Hex appeal
ICE claims it’s surveilling social media to protect agents, but the reality is closer to an intimidation campaign against Americans. / The Wall Street Journal [$]
See also: ICE collected more than a million people’s DNA last year, many of whom never committed a crime, and those records are going to be stored forever. / WIRED
Jay Caspian Kang on Subaru Socialists, “college-educated millennials in their thirties and early forties who earn a somewhat steady income but not what they expected.” / The New Yorker
A database of around 20,000 IKEA products organized by how many steps they take to build. / IKEA Complexity Index
"I didn't think we had this much avocado oil to go around." The vast majority of avocado oil products include rancid avocado oil as well as other, cheaper cooking oils. / NPR
See also: What it’s like to live with an actual inflammatory disorder at a time when RFK Jr. is blaming the country’s ills on inflammation. / Mother Jones
If you enjoy these headlines, please join us as a Sustaining Member to support what we do and unlock access to paywalled links.
In a disturbing trend, more US states are changing “stand your ground” laws to extend beyond self defense, and allowing people to kill to defend their stuff. / The New York Times [$]
Starting with Kansas, states are looking at ways to “slowly and quietly” restrict abortion rights by changing how their supreme court justices are selected. / Vox [$]
A16Z’s new AI video model is really good at creating vintage videos that could poison our understanding of history, to predictably disastrous effects. / Gizmodo
See also: When AI companies destroy out-of-print books, they’re burning our history. / Hyperallergic
“It is the rarity of perfect forms—their contrast with the predominant irregularities of the natural world—that makes symmetry and repetition so striking to our eyes.” How art invented humanity. / Aeon
A timeline of the future based on Manifold market predictions. / WHEN
Clubgoers’ latest drug of choice is 3-MMC, like cocaine without the irritation or MDMA with an easier comedown, and it seems poised to become the next “pharmaceutical panacea.” / The Playboy Reader
“While clerks were usually seen as the in-store experts, the flow of information was by no means unidirectional.” The lost civic life of movie rental stores. / The MIT Press Reader
Hey, for the first time since maybe 2005 we started a blogroll. / The Morning News