Killer Mike and George Clinton dish about music, barber shops.
Killer Mike and George Clinton have an unusual thing in common besides music: They've both owned barber shops. NPR recently got them together to discuss both.
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Killer Mike and George Clinton have an unusual thing in common besides music: They've both owned barber shops. NPR recently got them together to discuss both.
Friday headlines: Hell caesar
The limited nature of Israel's counterattack on Iran suggests both sides want to avoid escalation. / The New York Times [+]
Most of the US military aid approved for Ukraine is being spent in the US—and specifically in these congressional districts. / The Washington Post [+]
Tracking AI-generated election content around the world. / Rest of World
GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic are resulting in pregnancies, leading some doctors to use the medications to treat PCOS, but without the data to back it up. / National Post
Wastewater testing has proved essential for tracking and isolating Covid outbreaks, and could expand to other health threats. / Nature
"What this means is that there may be lots more hominin bones in people's floors and showers." On discovering a human-like mandible in travertine tile. / John Hawks
For the first time, archaeologists have evidence humans lived in lava tubes; tunnels below the deserts of northern Saudi Arabia were inhabited for thousands of years. / NewScientist
"We are living through an age of unchecked Caesar-salad fraud." / MSN
See also: Why don't rich people eat anymore? / Dazed
Responding to Germany considering limiting hunting trophy imports, Botswana's president threatens to send 20,000 elephants, citing overpopulation concerns. / The Guardian
"How ethical can forced identification be?" Current-day surveillance tech has roots in a 19th-century system of measuring bodies for criminal identification. / Eurozine
The NFL is the only North American sports organization that isn't open to institutional investment, but that may change next month—and private equity is gearing up. / Financial Times [+]
See also: Backed by private equity, a group has been buying up Minor League Baseball teams, and now owns a quarter of the league. / InsideHook
Thursday headlines: Poet common denominator
The amount of homicides in major American cities is falling at its quickest rate in decades. / axios
Mass shootings in the United States are said to be down 30% from this time last year. / X
Funding for US-based "creator" startups more than doubled in the first three months of 2024. / The Information
A new spy service scrapes more than ten thousand Discord servers and sells the data for as little as $5. / 404 Media
See also: Hand-embroidered surveillance footage. / designboom
The era of big data and now artificial intelligence has led to an entrenched, maturing partnership between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley. / Forever Wars
"Delve" is overused by ChatGPT because it's popular in Nigeria—and that's where the AI was trained. / The Guardian
Meanwhile: "It takes 20 times more water to have a ChatGPT conversation than to run a Google search." / The South China Morning Post
Nearly 300 gems were stolen from the British Museum over a 25-year period. / The Art Newspaper
A study finds Arabica coffee developed more than 600,000 years ago. / Phys.org
The "Mariko Aoki phenomenon" is when you enter a cafe or bookstore and immediately want to use the toilet. / Sprudge
Actual poets weigh in on Taylor Swift's new Tortured Poets Department. "I think a part of writing poetry is observing things and being honest. Can you do that if you have billions of dollars?" / The Cut
Love, all my friends
Photographs from four days in a Ukrainian trench with soldiers from an international legion. / The New York Times [+]
"Be honest and vulnerable." Activists explain how they keep calm in a world full of crises. / Goats and Soda
Spencer Ackerman: A world with exceptions to international law is one in which the least powerful suffer the most. / The New York Times [+]
Caitlin Clark's base salary in the WNBA will be $76,535. Why the pay gap with the NBA? Partly because of a much worse bargaining agreement. / Vox, Just Women's Sports
Gen Z is richer at this stage in their lives than Millenials or Baby Boomers were at their age. / The Economist
Profiles of people who work from "secretive" ships, repairing deep-sea internet infrastructure. / The Verge
"Resurrecting" the dead is a popular use of generative AI in China. / rest of world
Meta thinks it'll be a good idea for teachers and students to wear its headsets in class. / axios
"Rewilding is a positive vision for the networks we want to live inside." A manifesto for rewilding the web? / Noema
To combat overtourism, locals in Barcelona get a favorite bus route removed from Google and Apple maps. /
See also: Some maps from the 18th century that were a "picture of time itself." / Humanities
Handsome photographs of specialized tools used by contemporary artisans. / The Rake
Young straight men who tell their guy friends "I love you" find they sometimes receive weird looks in public. / Inside Hook
Tavi Gevinson goes long and meta in a zine of sorts about Taylor Swift. / mirrorball
Tuesday headlines: Go pouch, go
In China, companies making fentanyl precursors and analogues can apply for state tax rebates. / NPR
Nearly 200 US colleges and universities hold contracts with Chinese businesses, valued at $2.32 billion. / The Wall Street Journal [+]
Argentina experiences a 2,153% increase in Dengue cases. / The Guardian
From February, some good news about recent progress against dengue fever. / Science
If you're an organ donor in the United States, "there's a 25% chance your kidney ends up in the trash." / Statecraft
A researcher who studies American sexual behavior says there's been a rapid rise of "rough sex" among college students, particularly sexual strangulation. / The New York Times [+]
The amount of American adults who've had coffee in the past day has increased by 37% since 2004, a 20-year high. / Sprudge
See also: McDonald's introduces billboards that smell like French fries. / Business Insider
Why are cats getting more screen time in movies recently? Professional cat training for films "has greatly evolved in recent years." / The Hollywood Reporter
Remembering that once upon a time, schools, towns, states and even the Senate passed rules against beepers. / Pessimists Archive
Jessa Crispin: Once again, the intellectual media sends an elite writer on a cruise, only to discover the guy hates everyone. / The Culture We Deserve
Some notes on how a mechanical watch works. Also, how the Berlin Wall worked. / Bartosz Ciechanowski, Open Culture
Three men are rescued after spelling out "help" with palm leaves on a small Pacific island. / BBC News
Related: A former Special Forces soldier explains what he packs in his "go-pouch." / Why Is This Interesting
Monday headlines: Keep it like a secret
Following Israel's thwarting of Iran's aerial attack, world leaders urge Netanyahu not to retaliate, and Biden says the US won't support an Israeli counterattack. / AP, Axios
A mission to capture space junk has now rendezvoused with a second-stage rocket that's been orbiting Earth since 2009. / Gizmodo
Tinnitus sufferers are finding relief with a new FDA-approved device that electronically stimulates the tongue—it works by distracting the brain. / NPR
Researchers have identified a link between car exhaust and signs and symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's disease. / University of Technology Sydney
Just as there are people who have an innate sense of navigation, others do not, and GPS appears to diminish people's wayfinding skills. / Ars Technica
See also: "At some point, I'm going to pick up a paper map." What it's like to switch to a circa-2011 BlackBerry in the year 2023. / Stephen's Site
In online chats, Amazon drivers often refer to a dispatcher named "Wayne," an imaginary nemesis who's apparently based on a real person. / 404 Media
"The majority of what we are and who we are is kept private inside." Twenty years of PostSecret. / Hazlitt
John Warner: There are values core to higher education that shouldn't be handed over to generative AI—but that's exactly what's happening now. / Inside Higher Ed
A look back at the rise of the photocopier and its implications for copyright. / NEWART
"It is equally unsustainable to write about music as it is to write and perform music for a living." After Pitchfork, what's next for music criticism? / Boston Review
A pair of music archivists are unearthing lost recordings from major artists, and putting them back in the right hands. / The New York Times [+]
See also: A look inside George Martin's Montserrat recording studio, which is currently crumbling into ruins. / Atlas Obscura
Saturday headlines: Don’t look in the basement
Following Israel's attack on Iran's consulate in Syria, Iranian forces have seized an "Israeli-linked" container ship near the Strait of Hormuz. / Al Jazeera
See also: "The conventional wisdom in Washington and elsewhere has often held that Iran has become contained, even isolated. But this was never true." / Foreign Affairs
Google blocks California news outlets in retaliation over proposed legislation that would force it to pay publishers in the state for content. / Gizmodo
State and city mandates for CO2 reductions are working in the Bay Area, where vehicle emission rates are falling around 2.6% annually. / Berkeley News
"I remember thinking, 'Why did it take them three years to build a three-story building?'" The town that kept its nuclear bunker a secret for three decades. / Smithsonian
OJ Simpson handed over only $133,000 of the $33.5 million he was ordered to pay in the deaths of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. / Rolling Stone
US border arrests typically surge in spring; however, for the first time since 2017, March arrests fell, month over month—due to increased immigration enforcement in Mexico. / NPR
AI summaries won't replace social media anytime soon, both because the technology isn't there yet, and because people don't want that. / Read Max
Inside a horror-themed gym in Pittsburgh. / Neatorama
After scanning more than 500 sauropod bones during Covid lockdown, an Australian paleobiologist identified 12 new dinosaurs. / ABC
"For years, I have been telling people that if they love podcasts and want to support podcast creators—especially independent ones—they shouldn't listen to podcasts on Spotify." / Defector
This is wonderful: 15 notes played at 0.2 bpm time differences. / YouTube
Spend a minute at a park. / One Minute Park
Friday headlines: What’s new is old again
Bird flu outbreaks typically go away after culling poultry, but over the past three years the virus hasn't died down, and in fact is increasing. / WIRED
Moira Donegan: How society's failure to help an obvious victim of domestic violence led to Nicole Brown's death. / The Guardian
Traffic data on the day of eclipse shows how people flocked to the path of totality. / The New York Times [+]
An advocacy group in Mexico is using deepfakes of missing people in efforts to coerce the government to help locate the individuals. / The Daily Beast
This week, Apple notified iPhone users in 92 countries that they were "being targeted by a mercenary spyware attack," at first calling the attack "state-sponsored." / TechCrunch
The only thing Humane's AI Pin does reliably is tell the time; two years later, the crank-based Playdate gaming console has only grown in relevance. / The Verge, Engadget
A new excavation at Pompeii has unearthed stunning frescos as well as a mosaic floor with more than a million white tiles. / BBC
Jessa Crispin: "You are having a midlife crisis. It's fine." / The Culture We Deserve
Setting the retirement age at 65 was politically motivated—it was a way to get Social Security legislation passed when life expectancy was far lower. / Money
"In an attempt to banish Western cultural influences, authorities in the Republic of Chechnya are banning music they deem too fast or too slow." / Hyperallergic
How attitudes toward "selling out" have changed among musicians over the past two decades—as to why, the answer has a lot to do with Napster. / Can't Get Much Higher
"Pelicans will eat anything they can fit into their mouths." / Boing Boing
Thursday headlines: Expungables
The February heatwave in West Africa was made 10 times more likely by climate change. / CarbonBrief
British farmers say this year's record rainfall suggests an ongoing emergency. / The Guardian
A round-up of superlatives, senior yearbook style, for "the most surprising, actionable, and fun solutions" to the climate crisis. / Grist
Lionel Barber: We already live in a "Trump 1.5" world, but Japan is more worried than most about Trump 2.0. / Politico Magazine
See also: Fake pictures of Donald Trump with historical figures. / X
Despite a decade of federal oversight, Albuquerque cops kill people at a higher rate than any other police force in the United States. / Searchlight New Mexico
Can America's abandoned malls be turned into housing? Zoning rules say probably not. / Vox
Consumer Reports asks the USDA to take Lunchables off school lunch menus due to high amounts of sodium and heavy metals. / NPR
A French court says veggie burgers can be called "steaks." / Le Monde
Indie food brands cry foul over Trader Joe's executives' "blatant and aggressive" copycat tactics. / Taste
Biohackers go all in on so-called cellular-health treatments, despite science not exactly supporting them. / GQ
"'The most basic questions about sleep still lack definite answers." Increasing evidence finds sleep disorders to have a genetic component. / The London Review of Books
Wednesday headlines: Greeks’ herring gifts
Tuesday headlines: Candle me this
Monday headlines: Real friends, fake likes
Friday headlines: Nobel rejections
Thursday headlines: Pachabel’s salmon
Wednesday headlines: StairDisaster
Tuesday headlines; Tame, very tame
Monday headlines: Plantlife
Saturday headlines: Carbon coffee
Friday headlines: The Juggernaut, I was
Thursday headlines: Give it away, give it away now
Wednesday headlines: Joy riders