January 5, 2017

The vaquita is the world’s smallest porpoise, and there are only several dozen left. Somehow, it makes more sense for the United States to train heroic mine-detecting dolphins to find the vaquitas than it does for China to crack down on the imports of totoaba fish bladder that are driving the vaquitas to extinction. / The Guardian, Quartz

Some 220 metro and light rail systems from around the world, made tiny and simplified. (h/t things) / Peter Dovak, thingsmagazine.net

Bit of a slow-reading morning if you ignore the Trump/Assange tit-tat. But in case you haven’t buried your exasperation in an adult coloring book quite yet: / Slate, The Economist

1. “We’re living through the first world cyberwar—but just haven’t called it that.” / The Guardian

2. “Pastas With a New Selling Point: They’re All Italian.” / The New York Times

See also: “Why humans love cheese.” / The Economist

3. “The farewell message Obama wishes he could give: ‘You’re welcome!’” / The Washington Post

4. “The power and meaning of silence: Where, how and why to be quiet.” / The Economist

See also: John Berger, who died recently, on death: / The New Republic

“There are more white men named Jim in the California Legislature than black and Asian-American women—combined. And that’s not even including another white James. Or a Latino Jimmy.” California’s new legislative session begins this week, but the capitol’s faces don’t reflect the state. / CALmatters

Understanding its function and how it differs from similar structures in other mammals could unlock new insight into maladies like Crohn’s disease. Previously described as far back as da Vinci, scientists had believed the tissue to be discontinuous (an organ must be one piece of tissue), but it’s now been reclassified as an organ. / The Independent

“A résumé filled with grievous errors in the period 1996–2006 is not only a non-problem for further advances in the world of consensus; it is something of a prerequisite.” If this was true when it was published in 2012, it’s scripture now. How else do you explain the existence of Jeffrey Lord? / The Baffler

“I don’t want Tina Brown to top herself, but it would be nice if she was just a teensy weensy bit deflated by the sheer scale of her magazines’ losses.” A closing bon mot from a stunningly cold column on suicide, celebrity, and the differences in which New Yorkers and Londoners with money fail upwards. / The Spectator

People associate failing upwards with public-facing jobs (athlete, CEO, movie star). This is less due to their actual job performance—though that obviously is an aspect—than the skittishness of those who hire them around taking any kind of risk on someone untested (even if they’d likely be better than someone who’s mediocre but comes with experience). / The Atlantic, hse-econ.fi

“For people like me, failure is not being able to raise $100,000, and then when I go to angel investors seeking funding, they ask me if I’ve raised any money. It’s like I’ve already failed because of the color of my skin and not having my own networks to provide resources.” In Silicon Valley, white men with money encourage other white men to fail, fail away—and all but instruct all others to get the hell out of town. / The New York Times

Despite the accoutrements she collected by the end of 2016—her shiny new mainstream NBC News gig, glamorous Vanity Fair cover, the veneer of respectability afforded by being attacked by Trump—it’s good to remember that Megyn Kelly’s record shows her to be a race-baiting demagogue who actively took part in Fox News’s bigoted brand of information warfare for more than a decade. / Vanity Fair, Slate

Related: Her move to NBC allows perennially 17-year-old Young Republican Tucker Carlson to be rewarded with her old timeslot. / Politico

Mind-hacking: everyone’s doing it. Of course, being Americans, it’s not enough for us to just do drugs for pleasure or escape—we want to be more productive, more efficient, better workers. Silicon Valley’s overstuffed with gadgets to “upgrade” your mind, and the coders behind the products are stuffed themselves with modafinil, or tiny hits of LSD, or short sessions with their hypnosis apps. / The Guardian, New York, wired.co.uk, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

“I would like to tell you that after I nervously downed that mug of acid-laced water, I wrote some of the best and most creative prose of my life. But I’m afraid that’s not true.” In case you’ve been thinking of micro-dosing or dabbling in some “nootropics,” Josh Dean already did the hard work (and it doesn’t sound all that great). / GQ

Micro-dosing’s going mainstream partly due to Michael Pollan, partly thanks to Ayelet Waldman’s new book, published this month, A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life. / The New Yorker, Amazon

“When you knock on someone’s door and listen to them and talk about both views, people will talk, and will express uncertainty—most average people will.” Speaking of mind-hacking: Is it possible to “cure” prejudice and racism? / Vice

Here are five “zombie” parasites that mind-hack their hosts, such as the jewel wasp (Ampulex compressa), which hunts cockroaches and takes over their decision-making processes. / National Geographic

On the brain-conquering delight of “Bad & Boujee” in Nigeria, given this snippet of a Migos performance in Lagos: / stereogum.com

The opening of Tesla’s Gigafactory in Nevada signals the United States’ contention with the Asian companies that have dominated the battery cell market. / battery cell manufacturing has been dominated by asian companies, but t