March 21, 2017

A North Carolina startup uses bacteria to grow “biocement” bricks to avoid the hefty fossil fuel consumption needed for normal cement. / YouTube

Japan entices elderly drivers to give up their licenses with discounts at funeral homes. / The Mainichi

Markos Kay uses subatomic visualizations to turn the quantum world into art. / Creators

In rehearsal footage from 1986, Keith Richards can’t nail Chuck Berry’s “Oh, Carol” riff, and Berry doesn’t give him a pass. / Vimeo

In Washington, advocates call on all 435 members of the House to resist Trump’s plan to axe the NEA. / San Francisco Chronicle

Here’s a terrific “mega-meta list” of critics picks for the best classical recordings from last year. / iowapublicradio.org

“These men are distorting Austen’s work; her novels are hardly blueprints for an ‘ethnostate.’” The normalization of white supremacists continues with an article that huffs and puffs to protect Jane Austen from the alt-right. / The Chronicle of Higher Education

A long report on the battle for the Metropolitan Museum’s future, and why its wunderkind director got the boot. / Vanity Fair

An actual rabbit hole leads a farmer to find caves used (maybe) by followers of the Knights Templar. / BBC

In case your CPR training is out-of-date, some news: Bear pop music in mind when performing chest compressions. / Quartz

Related: A playlist of 100-bpm songs approved by New York Presbyterian Hospital for CPR—admittedly a treatment that only works about eight percent of the time. / Spotify, jems.com

A hand-cranked gramophone provides solace among the ruins of Aleppo, where electricity is scarce. / Agence France-Presse

“My access to the inmate email service was cut off in early 2015, an hour after I’d used it to contact a journalist about wrongdoing within the Bureau of Prisons.” Barrett Brown was thrown in solitary for taking a phone interview, which isn’t against the law. He knows his fellow inmates have it as bad or worse—filing grievances online would help. / The New Inquiry