Every Monday on Global Comment, we share the slow, thoughtful, considerate words that our brains – and souls – need but that it’s easy to miss in our busy world. We distil the best of the web and recommend just three links every week that you absolutely must see.
No fluff, no fuss, just three exceptional reads.
Here are this week’s recommendations:
My Parents’ Dementia Felt Like the End of Joy. Then Came the Robots (Kat McGowan / WIRED)
The robot-makers are a shaft of light at the bottom of the well. The gizmos they’re working on may be far in the future, but these scientists and engineers are already inventing something more important: a new attitude about dementia. They look head-on at this human experience and see creative opportunities, new ways to connect, new ways to have fun. And, of course, they have cool robots. Lots and lots of robots. With those machines, they’re trying to answer the question I’m obsessed with: What could a good life with dementia look like?
Al-Thakla—Arabic as the Original Mourner (Abdelrahman ElGendy / The Markaz Review)
How do you hold your grief in a language that’s been its main perpetrator?
Since October, something has fractured inside me. I’ve been attempting to write into the fracture. English, time and again, fails me. To my ears, its sounds have become linked to the daily degradation of my people: human animals, wasps and insects, savages, barbaric—a list which grows longer by the day. Suffocated, I find myself rushing to Arabic.
“I’m so sorry” (Layla Moran)
Visiting Netiv Ha’asara I met Roni, an Israeli peace activist who lost family on October 7th. Looking across at Gaza, I saw plumes of smoke, heard drones and gunfire and I broke down.
Walking back, Roni gave me a hug and said "I'm so sorry". I said it back and we cried. pic.twitter.com/SyGR1TucM1
— Layla Moran 🔶🕊️ (@LaylaMoran) March 8, 2024
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Image: Conner Eastwood