October 12, 2016
Apparently the president and/or his assistants have time on their hands: he edited the latest issue of Wired, wrote a short piece for CNN about wanting to see Americans living on Mars, and a much, much longer and wonkier article for the Economist in which he predicts trouble spots for the American economy. / Wired, CNN, The Economist
All six of the American scientists who won Nobel Prizes were born in other countries. / The Hill
The new mayor of San Salvador, one of the most murderous places on Earth, is young, rich, and inexperienced, and his theory of change—to inspire Salvadorans—vexes people. But it actually works so far. / vqronline.org
John Singleton, director of Boyz N the Hood, on the deep roots of black Hollywood flowering today: “If you didn’t have Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger in In the Heat of the Night, you wouldn’t have had Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte in 48 Hrs. If you didn’t have Gordon Parks directing Shaft the way he did, you wouldn’t have Denzel Washington.” / YouTube
Conservatives, against the peace deal with FARC, used President Juan Manuel Santos’s social liberalism against him, imploring voters who disagreed with his open policies on LGBTQ people to vote against the deal. / The New York Times
Among the liberal millennials Obama’s eight years have brought to Washington, few cultural talismans are considered more woke than a “Notorious RBG” shirt. / currentaffairs.org
Two schools dominate the rankings of universities that produce Nobel prize winners: École Normale Supérieure in Paris and Pasadena’s Caltech. / Nature
“Politically, a hard Brexit is actually the soft option for the government. Economically, however, hard Brexit will come at a high price, which the UK will have to pay for years to come.” Poland’s former Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister assesses the political logic behind “Hard Brexit.” / Project Syndicate
Connecticut senator Chris Murphy says America bears responsibility for this weekend’s Saudi airstrikes on a funeral in Yemen that killed over 140. / NPR
Voters who think big rallies will win states—Trump just bragged of an upcoming rally in Florida, where he expects 25,000 people—are deluded, says a former Mitt Romney strategist. / The New York Times
In May 1988, girlfriends Claudia Brenner and Rebecca Wight were attacked while camping on the Appalachian Trail by Stephen Roy. In the Hollow tells the story of the shooting, Wight’s death, and Brenner’s desperate survival (and later transformation into an advocate for hate crime legislation in the US) as she returns to the trail for the first time since the shooting. / Vimeo
Nearly all ski movies are dumb and macho, but sometimes they’re not. Professional snowboarder Alex Yoder visits Petran, Turkey, where people have been snowboarding for roughly 300 years. / Vimeo
Oktoberfest garbage can be turned into a Nike Store, and cigarette butts can become high-design chairs. Engineer Arthur Huang goes through the basics of up-cycling trash. / YouTube
Cities plant stinky female gingkgoes—comparable to the odor of vomit or dirty socks—because they can withstand the pollution of dense urban areas for hundreds of years; many other trees barely last a decade. One surprising note: “It turns out the ginkgo, like some species of fish, can spontaneously change sex. This evolutionary adaptation allows ginkgoes to propagate when the sex ratio is imbalanced.” / Slate
A new way to understand climate change? Translate empirical data into sheet music. / grist.org
“Then, I saw it: Lebanon’s new ski slope. But instead of freshly fallen snow, the white hill was made of garbage bags, extending for several hundred meters along the Jdeideh bridge.’” AFP photographer Joseph Eid documents heaping piles of garbage in Beirut, where government inefficiency to clean the streets has resulted in apathy and dark humor among city dwellers. / AFP
Report from Santa Ana, “the face of the new California,” which once was at the heart of white bread Orange County, and now is 78 percent Latino. / The New York Times
“You’d think that a hall of taxidermied animals would be the epitome of quiet.” Grandiose, smug op-ed says natural history museums are wasted on the young. / Aeon