the shelter of an umbrella—a security guarantee provided by others. While the world fractured into unprecedented conflicts, Europe enjoyed a hard-won peace, purring contentedly as a unified, pacified market. Nothing proves more perilous than such complacent pacifism. No entity faces greater danger than a vast liberal democracy that promises only itself, recognizes no enemies, depends upon its neighbors for freedom, and whose sole preoccupation becomes being perceived as tyrannical by bored citizens. In Europe, absent the necessity of self-defense, absent any adversary, our liberties have begun to atrophy and decay.
Lithium, tantalum, niobium, zirconium… These minerals whose names we can barely pronounce have become indispensable for our industries—automotive and electronics—but also for our energy transition. We need them for everything: our batteries, our smartphones, our electric vehicles, and our solar panels.
A figure of the antisemitic "alt-right," this influencer is thriving on social networks thanks to hateful and misogynistic rhetoric. Idolized by vengeful youth, he advocates for a white, Christian America. Enough to make Trump look like a moderate.
It is acknowledged by many that the year 1887 was the high point of Paul Verlaine's suffering. It served as a turning point, symbolising the lowest of lows; the remaining years of his life were undoubtedly marked by crises, alcoholism, hospitalisation and financial difficulties. Nevertheless, the competing attentions of his two closest confidants, Eugènie Krantz and Philomène Boudin, the occasional help of last-resort sponsors, and his belated recognition as a ‘the prince of poets' by the young bohemian community ensured that he would not sink into the same depths of poverty and hopelessness that he had experienced during that tumultuous year.