Highlights from the newly unsealed election interference case against Donald Trump. / Politico

Some 56 percent of divorced men support Trump—more than single men, married men, and women of any relationship status. / The Cut 

Jessica Grose: The misogyny of young Gen Z men has been overstated. / The New York Times [+]

Emails sent to Springfield, Ohio's city officials reveal threats and racist disinformation, but also offers of support. / 404 Media

A judge acquits two environmental activists, saying that gluing themselves to a painting is "proportionate in view of the climate crisis." / The Art Newspaper

When a climate scientist criticizes his own research, suddenly Fox News wants an interview. / Grist

Related: TMN's Rosecrans Baldwin profiles a Bay Area startup "retromodding" old cars to go electric. / GQ

In 2019, an estimated 53,000 juveniles were charged in adult criminal courts because judges, prosecutors, or state laws transferred them there. / ProPublica

In 1976, 40 percent of high-school seniors said they had read at least six books for fun in the previous year, compared with 11.5 percent who hadn't read any. By 2022, those percentages had flipped. / The Atlantic [+]

See also: A high school graduate in Connecticut blames her inability to read and write on "shocking" educational neglect. / ct mirror

Quantum physicists show that photons can seem to exit a material before entering it, demonstrating "negative time." / Scientific American


Listen to a new version of OpenAI order 400 chocolate-covered strawberries by calling a store (around the 4:00 mark). / X

A researcher explains the sex lives of pygmy seahorses: "Not all seahorses are the portraits of domestic bliss that we assumed." / Nautilus

Some notes on furniture's influence on love: "We should live in rooms and on chairs built to our measure." / Chartbook

Laura Hall does another pop-up newsletter dedicated to Halloween. / 31 Days of Halloween

"It's decorative gourd season, motherfuckers." / McSweeney's Internet Tendency

In light of Israel's incursion into southern Lebanon, a look back at its 1982 invasion that became an 18-year occupation. / Politico Magazine

Viewers say last night's vice presidential debate was an even match, and an overwhelming majority felt the tone was positive. / CBS News

Interviews with 10-year-olds about the presidential election: "I wouldn't like someone who committed crimes to be my president." / CNN

A fact-check finds that no, there are not 13,099 illegal immigrant murders roaming free on American streets. / Alex Nowrasteh

See also: Researchers say a second Trump term could add an extra 4 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere by 2030. / Grist

A visit to Michigan and China shows how the US lost the solar power race. In short? Good old capitalism. / Bloomberg

New milk-tea chains in China have an aesthetic known as guochao, meaning "national and hip." / The New Yorker

Geologists make the counterintuitive case that Mount Everest is growing taller thanks to erosion. / Smithsoniian Magazine

DNA testing company 23andMe is sinking quickly, partly because it's run out of customers. / WIRED

Drug developers are developing birth control pills aimed at male Gen Zers and millennials. / axios

A study finds cannabis enhances the enjoyment of music, "confirming what every stoner already knows." / Marijuana Moment

A smartphone in San Francisco's Mission District is broadcasting what songs are currently playing nearby. / Bop Spotter

Video of "a particularly beautiful" murmuration of starlings observed in The Netherlands. / Kottke

The White House sides with Israel's ground assault of Lebanon while much of the world calls for a ceasefire. / Al Jazeera

Meanwhile, Iran is said to be preparing to launch a ballistic-missile attack. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

A long profile of Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose new book criticizes Israel and the corrupting influence of power. "I'm sad, but I was so enraged." / New York Magazine

Things to watch for in tonight's Vance-Walz debate. / Wake Up to Politics

Helene slamming a small town in North Carolina may disrupt the global supply chain for microchips. / NPR

A nuclear plant in Michigan will be the first in US history to restart. / CNBC

Your weekly white paper: "A systematic review about similarities in dog-human dyads." / Science Direct

A fascinating survey of how religious believers are using new technologies in their daily practices. / rest of world

An audio dive into Google's new niche product Notebook, which can turn a bunch of PDFs into a convincing podcast. / The New York Times [+]

See also: Barry C. Lynn on "Liberal democracy's last stand against Big Tech." / Harper's

From July, have you seen the trend of new books using multi-panel illustrations on their covers? They're called "bento books." / I Need a Book Cover

A celebrated new short story collection is about "people who just can't hang." / The New Yorker

Also, have you noticed worse service at restaurants lately? For the sake of society, that might be a good thing. / Economist Writing Every Day

See also: Britain experiences a rise in "zebra striping," where pub patrons alternate between alcoholic and non-alcoholic beer.  / Semafor

Japan's smaller museums are praised for their elegance. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Photographs of Japanese forests shimmering with fireflies. / Colossal

The death toll from Hurricane Helene has now reached 91 as Asheville, isolated by floods, struggles to get supplies airlifted to emergency workers. / Associated Press

Every time a climate disaster like Helene happens, insurance companies gouge customers, who complain to politicians, who claim climate disasters rarely happen. / How Things Work

Leonard Leo led the right-wing takeover of America's judiciary. Now one of his organizations is trying to block the efforts of a group that educates lawyers and judges about the climate crisis. / The Guardian

See also: Using an absurd legal basis, a Leo-funded think tank is suing the Consumer Product Safety Commission, arguing its structure is unconstitutional. / Rolling Stone

From inside Shein warehouses, gig workers—who don't have the same protections as full-time staff—are posting videos to expose grueling working conditions. / WIRED

"Perhaps this is appealing to you, but I find this revolting." The future of your Instagram and Facebook feeds is Meta's own AI-generated content. / Pixel Envy

Why AI is like the advent of the microwave oven: It's good at certain tasks and underwhelming at others—and just try to convince its advocates otherwise. / The Atlantic

Hardly a surprise, but according to a new FTC report, social media companies are gathering data far beyond users' expectations, sometimes with thousands of attributes per user. / EFF

See also: Ireland is fining Meta $101 million for "storing hundreds of millions of user passwords in plaintext and making them broadly available to company employees." / Ars Technica

According to a new study, "There will never be enough computing power to create AGI… because we'd run out of natural resources long before we'd even get close." / Radboud Universiteit

When AI scores higher on an IQ test than a third of people, have we "reached peak human?" That depends on whether "more" is necessarily "better." / VentureBeat

See also: The case for having lots of kids. / The New Yorker

Because of a legal dispute with a copyright group, a vast swath of popular music is currently blocked on YouTube. / Variety

Postcards were the memes of their day a century ago, replete with cats and everything. / BBC

How the 1937 hoax photo of a man holding a giant grasshopper—that later became a popular postcard—came to be. / Boing Boing

On Friday, the Chicago White Sox lost their 121st game of the season, the most for any Major League Baseball team in modern history. / ESPN

In a list of the world's 38 coolest neighborhoods, Marseille's Notre-Dame-du-Mont tops them all. / Time Out

Unrelated: A collaborative map for anyone interested in urban fruit harvesting. / Falling Fruit

Nearly four million homes and businesses in the South are without power as Helene makes landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in Florida. / Associated Press

Conservative purists may hope a Trump defeat will end Trumpism, but the GOP is likely to remain ruled "by, and for reactionary business interests and social conservatives." / Vox

Regardless of any reduction in emissions, climate change will raise the sea level of Pacific Island nations by at least six inches in the next 30 years. / NASA

See also: The climate has changed many times and in many ways over the past 485 million years, but never as quickly as what's happening right now. / The Washington Post [+]

The Secret Service spent $50,000 on AI and won't say why. / 404 Media

Households in the US can now order more free Covid tests. / USPS

"No billionaires will fund work like this because there's no money in it." The Jet Propulsion Laboratory does amazing things; equally amazing is that JPL even exists. / The Washington Post [+]

With the news that OpenAI is moving to a for-profit model, its stated mission to develop artificial intelligence safely and transparently is no more. / Vox

Why is generative AI being shoehorned into every software product? Because businesses need you to keep paying for a thing, and it's a new thing to pay for. / Where's Your Ed At?

An exoskeleton company's refusal to repair a $20 battery left their customer, a man paralyzed from the waist down, unable to walk. / 404 Media

Using advanced machine learning, researchers were able to solve 100 percent of Google's CAPTCHA challenges. / Decrypt

"A real-world contrarian could not have written the piece: it was completely predictable, littered with complaints about the artist's inflated reputation and dodgy brushwork." AI cannot bring Brian Sewell back to life. / New Statesman

Eighty-five years after a misspelled plaque was installed at Poets' Corner in Westminster, the dots have finally been added to the Brontë sisters' names. / The Guardian

To unlock why Greenland sharks can live 400 years, scientists study its DNA and reveal about twice as many base pairs as in humans. / The New York Times [+]

"It was stupid, immature and amateur to keep going forward when I still had the energy to get back." How a hiker survived a month in the North Cascades without food or shelter. / Cascadia Daily News

Analyzing the evolution of baseball's perfect lineup. / The Pudding

More than four million people have been affected by floods across six countries in western and central Africa. / CBC

Heavy rainfall caused parts of the Saraha Desert to turn green. / nasa earth observatory

A global economy of spammers and entrepreneurs is using AI to fill the web with "slop." / Intelligencer

New analysis suggests that one in seven scientific papers is at least partly fake. / Retraction Watch

Some findings from recent traffic analysis of right wing and mainstream conservative news websites. / TheRighting

Related: Men explain why they leave comments on pornography websites. / The Cut

Unrelated: A brief history of online fashion fandom. / Ssense

Today's political polling is said to be no more reliable than what we had a century ago. / The American Prospect

Photos from inside a high-status female leader's throne room in ancient Peru. / Colossal

A photographer makes composite images to depict the pressures of trying to be a "perfect" mother. / It's Nice That


Video of the first performance of an unknown Mozart piece recently discovered in the holdings of Germany's Leipzig Municipal Libraries. / Open Culture

Can you copyright a rhythm? A court is soon to decide. / Pitchfork

Billie Eilish is partnering with Google Maps to help fans find sustainable transport to her upcoming concerts. / NME

Cycling safety increases when bikes roll through stop signs and drivers are informed that this is okay. / electrek

For your weekly wanderlust: a north-to-south bike trip through Iceland. Also, where and when to see fall foliage this year in the US. / The Radavist, Smoky Mountains

If you carry a Nike Elite backpack, beware teenagers trying to steal your zippers. / Fast Company

The latest trend on TikTok? Young people going for silent strolls. "Gen Z thinks it just invented walking." / The New York Times [+]

Hezbollah launches its first long-range missile at Tel Aviv. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Was Israel's detonation of the pagers an act of terrorism? "To kill civilians in a mass operation that entails their deaths is neither a tragedy nor an accident." / Zeteo

American religious conservatives are working with Russia to push laws criminalizing homosexuality in Africa. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Kamala Harris says she would support ending the Senate's filibuster in order to reinstate federal abortion protections. / NPR

In the year after Roe fell, pregnancy-related criminalizations outpaced any other period in US history, with 210 women prosecuted. / Rolling Stone

Can MAGA appointees shift Georgia's electoral outcomes? An elections expert says no: "Whoever wins Georgia's electoral votes will get those electoral votes." / Vox

Francis Collins: We should each take the time to get our own mental house in order. / The New York Times [+]

A handful of grocery store chains own the majority of regional market share. / The Washington Post [+]

In Britain, young women are more likely to be employed than young men, and have higher average salaries. / Semafor

After organizers canceled, a southeast Cornwall town took over a music festival and made it free for all. / The Guardian

Scientists use AI detection techniques to double the number of known Nazca Line geoglyphs. / Gizmodo

An argument that optimization too often trumps human preference: "There are things where the value is precisely in the inefficiency, in the time spent." / Behavioral Scientist

A self-described artist, known for attacking other artists' work, deliberately destroys a sculpture by Ai Weiwei (see footage). / Artsy, Instagram

Tips on how to forage and enjoy North America's largest native edible fruit, the pawpaw. / Atlas Obscura

The most commonly used "-y" adjectives in the New York Times cooking section. / Reddit

See also: some odd words for the week—scrimption, nimiety, perficient. / Futility Closet

Tens of thousands of people in Lebanon have fled their homes since Monday amid Israeli air strikes. / France24

Murders in the United States dropped 11.6 percent from 2022 to 2023, the largest single-year decline in the last 20 years. / NBC News

A white paper finds that female politicians, most notably Democratic candidates, are more likely to convey angry emotions on Twitter. / Social Science Quarterly

Only four percent of Latino Americans use the term "latinx," and 75 percent say it should not be used. / Pew Research Center

Unrelated: "The DNA Dreams of the New Eugenics." / The Los Angeles Review of Books

Pilots and regulators say spoofed Global Positioning System signals are causing havoc beyond active conflict zones. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

The Chinese government blocked ChatGPT in March 2023, new research has found. / rest of world

A popular parenting forum is pursuing legal action against OpenAI for scraping its data. / WIRED

California sues ExxonMobil, alleging the company has spent decades misleading the public about plastic recycling. / NPR

Former Apple design guru Jonny Ive quietly acquires half of a city block in San Francisco, hoping to draw others to the area. / The New York Times [+]

London's clear air zone has resulted in more active children. / Grist

"Gatwick train cancelled after squirrels board and 'refuse to leave.'" / sky news

Some facts about Britain: "Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000." / Marginal Revolution

The Netherlands plans to return 288 items looted during the colonial era to Indonesia. / The Art Newspaper

When did color palettes become content for social media? The past year or so. / It's Nice That

Comparing Apple, Google, and Samsung's definitions of "a photo." / The Verge

An interview with the Tumblr girl who got people interested in medieval art. "There's something inherently appealing about creatures that are ugly in a charming or cute way." / Index

See also: Some tentacle-inspired leather accessories from Japan. / Spoon & Tamago

Citing issues during the primary season, election officials are raising concerns about the US Postal Service's readiness to handle mail-in ballots in November. / NPR

In 2017, Cards Against Humanity bought land in Texas at the Mexico border to protest Trump's wall. Now it's suing SpaceX for trespassing and damaging the property. / Engadget

Scientists identify a new class of naturally occuring shapes with rounded corners and pointed tips, which they call  "soft cells." / Nature

"It's the aesthetic equivalent of digging through your flatscreen's options menu to turn off 'auto-smoothing.'" The archival look is usurping slick horror as the AI art style of the moment. / 8Ball

The story of how Kodak invented the snapshot is really about "what happens when a powerful technology originally only understood by a select few can suddenly fit in your hand." / Vox

"If you let [AI] write your silly love song, it demonstrates how little love you feel, how little you are willing to risk or spare." / Internal Exile

See also: Further evidence we're currently living in a parasite culture. / The Honest Broker

In a new book, Olivier Roy argues that culture is dying when it's no longer done for its own sake, and instead to position ourselves against others. / The New Yorker

On "mixed emotions," and whether we are truly able to feel good and bad at the same time, or if we instead quickly switch back and forth. / The Conversation

If you haven't been following Rusty Foster's Today in Trail newsletter, this heart-breaking/warming post is the time to start. / Today in Trail

The next time you travel, be sure and put your name and contact information inside your bag—because luggage tags sometimes get torn off. / Afar

After an overwhelming customer response, Lego says it has no plans to abandon including physical building instructions with its sets. / Gizmodo

A new game to obsess over: Rearrange the tiles to unscramble a map. / Scrambled Maps

Rickie Lee Jones was one half of the sample that begins the Orb's "Little Fluffy Clouds." Turns out the other is writer Carl Arrington. / polpo blogo

"I thought we were supposed to sound nice." Fifteen members of the schoolboy chorus who sang on Benjamin Britten's 1963 War Requiem recording reunite. / BBC News

Trump's proposed tax plan is like 2017 but more, and research confirms those gains in fact never trickled down beyond the wealthiest individuals and corporations. / Rolling Stone

See also: Explainers on how Trump's tariffs would distribute wealth upward and how his backwards plan to lower grocery costs could end in food scarcity. / The New Republic, The Atlantic

Political agendas make their way into classrooms as more social studies teachers seek material online, and left-leaning sources outweigh those on the right. / The New York Times [+]

How red tape and a narrative that long Covid is over have curtailed research of the condition and development of therapies to help those who are suffering. / Chemical & Engineering News

Gambling and elections have always gone hand in hand, but there are too many factors at play to assume gamblers are going to be predictors of real outcomes. / Slate

See also: The crypto bros who dream of crowdfunding a new country. / BBC News

Visualizing why, to write a 100-word email, ChatGPT consumes one bottle of water and enough electricity to power 14 LED light bulbs for an hour. / The Washington Post [+]

How various industries hijack words to make basic human needs sound like amenities. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Pickleball courts, ziplines, and dining and among the attractions the eight biggest theater chains in the US and Canada plan to add over the next three years. / Variety

A guide to the streaming site that unearths rare films—where you'll find everything from forgotten gems to those best left buried. / Vulture

The 1975 owner's manual for the Pet Rock. / Boing Boing

"In all the photos from that trip, I'm staring at my phone. I can hardly remember that summer." The collapse of self-worth in the digital age. / The Walrus

Could there be another you in the multiverse? Maybe, "if string theory, and the idea of the string landscape being fully populated within the inflationary multiverse, is indeed correct." / Big Think

Watch: Last week's GeoGuessr World Cup finals were honestly pretty riveting. / YouTube

"This, too, was Paris. Just a different aspect." Joyce Maynard spends a foggy week in a riverboat on the Seine. / The New York Times [+]

Photos of the world's hot springs. / The Dial

Experts weigh in on Israel's use of exploding pagers and hand-held radios as weapons against Hezbollah. / New York Magazine

A group of former Donald Trump advisers have helped to build a pro-Russia website that frequently spreads debunked conspiracy theories. / The Guardian

A little more than half of Trump supporters say they believe his lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets. / The Washington Post [+]

See also: "How the Trump Campaign Ran With Rumors About Pet-Eating Migrants—After Being Told They Weren't True." / The Wall Street Journal [+]

According to Elizabeth Spiers, when Trump says things like, "I love the uneducated," he's not so much code-switching as code-hitching. / The New York Times [+]

Kamala Harris turns around a 17-point polling deficit in less than two months—something that doesn't happen frequently in presidential politics. / Wake Up to Politics

Unrelated: National surveys show an unprecedented decline in drug deaths in the United States, though they're still extremely high. / NPR, axios

A new Disney short film series dramatizes traditional African storytelling—and appears to do a good job of it. / Africa Is a Country

Post-pandemic, American students are being asked less often ​​to read full-length books. / ABC News

What's it like to be a college student with helicopter parents who are still helicopter-ing? "You know what they say—strict parents raise sneaky kids." / Slate

For your weekly wanderlust, a walking tour of the Faroe islands. / Walking the World

A new photo book documents the birth of mountain biking. / The Radavist

A profile of maverick bike designer Grant Petersen. "I think of bicycles as rideable art that can just about save the world, or at least make you happy." / The New Yorker

This year marks the centennial of the abolition of the Caliphate, or the "successorship" to the Prophet Muhammad. / Law & Liberty

A brief history of the decades-long conflict between Israel and Hezbollah/Iran. / Al Jazeera

Who are the best bureaucrats in the United States? There's an awards show for that, aka, "the Oscars for the deep state." / The New Yorker

Luxury brands are arranging costly events for "very important clients" to experience "the fashion-editor lifestyle." / The Cut

Instagram is now making teenagers' accounts private with restrictive settings. / The Verge

See also: The latest batch of friendship apps may discourage connection by preying on people's "techno laziness." / The Trend Report

Saudi Arabia has spent $1.3 billion so far on "sportswashing." / Politico

In South Korea, nuclear power surpasses coal and natural gas for electricity generation. / Reuters

The Consumer Brands Association believes companies should be able to stamp "recyclable" on products that will end up in a landfill. / Undark

Unrelated: A Texas science center built a business leasing out dead people's remains, often without their consent or their family's knowledge. / NBC News

Why are so many music festivals being canceled? One reason is a generation of fans that lacks "the same enthusiasm for festivals as generations past." / NPR 

Portraits of people from a 400-meter walk across London. / It's Nice That

Visualizing ship movements around some of America's busiest waterways. / Beautiful Public Data

Some recipes to celebrate Chuseok, aka, Korean Thanksgiving. / Metafilter

An argument that spiritual things play a significant role in our everyday lives. "The spiritual is not weird because it is completely familiar." / 3 Quarks Daily 

The number of people killed or wounded in the Russia-Ukraine war has reached roughly one million. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Devastating flooding sweeps through Central and Western Africa. / DW

Europeans are upset about Gaza, but they don't appear to be voting like it. / The Economist

Unrelated: "I will not tell you why Brazilians cannot buy cheap and safe sunglasses." / The hold-up problem

Both liberal and conservative Taylor Swift fans are trying to persuade right-leaning Swifties, perhaps disappointed by the Harris endorsement, to sell their tickets and merch. / Vanity Fair

In politics, "sanewashing" is the act of packaging outrageous statements in a way that makes them seem normal. / Poynter

JD Vance's hometown is happy to receive $500 million in funding from climate legislation that Vance calls a "scam." / The Guardian

Hamilton Nolan: For elected leaders, everything is on the table to be traded away. / How Things Work

Earth gets a new "mini-moon" for the next two months. / Semafor

Things to know about tonight's lunar eclipse. / NPR

From around the United States, satellite imagery of 59,507 outdoor basketball courts. / The Pudding

Two new books offer different ideas on where to look for the basic properties that define living things. / Undark Magazine

Nicole Twilley: Part of the problem I have with refrigeration is that we have conflated it with freshness. / Scope of Work

Should the Louvre spend half a billion Euros to rehouse the Mona Lisa? An expert says no. / The Art Newspaper

The Theory of the Leisure Class, from 1899, explains why humans want luxury items even more when the prices go up. / WIRED

American literary prizes increasingly favor stories about the past. "Contemporary fiction has never been less contemporary." / The Nation

The "dead internet theory" says if you're reading these words online, you're the last person on the internet. / Prospect Magazine

California lawmakers have passed legislation that would require health warning labels to appear on gas stoves. / NPR

Bill McKibben: How seeding pollinator-attracting plants in solar farms might address two climate crises at once. / The New Yorker

Boar's Head has shut down the Virginia meat plant where a listeria outbreak resulted in dozens of hospitalizations and the deaths of nine people. / CBS News

See also: If you're going to avoid mass-produced deli meat, talk with a butcher about how to get the good stuff. / The Melt

"I'd argue some AI projects are clearly art. They just tend to be ones where the art includes the interactive AI system." / The Verge

AI has helped Shein accelerate its fast-fashion production—as well as its carbon dioxide emissions, which nearly doubled between 2022 and 2023. / Grist

See also: The White House wants to close a trade loophole favored by Shein and Temu that allows low-value shipments to enter the US without paying duties. / CNBC

Why combining Major League Baseball with the Grateful Dead really does make sense. / Rolling Stone

"This is meta-gossip: gossip about the idea of a person and about ideas of human nature." How "Am I the Asshole?" ate the internet. / Vox

A bronze replica of Diana of Versailles from the Titanic's First Class Lounge, last photographed in 1986 and later feared lost, has again been identified in the wreckage. / Hyperallergic

"We see people who are nervous. And so we want to take them by the hand and say, it's OK." When did all the recipes get "garlicky?" / Eater

When offered an opportunity to listen to one of the world's best sound systems, a writer deals with the question: What song should I put on? / GQ

How the "ambient meaning" of a music playlist—or any curated collection—creates a perception beyond its individual selections. / johan's substack

See also: "It's not ambient music. It's Ambient Music. It's Kleenex, it's Velcro, it's ChapStick." Everything is ambient. / Andrew Womack

An astounding collection of BBC Essential Mixes dating back to 1993. / Internet Archive

"Radio Static is a small and ultimately pointless internet radio that plays nothing but various forms of static." / Radio Static

Covid is the only virus that has an adequate availability of tests—other infectious diseases remain dangerously lacking in diagnostics. / Financial Times

In the first year after the end of affirmative action, colleges' diversity numbers are already dwindling, and many are looking at ways to reverse the trend. / Inside Higher Ed 

Anti-abortionists are using states' single-subject requirements for initiatives to keep abortion rights—which address two subjects, the fetus and the mother—off ballots. / Slate

"Like trends in fashion, the dominant style of social media oscillates between aestheticized perfection and aestheticized mess." The desperation of the Instagram photo dump. / The New Yorker

In South Korea, sales of strollers for dogs outpace those for human babies. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

When it comes to grocery chains, Texans' fervor for San Antonio-based H-E-B is so intense that once stores move into a region, national competitors can't keep up. / Sherwood

See also: In Marathon, Texas (pop. 410), a local grocery store helped bring a community together—before disagreements and legal battles tore it apart. / Texas Monthly

In Victorian Britain, temperance advocates published "drink maps" of various cities in attempts to convince authorities there were too many places to buy alcohol. / Atlas Obscura

Americans can now drive to France—via a ferry that connects Newfoundland to Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the last French territory in North America. / Thrillist

A search for the photographer whose everyday images of occupied Paris delighted in trolling Nazis. / Le Monde

"The attempt to hide ambition with a sunset on a mountainside may be the internet's greatest trick." Gonzales regrets how the neoclassical genre he popularized became the algorithm's favorite. / The Quietus

AI chatbots are proving remarkably effective in persuading conspiracy theorists to doubt their beliefs, by tailoring counter-arguments to the individual. / Ars Technica

See also: At least for now, the next generation of Wikipedia editors is keenly aware of the existential threat AI's errors pose for the site. / The Guardian

xAI's supercomputer caught Memphis by surprise, skirting regulations in favor of becoming operational as fast as possible—even the city council was kept in the dark. / NPR

A startup wants to create the first space-based cellular broadband network, and is launching massive, sky-obscuring satellites to do it. / Gizmodo

"Have you ever been drifting off to sleep, only to be jerked awake by the sound of a bomb going off inside your head?" On exploding head syndrome. / The Conversation

Zone out to a mountain biker doing flips on a moving train. / Instagram

Nearly 400,000 people are without power as Tropical Storm Francine makes landfall in Louisiana. / CBS News

Photos of the French Quarter in New Orleans before and during Francine. / The Times-Picayune

Four civilians become the first non-government astronauts to conduct a spacewalk. / CNN

One of the largest US militias has forged alliances with law enforcement around the country. / ProPublica

Unrelated: Charts and data visualizations often convey narratives "that are misleading or entirely false." / Asimov Press

An interview with Leticia Sarda, aka Celebrity Number Six, on learning that thousands of people on the web have spent years searching for her. "I'm not ready for this." / The New York Times [+]

How to make an electronic bumper sticker that displays what you're listening to inside your car. / YouTube

See also: A q+a with the creator of Tuneshine, those LED album art displays. / Pocketlint

How can society make sure it benefits from AI, while minimizing the risks? One idea: make AI companies pay for the harm they cause. / Noema

Researchers find hundreds of different types of bacteria and fungi at altitudes as high as 10,000 feet. / Phys.org

The "World's Longest Yard Sale" runs for six hundred and ninety miles, from Michigan to Alabama. / The New Yorker

The best travel guides today? Exclusive Google Docs with vetted, personal recommendations. / Thrillist

Thanks to the readers who pointed out a typo in yesterday's link about stationery. As one noted, "all stationery shops are stationary, but not all stationary shops sell stationery."

The US says Iran is shipping ballistic missiles to Russia for its war against Ukraine in a "dramatic escalation." / NBC News

A first-hand account of surviving Israel's attack on Gaza's al-Mawasi "humanitarian zone." / Al Jazeera

Kamala Harris won last night's presidential debate in part by putting Donald Trump on the defensive. She also won Taylor Swift's endorsement. / Politico Magazine, Instagram

Harris is also said to have beaten Trump at the business of television, "which is a remarkable achievement." / The Bulwark

David Mack: I knew Harris won the debate because I watched Fox News the moment it ended. / Slate

Unrelated: American men are eating far more red and processed meats than federal guidelines recommend. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Nearly 200 people were killed last year protecting the environment. / Grist

Hannah Ritchie: You and I aren't going to solve climate change, but we are an important part of a system that will get us there. / Sustainability by numbers

"It's hard not to find the absurdity in it." Making fun of 9/11 is now a popular meme for Gen Z. / Rolling Stone

Some 92 percent of 8- to 12-year-olds are on social media. Does that mean their brains are being damaged? "In scientific terms, no." / Vox

A trailer for the Minecraft movie is getting ripped apart by viewers on YouTube—"horrifying," "devastating," and "expensively naff." / The Guardian

"An unfinished project is full of intoxicating potential." Some tips on how to finish a project when deadlines are absent. / ByteDrum

For your Wednesday wanderlust: a bike tour across Japan, a foodie tour across France. / The Radavist, Travel + Leisure

A new fashion label for the ultra-rich requires a $12,000 membership fee before you can buy any of the clothes. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Declassified images from US Army archives show combat designs through the decades. / The Guardian

Drummer Spencer Tweedy, son of Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, reviews stationary shops around Europe. / Spencer Tweedy

An op-ed for the visionary art director and photographer Lloyd Ziff. "I'm only in it for my friends, so I can give them work." / The New York Times [+]

Vice President Harris will meet Donald Trump tonight in their only confirmed debate. / axios

Some iinterviews with people who started politics-free Facebook groups. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

A political reporter says the question he gets asked most often is "who will win the presidential race?" (He says it's always been tied.) / Wake Up to Politics

Brazil is suffering its worst drought since nationwide measurements began over seven decades ago. / The Associatedd Press

See also: Photographs of scientists recording sounds in the Amazon. / The Dial

A fossil-fuel billionaire in Texas is trying to sue Greenpeace USA out of existence. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

​​Cabernet Sauvignon is the most popular red wine in the US, but Napa Valley may no longer be able to make it, given the climate crisis. / NPR

In France, frozen products accounted for 24 percent of all pastries in 2021. It was 17 percent in the United States. / Marginal Revolution

New recipes are said to be moving away from cutesy titles—e.g., "beany leeky greens with greeky rampy beans"—to becoming more straightforward. / Eater

Composer Max Richter describes the different styles of music that have influenced him since he was little. / Pitchfork

An ode to looking at works by the fifteenth-century Flemish painter Jan van Eyck. "They beg to be seen face to face." / The New Criterion 

Apple's new AirPods will function as over-the-counter hearing aids, something users were already tinkering with. / Kottke, Bang Your Head

For tennis fans, Jon Wertheim's 50 parting thoughts from the US Open. / Sports Illustrated

From restoring access to enshrining bans—including two competing measures in Nebraska—a look at the abortion initiatives on US ballots this November. / The New York Times [+]

What's causing grocery price inflation? Retailer data shows it's not just corporate greed, it's also consumer spending habits. / NPR

In the first reported case, a person in Missouri with no known contact with poultry or dairy cows contracted bird flu. / NBC News

You can mask even if it isn't Covid, and more tips in this practical guide to the upcoming viral season. / Vox

"The field of paleontology is mean. It has always been mean." Inside the battle between two paleontologists over a site that could hold evidence of the day the dinosaurs died. / Intelligencer

Pour-over coffee takes time, which has driven demand—including a disastrous attempt by Starbucks—to automate the process. / Works in Progress

How a design firm created the novelty popcorn buckets—e.g., the infamous Dune sandworm—that have spawned a movie-theater phenomenon. / Slate

Hugh Jackman denies using steroids, except why should anyone care? / The Wrap

See also: When tennis stars are also billionaires' offspring, it's frustratingly hard to distinguish talent from privilege. / The Guardian

Veneers are the quick answer to the allure of perfect-looking teeth. But as the procedure becomes more accessible, the potential for trauma increases. / The Cut

In Europe, YouTube will stop recommending fitness videos to teens to help prevent developing "negative beliefs about themselves." / Euronews

See also: According to a new survey, fewer teens are vaping now than at any point in the past 10 years. / AP

"We went where Bob Hope didn't go." A group of American soldiers were also a rock band that toured Vietnam during the war. / Rolling Stone

There is a reference book for every moment in life, and it's time we start appreciating all the knowledge at our disposal. / Discourse

A roundup of the best animated series you should be watching now. / Meditations in an Emergency

"The best Oasis shirts were brutalist, or avant garde, or hideous, or looked like bootlegs." A design review of Oasis. / Snake

After five years of internet sleuthing, a model seen on a piece of fabric—aka Celebrity Number Six—has been found. / Reddit

See also: Redditors identified a new medical diagnosis: an inability to burp. And now doctors have responded with a treatment. / KFF Health News

"You've been selected because you're Andersen quality but not Andersen price." What it was like to work a job in fake Y2K preparedness. / n+1

Data from 10 million car crashes shows larger vehicles kill more Americans—compared to compact cars, colliding with a heavy pickup increases fatality rates by roughly seven-fold. / The Economist

See also: Cars have destroyed American cities, which were designed around cars. / How Things Work

How office workers shifted from sharing their personal lives to instead being "on PTO." / Vanity Fair

Women's world no. 2 Aryna Sabalenka, who's headed to the US Open final tomorrow, is hitting her forehand harder than the top men's players. / The Telegraph

How the US Open became "a monument to conspicuous consumption and aspirational wealth where tennis has become virtually incidental." / The Guardian

On Europe's disappearing peasantry: "They wear suits, to us perhaps a strange garb for such a journey as theirs, but this is a sign of their respect, of gravity realized." / Literary Hub

Test your knowledge of world geography—but instead of maps, make it about the news. / Rest of World

See also: Test your perception of the color blue. / Is my blue your blue?

"In a political landscape where climate issues have become highly divisive, green activists are split as to whether SDLT's disruptive methods can be effective—or whether they will further divide." / The Dial

Why are Yellowstone visitors petting bison? Or cooking in geysers? "There was only one way to find out: by going into the park and behaving like an idiot." / Outside

"After that epic reset, probably some snowy day in late 2027, we will finally begin to reintroduce what was lost." Beyond "rewilding," a landowner is working to restore the prairie. / Orion

How marinades do—and don't—work, and how too much of a good thing can make chicken taste like metallic ammonia. / Serious Eats

A look at how brands name themselves today, and how writers are finding themselves either revered or sidelined in the process. / It's Nice That

The Led Zeppelin songs that were written or inspired by other artists, some credited, some not, and some credited following litigation. / Wikipedia

The EU and UK are investigating Ticketmaster over the "dynamic pricing" model that sent ticket prices skyrocketing for the Oasis reunion. / Pitchfork