The best way to understand a controversial new resolution from the Republican National Committee censuring Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger is not, as some people have suggested, to legitimize the January 6 attack on the Capitol, but as something more primal: Trump service. The resolution hardly changes a thing—the two lawmakers are already personae non gratae in the party—but it seems designed to pacify the angry ochre god-king and his acolytes.

The power of Jackass has always rested with the peanut gallery. Almost every ridiculous, painful stunt Johnny Knoxville and his gang of nimrods have pulled over the past 20-plus years has come with a reliable laugh track: the rest of the ensemble gathered around to watch, doubled over and cackling as someone subjects themselves to unspeakable injury.

Sign up for Charlie’s newsletter, Galaxy Brain, here.Here is my confession: I’m traumatized by a David Letterman clip. It’s from November 1995, and Letterman’s guest is a young, bespectacled Bill Gates. The video starts with a question from the legendary late-night host: “What about this internet thing?” he asks.

Bernie Moreno should have been a contender. Instead, he has dropped out of the race for Ohio’s Senate seat after spending millions of his own money and never reaching even fifth place in polls of the Republican primary. It’s a story with a lesson, a very sad lesson.Moreno, age 54, declared last year for the seat now held by Ohio Republican Rob Portman.

One day in January 2020, a team of experts from Beijing arrived in Wuhan, China, to investigate the origins and assess the scale of an outbreak of a mysterious virus. At least 60 people in Wuhan had already fallen ill. Troublingly, cases had begun to surface in Thailand and Japan.The same day, Chinese President Xi Jinping departed from Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, where he had met with the country’s leaders.

Sign up for Conor’s newsletter here.Earlier this week, I asked for your thoughts on racial preferences in college admissions. For context, Pew found in 2019 that “most Americans (73%) say colleges and universities should not consider race or ethnicity when making decisions about student admissions. Just 7% say race should be a major factor in college admissions, while 19% say it should be a minor factor.

Attempts to summarize the Showtime series Yellowjackets have mostly had to rely on creaky comparisons: a female Lord of the Flies … a ’90s Stranger Things … a teen Lost, but in Canada. The coming-of-age horror story is indeed tough to categorize, but nonetheless thrillingly addictive. The show follows a championship-bound girls’ soccer team that crashes in the wilderness in 1996, threading their story with that of the surviving members as adults in 2021.