The Morning News

In its final season, Game of Thrones dispensed almost entirely with trying to make sense of its characters’ internal motivations—let alone the complex political reality that its psychological realism initially helped create.

In case you, too, felt betrayed by the end of Game of Thrones.

↩︎ Vox

23h

Data analysis finds connections between crime and unemployment rates, or housing instability, but not undocumented immigrants.

↩︎ The Marshall Project 23h

"People walkers" are trying to solve a loneliness epidemic in LA, where nearly a third of households consist of one person.

↩︎ The Los Angeles Times 23h

The finest texture in food? "Crispy-gone-soggy," from chilaquiles to Buffalo wings to cereal with milk.

↩︎ bon appétit 1d

Hägglund’s argument goes something like this: If what makes our lives meaningful is that time ends, then what defines us is what Marx called “an economy of time.”

James Wood on a new book that says if we truly embraced secularism, we could live in a much improved America.

↩︎ The New Yorker

1d

"Real assistance requires contact." Why public intellectuals should quit handing out advice.

↩︎ The Point 1d

A look at the history of humor finds Christianity full of dark comedy, though the Middle Ages weren't exactly funny times.

↩︎ Commonweal 1d

Things are shifting rapidly. Women’s achievements are multiplying. We don’t always have to prove that we’re acquiescent or complicit to enjoy the crumbs dispensed by the system of male power.

Elena Ferrante says men have colonized storytelling for several centuries. That era is over.

↩︎ The New York Times

1d

Turkey has entered "the second drone age," rivaling the US and UK as the world’s most prolific user of killer drones.

↩︎ The Intercept 1d

The US government is not having a constitutional crisis. "Separation of powers requires that you accept confrontation as normal."

↩︎ Matt's Five Points 1d

Photographs of black togetherness by Tyler Mitchell.

↩︎ Tyler Mitchell 1d

A billionaire investor, giving the graduation speech at Morehouse, pledged to pay off the entire graduating class's student loans.

↩︎ The New York Times 1d

The latest "connected cars" process up to 25 gigabytes of data an hour. Consumers are broadly worried about hacks.

↩︎ McKinsey & Company 1d

Obscured views of a city in photos by John MacLean.

↩︎ Booooooom 3d

A map estimates the amounts and locations of plastic floating in the world's oceans.

↩︎ Sailing Seas of Plastic 3d

Researchers find evidence bedbugs are much older than previously thought, and probably dined on dinosaurs.

↩︎ The New York Times 3d

The AI-created version of Joe Rogan's voice is unreal. (Literally.)

3d

AI is quite successful in poetry because it’s able to create something that leaves enough ambiguity so the reader can use a lot of their creativity to bring the poems to life. But when you turn to [longform] literature, AI has been quite unsuccessful.

An interview with Marcus du Sautoy, whose new book encourages artists to view AI as a collaborator, rather than a threat.

↩︎ Vox

3d

As Jeff Koons breaks the price record for a living artist's work, billionaires push millionaires out of the art market.

↩︎ The New York Times 3d

In border wall planning, Trump prefers sharp, injury-prone spikes rather than field-tested anti-climbing surfaces.

↩︎ The Washington Post 3d