Check out these recent articles from around the web:

Your Bubble is Not the Culture by Yair Rosenberg: “Many cultural critics live in an unrepresentative internet bubble. Much of the current divergence between elite discourse and popular preference can be reduced to a simple heuristic: Most critics are on Twitter; most consumers are not. If you examine the coverage proclaiming the end of Harry Potter or Lin-Manuel Miranda, or castigating any other wildly successful cultural product or personality, you’ll quickly spot a pattern: The only evidence they tend to cite is an assortment of tweets.”

How to think about war in Ukraine by Timothy Snyder: “An invasion of Ukraine would be a horror for Ukrainians, who have done nothing to provoke it.  Ukraine has about fourteen thousand war dead and about two million internal refugees from the last Russian invasion, and the suffering this time would be much worse.  The forces that Russia has deployed are capable of a terrifying level of destruction.  But invading Ukraine would also be an incredibly stupid move by Russia, and more than a few Russians are aware of this.  It would probably feel a lot like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979: seemingly successful at first, then system-destroying after a few years.”

How Men Burn Out by Jonathan Malesic: “If we want to end burnout, we have to address the problem for men as well as women. And to address men’s burnout in particular, we have to acknowledge that consciously or not, our society still largely equates masculinity with being a stoical wage earner. Not all men view themselves this way, and even men who don’t are still susceptible to burnout. But research shows that men and women tend to undergo burnout differently. The signature patterns in male burnout each reflect an enduring breadwinner ethos that does not serve men well.”

How the Pandemic Could Finally End the Mommy Wars by Stephanie Murray: “In the midst of this cultural awakening, it became increasingly clear that policies that support working mothers were long overdue. At the same time, the challenges of stay-at-home motherhood got more visibility. It became harder to deny that caring for children is work, even when it’s unpaid. That the very same conflict between domestic responsibilities and employment that makes life miserable for mothers in the labor force has been pushing others out of it for decades. And that belittling those domestic responsibilities only gives employers and public policymakers license to ignore rather than accommodate them.”

America’s Anti-Democratic Movement by David Leonhardt: “All of which has created a remarkable possibility: In the 2024 presidential election, Republican officials in at least one state may overturn a legitimate election result, citing fraud that does not exist, and award the state’s electoral votes to the Republican nominee. Trump tried to use this tactic in 2020, but local officials rebuffed him. Since then, his supporters have launched a campaign — with the Orwellian name “Stop the Steal” — to ensure success next time.”

Arrests, Beatings and Secret Prayers: Inside the Persecution of India’s Christians by Jeffrey Gettleman and Suhasini Raj: “In the past few years, Mr. Modi and his Hindu nationalist party have tugged India far to the right, away from what many Indians see as the multicultural foundation Nehru built. The rising attacks on Christians, who make up about 2 percent of the population, are part of a broader shift in India, in which minorities feel less safe.”

When They Warn of Rare Disorders, These Prenatal Tests Are Usually Wrong by Sarah Kliff and Aatish Bhatia: “The tests initially looked for Down syndrome and worked very well. But as manufacturers tried to outsell each other, they began offering additional screenings for increasingly rare conditions. The grave predictions made by those newer tests are usually wrong, an examination by The New York Times has found.”

My daughter was a gay Catholic who died by suicide. Here’s how the church must protect LGBTQ+ Catholics. by Joyce Calvo: “Nix told her not to tell anyone, especially her parents, who he believed would affirm her identity. Instead, he invited her to meet with him regularly. He gave her disturbing articles vilifying gay people and asked her to share intimate personal details about her sexual feelings. He insisted she could change her orientation. And that this would make her worthy to be a nun.”