October 5, 2016

President Duterte told a sympathetic audience Wednesday that Obama and the State Department should “go to hell,” intimating that he would take steps to replace American influence with Russian or Chinese support. / Associated Press

The World Bank stopped funding coal plants to much ado in the environmental and development communities. But the local banks they lend to made no such pledge, and now World Bank money is powering a coal boom across Asia at a time when taking international targets seriously should really mean a global freeze on new fossil fuel infrastructure. / americanprogress.org, Vox

“Women taking the combined oral contraceptive were 23% more likely to be diagnosed with depression.” Are pharmaceuticals mansplaining away serious risks from the pill? / The Guardian

“North Koreans know they do not live in a socialist paradise. North Koreans express the most animosity toward the government when it undercuts their entrepreneurial activities.” One of the first opinion polls conducted in Kim Jong-un’s DPRK debunks state myths of a docile, deluded populace. / Center for Strategic and International Studies

German prosecutors drop case against comedian Jan Böhmermann for reading a poem on TV that “insulted” Turkey’s president (by criticizing Erdogan’s policies, and saying that he likes sex with goats). / dw.com

Catastrophe in Haiti as Hurricane Matthew brings shoulder-high floodwaters into people’s homes. / NPR

A short, moving story about people consigned to living in their cars in the wealthy DC suburb of Fairfax, Va. / The Washington Post

The Cedar Tavern, New York’s legendary Greenwich Village bar that was a favorite of the Abstract Expressionists and the New York School of Poets long before it closed, has turned up in Austin, complete with its fabled mahogany bar. / Wikipedia, The New York Times, austin.culturemap.com

Jamie Oliver gets ripped online for promoting a paella that doesn’t follow proper form. / BBC

Scientists aimed to see if bees could “feel” positive emotions. / popsci.com

Sometimes it’s good to read things that make us enraged from the kick-off: “The right to vote should be restricted to those with knowledge.” / Quartz

The State Department is taking steps to base its negotiations off the capabilities and realpolitik of key rebel militias in Syria, rather than tethering its priorities to civilian political bodies. / tcf.org

“Wisconsin has promised the court that voters would be able to get an ID with whatever documents they have. They’ve completely failed to live up to that promise.” Wisconsin is supposed to grant temporary IDs to voters, but DMV workers keep turning people away. The state was found to have denied voting rights to about 100 men and women, most of them African-American or Latino, in the last election. / The Nation

“Without consistent regulations, skiers must decide whether they can continue trusting the lifts at the local ski hills they know and love.” Outside goes big in denouncing out-of-date chairlifts and the lack of national oversight that keeps them running—and breaking—at many of America’s ski resorts. / Outside

These five states will decide which side controls the Senate next year: Indiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. / The Washington Post

“The wealth gap between black and white Americans is much bigger than the income gap, thanks to a toxic combination of institutionalized discrimination, persistent racism, and policies that amplify inequality.” James Surowiecki, lucid as usual, on America’s widening racial wealth divide. / The New Yorker

“There’s nothing more to say except that Coke tastes like Coke.” Actually, much more is said in “one millennial’s search for the perfectly American, impossibly iconic Coca-Cola experience,” and a lot of it could have been better edited, but it’s still a well done story. / Eater

“Mack’s Soft Foam Earplugs are the filter for modernity that only an earlier version of modernity could have produced.” Delightful tribute from Jamie Lauren Keiles to foam earplugs. / New York Times Magazine

Human life expectancy has gradually increased since the 19th century, but scientists argue over whether we’ll ever make it past 115. / Nature

Someone went to the trouble of writing up what’s happened in the lives of Friday Night Lights’ main characters since 2012—the fictional characters, not the actors—and we’re not totally displeased. / The Ringer

“Brain training” app Lumosity is reeling, with app downloads down and thousands of refund requests reaching their inbox after the government ruled their advertisements were unsupported by science, with no evidence that the skills these games impart are exportable to general intelligence. / Scientific American, themanitoban.com, geneticliteracyproject.org

On the one hand, no, we shouldn’t go to the lengths of rote learning in Pakistan. / Pacific Standard

Adderall is at the center of an “epidemic of over-diagnosis and addiction.” Its fate has been linked to Big Pharma’s pockets from the get-go, but who it’s prescribed to has changed. Best read if you have the time: a journal paper on the neuroethics of Adderall and other memory-enhancing drugs making their way from schools into workplaces, including professional sports. / The New Republic, HuffPost, arxiv.org, seattletimes.com