England isn’t supposed to be this hot. Certainly not London. Contrary to popular imagination, it doesn’t actually rain that much here: We have fewer rainy days than Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, or Zurich. London is a city with a gentle, undulating climate; of wispy red sunsets and cloudy, gray days; where drab winters give way to soft springs and mild summers; and where drinking indoors almost always feels right and eating outdoors just a bit forced.

In September 2020, the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office published a hypothetical weather forecast for a mid-July day in the year 2050. Forty degrees Celsius in London. (That’s 104 degrees Fahrenheit.) Thirty-eight in Hull (100 degrees F). Thirty-nine in Birmingham (102 degrees F). These were preposterous numbers, never before seen in U.K. weather forecasts, much less felt in reality—until last week.

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.As monkeypox cases rise in the U.S., public officials are scrambling to balance concerns about stigmatization with the fact that the disease is largely affecting gay and bisexual men.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
The cause of the crime wave is hiding in plain sight.

Now that the world’s most powerful space telescope is finally up and running, we’re in for a constant stream of stunning images of the universe. Just a ton of galaxies everywhere, more detailed than you’ve ever seen them, and too many stars to count—all of it sparkling with an intensity that humankind hasn’t captured before.Not every interesting image from the James Webb Space Telescope is going to be a pretty picture, though.

When I first arrived in South Africa, in 2009, it still felt as if a storm had just swept through. For most of the 20th century, the country was the world’s most fastidiously organized white-supremacist state.