Skaidrīte Lasmane — an emeritus professor, philosopher and historian at the University of Latvia — discusses the history of Riga’s Victory Square (Uzvaras laukums) and the grandiose construction planned under Kārlis Ulmanis, which was deliberately turned into a nationwide volunteer effort, a tool for national unification. She sharply opposes proposals to rename the square, calling them irresponsible, and notes that after the Soviet monument was removed the park was transformed beyond recognition but never given a new meaning.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Stitched Up: Belarusian Political Prisoners Highlighted Through Traditional Embroidery
The Prague National Gallery is showing “Framed in Belarus,” an exhibition that uses traditional cross-stitch embroidery to draw attention to Belarus’s political prisoners, jailed in the crackdown that followed the disputed 2020 election. Artist Rufina Bazlova and volunteers from around the world created 681 embroideries — one for each prisoner — and she argues that the very “niceness” of cross-stitch speaks about hard subjects more effectively than shocking documentary images.
Financial Times: ‘You’re dead’ — Europe’s SpaceX fights back against Musk prophecy
Europe’s Ariane 6 heavy-lift rocket — whose demise Elon Musk predicted a decade ago — is trying to claw back ground lost to SpaceX, and is already flying satellites for Amazon’s low-Earth-orbit constellation. The rocket is more expensive and expendable, so it cannot compete on launch volume, but its backers stress that Europe must be able to put its own satellites — including military ones — into space without depending on anyone.
LRT: Behind the propaganda: why makeup influencers are suddenly talking politics
A study by the Lithuanian firm Repsense reveals how pro-Russian narratives on social media reach people who normally avoid politics: they are spread by seemingly apolitical creators — makeup-tutorial makers, lifestyle accounts, second-hand-clothes Facebook groups — who gradually weave propaganda into everyday content. Most of it is distributed by real people, not bots, and the same playbook operates in Armenia, Hungary and Germany; the analyst recommends better counter-narratives rather than bans.
The New York Times: A Diocese Tries to Protect Its 29-Foot Jesus From Trump’s Border Wall
The Catholic diocese of Las Cruces, New Mexico, is fighting Trump’s border wall in court over Mount Cristo Rey — a pilgrimage site crowned by a 29-foot statue of Jesus. The Department of Homeland Security wants to use eminent domain to seize 14 acres for about 1.5 miles of wall, but the diocese argues a steel barrier would desecrate the holy site and violate religious freedom.
NPR: Freed from Cambodia’s scam compounds, trafficking victims face a new crisis
After Cambodia began cracking down on online scam compounds, thousands of foreign workers — lured in and held captive in them — have been freed onto the streets of Phnom Penh with no money or shelter. Aid groups consider them trafficking victims, but Cambodian authorities demand visa-overstay fines and detain them — a crisis the government, while trumpeting its crackdown, is effectively ignoring.
A group of young people from a housing project on the outskirts of Avignon has built a viral “book club” in which friends in tracksuits and caps stage mock “battles” between writers and thinkers (Marx vs Smith, Zola vs Flaubert). They are out to break the stereotype that kids from the projects are just delinquents — “despite the tracksuits, we have brains” — and have already caught the eye of France’s National Library and its National Book Center.
Financial Times: King Charles to be first monarch to disclose personal tax bill
King Charles is set to become the first modern British monarch to disclose his personal tax bill, releasing it alongside the annual royal accounts in a push for greater transparency after scandals involving his brother Andrew. For the first time it will show the tax paid on his personal profits, including income from the Duchy of Lancaster, which came to about £24mn last year.
ABC News: Experts say gambling companies use ‘dark patterns’ to hook Australians
Experts warn that gambling companies use “dark patterns” — deliberately deceptive interface design — to push Australians to bet more: accounts that are hard to close, higher default stakes, countdown clocks and personalised lures after big losses. Australians lose $32bn a year on gambling — more per capita than anyone in the world — yet regulation lags behind this design.
This is a daily link digest — links to the articles I read the previous day.
Tip: a paywalled article can often be read by searching for its URL on archive.ph; an article in another language can be translated with hugo.lv.
You can also follow this digest via RSS: links.