'Iceland volcano drama shows nature remains in unpredictable command'

Volcanic drama reminds us that nature remains in charge

Anjana Ahuja for the Financial Times

Iceland's volcano drama "is testament to the powerful geological processes heaving unseen beneath our feet – and to the limitations of science when it comes to calculating how these forces will play out", writes Anjana Ahuja for the Financial Times. "That so many choose to live amid these natural threats might seem odd, but the hard-to-quantify risks come with ample rewards," she says. Ultimately though "when tectonic push comes to continental shove, nature remains in unpredictable command". 

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The resurrection of Cornish mining

Fred Skulthorp for UnHerd

As a resurrection of sorts takes place in Cornwall, Britain "has a strange relationship with its mines", notes Fred Skulthorp for UnHerd. "Dirty, exploitative, abundant" mines were "the Petri dish for both our industrialisation and our first revolts against capitalist excess". But they are also a "catalyst for the history-making seams that run through the nation: pride, self-sufficiency, rebellion". "Romantic tosh, perhaps, but it's a mood you can unearth quite easily" in somewhere like Cornwall. 

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Time to end Tories' ruinous clown show

Daily Mail leader article

In order to avert catastrophe at the ballot box "the Tories must offer a credible alternative" to Labour, says the Daily Mail in its leader article. The parliamentary party "needs to park its internal differences and start behaving like a government rather than a clown show". In her letter to the PM, Suella Braverman "scornfully" said Sunak "was averse to rocking the boat". "To avoid a shattering electoral defeat, boat-rocking now becomes a must," the paper urges.

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Overturning Roe Changed Everything. Overturning Affirmative Action Did Not.

Thomas B. Edsall for The New York Times

The responses to the US Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wade and the ruling that ended race-based affirmative action were "strikingly different", writes Thomas B. Edsall for The New York Times. The former saw a "hostile reaction" while the latter "provoked a more modest outcry". Clearly it shows "there has been a steady leftward movement on issues of equality when they are described as abstract principles, but much less so when the equality agenda is translated into specific policies, like bussing or affirmative action".

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