Every organization devoted to mass death needs a charmless, bespectacled, blank-eyed chief operating officer who inspires no one but keeps the gears of murder turning. Ayman al-Zawahiri was Osama bin Laden’s Himmler. President Biden and most Americans will see his death as just revenge for the three thousand innocents killed by Al Qaeda in the United States on September 11, 2001—and so it is. But I have to admit that Zawahiri’s end leaves me cold.

The United States killed the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a drone strike this weekend in Kabul. I already kind of miss him. Zawahiri came from an older generation of jihadists—he was 71—and was in many ways the kind of terrorist one wants. For a decade or more he had no known good ideas. He told young upstarts to shelve their own good ideas, and never got around to them. He was a black hole of charisma.

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.Would you rather watch a video of a man you don’t know rescue a sloth, or read your cousin’s take on the January 6 hearings? Meta is betting on the former.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
Of course Joe Biden has rebound COVID.

This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he 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.Last week, I asked, “Is there class prejudice in the United States? If so, describe how it works.”Our first response is from J, an educator who grew up in Texas in a family that was poor at times and middle class at others.

Writing about the dead is difficult business. Whenever I write about my mother, I spend a lot of time struggling to recall: How did she take her coffee? What music made her dance? When she laughed, did she throw her head back, like I do? My ability to answer these questions—to try to create an honest portrait of her on the page—is constrained by the five and a half years we spent together before she died.