Today's Liberal News

Even Netflix Can’t Escape the Black Mirror Treatment

Black Mirror has never been subtle. Charlie Brooker’s famously bleak Netflix sci-fi series has skewered the role of technology in our lives—dating apps, surveillance culture, social media—across its seven seasons; it has shown us how our overreliance on the convenience of the digital world can harm the real one. Black Mirror is also often self-referential to a fault, dotting its episodes with Easter eggs to other installments, building a large shared universe.

Life Before the Measles Vaccine

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Many people who contract measles don’t know right away that they have it. Days after infection, the symptoms can feel like the flu, until the tell-tale blotchy red rash emerges—usually near the hairline at first, later traveling down the biceps, abdomen, thighs, feet, hands.

What Recourse Does the Supreme Court Actually Have?

Since early February, when Vice President J. D. Vance posted on X that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” the United States has been inching nearer and nearer to the moment when the White House directly defies an order of the court. So far, that moment doesn’t appear to have arrived—in part because the Trump administration can’t quite commit to its own authoritarian posturing.

What Does the Literature of the Working Class Look Like?

The idioms of a language—its jokes, expressions, and well-worn wordplay—are windows into its speakers’ values and points of view. In both French and English, certain phrases—métro, boulot, dodo (“commute, work, sleep”), for instance, or nose to the grindstone—reflect a shared assumption about labor: that work is drudgery, eating up time and hindering happiness.

The Key to Critical Self-Awareness

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Know thyself is the most famous maxim of Greek philosophy, carved into stone on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Why? you might ask. The greatest philosophers and writers throughout history are more likely to tell you why not, so foundational is the idea of self-knowledge to a meaningful existence.

“One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This”: Omar El Akkad on Gaza & Western Complicity

We speak with the award-winning author and journalist Omar El Akkad, whose new book about the war on Gaza is titled One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. The book expands on a viral tweet El Akkad sent in October 2023, just weeks into Israel’s genocidal assault on the Palestinian territory, decrying the muted response to the carnage and destruction unfolding on the ground.

Trump Eyes Congo’s “Incredible Mineral Riches” as Armed Conflict Devastates Region

President Trump’s Africa envoy Massad Boulos has finished a tour of several East African nations, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he discussed a peace deal that could involve the U.S. tapping the country’s rich mineral resources, including cobalt and lithium. Several Western mining companies are already reportedly lined up to take part in the U.S.-backed mineral resources partnership.