Claudia Piñeiro’s Elena Knows, translated by Frances Riddle, is beautiful and devastating. Those are the same words I used to describe Daisy Hildyard’s The Second Body; I’ve somehow been picking up books that reach me in a particularly emotional way, and I’m not sure I like it. Stop making me feel things, literature! It’s painful! The Elena of the novel’s title is a woman in her 60s whose daughter, Rita, has recently died.

This is the 150th issue of my newsletter and I’m feeling anything but celebratory. Sorrow, apprehension, and dread is more like it. My sole subject today is the Israel-Hamas war — not the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, divergent historical narratives, or the toxic discourse around “apartheid,” “settler colonialism,” etc. I’m fixated on the littlest and least powerful Palestinians, and the largest, most commanding Jewish imperatives. Years ago, Elie Wiesel, perhaps the world’s pre-eminent Holocaust survivor, uttered words that echo now with stark urgency:

In an episode months in the making, Krystal Kyle & Friends’s Kyle Kulinski is joined by psychologist and political commentator Dr. Jordan Peterson. For Kyle, it’s the “perfect situation” of getting to speak with someone whose work in psychology and philosophy has been particularly interesting to him — but who differs from him significantly on most political issues. They’re here for a back-and-forth on everything from Twitter controversies to Trump, economics, liberal versus conservative mindsets, and interpreting the results of Kyle’s personality quiz.

J0th, 1994 was a magical day for the good people of Cincinnati, Ohio and Louisville, Kentucky. No one could possibly have known at the time, other than anyone familiar with the series’ dwindling box-office grosses, that that fateful day would mark the very final time a fella would be able to say to his gal, “What say you and me have a kissing date in the balcony of the theater showing the newest Ernest P.

Eryn SunnoliaEryn Sunnolia (she/they) is a queer writer living in Philly. Their writing has appeared in Electric Literature, HuffPost, Well+Good, and others. She also likes making quilts. You can find them at erynsunnolia.com or joynotes.substack.com. ncG1vNJzZmirpZfAta3CpGWcp51kjaa%2B2KeqrqaepLmqrQ%3D%3D