May 21, 2015

• New video of Freddie Gray arrest contradicts Baltimore Police report.
• Photos of the ancient site of Palmyra, Syria, whose antiquities are now under threat by ISIS.
• Crude oil spill along California coast threatens rare ecosystem that's one of only five in the world.
• Europe's seal pelt ban destroyed Greenland's coastal economy, resulting in overpopulation and disease.
• A day-by-day account of the $350,000 black rhino hunt that's been defended as protecting the species.
• During last night's filibuster, Rand Paul quoted Montesquieu, George Orwell, Thomas Paine, and Milton Friedman.
• Limiting government data collection is inadequate say 65% of Americans—only 10% have started encrypting their data.
• "All Americans should be reminded again and again that recent wars were based on lies."
• Lethal injection, once meant to ease executions, has become a way of experimenting with death.
• Nebraska lawmakers vote to end death penalty, with enough votes to overrule the governor's veto.
• "From 1992-1999, prosecutors were three times more likely to seek the death penalty for black defendants than white."
• Seeing death-row inmates in a different light—through watercolor portraits.
• Following her sexual assault allegations against Bill Cosby, Janice Dickinson sues him for defamation.
• New research challenges conventional wisdom, finds substantial decline in rate of severe childhood mental illnesses.
• If you are writing a rape scene, maybe you need to ask yourself why.
• The singularity is further than it appears: There's no incentive for sentience, so no one's building it.
• Computer scientists build algorithm that raps with 21% higher rhyme density than any human rapper.