May 6, 2014

• National Climate Change Assessment says climate change has moved from the distant future to the immediate now.
• Credit Suisse to pay a $1.6 billion penalty for helping wealthy Americans evade US taxes.
• Central African Republic's bloody battleground makes the Darfur conflict look like "a model of simplicity."
• Boko Haram leader says Allah wants him to sell the  200-plus Nigerian girls he kidnapped.
• Remnick: By banning four little words, Putin again shows his determination to "turn back the clock on the vast society under his rule."
• Tuesday poem: "To My Flowers" by Eileen Myles.
• Up to the mid-90s, shorty referred to female, male, and child equally (~30% each). But by 2002, the female bit rose to 70%.
• The world's quietest place is a man-made chamber in Minnesota that makes the human body sound like a rock concert.
• Netherlands Bach Society and guest musicians release a new recording online each week.
• Funeral directors prefer "semi-spiritual" ambient music over silence.
• Los Angeles Times finds the Donald J. Sterling Charitable Foundation to perform more self-promotion than charity.
• If Sterling is forced to sell the Clippers, his profits may be entirely tax-free.
• African park rangers fear that geotagged tourist photos will lead poachers to endangered animals.
• UPS accidentally delivers a​ Federal​ wildlife monitoring drone to a college student.
• The New Yorker spends a weekend on Soylent, the food substitute that tastes like "watered-down pancake batter."
• Alexander Chee undertakes a rich man's spring cleanse of Himalayan moss shakes.