This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.The incentives of social media have long been perverse. But in recent weeks, platforms have become virtually unusable for people seeking accurate information.First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:
The sociopaths among us—and how to avoid them
MAGA Bluey is stressing people out.

Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Question of the WeekMany observers are characterizing the recent attack on Israel as that country’s 9/11. On reflection, what did you learn from the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and America’s responses to it?Send your responses to conor@theatlantic.

Samantha Speiller, of Round Rock, Texas, started watching Bluey with her young daughter in the early months of the pandemic. Two years later, by then a dedicated fan of the wise and beloved Australian cartoon, she joined a Facebook group for Bluey memes.

Just as there are stages of grief, there are stages of war. Not yet two weeks after Hamas’s surprise attack, Israel is still in a raw, early stage. My colleague Graeme Wood, who arrived in Jerusalem this week, described it to me this way: “Israel is still reeling from the trauma of the attack on October 7. That manifests in a number of ways. And one is that there’s a certain amount of Israeli policy that is driven right now by wrath.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.The ongoing drama over electing a speaker of the House is not about governance. It’s about giving Republican voters the drama-filled reality show they voted for and want to see—even at the expense of the country.

Villagers in southern Lebanon have been heading north, fearing all-out war. Most schools are closed. Israel has ordered its citizens to vacate 28 towns along the border with Lebanon. The Israeli army has exchanged fire with Hezbollah—Lebanon’s Shia political and paramilitary group—every day since October 7, resulting in casualties on both sides.

Cameron Parish, Louisiana, used to be a nice collection of little coastal towns where the shrimping was good and the stars at night were better, James Hiatt told me. Hiatt lives just up the river, in Lake Charles, but he comes down to Cameron to be near the Gulf. He remembers when there were 1,500 people, a grocery store, and a Family Dollar in Cameron, the parish seat.

George Orwell is forever the patron saint of language and the ways it can become degraded in times of war—when a split occurs between what is being inflicted on human beings, on human bodies, and the words of ideologues who want to keep us from seeing “what is in front of one’s nose,” as Orwell famously put it.