The left is increasingly winning within the Democratic party. But it still needs to prove that it can build general-election coalitions capable of beating Republicans

The ideological struggle within the Democratic party continued on Tuesday night with primaries in Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Virginia and Washington. The results showed an increasingly intense conflict within the party, with high Democratic primary turnout and bruising ideological battles up and down the ballot.

The Democratic electorate is shifting, becoming more progressive and more willing to challenge party leadership, but not as quickly or uniformly as many assumed.

(Atlantic)
Evoking an astonishing range of artists, the US singer follows up her huge hit Love Me Not with stylistic diversity – and lyrics that defy her doubters

It sometimes seems like no musical success in the 2020s is allowed to pass without some degree of online controversy. There are accusations that the artist in question is an “industry plant” – a phrase which, as far as can be discerned, can basically be applied to anyone with a manager or a label deal – or that there’s something deceptive about the way in which they’ve been promoted, or that they’re possessed of some other form of moral bankruptcy that reflects not merely on the performer but the people who like them. Which brings us to Love Me Not, an ostensibly harmless 2024 track by Chicago singer-songwriter Ravyn Lenae.

After enjoying a burst of online virality, it became a huge hit single, making the Top 5 on both sides of the Atlantic. Taken from Bird’s Eye, an album that also featured collaborations with Childish Gambino and Ty Dolla $ign, its blend of retro-soul styling, distorted guitar arpeggios and infernally catchy chorus was noticeably poppier than Lenae’s previous work: it came with a remix that featured British bedroom-pop star Rex Orange County. You could understand why fans of the glitchy, abstract R&B found on 2015’s EP Moon Shoes, or of her more neo soul-flavoured debut album, 2022’s Hypnos, might consider it a straightforward bid for mainstream acceptance. But you’d argue against it necessitating an online interrogation that, Lenae has suggested, involved not just “picking apart what kind of music I make” but “questioning my identity and Blackness”.

Former European heavyweights, investment projects and teams from tiny towns will liven up the top tiers

Absent from La Liga since 2018, Dépor were once part of a Spanish “big four” with Barcelona, Valencia and Real Madrid. The Galicians were title-race disruptors over a sustained period, finishing in the top three on nine occasions between 1993 and 2004 and winning the title in 1999. Had they not come up against José Mourinho’s Porto in the 2004 Champions League semi-finals, they might have been European champions too. Eventually, the established order prevailed and Deportivo slid into mid-table, then fell away completely – dropping into the regional third tier in 2020. It took four years to battle back to the second tier, but Dépor then leapt from 15th place in 2024-25 to earn automatic promotion last term. The golden era of Juan Carlos Valerón and Diego Tristan is long gone but the club are showing ambition, signing Mallorca keeper Leo Román and veteran striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang as they bid to hold steady in La Liga. Deportivo are not the only long-term absentees returning this season: Segunda champions Racing Santander are back after 15 years, while Málaga also went down in 2018 and fell into the third tier for a single season in 2023-24.

The palm-sized greengrocer is bright, loud and abundant, and has long been a collectible item for Australian children

• Revealed: the top 10 invertebrates of the year

Before marbles, stamps and trading cards, there were cicadas.

There are thousands of cicada species globally, but for Australian children the craze centres on one particularly collectible item: the greengrocer.

Proposals to convert skateparks, children’s play areas and basketball courts have angered residents

Aiwa Saito and her children are one of many families who were regulars at Barking Skate Park. But after skating there for more than five years, London’s only full-size indoor skate park closed on Sunday and will be replaced with padel courts.

Padel is one of the UK’s fastest-growing sports, according to the Lawn Tennis Association, and the plan to convert Barking Skate Park is the latest in a series of proposals across London. However, some plans that have sought to build pay-to-play padel courts on top of existing spaces have angered residents and provoked claims of gentrification and community displacement.

Een vreemde trend onder pikkeboeven teistert onze hulpverlening: bij de ene na de andere brandweerkazerne wordt ingebroken. Onder andere in Geffen, Vlaardingen en bij verschillende kazernes in Amsterdam zijn al meermaals spullen gejat. Levensreddende spullen, zoals de hydraulische scharen en 'spreiders' om auto's mee te slopen, om precies te zijn. Erg jammer want als onze brandweerlieden straks geen reddingsmiddelen meer hebben kan er niemand meer gered worden en dat is toch een beetje waar die lui voor bedoeld zijn, zeg maar. En waarvoor? Wie heeft er baat bij al die autoschaar? Wordt knippen het nieuwe ploffen? Wordt er op dit moment iemand hydraulisch opengespreid in een martelcontainer? Is inbreken bij de brandweer een rage op het schoolplein? Allemaal erg RAAR.

Was de software waarmee de investeerder de aandelen volstortte echt 100 miljoen euro waard? De Ondernemingskamer schorst de bestuurders en gelast een onderzoek.

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

This NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month takes us to a fantastical realm within our home galaxy, where piercing starlight and billowing winds sculpt dust clouds into inventive shapes. This scene is from the Carina Nebula, which lies just 7500 light-years away in the constellation Carina (the Keel).

Spanning roughly 260 light-years, the nebula is home to an incredible collection of objects, including the Cosmic Cliffs revealed in the first-ever Webb image release. The Carina Nebula is also the nearest high-mass star-forming region that allows astronomers to study the full range of star formation. This nebula houses some of the most massive stars in our galaxy as well as tens of thousands of protostars, offering a valuable opportunity to understand how stars shape their neighbourhoods.

The feature highlighted in today’s image, aptly called the Treasure Chest, looks right at home in this celestial sculpture garden. The Treasure Chest is what’s known as a cometary globule. A cometary globule is an isolated cloud of gas and dust with a dense, dark head and a sweeping tail. These clouds often somewhat resemble comets, but the Treasure Chest looks distinctly like a wooden chest with its lid wide open.

However, this chest doesn’t contain jewels or gold coins, but instead a compact cluster of young stars. These stars are responsible for the otherworldly glow coming from within the Treasure Chest, revealed by Webb’s sensitive Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). Researchers estimate that the Treasure Chest’s cluster contains about 70 stars, the most massive of which is a rare O-type star roughly 19 times as massive as the Sun.

The star cluster is likely around 1.3 million years old, though earlier estimates found it to be as young as just 100 000 years old. Because of its youth, the cluster is still deeply embedded within the dusty clouds of the Treasure Chest. The individual stars in the cluster are wrapped up in dust as well; astronomers have found evidence that many of these stars are surrounded by circumstellar discs. Over time, the brilliant starlight from these young stars will dissipate the surrounding cloud and reveal the entire cluster.

The key to the Treasure Chest’s sculptural shape lies outside this image: just 39 light-years to the northwest, as measured on the sky, sits Eta Carinae, the most luminous object in the entire Carina Nebula. Eta Carinae is a star system containing at least two stars, one of which is 100 times as massive as the Sun. This star alone is about 5 million times as luminous as the Sun. Adding to this intense radiation is the nearby star cluster Trumpler 16, which also contains several extremely hot massive stars.

The radiation and winds from these massive stars are largely responsible for the current appearance of the Treasure Chest, though the star cluster embedded within it is also eating away at the cloud from within. There’s some debate as to which came first, the cometary shape of the cloud or the star cluster it contains. The likeliest scenario suggests that the star cluster formed first in a cloud of gas that was larger than the Treasure Chest is today. Then, the powerful stellar feedback from nearby stars whisked away the less-dense gas, leaving behind only the denser gas that makes up the Treasure Chest.

With Webb, astronomers have carried out an observing programme (#5408; PI: Reiter) dedicated to studying how young stars in the Carina Nebula collect gas from their surroundings and expel it through outflows. These observations from Webb will help astronomers understand how young stars impact their environments, allowing them to craft spectacular scenes like this one.

[Image Description: A region of space filled with bright stars and clouds of gas. In the centre, the densest clouds form the shape of a chest with its lid open. The chest appears to glow from within. At its base it breaks apart into long pillars of thick gas. Many of the gas clouds in the background are dark orange globules, while others form large, pale hazes. A few brightly shining stars lie in the foreground, the biggest and brightest in front of the chest’s lid.]

Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Reiter; CC BY 4.0
Acknowledgement: M. H. Özsaraç

mikeleonardvisualarts has added a photo to the pool: