January 13, 2015
- Obama tries to counter the GOP's glass-is-half-empty conversation.
- Minute-by-minute takeaways from the State of the Union.
- In case you missed it: CNN previewed the State of the Union in the style of a Wes Anderson movie.
- Obama spotlights criminal justice reform as an avenue for progress even in chaotic election year.
- Between health care and climate action, Obama will go down as a pivotal president.
- According to Spotify streams, fans of David Bowie chose to remember him with "Heroes," followed by "Let's Dance" and "Life on Mars?"
- Twitter science proves Canadians are more polite than Americans.
- Iran releases the 10 US sailors held for entering its territorial waters.
- NASA's new Planetary Defense Coordination Office will oversee all of the space agency's efforts to detect and track near-earth objects.
- So far the Oregon militia members are fighting one another, not the federal government.
- Western militia movements get political cover from fossil fuel companies that want to facilitate looser regulatory regimes.
- Wednesday white paper: Analysis of many tweets finds "a sharp decline in hedonic state" when the weather's above 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
- See also: The (totally not peer-reviewed) chocolate milk concussion-cure craze.
- The word "cakeage" was added to OxfordDictionaries.com in 2015—that fee restaurants charge when you bring in your own cake.
- Wanted criminal sends police a selfie, preferring it to a mugshot circulating on Facebook.
- Defensive reactions to Cosby don’t just fail to hold water—they echo racism.
- Photographs of many Martin Luther King Drives across America.
- Ten prototypes of Londoners from the future, from solar-hacking grannies to floating residents of the Thames.
- Thomas Keller slips to two stars in the Times.
- New York's top ticket-giver sees his base pay eclipsed 33 times by the amount of fines he's generated for the city—$1.2 million.
- Sorta related: Many small jets across both wings might be better than one big jet per wing.