June 26, 2017
Yemen’s civil war has created an out-of-control cholera outbreak—more than 200,000 cases, with 5,000 added daily. / NPR
FireWire was almost that rare story where tech giants could agree on one thing—then Apple tried to cash in. / Ars Technica
How a group of fans crashed a Joy Division rehearsal in 1979, resulting in one of the band’s seminal photos. / The Guardian
Millennials are visiting public libraries in bigger numbers—libraries, though, have become a lot more enticing. / Pew Research Center
Trump breaks 20-year tradition, drops Eid al-Fitr celebration. (Jefferson held the first White House iftar in 1805.) / BuzzFeed
An interactive map shows how much you’d pay in 2020 under the Senate healthcare bill compared to the ACA. / The Kaiser Family Foundation
“Software could look for patterns in speech or word categories representing confidence related to policy, whether Trump is considering opposing points of view and if he harbors uncertainty toward any subject.” A former CIA terrorism analyst on how spies view Trump’s tweets. / The Washington Post
It’s difficult to gauge Rex Tillerson’s effectiveness when the State Dept. is missing in action. / The New York Times
Previous losers of presidential races enjoyed a post-race bump—notably absent from Clinton’s ratings. / Gallup
Sign language in small Negev desert town defies linguistics—phonemes aren’t reused or combined. / Nautilus
“The system presented here extracts semantic meaning from an input text and uses this knowledge to generate ambient music.” Narrative can become music with this text-to-audio protocol. / Computational Creativity
To celebrate Harry Potter’s birthday, a look back at the conspicuously popular Nimbus 2000 vibrating broom toy. / The Morning News
Salvador Dalí’s body to be exhumed to investigate a woman’s claim she’s the artist’s sole offspring. / VICE News
The best places in the US to experience the Aug. 21, 2017, solar eclipse. / Atlas Obscura
Spoofing an Atari 2600 cartridge with an SD card to play the “Bad Apple” video and audio. / knowyourmeme.com
“The most startling flashback in the history of American television is the one that takes us from a black screen to the first successful test of an atomic bomb in New Mexico, on August 16, 1945, at 5:29:45 a.m.” It’s happening again. With the latest Twin Peaks episode, David Lynch and Mark Frost are rewriting the rules of television. / Vulture
Fascinating slide deck of computing without electricity; alternate media include DNA, fluids, and crabs. / Charles Reid
“I never thought there were so many of them”: Pride photos from ’70s San Francisco. / The Bold Italic
Burning lands where chronic wasting disease lies in wait may be the only way to save wildlife from an epidemic. / The New York Times
Predictions from 20 years ago on Hong Kong’s future under China were overblown. Then again, it’s still early. / BBC
Architectural history/parody blog McMansion Hell gets cease-and-desisted by Zillow. / The Verge