The cartoonists of Charlie were not allowed to rest in peace for very long.

Bells toll at Notre Dame, in honor of a newspaper that was radically anti-cleric. A chant of war, the Marseillaise, was sung, in honor of people who were deeply pacific. Millions of dollars were donated to a newspaper that held its financial independence higher than any other principle. On the brink of bankruptcy just a week ago, Charlie finds itself flooded with cash at the very same time its fangs are removed.

The murder of innocents is denounced by people in whose direction guns will never be drawn: neo-fascists, far-right writers and intellectuals disguising their islamophobia in a thin veil of free speech. Once dedicated to deconstruct and mock symbols, Charlie has itself become an idol. On Saturday, one French newspaper titled ‘Justice was served’ when there is nothing further from the truth. Though regrettable, this outcome was almost inevitable.

Luz, one of Charlie’s cartoonists who escaped the massacre, said they would have hated that. “They were just guys sitting in a corner, making drawings.” As to put back things in perspective – real people lost their lives. It’s personal. You can’t bury a symbol in the ground but their bodies will soon rest there.

When interviewed over the phone on the morning of their deaths, the perpetrators said themselves they murdered no innocents, they only eliminated targets. To their eyes, their actions are entirely legitimate and they showed no remorse whatsoever. This violence wasn’t blind. Journalists, police officers, jews – the problem is not where this list begins, it’s that it is conceivably endless. The killers are free to arbitrarily direct their wrath to anyone they perceive as an enemy. How that label is applied follows no reason or logic.

It’s been said, by many and by me, that Charlie’s satire was undirected – that it hit all religions and political and financial powers equally. And that as such, it also targeted oppressed and vulnerable minorities in France and elsewhere. In this instance, Muslims. Let it be very clear: Arabs in France are, and have been for decades, subject to a systemic violence and discrimination. It existed long before France faced attacks from extremists supposedly acting in the name of a religion. Without becoming any kind of excuse for it, poverty and ghettoization are undeniably elements in which extremism has the potential to fester.

But reducing French Arabs to a theorized atomic Muslim identity is as idiotic as turning Charlie Hedbo into of symbol of anything. From Yemen to Syria, it’s painfully obvious the Muslim civilian population is the first victim of religious extremism. Those victims are oppressed and murdered by the same people Charlie was mocking – the same people who executed those cartoonists, cops and jewish shoppers.

I wrote it would be hard to describe the magnitude of this event to people who never lived in France. On this day, up to 2 million people marched in the streets of Paris and about 2.7 millions throughout the rest of France. This is unheard of: the single largest demonstration in the History of France, bigger even than when Paris was liberated from the Nazis. Well over a thousand people gathered at the Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco. With the exception of a single asshole carrying an anti-Islam sign, the gathering was peaceful and honorable. To an extent, it was somber. But to another, it was glorious.

This morning in Paris, three gunmen opened fire on the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo, a weekly french satirical newspaper. Ten people in the staff were killed as well as two police officers. Several were left gravely injured and are fighting for their lives at this very moment.

It’s really hard to communicate the magnitude of this event to someone who didn’t grow up in France. Of course, there’s the violence and the brutality with which the victims were executed. You don’t wake up in the morning thinking about the possibility of facing such a death but I guess that’s the world we live in. I’ll forever remember the place and the time when I learned about this.

The victims were people, with families and relatives that are mourning them. They were journalists and cops, both doing their jobs on the frontline. But moreover, the target of the attack was Charlie Hebdo – “Charlie”. The perpetrators were heard leaving the scene screaming in joy “On a tué Charlie!”, “We killed Charlie!”. All these cartoonists and journalists were celebrities and they were partners in a newspaper that had an iconic status in France. They were people I knew, people I had read, people I had laughed with. I read Charlie every week through high school and college. It shaped my political conscience, as was the case for so many young adults from the ’70s and until today. They were family – they had been working together for decades.

I’ve left France almost a decade ago and I don’t think I’ve seen any equivalent to the way Charlie was handling the news. Leftist, anti-cleric, pacifist, humorous, punchy, radical, scruffy. Fighting against all established powers, religious and politic alike. Charlie lived and thrived like an old-school newspaper. It was one of the last two fully independent national newspapers in France: they relied solely on subscription revenue.

The absence of paid ads gave them full liberty to address all that’s fit to print and also some of what’s not fit to print. They excelled in using and playing with the age-old concept of ‘freedom of speech’. It was not just a concept to them - their liberty was a way of life. Charlie had already been targeted three years ago and Charb (Stéphane Charbonnier, editor in chief and one of today’s victim) was under permanent police escort.

Charlie didn’t have an editorial policy, didn’t have a style guide. They didn’t care about digital, didn’t care about social media. They were living week-by-week, pulling a new issue and moving on. Some people were prompt to denounce Charlie Hebdo as a racist publication. I suppose anything is up for debate but I don’t think that’s the case. When you get killed by an extremist for doing nothing but your job, you must have been doing something right.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next – the loss seems like too much to stomach for everyone. But we’re going to have to live through this. To those who don’t: may you rest in peace.

Yesterday, NASA released an updated view of the iconic picture originally taken by the Hubble space telescope in 1995. Using an updated camera installed in 2009, Hubble was able to capture the magnificent structures in an even greater amount of detail.

The pillars have been presented as a ‘nursery of stars’ – the dust constitutes the raw material that slowly collapses into stars and planetary systems. A new infrared shot of the same region pierces behind the dust curtain and literally shines a new light on just how much is hapenning behind the scenes. Young stars blow their surroundings away as soon as they start radiating heat and solar winds.

Although the original image was dubbed the “Pillars of Creation”, this new image hints that they are also pillars of destruction. The dust and gas in these pillars is seared by intense radiation from the young stars forming within them, and eroded by strong winds from massive nearby stars. The ghostly bluish haze around the dense edges of the pillars in the visible-light view is material that is being heated by bright young stars and evaporating away.

You may download the picture in a variety of sizes (from ~300KB to a whopping 114MB in full resolution) on this page.