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:
Trump’s Killing Spree: The Inside Story of His Race to Execute Every Prisoner He Could (Asawin Suebsaeng, Patrick Reis / Rolling Stone)
By 9:27 p.m. Bernard was dead. In that moment, he became the ninth of 13 people executed in the final six months of the Trump administration — more federal executions than in the previous 10 administrations combined. Of the 13, six were put to death after Trump lost the election, his Justice Department accelerating the schedule to ensure they would die before the incoming administration could intercede. Before Trump, there had been only three federal executions since 1963; in January 2021, Trump oversaw three executions during a single four-day stretch.
The executions, carried out in the name of law and order, took place at a time of peak lawlessness within the White House. While his administration killed prisoners at an unprecedented clip, Trump spent his final months attempting to overturn the 2020 election, culminating in the Jan. 6 ransacking of the U.S. Capitol. And though Trump did show some mercy on his way out the door, it was largely reserved for political cronies such as Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.
Why We Made Fewer Memories during the Pandemic (Jadine Ngan / The Walrus)
We might assume that our pandemic memories are missing because information entered our brains, then slipped from it—like a toy tumbling out of a clumsy toddler’s hands. However, it’s more likely that our brains weren’t storing that information in the first place. Morgan Barense, a University of Toronto professor and Canada Research Chair in cognitive neuroscience, explains that, to encode new memories and retrieve old ones, our brains use “event boundaries, or changes in context.” Those alert our brains to pay attention to our circumstances. In other words, we’re more likely to remember the events of a day if something out of the ordinary happens.
As the Actress said to the Bishop (Sandi Toksvig)
As the Actress said to the Bishop… #comeoutforlove pic.twitter.com/fIFJkGVZzr
— Sandi Toksvig (@sanditoksvig) January 26, 2023
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Image: Kevin Mueller