Life, death, and total football
China announces a new social credit law, attempting to codify past experiments. / MIT Technology Review
To understand China's zero-covid policy, it's helpful to think of it "as a steampunk pandemic response." / The Economist
Unrelated: Cities where "vision zero," regarding traffic deaths, is working. / Bloomberg
Barbados intends to make a British member of Parliament the first individual to pay reparations for his family's history of slavery. / The Guardian
A French court says a man fired for not being "fun" enough at work was wrongfully dismissed. / The Washington Post
An experimental vaccine, developed using mRNA, looks to "defang" the flu. / STAT News
Iran enters its World Cup group finale under a threat of "violence and torture" if the players don't "behave." / Sports Illustrated
See also: In 1983, Iran issued a ban on video technology, provoking a vibrant, underground infrastructure to develop. / The MIT Press Reader
Rosecrans Baldwin pays tribute to his first close friend to die—and the World Cup's most radical team. / GQ
A new study suggests that our brains use comparisons between control signals, not the signals themselves. / Quanta Magazine
New prefixes get introduced to measure the very big and very small. E.g., Earth weighs one "ronnagram." An electron? "One quectogram." / Nature
Should companies be compelled to pay fees when they use at-risk animals in their marketing? / Undark
Fashion analysis of female Gen-Z outfits on season two of White Lotus: "You really see just the angst and the misery." / Vogue
Unearthed photographs, taken by prison-appointed photographers, show daily life at San Quentin. / The Marshall Project
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Your headlines are sourced and written by Andrew Womack and Rosecrans Baldwin, Monday through Saturday.