Saturday roundup Part I

ISIS escapees tell their stories.

Whither Hungary?

Russia continues to struggle with coming to terms with its history:

Russia has problems with its memories. There isn’t a building that we walk past that wasn’t the scene of execution squads, betrayals, mass murders. The most gentle courtyards reveal the most awful secrets. Around the corner from Potapoffsky is an apartment block where every one of the families had someone arrested during Stalin’s terror. In the basement of what is now a brand new shopping mall was the courtroom where innocent after innocent was sentenced to labor camps, the courts working so fast they would get through two cases inside a minute. Whenever twenty-first-century Russian culture looks for a foundation it can build itself from, healthy and happy, it finds the floor gives way and buries it in soil and blood.

Lviv has mixed feelings about embracing the Masoch brand.

What kind of crazy star is this?

Katie Mack explains the science of "Interstellar." I learn that "spaghettification" is a thing.

Philae, sleeping now, is still a huge success.

Stop generously diagnosing people as narcissists.

On "Rosewater."

Household chemicals could be more safe and environmentally friendly.

There are two sides to publicly feeding the homeless, and optics matter, but still.

We need a food policy.

Food security is about access to food, not the overall supply of food.

The meat industry goes big. Big mayo sues Just Mayo. Chris Christie's political dilemma around pigs.

Factory pork has brain machines and other atrocities.

I'll say it again: plant-based eating helps the planet.

Matt Yglesias is really wrong about fast food wages.

Voter ignorance is the fuel of our democracy.

Baby gorillas in DRC.

Frank Bruni on getting older: "If you're lucky, you slough off some of your pettiness."