Last spring in Kyiv, in the spartan second-floor office of the Center for Civil Liberties—which has just received the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize—I met the organization’s leader, Oleksandra Matviychuk. I didn’t know much about her then, and she was pressed between appointments, and the interview threatened to become the kind whose purpose neither side understands. But within a few minutes I realized that she was a remarkable person doing remarkable work.

Two Republican governors last month sent asylum seekers to the two most Democratic places they could think of—Martha’s Vineyard and the doorstep of Kamala Harris’s house in Washington, D.C. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas have made no secret of the message they were trying to send: Immigrants are a burden, and one that Democratic states should share.

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.President Biden has warned the Russians that the use of a nuclear weapon in Ukraine could lead to a wider nuclear conflict. He’s right to be worried—and he’s right to warn the Russians yet again not to take that fateful step.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

When I was living in Paris in 2018, a friend passed Annie Ernaux’s book Happening to me as if it were an envelope containing treasure. The memoir tells the story of the abortion Ernaux had in 1963, when the procedure was illegal in France, and, like nearly all of her books, it is an excavation of memory, of self, of the powers and the limits of writing.

About 40 percent of my first full-time job was dedicated to making GIFs—a skill I had professed to have during the interview process, and that turned out to be much harder than I thought. It took trial and error to figure out how to make sure the colors weren’t too weird, the frame rate too fast, the file too big.This was 2015, and GIFs had to be smaller than 1 megabyte before you could upload them to most social platforms.

To me, the true sign of fall isn’t apple picking, fuzzy sweaters, or leaves turning new colors. It’s the sudden urge—which typically emerges on sleepy weekend afternoons—to dig up a cookbook and start measuring and mixing ingredients for sweet treats. The practice can be a salve for anxiety and provides comfort in stressful moments. It’s also just really cozy.