Welcome to Sunday! Our top five articles of the past week are displayed below.

If you need to catch up on the latest from Ukraine, four of our top stories delve into sobering aspects of the conflict.

In one, Alexander Hinton of Rutgers University – Newark examines Russia’s actions in Ukraine for signs that genocide is happening there. One red flag he sees is Russia’s history of atrocities against Ukrainians, including a famine that killed millions in 1932 and 1933.

In another, Neta Crawford at Boston University writes about the difficulty of getting an accurate count of how many people have died in the conflict. It’s a process that’s complicated by logistics, politics and the difficulty of determining exactly who is a civilian and who is a combatant.

If you’re just looking for a little escape on this Sunday morning, try reading art history professor Maggie Cao’s attempt to add some needed intellectual heft to Netflix’s “Is it Cake?”

“Throughout American history, moments of social anxiety around truth tend to be accompanied by ‘fool the eye’ pop culture phenomena, from P.T. Barnum’s hoaxes to a painting technique called ‘trompe l’oeil,’” Cao writes. “So it doesn’t surprise me that the gravitation toward a show like ‘Is it Cake?’ is happening at a time when more ominous deceptions lurk in the media landscape.”

Warning: Like sugary treats, the show is best in small doses; bingeing is not recommended.