Flying spaghetti better.
The NIH director says states with vaccination rates below 70% are at increased risk for future outbreaks. / CNN
See also: Charts and maps show how Covid cases are declining across the US. / BuzzFeed News
Say what you will—and many have—about the AstraZeneca vaccine, but it was instrumental in containing the outbreak in the UK. / NPR
Historians are concerned about the GOP's shift toward authoritarianism, noting that for a major party to so thoroughly discard the rules of American democracy was previously unthinkable. / VICE
Facebook will no longer allow politicians to post hate speech on its platform. Formerly, the company cited newsworthiness as a reason to keep the posts up. / The Washington Post
"It is a rejection of reality, a rejection of law, and, ultimately, a rejection of the entire system of American government." Maggie Haberman is right about Trump. / National Review
Trump's Justice Dept. seized the phone records of four New York Times reporters, in addition to the logs of CNN and Washington Post journalists. / The New York Times
This week, a federal judge's decision moved the Sackler family a step closer to immunity from opioid lawsuits. / NPR
Ethiopia invited former enemy Eritrea to police a shared threat in the Tigray—but Eritrean forces have brutally taken over. / Associated Press
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Inspired by flat-packed furniture, Carnegie Mellon scientists invent pasta that ships 2D and boils 3D. / Ars Technica
Video: Why do people always say Saturday Night Live used to be funnier? Based on watching one episode from every season, the answer is: because most of the '80s were bad. / The Morning News
After Obama killed irony, our fiction and politics are now either sentimental or gothic. / Bookforum
Today we learned: The CPR dummy's physiognomy is based on the death mask of a 19th-century Parisian teen who drowned in the Seine. / ScienceAlert
The greatest, dumbest web videos—aka "a Criterion Collection of completely stupid, but absolutely genius internet content." / Polygon
A graph of how the Art Institute of Chicago's collection has grown from 1879 to 2021. / Reddit
The colors Bob Ross used most frequently in his paintings, broken out by individual pieces and seasons. / Connor Rothschild
Drop a raindrop on a map of the contiguous US and travel along with it on its journey to the sea. / River Runner
Along the southwestern coast of Lake Michigan, a "pneumonia front" causes a temperature drop of as much as 40 degrees in minutes. / Atlas Obscura
The unique power of the letter "X." / The New York Times
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Since 1999, your Headlines are sourced and written by Andrew Womack and Rosecrans Baldwin, and arrive in your inbox, Monday through Saturday. View this edition and the latest Headlines at TMN.