The lack of respect for the dead surprised even a soldier with the Wagner Group, Russia’s mercenary legion of former convicts that fought some of the bloodiest battles in the invasion of Ukraine. He looked at an ugly heap of wooden crosses and flower wreaths that had been pushed aside and cursed the authorities.“What are you doing? They died for Russia, and you are razing their graves to the ground.

One day in July, a developer who goes by the handle Teknium asked an AI chatbot how to make mayonnaise. Not just any mayo—he wanted a “dangerously spicy” recipe. The chatbot, however, politely declined. “As a helpful and honest assistant, I cannot fulfill your request for ‘dangerously spicy mayo’ as it is not appropriate to provide recipes or instructions that may cause harm to individuals,” it replied.

A press release that President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign issued last week offered a revealing window into his advisers’ thinking about how he might overcome widespread discontent with his performance to win a second term next year.

When I first became a stay-at-home dad, 15 years ago, people didn’t know how to categorize me: I was called a babysitter, “that guy at story time,” and even a woman a couple of times by shirttail relatives and friends. Their words were patronizing and unnecessarily feminizing, but they didn’t diminish my love of being a father. Over time, I raised three kids while my wife advanced in the advertising world. She negotiated contracts; I negotiated naptime.

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present, surface delightful treasures, and examine the American idea. Sign up here.You can tell a lot about a cultural moment by the words it invents. New phenomena, products, social movements, and moods require new language, and an idea without a name is unlikely to stick.

I’ve heard of three Thanksgiving plans that got canceled because of disagreements over the Israel-Gaza War. In one case, over the past few weeks, a guy watched as his brother’s wife posted pictures of cease-fire rallies on Facebook. Finally he texted her: “So you love Hamas now?” She was horrified. After doing Thanksgiving together for two decades, they will not be continuing the tradition this year.

People clad in green tracksuits stand nervously in a circle. They’re participating in a “test” on Squid Game: The Challenge, Netflix’s new reality competition series based on the streamer’s hit South Korean drama Squid Game, but they’re really just playing a game of chance. Each player must nominate someone to be eliminated, and then roll a dice. If they roll a six, the person they chose is eliminated.

This Thanksgiving, three generations of my family will drink a champagne toast, eat the hors d’oeuvres that my mother used to make and my grandchildren now help produce, tackle the turkey that will succumb to my inexpert slicing, and then move on to the pecan and pumpkin pies.But first, as we have for decades now, we will read George Washington’s 1790 letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island. The letter includes his declaration that the U.S.