'The decline of Twitter, and the race to replace it, is in a sense a sideshow'

‘Text posts as we’ve always known them just can’t keep up’

Caroline Mimbs Nyce in The Atlantic

Elon Musk isn’t the only thing killing Twitter, says Caroline Mimbs Nyce in The Atlantic. He has renamed the social media platform X and driven away “billions in advertising revenue.” Opportunistic clones like Mastodon and Threads are trying to replace it. But that’s just part of the story. Users spend “an average of 95 minutes a day on TikTok” and just 30 minutes on X. Short-video platforms like TikTok are changing microblogging as we know it.

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‘A cease-fire is just the beginning’

Queen Rania Al Abdullah in The Washington Post

“Bethlehem usually comes alive at Christmas. Not this year,” says Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan in The Washington Post. Celebrations in the Holy Land are canceled due to the Israel-Hamas war. Since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, “Israel has turned Gaza into a hellscape,” killing 20,000 people, 8,000 of them children. The fighting must stop. Once a cease-fire is in place, all must “embark on the difficult process of rehumanization,” recognizing the humanity in everyone.

‘How long can Ukrainians perish in the maw of the Russian defenses?’

Ross Barkan in The Nation

The Ukraine war is not “sustainable,” says Ross Barkan in The Nation. Kyiv’s overhyped counteroffensive was never going to achieve “utter Russian defeat.” That’s clear now that the “thick, bilious clouds of propaganda” have dissipated. Russia is huge. It “can lose 150,000 troops and call up more.” It’s distasteful, but Washington should push a diplomatic solution “to stop the slaughter and save Ukrainian civilians from a war that could devour the rest of the decade.”

James P. Pinkerton in the Washington Examiner

Nippon Steel’s plan to buy U.S. Steel is “good news,” says James P. Pinkerton in the Washington Examiner. Critics don’t want to put an “iconic” American industrial giant under foreign control. But this deal comes after the U.S. went from producing half the world’s steel in 1950 to just 6% in 2021. The Japanese steelmaker’s more than $14 billion investment will boost U.S. steel-making capacity. It’s also “a vote of confidence in American manufacturing” and workers.