Lettuce leave
Internal documents show Kennedy Center ticket sales and fundraising fell after the Trump takeover, then cratered after his name was added to the center. / The Washington Post [$]
World Bank aid disbursals spark a surge in crypto activity exactly along the lines of what you’d expect to see in money laundering. / FT Alphaville
A journey through the lifetime of a bagged salad, and all the ways it might become contaminated on its way to your plate. / The New York Times [$]
Related: The case for not eating so much lettuce anyway, especially when you consider its climate footprint. / The Washington Post [$]
“What semaglutide does not do is fully numb the desire for pleasure.” Contemplating the smorgasbord and all-you-can-eat buffets in the age of Ozempic. / Cabinet
Researchers find a small dose of peppermint oil, twice daily, can lower systolic blood pressure by an average of 8.5 mmHg. / Science Daily
Unrelated: “Afterwards, my smartphone tells me my heartbeat dropped into a state of deep relaxation over the course of the session.” On collective listening events. / The Wire
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The tug of war over teaching Huck Finn in schools has everything to do with the content, when the real question should be over how it’s taught. / The New York Times [$]
To learn how to make peace with uncertainty, look to Tove Jansson’s Moomintroll. / The Marginalian
Watch: A filmmaker learns about the time his dad played a show with Elliott Smith at a small club in Lubbock, Texas. / YouTube
In a reverse space race, by 1979 Soviet scientists had drilled the deepest hole ever, at more than 40,000 feet deep and about nine inches in diameter. / Nautilus
AI can take a meaningful idea and sterilize it to worthlessness, so maybe your prompt was the thing worth sharing in the first place. / Read Max
See also: A collection of early computer software that claimed to use some degree of artificial intelligence. / Internet Archive
A walkthrough of a sci-fi city made entirely out of ASCII characters. / PC Gamer
“We abided by a moral code that we had never explicitly explained but expected everyone else to understand.” Things that happened to both Odysseus in the Odyssey and to me on my bachelorette trip. / McSweeney’s