October 19, 2016

Government scientists discover a process for converting CO2 into ethanol at room temperature, opening possibilities for converting exhaust into fuel and capturing pollution at the same time. / popularmechanics.com

Data beamed back from NASA’s New Horizons probe suggests that Pluto could have some weather-like behavior, including clouds. / The Guardian

A new cadre of women “refusing to be pigeonholed” in pop garner acclaim for their own voices in opportunities won after years in songwriting. / Twitter, mtv.com

“We went through years of seeing every hack in America reduce dramatic Red Sox playoff baseball to prefabricated invocations of the Curse of the Bambino, and hindsight has only proven how silly and counterproductive it was for writers to hug their clichés rather than write meaningful and interesting things about meaningful and interesting baseball games.” A plea for good writing about the Cubs. / Deadspin

“I understand him. He cares about two things, how people perceive him and how much cash he has in the bank.” Mark Cuban was persuaded against Donald Trump by a conversation with the man himself, who Cuban says literally “doesn’t know how technology works.” / Bloomberg Businessweek

“The most natural thing in the world.” How an Icelandic member of parliament described breastfeeding her baby while giving a speech. (Iceland elected the world’s first female prime minister in 1980.) / Jamaica Observer

Authorities are investigating a Pennsylvania city councilman who encouraged people to vote online for Hillary Clinton with a hashtag—a cruel joke or a ruse, seeing how online voting doesn’t exist. / ABC News

“Even to refer to different Chinese ‘languages’ remains taboo—they must be ‘dialects,’ or risk undermining the hallowed notion of ‘one China.’” Mandarin is the world’s most spoken language, but its growth exposes diversity that remains contentious at home. / Economist

Poet Donald Hall writes movingly about the pleasures and difficulties of solitude, but it’s mostly his brief descriptions of his marriage to Jane Kenyon that had us enthralled. / The New Yorker

See also: “Divorce is Destroying Retirement.” / Bloomberg

A conversation between Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons isn’t very revealing, save for the fact that Prada’s office is dominated by paintings of doors and a giant escape hatch. / System Magazine, It’s Nice That

Why in hell would the left oppose the first and biggest carbon tax in the country? “The future of climate politics is playing out in Washington state, and it is not pretty.” / Vox

In the US, an average dancer’s annual total income is just $35,000, about half of which comes from non-dance activities. / elle.com

“A grown-ass man has to take a bird bath. That shit ain’t right.” Rasheed Wallace writes on the ongoing crisis in Flint, Mich. / The Players Tribune

Feel like traveling to Italy in November? Bed-and-breakfasts are offering free rooms for an exchange of services—social media help, gardening, or some produce from your garden. / The Guardian

A Silicon Valley dad builds a backyard playground where the neighborhood’s children can play without supervision, complete with roof-jumping. A journalist explains why she doesn’t let her kids visit anymore. / The New York Times

Studies show that “learning styles” are mythical creatures. / New York

Danish TV audiences don’t need cliff-hangers. / The Wall Street Journal

“Selling health insurance to dead people is not a very profitable business.” And yet dying does nothing to stop the flow of offers and other junk mail you’ll still receive. / Consumerist

Less than a month after the Anti-Defamation League added Pepe the Frog to its database of online hate symbols, the group teamed with Pepe creator Matt Furie in a campaign to #SavePepe using “a series of positive Pepe memes and messages.” / link, The New York Times

Matt Furie’s comic response to a potential Trump election. / The Nib

Since Milo Yiannopoulos was banned from Twitter for harassing Leslie Jones with a barrage of overtly racist tweets (and rightly so considering Twitter’s rules), some Twitter trolls have decided to code their racially hostile language using the names of popular tech companies and Skittles candy. / The New York Times, Twitter, Quartz

“If you were the kind of person wanting to use the Harambe meme as an excuse to be offensive and juvenile in the name of whimsical fun, then the Harambe meme was all yours. If you were looking for an actual excuse to be racist, then the Harambe meme provided that as well.” The Harambe meme was originally about a gorilla, we think. / Vox

A Trump-supporting Pennsylvania mayor, Charles Wasko, faced calls for his resignation after he posted racist and misogynist memes to his public Facebook page. / Salon

Stereotypes hold women back from rising to leadership, but breaking those stereotypes requires nuanced attention to the interplay between identities. / Fast Company

The latest Wikileaks dump reveals that Abedin, whose first job for Hillary Clinton was as an intern in the First Lady’s office, is not so much Clinton’s body woman, power-broker, or strategist—so much as she is Clinton’s “external hard drive.” / Politico

“If feminism’s goal is equal opportunity and choice, Michelle makes me feel like every choice is available.” How much does America love Michelle Obama? Chimimanda Ngozie Adichie, Gloria Steinem, Jon Meacham, and Rashida Jones count the ways. / New York Times