Welcome to The Light, your quiet hour of reflection.
Twenty-nine states are asking a federal judge to reach into Instagram and Facebook and remove the very mechanisms designed to keep you there — the infinite scroll, the autoplay, the algorithm tuned not to inform but to hold. It is, at its heart, a question about whether attention belongs to us or to the platforms we wander through.
From screens to schoolrooms, the conservative majority that Moms for Liberty helped build on the Sarasota County school board four years ago has quietly come undone. Their endorsed candidates lost the seats they once flipped, a reminder that cultural movements, however forceful in their moment, are always in conversation with the communities they seek to shape.
And then, a gentler story — science has named a newly discovered groundsnake after Slash, the guitarist of Guns N' Roses, who is, it turns out, a devoted lover of reptiles. There is something quietly wonderful about a person known for electric noise finding his truest kinship in the patient, unhurried world of snakes.
That is this hour's reflection. Carry the light gently.
