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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What Bluesky Tells Us About the Future of Social Media</strong> - The new platform aims to be a decentralized alternative to Twitter. The vibe there is mostly like that of a Portland coffee shop. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/what-bluesky-tells-us-about-the-future-of-social-media">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Parents Who Fight the City for a “Free Appropriate Public Education”</strong> - Children with disabilities have a constitutional right to accommodation in public schools. Securing those rights can bring their families to a breaking point. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/the-parents-who-fight-the-city-for-a-free-appropriate-public-education">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Dont Say You Havent Been Warned About Trump and 2024</strong> - CNNs awful town hall with the former President heralds a disastrous election year to come. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/dont-say-you-havent-been-warned-about-trump-and-2024">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Chicagos Unlikeliest Mayor, Brandon Johnson</strong> - The former union organizer makes the leap from protest to politics. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/chicagos-unlikeliest-mayor-brandon-johnson">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>W.G.A. Strike: Why Your Favorite Shows Could Go Dark</strong> - Michael Schulman talks with Laura Jacqmin, a veteran TV writer and a Writers Guild strike captain. Plus, the comedian and essayist Samantha Irby in conversation with Doreen St. Félix. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/wga-strike-why-your-favorite-shows-could-go-dark">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Could the US have helped avert the crisis in Sudan?</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4_endioJa61MW4BXiHXiGJDF51s=/0x0:3548x2661/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72280690/1139270273.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
A Sudanese protester walks past a recently painted mural during a demonstration near the army headquarters in the capital, Khartoum, on April 24, 2019. | Ozan Kose/AFP via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The debate over the USs failures in Sudan, explained.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="23SZgU">
In 2019, Sudan briefly<strong> </strong>held out hope. After <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2019/4/11/18305358/omar-al-bashir-sudan-president-military-coup-protests-women">mass protests</a>, the military arrested and <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2019/4/11/18306002/sudan-news-bashir-coup-protests-khartoum-auf">overthrew</a> Omar al-Bashir, who had brutally run Sudan for three decades. Though in the aftermath the military shakily shared power with civilian leaders, that ended two years later when military leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Sudanese armed forces launched a <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/10/29/22751437/sudan-coup-protests-al-burhan-hamdok">military coup</a>. The US engaged with the new military government.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MW396V">
Now, al-Burhan is <a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/23712710/sudan-war-khartoum-burhan-hemedt-rsf">battling a rival military leader for control of Sudan</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cBytqE">
Over the past month, conflict between al-Burhans Sudanese armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces, an irregular militia led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who goes by Hemedti, has <a href="https://reports.unocha.org/en/country/sudan/">displaced more than 730,000 people</a>. More than 600 people have been confirmed killed and over 5,000 injured; the real numbers are likely much higher. Airstrikes and street fights in the capital of Khartoum continue, as the battling forces defy ceasefires. The conflict is “likely to be protracted as both sides believe that they can win militarily and have few incentives to come to the negotiating table,” national intelligence director Avril Haines <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/4/us-intelligence-chief-sees-protracted-fighting-in-sudan">told the Senate</a> last week.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EItWrn">
Now, as a humanitarian emergency looms over Sudans conflict, a debate has broken out as to whether the US could have handled the situation in Sudan differently — with significant implications for what comes next, and potentially big impact on US policy in Africa and the Middle East. Despite President Joe Bidens campaign pledge to put <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/11/17/23423031/why-america-cant-seem-to-quit-saudi-arabia">human rights in the center of foreign policy</a>, the Biden administration has struggled to articulate a rights-driven approach.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qEJdT6">
There are valid critiques of the US and international communitys role in Sudan since the 2019 change of power. Not enough punitive measures were taken against the generals when they massacred protesters in June 2019 or when they ousted the democratic government. The US <a href="https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-africa-sudan-khartoum-96e7b33b6e1045fce01189e81b36814a">froze $700 million of aid</a> after the 2021 coup and worked with international partners to suspend development lending and debt relief to Sudans government, though the generals were not personally sanctioned.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WkwN3U">
“It was a real deep lack of imagination, and a real misunderstanding of democratic transitions in the context of Africa,” says Khalid Mustafa Medani, chair of the African studies program at McGill University. “That is not only naive in terms of how transitions work, but its also a misreading of the strength of civil society in Sudan.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YlGlvA">
But its not clear whether the US could have done much to prevent a coup in Sudan that halted the grassroots democratic movement or ongoing violent conflict. There have been at least <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/2/5/22919160/coup-guinea-bissau-africa-burkina-faso-sudan-why">seven military coups</a>, plus other coup attempts, in Africa in the past couple years. And the Sudanese generals crushing of protest is a mirror to the outcome in Arab states that had overthrown military leaders in the 2011 Arab Spring.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="raEgAx">
The series of events in Sudan reveals the limits of US influence. “The overall impression is this is a power struggle between Hemedti, Burhan, and their institutions that would have been very difficult for any country alone or in concert to prevent, when each sees the other as an existential threat,” says Jeffrey Feltman, who served as the USs special envoy to the Horn of Africa from 2021 to 2022.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QC8Mz5">
His successor as special envoy says that the US did everything it could have, and had only bad options, forced to make deals with a military known for its heinous crimes. “At the end of the day, we had to include the military in the dialogue,” David Satterfield, a career diplomat, told me. “And I would argue to you right now, if there is ever an opportunity to return to a path towards restoration of a civilian-led government, youre going to have to talk to the military then as well.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8jk9eV">
In effect, this was the argument that won the day in 2021 among the Biden administration and shapes its policies today.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r5nsYZ">
“I dont think the US played its hand really well. I also dont think that if the US had played its hand really well, that it would have necessarily averted a disaster,” says Michael Wahid Hanna of the International Crisis Group. “Its like nostalgia for a mythical past that never existed.”
</p>
<h3 id="kHDy9f">
What the US has been up to in Sudan
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="48z6o4">
One of the strongest critiques of the Biden administrations policy toward Sudan is that the country wasnt a priority.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ngVVVm">
When the Biden administration convened a summit with African leaders in December, it did not invite Sudan, in part because of the countrys military takeover. The countrys future did not figure prominently into meetings and events at the summit, according to summaries <a href="https://www.state.gov/africasummit/">published by the State Department</a>. And Sudan was not a centerpiece of policy discussions during President Bidens visit to Saudi Arabia in July 2022, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/07/16/joint-statement-following-the-summit-of-the-leaders-of-the-united-states-and-the-gulf-cooperation-council-gcc-countries/">according</a> to <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/07/16/joint-statement-following-meeting-between-president-biden-and-egyptian-president-abdel-fattah-al-sisi-in-jeddah/">diplomatic</a> <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/07/16/joint-statement-following-meeting-between-president-biden-and-president-of-the-uae-sheikh-mohammed-bin-zayed-in-jeddah/">readouts</a>, despite the Middle East and Gulf countries in attendance at the Riyadh summit having sway in Sudan.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="e3za4U">
In December 2022, the US, United Nations, African Union, and regional groupings <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/us/politics/us-sudan-democracy-war.html">worked</a> with the Sudanese military to compose a framework agreement to transition to civilian rule. The document itself, according to <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/sudan/critical-window-bolster-sudans-next-government">Crisis Group</a>, wasnt bad. But many of the grassroots protest groups were not involved. Critics noted how it did not offer mechanisms to hold the generals to account.
</p>
<div>
<div class="c-image-grid">
<div class="c-image-grid__item">
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Pompeo sits on the left of the photo on a low white couch, as al-Burhan sits in a matching white chair on the right. Behind both are drawn curtains in a large room." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wqevEURi0DFoYMnNwomaEkJleoo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24653229/GettyImages_1228198629.jpg"/> <cite>Sudanese Presidency Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meets Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, chair of the Transitional Military Council, on August 25, 2020, in Khartoum, Sudan.
</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<div class="c-image-grid__item">
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Phee, in a blue suit, stands on the left of the photo, shaking hands with Dagalo, in military fatigues. Both wear white masks and are surrounded by beautiful furnishings." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Qji9t3AiGNsgR3W_wSBQUxT10ws=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24653231/GettyImages_1241164818.jpg"/> <cite>Sudanese Presidency Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Molly Phee, the US assistant secretary of state for African affairs, meets with Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, in Khartoum, Sudan on June 7, 2022.
</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yWad3f">
“Were working incredibly hard in Sudan … with civil society to work toward a civilian transitional government,” Judd Devermont, Bidens top Africa adviser, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp0Fa7AbhMg">said</a> in February.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y1bjN5">
But the conditions for civil war came into place during the previous US administration.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LtCBsO">
After Bashirs overthrow, in June 2019, the Sudanese military <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/11/18/they-were-shouting-kill-them/sudans-violent-crackdown-protesters-khartoum">killed</a> more than 120 protesters and seriously injured about 900. There has been no accountability, and the Trump administration <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/10/accused-of-indifference-trump-team-set-to-appoint-sudan-advisor-khartoum-violence-protests-east-africa-diplomacy-state-department/">did little in response to the massacre</a>. One of the few arenas where Trumps team meaningfully deployed leverage against Sudan was in urging the country to normalize relations with Israel as part of Trumps Abraham Accords effort. In exchange, the US <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/12/14/946207797/sudan-who-once-sheltered-bin-laden-removed-from-u-s-terrorism-list">removed</a> Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in December 2020.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="N8I9Mu">
The USs tendency to play footsie with the Sudanese military in those two years reinforced the conditions that sparked todays fighting.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JRNYvi">
Then the Biden administration, according to analysts, <a href="https://prospect.org/world/will-biden-put-pressure-on-sudan/">failed to put pressure on the generals</a> in October 2021 when they detained Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. (Though they agreed to a deal a month later that <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/11/21/22794556/sudan-coup-protests-prime-minister-reinstated-democratic-transition">reinstalled Hamdok as the head of a “technocratic government</a>,” Hamdok resigned in January 2022, recognizing the failure of that deal.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="su9OB9">
Activists say the US <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/02/03/sudan-coup-us-hamdok-democracy-transition-military/">should have quickly implemented targeted sanctions</a> against Sudans military in those months. The US was even <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/03/sudan-military-coup-khartoum-us-influence/">reluctant</a> to refer to al-Burhans military takeover of the country as a coup.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="98LunP">
Feltman, now a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, says that measures against Sudans generals after the coup should have been a priority.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dTLDcS">
“The value would have been that the Sudanese civilians would have seen our actions match our words, in terms of trying to promote a civilian-led democratic transition,” he told me. “Refraining from imposing any punitive steps on generals bought time, but it didnt buy us the type of goodwill from them to really promote a civilian transition.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TNANiJ">
Still, its not clear whether sanctions would have deterred the generals. Sudanese civil society was organized and active, but continually repressed by the military. Despite US efforts, democratic transitions in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia have been elusive.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aALHMM">
Another key moment of US policy relates to the failure to anticipate how <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/sudanese-talks-hit-roadblock-over-security-sector-reform-2023-03-30/">security sector reform</a> — consolidating Sudans military and militias under one centralized umbrella, including al-Burhan and Hemedti — would invariably <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/20/sudan-civil-war-biden-burhan-hemeti-foreign-policy/">lead to conflict</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0fjH4Q">
Such reform was necessary for Sudans transition to democracy, but the timeline was rushed and the process unplanned. Medani says a fatal error was “the notion that security sector reform, accountability, issues of justice, and the dismantling of a deep state could occur and be agreed upon in one year.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="22cO6h">
The US also <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/03/sudan-military-coup-khartoum-us-influence/">outsourced</a> much of its policy to the Gulf countries like the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/28/analysis-uae-egypt-closer-to-different-sides-in-sudan-conflict">United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia</a>. But the future of Sudan was never a priority for those countries, where countering Irans influence, the war in Yemen, and other conflicts took precedence. But by ceding much to them, the US diminished its own agency.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="S14TO9">
“The incompetence and short-sightedness was ridiculous, and also the inability and unwillingness to use American power to influence the allies of Saudi Arabia and the UAE is an astronomical mistake,” Medani told me.
</p>
<h3 id="LB9IdJ">
The debate around the US in Sudan, explained
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XkTVdc">
Just three days after the two rival military leaders began warring in Sudan, Feltman <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/18/sudan-civil-war-generals-negotiations/">published</a> an essay for the Washington Post arguing that the United States and its partners got burned by putting too much faith in the generals.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="grEgqp">
It was a rare, scathing criticism from a recent alumnus of the Biden administration. That has crescendoed into a growing chorus of voices saying that the US screwed up. The “United States seems curiously mute or even absent,” columnist Lydia Polgreen <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/02/opinion/sudan-civil-war.html">wrote</a> in the New York Times. “Washington and its allies in the West have prioritized the voices of those people with guns over the people in the civilian, civil society leadership of the country,” Cameron Hudson, a former CIA analyst affiliated with the CSIS think tank, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr1evJDFVJk&amp;t=3s">told Deutsche Welle</a> recently.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AJCLBY">
<a href="https://www.state.gov/briefing-with-senior-state-department-officials-on-the-situation-in-sudan/">I asked the State Department</a> how they respond to these criticisms.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6PhUv6">
A senior official said its “confusing when were told that we havent been pressing the generals” and described how the US “mobilized extraordinary economic pressure on the generals” against Burhan and Hemedti when they overthrew the democratic government in 2021. The senior official said they were part of a long line of “American officials from different agencies who have stood by the side of the Sudanese people and used US power and influence to press the generals to respond to the aspirations of the Sudanese people.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6HI5wU">
Satterfield, who served as special envoy for the Horn of Africa last year, says that the Biden administration did the best it could. “We tried all the tools available to us that were practicable and legally possible,” he told me.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ckD5jI">
Though critics of the Biden administration are arguing that the US should have taken a stronger line against the generals, that might not have been doable. Much of Hemedtis assets are non-traditional, notably in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sudan-gold-exclusive/exclusive-sudan-militia-leader-grew-rich-by-selling-gold-idUSKBN1Y01DQ">gold</a>. He trades billions annually with the <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/55662/sudan-the-central-role-of-the-gold-trade-in-its-politics/">United Arab Emirates</a>, which would be unlikely to implement sanctions against the Sudanese warlord. “The reach of sanctions would have been meaningless. You would have antagonized both of them at a time when they were indeed interlocutors for us, the international community, and achieved zero,” Satterfield, who is now at Rice University, told me.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Women, some with signs and one with a megaphone, walk in a city street with crowds of onlookers. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/VL-CCTwA_ZsLatAIa_lKX8q-FCk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24652953/1241734581.jpg"/> <cite>AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Sudanese women take to the streets of the capital Khartoum, as they join the ongoing protests against military rule, on July 6, 2022.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9jOnIf">
Satterfield said he talked “continuously” with Sudans grassroots activist groups, “with the aim of shaping them into a coherent force that could, through and with the UN, present a unified and reasonable position.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Lz5Xtu">
That is not the consensus. “Americans missed an opportunity in the sense that they thought that their pragmatism was going to be the most effective,” says Medani. “They didnt understand that, despite the divisions within civil society, it really was the only balancing act that could actually guarantee that kind of transition.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rUOeU5">
The lack of US leverage led the State Department to focus on engaging Sudan through partner countries and international organizations.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TNB2wq">
As for the criticism that the US paid too much attention to the generals: “Listen, if the generals dont want there to be a transition, theres no transition. They have the guns, they have the power,” Hanna of International Crisis Group explained.
</p>
<h3 id="i4sYhR">
What the US could do going forward
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="scCoAG">
For now, a ceasefire is the most urgent priority. The rival factions have been negotiating in Saudi Arabia. “The two combatants still believe they can win,” Satterfield told me. “Until they have concluded that they can only lose, this is going to continue.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0tp5aI">
On Thursday, the State Department announced it had helped broker an <a href="https://www.state.gov/jeddah-declaration-of-commitment-to-protect-the-civilians-of-sudan/">initial commitment</a> between Burhan and Hemedtis forces to allow for some humanitarian measures, like the delivery of aid, withdrawing troops from medical facilities, and allowing for burials.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mCnl8Y">
“The negotiations were very tough” and a broader cessation of hostilities is “going to be a step-by-step process,” said a second senior State Department official. “Weve also talked about steps that the civilian actors could take now to prepare to effectively participate in discussions when they go to that expanded format.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lyiGPv">
The current Horn of Africa envoy, Mike Hammer, has been more focused on Ethiopia. This week, he <a href="https://www.state.gov/special-envoy-for-the-horn-of-africa-mike-hammer-travels-to-los-angeles-california-and-santa-fe-new-mexico/">travels</a> to the West Coast to meet with leaders in the Ethiopian diaspora. Victoria Nuland, the top policy leader at the State Department, told a <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?527987-1/state-department-usaid-leadership-testify-sudan-conflict">Senate hearing</a> on Wednesday that the US ambassador to Sudan, John Godfrey, is “likely to play a stronger role in some of the regional diplomacy and global diplomacy that we need on Sudan.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XcuZRk">
This division underestimates how easily Sudan could become a regional issue. “If youve restricted the special envoy for the Horn of Africa to just Ethiopia, you have undermined the purpose of having a special envoy that can look broadly, regionally,” Feltman told me.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2puHI3">
In this melting pot of external interests, the concerns go far beyond Sudan and to the potential spillover effects, especially as thousands of refugees flee Sudan. As neighboring countries get involved and may pick their own winners, new regional dynamics will likely exacerbate the situation. If Egypt takes a stronger side, then Ethiopia is likely to take the opposite side, given their conflict over the new Nile dam.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7VePrk">
Plus Hemedti may be able to reinforce his militia by drawing upon combatants from his own ethnic group across the continent and widening the conflict to the Sahel region. “So you could imagine a situation in which fighters are recruited from as far west as Mali,” political scientist Mai Hassan of the University of Michigan <a href="https://pomeps.org/covid-and-gender-in-the-middle-east-s-12-ep-24">said</a>. “Each new day brings us closer to these worst-case scenarios.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Iuzizp">
Feltman says that even with the benefit of hindsight, its not clear whether different US policies could have changed the trajectory. “Theres an overestimation of the US role, and an underestimation of the agency of the local actors,” he told me.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lWioMk">
But that doesnt mean the US is powerless to influence change at this critical juncture for Sudan. “There has to be a graceful exit for these generals who have proven unable and unwilling to take the steps that would lead to fulfilling the aspiration of the Sudanese people for democratic, civilian-led government,” Feltman said. “That has to be a unified message, not from just the United States, but from neighbors.”
</p></li>
<li><strong>The fallacy of new ideas, and why we want them anyway</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A cluster of mermaids drawn in various styles to show different iterations throughout history." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/w3lYMecofA13e6LaHIu0JQySqjM=/254x0:1694x1080/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72259325/2Spot.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Cristina Spanò for Vox
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Could we ever really tell a new story about a very old mermaid?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Jh6JhS">
<em>Part of the issue </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23698278/everything-old-is-new-again"><em><strong>Everything old is new again</strong></em></a><em> from </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight?itm_campaign=hloct22&amp;itm_medium=article&amp;itm_source=intro"><em><strong>The Highlight</strong></em></a><em>, Voxs home for ambitious stories that explain our world.</em>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zqRh6x">
“Originals,” of course, rarely are.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iak6zm">
In 1989, a redheaded mermaid made her big-screen debut. She wanted to be part of the above-surface world, where people walk around on (what do you call em?) feet, to wander free on the sand in the sunshine. She fell in love with a handsome, kind prince. After some terrifying obstacles and a near-miss, they married. Ariel got her feet.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="akp6Us">
For Disney, <em>The Little Mermaid</em> was a big hit, the start of a new era for the studios animated entertainment. She launched a hot streak that would continue through the 1990s: <em>Beauty and the Beast</em> (1991), <em>Aladdin</em> (1992), <em>The Lion King</em> (1994), <em>Pocahontas </em>(1995), <em>The Hunchback of Notre Dame</em> (1996), <em>Hercules </em>(1997), <em>Mulan</em> (1998), and <em>Tarzan</em> (1999). They were hits then, the early films in particular, and form a foundational plank in billions of lives. A tremendous percentage of people walking around on the planet can sing snatches of “Part of Your World” or “A Whole New World” or “Circle of Life” at the drop of a hat.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="7yXq0e">
<q>Disney seems determined to make sure its most beloved movies feel like the emblem of a world thats run out of ideas</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GUZICs">
Yet 30 years after these films defined an era, Disney seems determined to make sure its most beloved movies — including <em>The Little Mermaid</em> — feel like the emblem of a world thats run out of ideas. One by one, theyre all being remade into “live-action” versions (a misnomer, unless you believe the <em>Lion King</em>s magicians taught a bunch of wildlife to talk) that are in many ways identical to the originals, except not animated. The songs are re-recorded, the parts re-cast, some new bits are added. In the new <em>Little Mermaid</em>, Ariel is played by the young Black actress Halle Bailey, an innovation thats both a welcome iteration on a story and a tacit acknowledgement of the overwhelming whiteness of most of Disneys history.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NCILi5">
New, the films are not, mostly to their detriment: the songs are the same, the story beats maintained, because who wants to see their childhood messed with too much? Strangely, their existence could imply that the originals are unwatchable today — which, of course, is both ridiculous and vaguely insulting, and everybody knows it. Theyre obviously unnecessary. Which doesnt keep audiences from seeing them. Search the internet for “why is Disney remaking all of their films,” and the answer you get, most often, is “<a href="https://screenrant.com/why-disney-remake-animated-movies-live-action/">because they make a lot of money</a>.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mM1bSE">
To call the originals “originals,” though, is wrong, sort of. Each followed a familiar Disney template: an old fairy tale or folk tale with some disturbing undercurrents gets scrubbed up a bit, made suitable for children but enjoyable for adults, draped in some of the catchiest tunes youve ever heard and capped with an inevitable happy ending. Each is an adaptation of an older, much-told story. <em>Beauty and the Beast</em> draws from an 18th-century French fairy tale, and also quotes a <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038348/">1946 Jean Cocteau film</a>. <em>Aladdin </em>comes from <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34206/34206-h/34206-h.htm"><em>One Thousand and One Nights</em></a>, a collection of Arabic folk tales framed by Scheherazades desperate attempt to stay alive. <em>The Lion King </em>is mostly Hamlet, but with sprinklings of the Bible and a bit of <em>Bambi</em>. The stories come from novels and history, mythology and pulp. They are adaptations, new iterations of old stories. Plenty about them innovates on their source material, but they arent “new,” not really.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="An 1800s ink and watercolor drawing of mermaids in rough seas, with two in the foreground clinging to a rock as a ship approaches, one singing and the other playing a lyre." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XDWajlCi77RrzAoaTjiEa4QIA4Y=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24599284/159830483.jpg"/> <cite>DeAgostini/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Lorenz Frolichs illustration for Hans Christian Andersens fairy tale “The Little Mermaid.”
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7G8B1L">
Ariel, too, preexisted Disney, though she didnt have a name. Back then, she was the protagonist of Hans Christian Andersens 1837 story “<a href="https://andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheLittleMermaid_e.html">Den lille Havfrue</a>,” an unnamed young mermaid who longs to be human. She wants an eternal soul, which she can only get by marrying a human. When mermaids die, they turn to sea foam, with no persisting soul. So she turns her eyes to the world above the waves, where she finds an indifferent prince who jerks her around a lot. He marries someone else, and she goes to his bed to kill him, but instead sacrifices herself, jumping into water and turning to sea foam. Her sacrifice, however, is rewarded by the spirits of the air, who give her the chance to earn her soul through performing a few centuries of good works.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9lCdq4">
Its a far less happy tale than in Disneys telling, its unnamed protagonist given what she wants but only through great labor. Andersens “The Little Mermaid” is neither morality tale nor heroic romance. In fact, <a href="https://lithub.com/dear-internet-the-little-mermaid-also-happens-to-be-queer-allegory/">scholars agree</a> it was probably Andersens expression of anger and longing for Edvard Collin, the son of his patron, upon the occasion of Collins marriage to a young woman.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hZcLn7">
Andersen said that his story had no model. That wasnt strictly — or even kind of — true. Beings that were half-woman and half-fish had been part of Nordic ballads and folklore as early as the medieval era, when they turned up in songs and stories, sometimes as helpers to sailors. Furthermore, a few years before “The Little Mermaid,” Andersen had written another story entitled “Agnete go Havmanden” (or “Agent and the Merman”), which also turned on the matter of its subjects immortal soul. That story, in turn, was based on a Danish folk ballad handed down across generations.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="W0ae2v">
Even the idea of a mermaid is far from unique to the chillier regions of Europe. Human culture seems to have a distinct attraction to the idea of a water-dwelling spirit thats partly woman, partly fish, often mystical or divine, frequently associated with fertility. <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/mermaids-myth-kith-and-kin/">Scholars have chronicled</a> mentions of mermaid-like creatures in ancient written records as far back as the third century BCE. The Syriac fertility goddess Atargatis was described in the first century BCE as having “the face of a woman, and otherwise the entire body of a fish.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Qz6OGC">
Whether or not Andersen was aware, theres a whole bevy of mermaid-adjacent creatures throughout the worlds cultures. There are the sirens of the <em>Odyssey</em>, who are actually half-bird, half-woman, and lure sailors to their deaths. Centuries after Homer wrote about them, they became conflated with mermaids, and are frequently depicted as having fish tails. Or theres Mami Wata, the water goddess pervasive throughout African folklore, who brings fertility and wealth and is tied to lust. From Iran to Indonesia, fertility and prosperity are embodied in spirits and goddesses, usually with feminine attributes, that live in water.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8zppoZ">
Theres a more murderous variation, too, who seems to lurk in the background of Andersens story. (We might properly think of her as a very, very distant antecedent of the antagonistic mermaids in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAMKwDsfUeU"><em>Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken</em></a>.) The 16th-century physician, alchemist, and philosopher Paracelsus proposed the existence of a creature called an “undine,” one of the four elemental beings, a spirit inhabiting water. The idea gripped European imaginations. An undine can gain an immortal soul if a man falls in love with her. If he leaves her, however, she has to kill him, and she may die too. Paracelsuss conception wasnt invented from whole cloth; he seems to have melded the European folklore figure of <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/Melusine/">Melusina</a>, a woman who is a fish from the waist down, with a 14th-century High German novella entitled <em>Peter von Staufenberg</em>, in which a magical woman kills her human lover when he marries another woman. Undine is a remix.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="An antique colorized photo shows a young woman crouched over the body of a man, among rocks at the edge of the sea." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/yj9isENv0qSVfEHMfgERi6t3p6U=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24599311/1137136898.jpg"/> <cite>LMPC via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
A lobbycard for the 1916 film <em>Undine</em>, starring Ida Schnall.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PPcw4D">
In 1811, Baron Friederich de la Motte Fouqué made of Paracelsuss undine a wildly popular novella, entitled <em>Undine</em>, the story of a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/undine-mythology">water spirit</a> who marries a knight in order to gain an immortal soul. Fouqué mixed the undine with some occult philosophy derived from Paracelsuss other work, and also maybe an opera entitled <em>Das Donauweibchen</em>, or “Danube mermaid.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="29zAs8">
<em>Undine</em> was such a success that it spawned dozens of derivations. Here are just a few: E.T.A. Hoffmann and Albert Lortzing both wrote librettos based on Fouqués novella, in 1816 and 1845, respectively — decades before, and then after, Andersens little mermaid entered the world. Composers flocked to the tale, with figures as eminent as Tchaikovsky taking a crack at it; he composed his own <em>Undina</em> opera in 1869. In 1892, Maurice Maeterlinck wrote the play <em>Pelléas et Mélisande</em> based partly on <em>Undine</em>, and Maeterlincks play in turn was adapted into a 1902 opera with music by Claude Debussy. A 1916 silent film explored the story. In 1958, the eminent choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton premiered a ballet entitled <em>Ondine</em>, based also on Fouqué, with legendary ballerina Margot Fonteyn in the lead role.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="W8K9ZY">
The undine — who is soft and yielding until deserted, and then dangerous beyond belief — is both sister to and antithesis of Andersens little mermaid, and thus a forerunner of Ariel. Yet by the time Disneys mermaid swam on screen, the danger had been stripped away from her, handed to the sea-witch Ursula. Theres no moment when you fear that Ariel will murder Prince Eric. That wont happen in the remake, either.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mmD9YF">
So decide for yourself. Was Andersens mermaid without model? Or was it a new idea? Was it a tired remix and reboot of what came before? Or is she part of a natural process, a progression borne out through time?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uJ4y9u">
Furthermore, if this is simply the way of things, why does Disneys seemingly bottomless drive to make “live-action” remakes of its animated “originals” feel so creatively bankrupt?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fprxIo">
Do they make you, too, feel like were living in a culture thats just run out of ideas?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="F0PHgP">
“Every piece of art is made with reference — overt or not, conscious or not — to the traditions, practices, and possibilities of its genre, and so is in dialogue with other work,” A.O. Scott points out to me. Until recently the New York Timess film critic, Scott has watched, and reviewed, more remixes and reboots than most people will see in a lifetime. He makes the case in his book <em>Better Living Through Criticism</em> that all art is, in a sense, criticism — a work that builds and comments upon other works of art — and that criticism in this sense is itself art.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5QQJbD">
“This isnt to say that a reboot or imitation <em>cant</em> be an original or critical work,” he says. The history of art is, after all, a history of remakes and reboots, paintings that take styles and symbols from the past and interpret them, sometimes in profoundly original ways. “But in those cases its the assertion of an individual style, the imposition of a personal will, on the material that makes the difference.”
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="fuhTGK">
<q>Andersen isnt being <em>new.</em> But he is being <em>original</em>.</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GQ5frW">
So when Andersen uses folklore, legends, and the writings of a 16th-century alchemist to tell the story of a little mermaid, he isnt being <em>new.</em> But he is being <em>original</em>. His personal will — in this case, thwarted desire for a man who would never love him back — is imposed on the material, shaping it into something related to but different from the stories told by Fouqué or medieval ballad singers or Homer or people in Africa and Indonesia.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zQXeDI">
Spend enough time around human stories, and you start to realize that all of culture seems suspiciously like variations on the same few ideas, archetypes, and arcs that we have, since our earliest ancestors, relied upon to make meaning from the world. Andersen is doing the same. So is Disney.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lbsOFt">
Art, however, is more than its ideas, its “content.” Theres something more than just content that attracts us to art, to stories. In the most enduring works, we are drawn to the evidence of a humans sensibilities and proclivities and obsessions and passions exerted on the material. Yes, William Shakespeare based most of his plays on stories and histories that predated him. But the hook to see Shakespeares <em>Richard III</em> wasnt (and still isnt) that you want to see the familiar events of Richards life played out in front of you once again so you can remember them. Its the language and the rhythm, the way the tale unspools, the themes and their interpretation. What we see on stage is a creative intelligence — that of the writer, and of the director, too. Its the source of the old axiom: art isnt just <em>what</em> its about, but <em>how</em> its about it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="izFC3X">
Of course, we havent come to the end of new ideas. Humans are inexorably creative, coming up with new ways of looking at the world, new ways of reinventing old human obsessions, of making meaning of our lives, all the time. We are creatures who remix and invert and mash up and imagine. As a wise man once said, there is nothing new under the sun.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7bwQrw">
So why do things feel different now? Why do I expect so little from Disneys live-action remakes? Or the latest reboot of a sitcom from the 90s? Or the millionth installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Why does it feel like the kind of movies we were watching and celebrating in 1967 and in 1999 would be plainly impossible to make today?
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="An image of Halle Bailey as a mermaid, under the sea." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Xs13xGHSea6AHrhWJ8RNFZt-h-g=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24599313/mermaid.jpg"/> <cite>Disney</cite>
<figcaption>
Halle Bailey as Ariel in the 2023 “live-action” remake of <em>The Little Mermaid.</em>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qkj2Yw">
In my professional career as a critic, Ive seen plenty of shifts in the art on offer. Im not naive enough to adopt an end of history attitude; the market goes in cycles, and I hope the independent-film heyday of the late aughts will return some day.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="O8VZU2">
That said, its hard to deny that the kind of movies we were watching and celebrating 30 years ago <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/1/3/18157860/1999-top-movies-box-office-fight-club-american-beauty-toy-story">feel markedly different</a> from the glut of familiar entertainment now. The culprit, I think, is simple: the “new” entertainment were offered by corporations today is filtered through an assertion of ownership over the ideas therein. We live in an entertainment culture dominated by movies and TV and video games, and who knows what else, drawn from “existing IP” by risk-averse companies. Ideas with a built-in audience and a proven market value are favored over the risk of a remix that has a different ending, a daring take, a complex or frightening element thats not in its source material. Now, ideas are owned by a company, which gets to dictate who can do the remixing and reinventing, and along which lines, and who can sue if the fence gets jumped.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rd9u8Y">
“IP is an artifact of the marketplace,” Scott says. “IP is about who has the right to exploit material, and that person is never an artist, but always a corporate entity looking to extend its brand and limit what can be done with certain images and stories, and who can do it.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="I0xEEo">
Certainly, intellectual property laws exist for a reason. They can, at their best, encourage creativity and the sharing of new ideas by allowing creators to benefit from their work. In a market-driven world, trademarks and copyrights protect creativity.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WwWUUJ">
But increasingly, the new stories on our screens dont, and cant, become part of our commons, fertilizing a field for us to plow and plant with our own versions molded by our own creative intelligences — or at least, not if we fear a lawsuit (or fan outrage). Yes, film and television have been dominated by adaptations of stories owned by corporations since the dawn of the moving image. But theres axiomatically more of it now than ever before. And in a world where the simple tools for creativity are easily accessible to ordinary people, not just studios who can afford expensive equipment, the lockdown on stories, and the insistence on constant regurgitation of the same stuff with the same predictable outcome, feels particularly egregious. Particularly stale. Particularly like weve stifled our culture into stasis.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kmAKXL">
Is it really new ideas were looking for? Or do we yearn for the ability to be surprised, to fall in love with new versions of old stories that speak to our time?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Wfb8uI">
Human nature doesnt change, but the world in which humans live does. And our world presents us with particular challenges and fears. Fragmentation and alienation from one another. Technological advancements that challenge what it means to be human. New ways to conceive of our identities. A looming sense that nature is not within our control.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="TxNXM8">
<q>Something within us wants to hear the old stories told in new ways</q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GKSwgI">
What were looking and longing for when we complain of stagnancy in the culture isnt some wholly new idea. Instead, I think, something within us wants to hear the old stories told in new ways — not just converted from hand-drawn animation to more realistic computerized versions with the same story beats and songs, but with something to say to our age.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yKpbLt">
Art like this can be scary and threatening and makes people complain when it challenges their comfort, and thats why companies dont do it. Dont look to Disney for that kind of innovation, that kind of meaning-making; they seem to have abandoned it decades ago.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZZnknL">
The art that endures out of our age, I think, will be made by people who sense how to harness the old romances and myths and figures that frighten us — the water-spirits, the partly-human, partly-something-else creatures that lurk around the edges of our species subconscious — and make them speak to our new world, and the world our children will live in, too. Art makes meaning from chaos, the same as it always has. There are artists with fresh imaginations who break through the fence. Its incumbent on us to be ready.
</p></li>
<li><strong>Everything old is new again</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A figure holds their finger in the air. Their head is a lightbulb with the recycling symbol inside. Flowers and a bird surround the figure." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ZGePaQXu4Da3tjIrA3floMXBs4s=/226x0:1666x1080/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72280675/CristinaSpano_NoNewIdeas_Cover.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Cristina Spanò for Vox
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Is it possible to be truly original anymore — in your own life, in commerce, in art?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1NaybJ">
Were in a cultural moment where it feels like so much is being rehashed, repackaged, and resold to a captive audience. This is certainly the case in entertainment, where the Hollywood reboot machine is the driving force behind what makes it to our screens; even “original” programming is frequently built from familiar storytelling tropes and formats. The same kind of recycling — sorry, <em>remixing</em> — holds true in pop music.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ettJdm">
This carries over into matters of business and politics with just as much resonance. And when it comes to lifestyle topics like dieting, parenting, and even sex, we wind up circling the drain and repackaging old trends and ideas as hot new fads, too.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OCRHX8">
What makes newness, or novelty, or originality, so important in the first place, particularly in a society that heavily prioritizes individual comfort and choices? Are we in a uniquely not-new moment, or has it actually always felt this way?
</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="ychhL0"/>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A cluster of mermaids drawn in various styles to show different iterations throughout history." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/MHrW4PyZ8LFGsHgIFhjotq6aKcg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24630032/2Spot.jpg"/> <cite>Cristina Spanò for Vox</cite>
</figure>
<h3 id="QOLupP">
<a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23668199/fallacy-new-ideas-original-story-little-mermaid"><strong>The fallacy of new ideas, and why we want them anyway</strong></a>
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tIQp0o">
Could we ever really tell a new story about a very old mermaid?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="N6EYPi">
<em>By Alissa Wilkinson</em>
</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="Z62zJB"/>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A cartoon drawing of two figures riding in battle tanks, facing each other, yelling at one another through bullhorns. A laptop sits in the background between them. The laptop screen reads “XXX.”" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/IOl-G4ji6RrceNwlQv2C1po--fU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24630262/3Spot.jpg"/> <cite>Cristina Spanò for Vox</cite>
</figure>
<h3 id="lp2WLg">
<strong>The return of the porn wars </strong><em><strong>(Coming Tuesday)</strong></em>
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="V3vI5m">
How todays fight over pornography is rooted in a 40-year-old feminist schism.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nP0SQK">
<em>By Constance Grady</em>
</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="ygZkQj"/>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Row of parents holding babies with speech bubbles above their heads. They are all offering the same advice to new parents." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Vo9pWaxb3xxLIovbzvaAT3lSXvM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24630385/5Spot.jpg"/> <cite>Cristina Spanò for Vox</cite>
</figure>
<h3 id="iDER1r">
<strong>From banning hugs to gentle parenting, how are you supposed to raise kids, anyway? </strong><em><strong>(Coming Wednesday)</strong></em>
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="piM15a">
The endless cycling — and recycling — of parenting advice.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cqNjat">
<em>By Anna North</em>
</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="ieuIG7"/>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A cartoon drawing of a large figure sitting proudly on top of several people, who are struggling to hold the weight. The scene looks like a king on a throne with two bitcoins in place of arm rests." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KZSpLxZnJF6wsRAoUkjBijDfw5E=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24630061/4Spot.jpg"/> <cite>Cristina Spanò for Vox</cite>
</figure>
<h3 id="LwS7GY">
<strong>Crypto: New. Fraud: Old. </strong><em><strong>(Coming Thursday)</strong></em>
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5i1yyS">
When you democratize finance, you get the good and the bad.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lc4tkl">
<em>By Emily Stewart</em>
</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="JipfNj"/>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A figure stands on a stage, which looks like a $100 bill, surrounded by showy rays of light. Audience members below reach their hands toward the stage to show their fandom." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AjAdHvTIPEuOnFUfNs-Hs5k1UkE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24635258/1Spot.jpg"/> <cite>Cristina Spanò for Vox</cite>
</figure>
<h3 id="nhVVwa">
<strong>The billionaires guide to self-help </strong><em><strong>(Coming Friday)</strong></em>
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NlkYoC">
Self-improvement is old. Whats new is the bootstrapping mythos and toxic positivity of the very rich.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fve35E">
<em>By Whizy Kim</em>
</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="2Dd4j4"/>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jW6hDf">
<strong>CREDITS</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="otp9Bk">
<strong>Editors: </strong>Meredith Haggerty, Alanna Okun, Lavanya Ramanathan, Julia Rubin<br/><strong>Copy editors/fact-checkers:</strong> Elizabeth Crane, Kim Eggleston, Tanya Pai, Caitlin PenzeyMoog<br/><strong>Additional fact-checking: </strong>Anouck Dussaud, Matt Giles<br/><strong>Art direction: </strong>Dion Lee<br/><strong>Audience:</strong> Gabriela Fernandez, Shira Tarlo, Agnes Mazur<br/><strong>Production/project editors:</strong> Lauren Katz, Nathan Hall
</p>
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</div>
<div id="8eFsli">
<div id="money_pixel_page_level_exception">
</div></div></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Dhoni — the ultimate outsider who became Chennais own</strong> - The most remarkable thing about the CSK captain is just how unremarkably normal he is</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Keep Rohit and Kohli fresh for Tests and ODIs, try IPL performers like Tilak, Jaiswal, Jitesh in T20Is now, says Ravi Shastri</strong> - The likes of Jaiswal, Jitesh, Tilak and Rinku Singh have all done well in the IPL and would be pushing for regular slots under Hardik Pandyas captaincy</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>IPL 2023, LSG vs MI | Lucknow looks to halt Mumbais momentum in crucial clash</strong> - Both teams will be looking to get out of the danger zone as eight teams remain in the play-off contention</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>IPL 2023 | Missing out on Varun Chakravarthy still hurts: CSK coach Fleming</strong> - On the loss against KKR on Sunday, Fleming said CSK did not read the conditions correctly</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Morning Digest | Kharge set to pick Karnataka CM; key Turkey election heading for runoff, and more</strong> - Heres a select list of stories to read before you start your day</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SSLC results on May 20, Plus Two on May 25</strong> - Schools will reopen on June 1</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Go First insolvency: NCLAT to pass order on aircraft lessors petitions on May 22</strong> - A two-member Bench headed by Chairperson Justice Ashok Bhushan on May 15 reserved its order after completing the hearing on the the three petitions</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Cyclone Mocha damages over 230 houses in Mizoram</strong> - A total of 5,749 people in more than 50 villages were affected by the powerful winds</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Registration plates: three months needed to select manufacturers, Kerala govt. tells HC</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Sachin Tendulkar invests in Hyderabads Azad Engineering</strong> -</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Erdogan leads as Turkey heads for election run-off</strong> - Turkeys president says he will win five more years in power, after taking a first-round lead.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Austrian train plays Hitler speech over loudspeaker</strong> - Staff and passengers were “upset” by the incident, for which two people have been charged.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Swedens Loreen wins Eurovision for the second time</strong> - Loreen is the first woman to win twice, but Mae Muller fails to replicate Sam Ryders success.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine Eurovision acts city Ternopil attacked before performance</strong> - Ternopil was hit by Russian missiles before Tvorchi took the stage in Liverpool, authorities say.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Kyiv not attacking Russian territory - Zelensky</strong> - Ukraines president says in Germany that Kyiv is preparing to liberate its regions seized by Russia.</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The complicated history of how the Earths atmosphere became breathable</strong> - Biology, geology, and chemistry all worked together to make the present atmosphere. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1933473">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The challenges and promises of climate lawsuits</strong> - Suing governments and fossil fuel companies is a key tool in the climate change battle. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1938870">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>More evidence emerges that Saturns rings are much younger than the planet</strong> - In a way, weve gotten closure on a question that started with James Clerk Maxwell.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1938634">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Passkeys may not be for you, but they are safe and easy—heres why</strong> - Answering common questions about how passkeys work. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1939003">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Google to pay $8M settlement for “lying to Texans,” state AG says</strong> - “If Google is going to advertise in Texas, their statements better be true.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1939110">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Guy walks into a bar Sits at the bar and orders a drink. He pays with a $100 bill and refuses the change. Just when hes about to take a drink, this little guy - not even a foot tall - runs across the bar and knocks the drink out of his hand. The little guy jumps off the bar and disappears.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The bartender, really confused, pours him another drink. The guy pays him $100 and refuses the change again. Just as hes about to sip his drink, the little guy appears, knocks the drink to the floor and runs off again.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Now the bartender pours him another drink and asks him about the little guy. The patron says, "well, I found myself on a deserted island, with nothing but an old elaborate bottle. When I opened the bottle, this genie came out and granted me three wishes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
My first wish was to be back in civilization. And here I am. My second wish was to have a never ending supply of $100 bills. And heres one for you."
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The bar tender thanks for his third $100 bill and asks “what about your third wish?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“I wished for a 10 inch dick”.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/YZXFILE"> /u/YZXFILE </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/13hmlso/guy_walks_into_a_bar_sits_at_the_bar_and_orders_a/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/13hmlso/guy_walks_into_a_bar_sits_at_the_bar_and_orders_a/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A stoner rubs a bong and a genie comes out, offering three wishes.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The stoner says, “ok for my first wish, I want a six inch joint.” And poof! A joint appears and the stoner and genie sit down and smoke it together.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“For my second wish, I want a 12 inch blunt!” And poof! A blunt appears and the stoner and genie sit down and smoke it together.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Ok now for my third wish, I want an 18 inch monster roll with a THC-concentrate core!” And poof! The biggest blunt youve ever seen appears and the stoner and genie sit down and smoke it together.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Finally the genie gets up and slowly starts to stagger away. Then he stops, turns his head and smiles, and says, “ok man, one more wish”
</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/ReturnOfTheBanned"> /u/ReturnOfTheBanned </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/13hz369/a_stoner_rubs_a_bong_and_a_genie_comes_out/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/13hz369/a_stoner_rubs_a_bong_and_a_genie_comes_out/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Pavlov walks into a bar</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He orders a pint and sits at a table sipping his beer.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Suddenly the phone rings. “Oh shit!” Pavlov exclaims, jumping up to his feet. “I forgot to feed the dogs!”
</p>
</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/hiddenyogi"> /u/hiddenyogi </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/13hufje/pavlov_walks_into_a_bar/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/13hufje/pavlov_walks_into_a_bar/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>When I found out they had found a cure for dyslexia I was like…..</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Music to my arse!
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/_DogTits_"> /u/<em>DogTits</em> </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/13i3bzp/when_i_found_out_they_had_found_a_cure_for/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/13i3bzp/when_i_found_out_they_had_found_a_cure_for/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A farmer buys a young cock</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
As soon as he gets home it fucks all of his 150 hens. The farmer is impressed. At lunch, the cock again screws all 150 hens.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Next day its fucking the ducks and the geese too.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Sadly, later in the day the farmer finds the cock lying on the ground half-dead and vultures circling over its head. Farmer yells , “You deserve it, you horny bastard!”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The cock slowly opens one eye, looks up at the sky and whispers , " Shhhhhh, Theyre about to land!!!"
</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/HelpingHandsUs"> /u/HelpingHandsUs </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/13hed49/a_farmer_buys_a_young_cock/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/13hed49/a_farmer_buys_a_young_cock/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
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