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.War is always a brutal business, but why is the Russian military so determined to inflict civilian casualties on neighboring Ukraine? I talked with a fellow Russia expert.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

There’s an episode of—please bear with me here—the children’s animated television series Peppa Pig in which Peppa, the fearless porcine queen of toddler hearts everywhere, meets another queen, one who lives in a palace and wears a crown, and might be, one of Peppa’s friends suggests, “the boss of all the world.” At first encounter, this queen sits on a throne, knitting; she speaks in clipped, commanding tones.

School is in session, pumpkin spice is in season, and Americans are heading to pharmacies for what may soon become another autumn standby: your annual COVID shot. On Tuesday, the White House announced the start of a “new phase” of the pandemic response, one in which “most Americans” will receive a COVID-19 vaccine just “once a year, each fall.

Photographs by Ash Adams, Nabil Harb, Timothy Ivy, Sylvia Jarrus, Stacy Kranitz, Chris Perez, Adali Schell, and Anne Vetterp[class*=”SaturdayNightArticleDek_”] {
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It’s a crazy system.The symbol of the state, the theoretical supreme executive of the country, is chosen by birth order within a single family. If that system produces an extreme dud, he or she may be maneuvered off the throne, as the late Queen Elizabeth’s uncle David—who reigned as Edward VIII—was maneuvered off in 1936. But Edward was recklessly irresponsible and weak-willed. The normal rule is: Next in line gets the job.