The hardest cases for an insect detective involve “delusional parasitosis,” or bugs that aren’t really there. / STAT What is populism? A type of politics that promises to protect and empower “the people” against “corrupt elites.” / Government and Opposition Ltd. A mathematician explains why, if you use bricks as dominoes,
“When I looked at the spinach leaf its stem reminded me of an aorta. So I thought, let’s perfuse right through the stem.” Human and plant vascular systems are so similar that researchers are growing human heart cells on a spinach leaf. / Worcester Polytechnic Institute Indian recharge outlets sell
California farms offer benefits and pay well above minimum wage, but Americans won’t take tough jobs. / Los Angeles Times New evidence suggests that animals have richer mental lives than scientists previously suspected. / The Economist Airbnb doubles its China investment under new name “Aibiying,” which translates as “welcome each other
A North Carolina startup uses bacteria to grow “biocement” bricks to avoid the hefty fossil fuel consumption needed for normal cement. / YouTube Japan entices elderly drivers to give up their licenses with discounts at funeral homes. / The Mainichi Markos Kay uses subatomic visualizations to turn the quantum world into art.
Caste-consciousness divides a burgeoning Delhi music scene. / Bandcamp “[That era] is over.” John Waters declares Midnight Movies, like his Pink Flamingos, dead. / Vanity Fair Burying their cattle, ranchers call wildfires in Kansas, Oklahoma, and the Texas panhandle their Hurricane Katrina. / New York Times TMN’s Rosecrans Baldwin is sent
“The prime minister will be woken, if she is not already awake, and civil servants will say ‘London Bridge is down’ on secure lines.” A fascinating and tender look at how the British government and public institutions war-game scenarios for the death of Queen Elizabeth II. / The Guardian
On Irene Kuo, the New York chef and writer who introduced America to cooking Chinese food yet died nearly unknown. / Food52 And people say the Rooster is rough: Norman Podhoretz, king of New York intelligentsia, continues to pick fights. / New York Times “There are more sets of bananas than there
Sessions revives “just say no” as part of his anti-drug policy, despite its lack of success the first time around. / The Washington Post GOP claims it’s not targeting Planned Parenthood, but PP is the only provider that would be defunded by Trumpcare. / Rewire Sen. James Inhofe, famous for
How many people vanish in the American wilderness? The government has no idea. “Aficionados of the vanished” think that at least 1,600 people, and maybe more, remain missing on public lands. / Outside An Irish journalist asked every member of Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas (the Irish
The NFL has been dosing players with painkillers for years, using playing time as a threat to get players to comply with off-label levels of Vicodin. / Deadspin A dismal 6 percent of Hollywood productions this year will be helmed by women at the six major studios (Fox, Warner Brothers,
