July 26, 2017
In case you were wondering: What a 4,000-year-old credit card statement looks like. / Isobel Finkel (Twitter)
Venezuela enters a two-day national shutdown amidst a brutal economic crisis. / Reuters
Rogues, nomads, orphans: The Milky Way seems to be filled with billions of “solar exiles,” or free-floating planets. / Motherboard
Because sometimes you’re on deadline, but you still need an occasional distraction, and you can’t track the bozo Senate Republicans all day without wanting to duel it out, South Texas style. / texastribune.org
1) On self-amputation and sports writing: “Cricket historian, writer, surgeon, spy: the mad world of Major Rowland Bowen,” Russell Jackson (The Guardian). / The Guardian
2) On HBO’s new series Confederate, Jermaine Spradley’s Twitter conversation / Twitter
3) On being white in America, and how it relates to Hollywood folk, Fran Lebowitz interviewed in 1997 (Vanity Fair). / Vanity Fair
4) On exercise science and signals among the noise, running experts are asked who they look to for advice, then those people are asked the same question, and so on (Outside). / Outside
5) On social norms and chile peppers, and how they’re alike, Peter Turchin sums up books about spicy food, brain development, cooperation, pleasure and pain (Cliodynamica). / peterturchin.com
A brief history lesson on Prussian blue, the pigment that sparked “blue fever” in Europe and changed the world. / The Conversation
“Women’s chess” has become a real concept, unfortunately, flouting the game’s inherent meritocracy. / ChessBase
Winners announced for this year’s Magnum Photography Awards. / Lens Culture
Reviewing a history of “cool,” David Brooks says it’s likely dead, replaced by the more engaged “woke.” / The New York Times
“We’re taking all those questions marks of, ‘Would it be unseemly to ask my Lyft driver to go through the Taco Bell drive-through?’ And now we’re not only going to make it permissible, we’re going to celebrate this behavior.” Lyft adds “Taco Mode” in select Southern California markets. / The New York Times
Opioid crisis update: More US workers are failing drug tests, so more companies are moving more jobs overseas. / The New York Times
The pie chart and other data visualizations can be traced to a “Scottish scoundrel” who blackmailed lords. / Atlas Obscura
“That was 9 years ago, and he now does his horse impersonation (among others) for me on request.” Some fun responses to the question, “How did you know you’d found your person?” And be careful, some qualify under the #cryingatwork rubric. / Everything Changes: The newsletter
Détour, a new film by Michel Gondry, shot entirely on an iPhone, tracks a tricycle in France trying to return to its owner. / YouTube
See also: Michel Gondry at home in Brooklyn discussing his conversations with Noam Chomsky. / YouTube
A study of 111 NFL players’ brains finds 110 had chronic traumatic encephalopathy. / Gizmodo
For nine minutes between tweets, Pentagon officials wondered if Trump was about to announce a strike on North Korea. / BuzzFeed