Shouts and burglars
For the first time since 2002, the US will exclude European officials from monitoring its elections, joining only Russia and Belarus. / MS NOW
In a new poll of more than 100 countries, the US is the only one where people who disapprove of their nation’s leaders have higher confidence in election integrity. / Semafor
The White House says Trump will stop using taxpayer dollars for political ads, but has no intention of reimbursing the funds either. / Politico
The US trade deficit hits its widest point in 17 months, despite Trump’s tariffs that the president claims are intended to shrink that gap. / Reuters
“The Strait of Hormuz is still closed. We will open it by the order of our leader, Imam Khomeini, not by the tweets of some idiots.” Radio messages to oil tankers during the US blockade. / The Wall Street Journal [$]
Botched executions are common in lethal injection, between the prisoner’s health, the execution team’s competency, and the tumult of legal wranglings. (Content warning.) / ProPublica
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A southern Arizona protest to protect a 200-year-old cottonwood from border wall construction was raided by federal agents, who then immediately felled the tree. / Arizona’s Family
Lundy island, famed for its puffin population, faces evacuation after water levels drop to their lowest point on record. / BBC News
A startup has a plan to harvest water from thin air using low-level industrial heat, and fortuitously enough that’s just what data centers produce. / WIRED
When instructed to make a “New Yorker-style cartoon,” ChatGPT is adding real New Yorker cartoonists’ signatures to its output. / Nieman Lab
See also: Rogue OpenAI agents infiltrated Wikipedia, editing wikis, attempting to hack a public note-taking tool, overwhelming the site with traffic. / Futurism
“A world without fraternities asks young men to live alongside their classmates as equals, not superiors.” Tear the frat houses down. / Dazed
Investigating deaths at juvenile detention centers, researchers have identified the forgotten graves of more than 1,000 children across the US. / NPR
How to defuse a WWII bomb: “Silence only means that at that moment, no mechanical fuze has been triggered.” / The Guardian
“One of the strongest positive emotions is relief—which is interesting and not a coincidence, because it’s relief from negative emotions.” The new self-help book that isn’t here to help. / Vox [$]
You can find out what Amazon’s data collection thinks it knows about you, e.g., whether you have trust issues or, in one case, “flat buttocks.” / The Verge