Credit (on left): Asimov Collective. Credits (center-left, clockwise): Shuyao Xiao; US National Archives; Charlie Riedel/ AP Images; Getty Images/ Anton Petrus. Credit (center-right): Thomas Presquet/ ESA. Credits (on right, top to bottom): Robert Duboise/ Wilhelmina Duboise/ Tampa Bay Times; Patapoutian Lab / Scripps Researcher Institute, La Jolla, CA.

This week’s collection:

• How the Guinness Brewery Invented the Most Important Statistical Method in Science
• To pee or not to pee? That is a question for the bladder — and the brain
• The 165-year reign of oil is coming to an end. But will we ever be able to live without it?
• The City Makes the Civilization
• You Can’t Turn Back the Clock on Genocide
• The Marked Man
• The Tower and the Sewer
• Haiti’s Sin of Resistance
• On the Crisis of Men
• The Insulin Empire
• Dominion

India’s gargantuan election is about to conclude. I am reminded of how many times people have willingly pedestalled would-be-fascists throughout history. Electing national shepherds under benign assumptions only to be led down malignant paths. Because reactionary politics are easier to adhere to in the face of failing institutions; scapegoating made much more digestible as a means to an end – a quicker path to socioeconomic prosperity. But the path is unsustainable, the suffering is incalculable, and the promised prosperity is a fantasy. It must be if it excludes segments of the populace.

What is happening in India is a microcosm of what is happening in many nations worldwide – a shift to radical populism that seeks victory through oppression, empowering those already in power, and tying the national sentiment to figures rather than democratic principles. The digital age, still in its infancy, has somehow made it easier to construct cults and disseminate charged doctrine rather than reinforce critical inquiry. On this, two writers from the East and West speak about a country where the idea of a republic is yet again on the ballot:

• The BJP’s Drive for Hegemony
• Elections in India: Caste, Islamophobia and Social Revolution

Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.

Not quoted below, but further reading on a society cannibalizing itself. The first four dispatches are from the past week, while the last is from 2014 but worth sharing alongside them. From the creator of Arab Labor, who tried to make it work before reluctantly departing with his children’s welfare in mind.

• Israel’s Problem Is Its Rotting Society, Not Benny Gantz
• Superlatives
• ‘Exterminate the beasts’: How Israeli settlers took revenge for a murder in the West Bank
• The BBC Is Afraid to Report the Facts About Israel’s War
• Sayed Kashua: why I have to leave Israel

The BBC and Jacobin articles are purposefully relayed together here, a dialectical presentation for your interpretation.