President Trump plans an expensive military parade for his 79th birthday. / Washington City Paper

Economic tensions with the United States’ trading partners begin to escalate. / Semafor

Tariffs may not make other countries respect the US, “but they can make them move on without it.” / The Atlantic

A 5-4 Supreme Court lifts an order that blocked the deportation of suspected Venezuelan gang members to a prison in El Salvador. / Reuters

Meanwhile, three-quarters of those deported had no apparent criminal record. / CBS News

Tips for people visiting the United States to minimize the risk of Border Protection accessing their data. / WIRED

A round-up of high-speed rail projects in the US that have a chance. / The New York Times [+]

A billionaire in Southern California owns about 75% of the apartment units in his Orange County city. / Bloomberg [+]

Unrelated: A skateboarding trip through the Golden State. / YouTube

For nearly a year, the FBI secretly ran a money laundering scheme named after Elon Musk. / 404 Media

To justify its power, Silicon Valley obsesses over IQ, “the term of choice for the man who doesn’t just think he’s smart, but thinks he’s smarter than everyone else.” / The New York Times [+]

Children of the wealthy spend upwards of $6,000 a month to live in luxury housing near Ivy League schools. / Airmail

See also: “Inside Boston’s Luxury Brothel Scandal.” / The Wall Street Journal [+]

A long essay on what it’s like to live next to malevolent neighbors. / Electric Lit

Thomas R. Wells: There’s no good reason for small countries to exist if their primary business is enabling tax avoidance. / 3 Quarks Daily

Some analysis of male characters who appear in Michael Mann movies, for whom nothing is fun and everything is work. / The Los Angeles Review of Books

Some paintings by Emma Beatrez, “the most intriguing of which examine prototypical cheerleaders and the spectacle of small town pep-rally bonfires.” / Booooooom

Jesse Pearson interviews his mother about her collection of 8-track cassettes. / Apology Magazine

Trump often blames popular resistance to his policies as bad polling, but the size and scope of the Hands Off protests were far too large to be the product of faulty data. / Strength in Numbers

The Israeli military walks back its account of killing 15 Palestinian medics after video contradicts its claims that the victims’ emergency signals were not on. / AP

Related: If you are in the US military, you are about to be asked to betray your own values. / How Things Work

According to a researcher, authoritarian regimes tend to break down when elites turn on each other when faced with an economic crisis. / Bluesky

Unrelated: Billionaire hedge fund manager—and Trump booster—Bill Ackman calls Trump’s tariffs “a self-induced, economic nuclear winter.” / BBC

Now that a second death has been recorded in the Texas measles outbreak, it increases the likelihood that we’re going to see more. / STAT

Related: “The generation of physicians who are currently, for the most part, treating patients haven’t actually seen what a measles case looks like other than from a textbook or a video.” / The New York Times [+]

Trump is offloading the cost of disaster response to cities and states, which could drive them to invest more proactively in climate adaptation and other risk mitigation. / Energy & Environment News

ICE Air flight attendants say in case of a water landing they’re instructed to ignore passengers and “make sure that you and the guards and the people that work for the government get off.” / ProPublica

The National Park Service’s Underground Railroad webpage is being literally whitewashed—sometimes not by direct order, but by low-level NPS workers seeking to comply with what they believed Trump wanted.” / The Washington Post [+]

“Are we at the point where universities across the country must have presidents who are agreeable to President Trump or else risk calamitous cuts to their federal funding?” / David Pozen

US cuts leave Democratic Republic of the Congo—a country of more than 100 million—down more than 70% of humanitarian aid, cutting off potable water and HIV drugs overnight amid simmering conflict.  / Think Global Health

See also: “You don’t improve global security by allowing the World Food Programme to run out of funds to feed 2 million desperate people in the Sahel.” / Financial Times

International standards organizations are said to be a current of anticapitalism in the corporate stream. / MIT Press Reader

Splitting more than atoms: Physicists form factions for and against a new, bigger, budget-hungry Large Hadron Collider. / Guardian

Economists consider switching from “gross domestic product” to “net domestic product.” One big difference: Counting depreciation of natural resources makes petrostates appear less wealthy. / IMF, Climate Home

As states like Texas enact fossil-reliant energy strategies, a stark reality: New gas turbines are wildly expensive and difficult to procure right now. / Canary Media, Gas Outlook

Winter ice long visited by a dragon spirit no longer freezes; Shinto devotees blame climate change and disharmony with nature. / The New York Times [+]

See also: According to the company behind the initiative, de-extincting mammoths is a win against climate change—but it’s almost sure to fail, and the money burned getting there would be better spent on actually fighting climate change. / Ars Technica

A forbidden workplace romance ends with a Major League Baseball player marrying the mascot—or, rather, the woman in the costume. / People

About 70 percent of adults in the United States say they are following news about the White House. / Pew Research

The administration plans to build a “war-fighting headquarters” in Japan to deter China. / NBC News

Donald Trump says he is not joking about running for a third term. / BBC News

We now know what a Millennial American president looks like, and he has a beard. / The Trend Report

Canadians turn “elbows up” into a movement rallying the nation against President Trump. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Corey Robin: Fear works most potently and powerfully when it threatens our highest sense of ourselves. / Corey Robin

Behind the design of a new Swiss passport. / SWISS Magazine

A tour of an “ultra-narrow” Tokyo hotel. / Spoon & Tamago

A round-up of the best things ever made by Microsoft. / The Verge

Tressie McMillan Cottom: AI is a stellar tool for demoralizing workers. / The New York Times [+]

Blocking the internet on your smartphone improves “sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being.” / PNAS Nexus

Related: Easy steps for lobotomizing your smartphone. / She’s a Beast

Former tennis pro Andrea Petkovic says greatness in the game is a question of tension. / Finite Jest

Unrelated: A new college course likenes heterosexual partnerships to eating disorders. / The Cut

This year’s Tournament of Books, presented by Field Notes, reaches its closest-ever conclusion! / Field Notes, The Tournament of Books

Due to fatigue from producing this newsletter and the ToB, TMN is going to take the rest of the week off. See you next Monday.

Canada’s Prime Minister says the country’s old relationship with the United States, “is over.” / BBC News

An alliance providing vaccines to poor communities says a loss of US funding could potentially cause a million-plus deaths. / The Associated Press

Scientists are stunned that a long-discredited researcher will conduct a federal study on whether vaccines cause autism. / STAT

Researchers are being told to remove any references to “mRNA”—one of the most promising areas of medicine—from grant applications. / Semafor

See also: A poll finds 75% of US-based scientists are considering emigrating, likely to Canada or Europe. / nature

Hillary Clinton: It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity. / The New York Times [+]

The White House revokes hundreds of visas to crack down on students who support Palestinians. / NPR

There have been more than 170 violent vigilante attacks by “pedophile hunters” since 2023. / The New York Times [+]

Headline of the week? “Kansas babysitter checking for monsters finds man hiding under bed.” / The Guardian

Walking through a thought experiment about: what if jobs were purchasable? / No Dumb Ideas

Related: A brief poem about not working too hard. / Futility Closet

A former Meta employee says a new Facebook memoir “puts a face to the horrific events and dangerous decisions.” / rest of world

Today’s books and films depict agriculture in outmoded fashion, rather than as “an industry that’s ruthless and exploitative in ways peculiarly modern.” / The Dial

Eighty percent of women are said to be wearing the wrong size sports bra “with wide-ranging consequences.” / The Athletic

Amidst all the anime-izing of photos with ChatGPT, Hayao Miyazaki, founder of Studio Ghibli, is “disgusted” by AI. / The Verge, 404 Media

See also: The Tate Museum got rid of a Van Gogh portrait about a century ago because the subject’s beard was “too funny.” / The Art Newspaper

“You get really high and you answer emails.” Pedro Pascal explains why his Starbucks order is six espresso shots over ice. / Sprudge

If the news is getting you down, why not join the conversation at the Tournament of Books, presented by Field Notes, on its penultimate day?! / Tournament of Books, Field Notes

The European Union tells residents to stockpile enough food to last 72 hours in readiness for war. / Politico

The week’s long read: A reasonably condensed version of one person’s seven-year saga of escaping Iran for the United States. / Outliving Iran

Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza protest against Hamas. / The Associated Press

A 19-year-old engineer working for DOGE once provided tech support to a cybercrime ring that bragged about trafficking in stolen data. / The Guardian

A round-up of issues dividing GOP lawmakers—including whether to acknowledge their planned tax cuts will cost $4 trillion. / Wake Up to Politics

The contact details for White House security advisers—and even some of their passwords—can be found in leaked customer data caches. / Der Spiegel

Meta, Google, OpenAI, and others ask the White House to block state AI laws and say it’s legal for them to use copyrighted material to train their models. / The New York Times [+]

See also: A federal judge rules that a newspaper copyright lawsuit against OpenAI can proceed. / The Associated Press

A researcher says one reason people are making fewer babies is the “hyper-engaging” media found on phones. / Vox 

Four college students explain how they make “positive masculinity” videos for TikTok that are appealing to young men. / Rolling Stone

Two-thirds of single people in the US hold on to clothes that belonged to an ex. / Women’s Wear Daily

See also: How to become a contemporary fashion critic. / Ssense

An in-depth interview with actor Michael Shannon about his R.E.M. cover band. / Bitter Southerner

George Saunders: “The first and only time I ever did acid, I looked down at my hands and noticed that they were not, in fact, ‘flesh-colored’ after all.” / The Paris Review

A first look at Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne’s archive at the New York Public Library. / Vulture

Russia agrees to a ceasefire in the Black Sea following talks in Saudi Arabia, then almost immediately demands new terms. / Semafor

Unrelated: President Donald Trump is gifted a new portrait from Vladimir Putin. / BBC News

Consumer confidence in the United States falls to a four-year low. / Al Jazeer

The US put tariffs on goods from Canada in the late 1800s, thinking the country might join the Union—instead, nationalist sentiment surged. / TIME

Security officials say “heads are exploding” after a journalist was added to an administration group chat on Signal. / NPR 

The White House insists nothing clasified was shared—so the Atlantic decides to publish the entire chat. / The Atlantic

There are few things more dangerous than firing a spy—and a researcher says Chinese intelligence networks are already recruiting ex-USG officials. / The Associated Press, Reuters

Unrelated: Everything you need to know about Elon Musk’s new restaurant in Los Angeles. / Eater

Business jets operating at Mach 5 are becoming closer to “a workable reality.” / Robb Report

Malcolm Harris reviews a new book by Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein, who can “brook no structural conflict between social classes” and believe abundance requires no tradeoffs. / The Baffler

The average non-elderly American household only has 46 days of cash savings. / People’s Policy Project

A paralysed man can stand on his own after receiving an injection of stem cells to treat a spinal cord injury. / Nature

From last year, a round-up of the 10 hardest dayhikes in the US. / Backpacker 

The winners of this year’s British Wildlife Photography Awards are said to “celebrate the diversity of animal life across Great Britain.” / Colossal

Photographs capture Mexico City’s water crisis. / Long Lead

A trendy new way to microdose alcohol? A shot-and-fake-beer setup. / Punch

Gay men recall the kindly waitresses at Hooters who made their restaurants “a secret sanctuary.” / The New York Times [+]

A Palestinian director of this year’s Oscar-winningn documentary is arrested by the Israeli army after masked settlers attack his house. / The Guardian

In the fallout of a journalist being added to a Signal group discussing White House war plans: a lot of loathing for Europe is made public. / The Atlantic [+], Politico

Republicans coalesce around a defiant message despite the news. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Signal is typically not allowed on government phones, which means officials were likely using their personal devices—which are much easier to hack. / Today in Politics

Is President Trump a natavist or a neocon? He’s basically being both at the same time. / Forever Wars

Unrelated: Heartwarming thoughts from an indie bookseller in the South. / Kottke

In China, income taxes collected from individuals were 7.5 percent below expectations last year. / Marginal Revolution

The DNA of 15 million people is up for sale after the bankruptcy of 23andMe. / 404 Media

A science journalist says the US needs a “reckoning” over its handling of Covid. / Vox

See also: A round-up of interesting things learned by researchers during Covid that don’t have much to do with Covid. / The New York Times [+]

A brief history of “accelerationism”—i.e., the theory that human history is a small mechanism within techno-capital’s history. / The Latecomer

Colorado begins overseeing legal use of psychedelic mushrooms in mental health treatment. / Undark Magazine

Architects explain how they restored the skylight in Houston’s Rothko Chapel. / Architect

The amount of hair-loss content on TikTok is said to cause many to “think about their scalps too much.” / The Cut

Turkey takes a step toward full autocracy after President Erdoğan jails his main political rival. / Politico

The Turkish government says 1,133 people have been arrested in five days of protests across the country. / BBC News

High-profile US officials are planning to visit Greenland this week, reviving concerns. / Semafor

Hamilton Nolan: There isn’t a secret reason driving behind that’s happening right now. “This is the outcome of the class war... This is what happens when it is lost.” / How Things Work

What does it say about these times that “we’ve replaced Christ figures with fictional serial killers?” / The Trend Report

See also: A teenager subscribed to at least 49 extremist Telegram chats and channels before he killed two people at an LGBTQ+ bar. / ProPublica

Ethiopia’s fastest-growing EV maker is producing electric motorcycles. / rest of world

The science behind longevity is said to be “fiercely” debated by those in the field. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Millennials are reported missing 2010s media, wishing for a period prior to everything being owned by private equity and tech billionaires. / Get a Shelf

From Mariam Mahmoud earlier this month: Where have the amateur researchers gone, and how do we bring them back? / Kasurian

A Dublin-based company has designed upwards of 2,000 Irish pubs in more than 100 countries. / Smithsonian Magazine

A self-described autistic nerd writes a guide on how to date after 15 years of celibacy. / Fantastic Achronism

Find out what the Hubble telescope saw on your last birthday. / NASA

The latest edition drops of experimental web writing journal The HTML Review. / thehtml.review

The Tournament of Books, presented by Field Notes, basically has one week left—which means there’s still time to dive into the action! / Field Notes, Tournament of Books

The Sudanese army says it has recaptured the presidential palace in Khartoum after nearly two years of fighting. / BBC News

An explainer for how Germany’s “fiscal flip” this week stunned Europe’s diplomats. / Politico

Unrelated: Photographs from Berlin’s feminist noise-punk scene. / VICE

London’s Heathrow Airport will restore some flights after being completely shut down. / CNN

Yaroslav Trofimov: Lessons from the 20th century offer a range of possible outcomes for Ukraine. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Sally Rooney explains the pleasures of watching—but not playing—billiards. / The New York Review 

The owner of Carrie Bradshaw’s house in Sex and the City implores fans to leave him alone. / The Cut

American women between 19 and 30 now consume more cannabis than men. / The Face

See also: A round-up of odd Canadian liquors. / Nuvo

A 115-year-old Belgian religion called Antoinism is said to be dying out, partly from refusing to explain itself. / The Dial

Before the discovery of gravity or magnetism, “angels were one way of accounting for the movement of physical entities.” / Aeon

“There have been times I have dug for complete strangers, and other times for close family.” What it’s like to dig graves. / The Spinoff 

European leaders gather to find the money and rules needed to turn the bloc into a military superpower. / Politico

Hungary passes a law banning pride marches held by the LGBTQ+ community. / BBC News

President Trump removes all democrats from the board of the Federal Trade Commission. / Vox

Tesla protesters are planning their “biggest day of action” yet at the end of the month. / The Verge

See also: A list of things to be done that “probably won’t magically catalyze a mass movement against Trump but are still wildly important.” / The White Pages

A jury in North Dakota says Greenpeace must pay hundreds of millions of dollars to a pipeline company. / The Guardian

Expedition companies are testing out drones to airlift heavy loads normally carried by Nepali Sherpas. / The New York Times [+]

A climber reports on efforts to protect Chile’s Cochamó Valley from overtourism. / Patagonia

Friends of the world’s leading thinker on decisions explain what it was like to learn he intended to end his life. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Young women describe acquiring “facial dysmorphia” from spending too much time on social media. / The Cut

Young people in Lithuania are said to be the world’s happiest. / Dazed

Eighty-four percent of employed Gen Z TV viewers say they watch shows and movies at work. / The Wrap

Unrelated: Lessons learned from apologies issued on reality television. / The Pudding

Also unrelated: “Actually, Living in Carrie Bradshaw’s House Is Hell.” / The Cut

A seven-minute visit to painter Amy Sherald’s studio. / YouTube

Four new fairs demonstrate Mexico City’s “meteoric” rise as an art world capital. / Artsy

An explanation of how sculptures are made to burn during Las Fallas, Valencia’s largest festival. / Atlas Obscura

Hundreds of Palestinians are killed after Israel resumes its war on Gaza. / Al Jazeera

Peru declares another state of emergency in Lima over a crime wave. / Reuters

Investors are slashing holdings of American equities by the most on record. / yahoo! Finance

Military websites are scrubbing the renowned Native American Code Talkers. Meanwhile, segregated facilities are no longer explicitly banned in federal contracts. / axios, NPR

Without foreign-aid programs, the United States is making survival less likely for people with tuberculosis and risking the disease becoming more treatment-resistant. / The Atlantic [+]

See also: Amid President Trump’s layoffs, the future of more than 26,000 government-owned art objects is unclear. / The Art Newspaper

Sweden’s low rates of lung cancer, known as “the Swedish experience,” help explain the new nicotine gold rush, aka, the Zyn market. / The New Yorker

An early smoking-cessation tool was an all-lettuce cigarette. / Atlas Obscura

As late as the 1980s, it was believed that babies do not feel pain. / Marginal Revolution

Who came up with the idea of side-release clamps? A man named Dick Tracy who was inspired after nearly drowning. / Tedium

Most of humanity’s ancestors avoided conflict, “but this made them vulnerable to a few psychopaths.” / Works in Progress

Unrelated: “Airport theory,” yet another TikTok trend, means going to the airport with only 15 minutes to spare. / The Points Guy

A “sculptural” California mansion with a shark tank can be yours for $59 million. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

A former fashion editor explains what it’s like to spend a year only buying secondhand. / GQ

Some details about the golden age of Japanese pencils. / Studio Notes 

A reminder: This year’s Tournament of Books, presented by Field Notes, is still playing out! / Field Notes, The Tournament of Books

A reporter in Canada explains how furious people are with the United States. / Vox

“If you are not a citizen of the US, and you are going through an immigration process, your first thought needs to be: How can this process be weaponized against me?” / USA Today

The head of an NGO in Kenya details the suffering caused by the end of USAID funding. / STAT

What it’s like to be declared dead by DOGE when you’re still alive. / The Seattle Times

Spencer Ackerman on how to secure Red Sea shipping: “Just stop the fucking genocide.” / Forever Wars

Some details regarding fears felt within CISA, within universities, within the National Park Service. / WIRED, The Harvard Crimson, ProPublic

Thoughts on how many of our media and intellectual leaders have failed to update their priors. / How Things Work

Utah may lose the Sundance Film Festival over a bill to ban pride flags. / Deadline

Unrelated: A Texas bill wants to prevent students “from behaving like anything other than a human.” / KVUE

Snapchat’s “half-swipe” gesture is reportedly making teenage lives miserable. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

A poem for the moment: “For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper.” / poets.org

Gen Z faces more rejection—in a multitude of forms—than any previous generation. / Business Insider

See also: Gen Z-ers explain how they steal time and money from employers. / The Standard

If you know how music contracts work, Spotify’s claim that it paid out $10 billion in royalties last year suddenly makes a lot more sense. / Dada Drummer Almanach

If you missed the Eno streaming event, new livestreams ware announced. / Anamorph

A props master explains how books are selected for White Lotus. A recording mixer explains why people’s dogs are freaking out during Severance. / Lit Hub, The Washington Post [+]

Stephan Kunze: Your life is not a movie, so stop soundtracking it 24/7. / zensounds

Some oral history for the time 250,000 bouncy balls were launched down San Francisco’s hills. “You could hear them coming.” / SFGate

Greenlanders vote to rebuff President Trump’s bid to control their island. / BBC News

Chinese automaker BYD delivers more fully electric vehicles than Tesla for the first time in the fourth quarter. / rest of world

Related: An observation of Chinese small vehicles. / Medium

Unrelated: “Tesla Cybertruck sinks in Ventura Harbor after botched Jet Ski launch.” / The Los Angeles Times

Meta restricts a journalist’s coverage of Elon Musk’s government takeover. / User Mag

NBA players use consultants to create and run their Chinese social media accounts. (Are the nicknames any better there?) / The New York Times [+], GQ

A “hodgepodge” of local news outlets spring up in London. / The New Yorker

A list of 200+ websites and services that an ICE contractor is monitoring. / 404 Media

The EPA announces plans to target more than two dozen rules and policies. / NPR

See also: The Supreme Court says it won’t hear a case seeking to stop climate lawsuits in five states. / Grist

The cost of child care now exceeds the price of college tuition in 38 states and the District of Columbia. / Stateline

Something new we learned this week: Men are 2.7 times more likely to be diagnosed with an HPV-associated malignancy and face mortality rates that are 2.8 times that of affected women. / NPR

A total lunar eclipse will be visible tonight across all of North and South America. / Sky & Telescope

Paintings by Keita Morimoto of corner stores, vending machines, and lampposts. / Colossal

“If it makes sense, it’s not French.” Photos from a day in the life of Chamonix ski patrollers. / Field Magazine

Secretary of State Rubio says there’s “no military solution” to resolving Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. / The Guardian

A Ukranian newspaper uncovers how Russian defense manufacturers buy American microchips. / The Kyiv Independent

Stephen Kotkin: Trump may be wrong in his analysis of the world, “but you can’t say that American power is sufficient to meet its current commitments on the trajectory that we’re on.” / The New Yorker

The White House derails regulation to prevent carbon dioxide pipeline leaks. / Verite News

Abubakar Adam Ibrahim: The not-so-powerful who demand the truth about the powerful “are often averse to the truth about their own complicity in the failings of the nation.” / The Dial

Washington DC’s iconic Black Lives Matter mural is being removed. / Hyperallergic

People with Botox are banned (reportedly) from a London club after comedians complain their faces don’t react to jokes. / The Independent

Americans spend three days a year playing Wordle, contributing to the “de-intensification of work.” / The Conversation

See also: What it’s like to be a professional python hunter, or a professional slap fighter. / Garden & Gun, Esquire

Generation “Beta” arrived in January, and parents already don’t love the name’s connotations. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Gen Z members say they feel “bombarded” by products and trends. / The New York Times [+]

Related: “If you buy what you don’t need, you steal from yourself.” Some proverbs from around the world. / Futility Closet

A cute new tiny electric truck debuts in California. Some details on Japan’s new high-speed trains. / dezeen, uncrate

A round-up of 100 significant moments in sports in the 21st century. / The Ringer

Related: A video depicts a wild, urban mountain bike descent in Chile. / YouTube

Ukraine says it is ready to accept a US-led proposal for a 30-day ceasefire with Russia. / BBC News

A separatist militant group in Pakistan says it has taken 214 hostages after hijacking a train. / The Guardian

The West is said to have bet on the wrong technologies in the energy transition, “catering to oil company tastes that proved fickle.” / Energy Intelligence

See also: Asia is now home to 19 of the 20 most polluted cities. / Semafor

A poll finds nearly nine in 10 Americans admitting to a fear of flying. / The Points Guy

Many American adults are withdrawing from romance, “but the trend seems to be especially pronounced for Gen Z.” / The Atlantic

Unrelated: Mr. Beast, YouTube’s biggest star, now earns more money from selling chocolate bars than making videos. / Bloomberg

Are men in a spermpocalypse? A wild ride through testicular microplastics, the (overblown) fertility crisis, and mind-bending reproduction technology. / GQ

Speaking of mind-bending: Surgeons use a “tooth-in-eye” procedure to testore vision to blind patients. / Smithsonian Magazine

Imagining what the next 5 years of Covid-19 may look like. / C&EN

Seven of Michelangelo’s few surviving sketches are shown in the United States for the first time. / Hyperallergic

Alice Gribbin: To love divinity, to love vigor and abundance, harmony and one’s ancestry, was to love the body. / Cluny Journal

Calls for entries to “a crowdsourced panning for art-writing gold.” Also, winners of the $10,000 “ISBN visualization bounty,” and a website you can change with a phone call. / Greg.org, Anna’s Blog, 715-999-7483.com

Why do different cultures hear the same animal sounds yet translate them into language so differently? / The Pudding

Some details on what it takes to become the 2025 US barista champion. / Sprudge

Since Trump’s inauguration, records show multiple incidents of violence have erupted at Tesla facilities in the US, including one person who tossed molotov cocktails at vehicles. / The Washington Post [+]

See also: At a dealership in France, more than a dozen Teslas were ignited in an apparent act of arson. / France 24

“It’s cool that the president knows my first name. I dig that.” It doesn’t take much flattery or threatening for Trump to win over reluctant Republican lawmakers. / The New York Times [+]

See also: How much is too much for Republicans in Congress? “The possibility that there literally is no line is, at this point, the most likely answer.” / Splinter

Green cards can only be revoked by an immigration judge, no matter what Rubio or Trump may say in their aim of deporting a Palestinian activist. / The Guardian

The company that owns the world’s largest call center has deployed AI to “neutralize” agents’ Indian accents. / Futurism

On “vibe coding” with AI, and apparently deciding to no longer give a shit about what you get, as long as you got something. / Internal exile

How the largest fraud in Canadian history was busted, but not before its perpetrators “contacted—by phone, email and other means—every single adult Canadian.” / Maclean’s

When all your memories are digital, you yearn for something to hold onto. / Bloomberg

Everyone loves the wooly mouse; rather than proof that it’s possible to bring back a mammoth, it may instead show your company’s value can hit $10 billion because of a cute photo. / Defector

See also: A game where you must pretend to look at your phone. / It is as if you were on your phone

Probably related to all of the above: In Ted Gioia’s annual state of the culture, how dopamine addiction is flattening everything. / The Honest Broker

Why may Trump’s $880 billion in spending cuts come from Medicaid? Because otherwise the math doesn’t add up. / The 19th

A now-deleted list of government properties for sale includes a secretive CIA facility. / WIRED

Related: How Trump’s efforts to cut environmental red tape may backfire. / Grist

Unrelated: Beware the man whose handwriting sways like a reed in the wind (from TMN favorite Anne Carson). / The London Review of Books

Thanks to Elon Musk’s leap into politics, Tesla suffers brand erosion, employee dissatisfaction, and a falling stock price. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Adi Robertson: If Congress decides to become a real branch of government again, then we can talk about things like an anti-deepfakes law. / The Verge

A paralyzed man in San Francisco is able to move a robotic arm using only his thoughts. / Interesting Engineering

Vietnam’s offers free 4G phones to help low-income consumers adapt to the country’s 2G network shutting down. / rest of world

Forest managers and ecological designers are trying to build thousand-year-old trees. / Noema Magazine

Frank Lloyd Wright’s personal apartment at The Plaza Hotel is up for sale. / Compass

The contest for literature’s worst opening sentences is sadly over. / The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

In case you missed it yesterday, this year’s Tournament of Books, presented by TMN favorite Field Notes, is in full swing! / The Tournament of Books, Field Notes

The 2025 Tournament of Books, presented by Field Notes, is now live. / Field Notes, The Tournament of Books

Denmark’s state-run postal service plans to end all letter deliveries at the end of 2025. / BBC News

Russia is working hard to hold on to its military bases in Syria. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Israel’s internal security agency says Netanyahu’s policies were among the underlying causes of the October 7 attack. / NPR

The White House has been holding direct talks with Hamas. / axios

The US Supreme Court blocks President Trump’s freeze on foreign aid. / Semafor

A new study suggests more than half of the world’s adults will be obese by 2050. / The Lancet

Abraham Santiago: I was an incarcerated nursing assistant during Covid. This is what I saw. / STAT

Retinol, the wrinkle-erasing, acne-fighting cream, is said to be the result “of decades of horrifying medical abuse.” / Teen Vogue

Low-flying satellites—100 miles above the Earth—appear to be coming soon. / Ars Technica

See also: A self-driving Maserati reaches 197.7mph. / The Verge

A visit to a four-story communal treehouse in southwest Arkansas. / Colossal 

An ASMR-style look through Carl Jung’s “red book” of dreams and visions. / Open Culture

In 1995, bands occupied 41% of the music charts. By 2023, that number had fallen to just 4%. / Voronoi

President Trump delivers the longest presidential address to a joint session in history. Some factchecking for his main statements. / Slate, The Guardian

An ongoing tragedy in the United States? The “billionaire paradox” wherein “a small elite sacrifice both democratic principles and economic growth on the altar of their tax privileges.” / On Data and Democracy

A round-up of price hikes to anticipate in coming weeks. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Unrelated: Some thoughts from top economists on Social Security’s “Ponzi-like aspects.” / Marginal Revolution

The Art Museum of the Americas cancels upcoming shows about queer identity and the African diaspora. / The Art Newspaper

“Dark woke” is said to be the new “dirtbag left”—young progressives who aren’t afraid to tease their political opponents. / GQ

Related: “Facebook cybertruck owners group copes with relentless mockery.” / 404 Media

A study finds China is now producing most of the basic research that may underpin future computing hardware. / Nature

ABC shuts down the news website FiveThirtyEight. / Reliable Sources

The Los Angeles Times launches an AI tool to summarize articles—and it only needs a day to sympathize with the KKK. / Nieman Lab, SFGate

See also: This sort of feckless truth aversion “is what’s destroying consumer trust in journalism.” / Techdirt

A tiny sunflower relative is the first new species identified in a US national park in nearly 50 years. / Atlas Obscura

The Texas measels outbreak shows no signs of slowing. / The New York Times [+]

Details on cuttlefish and their many disguises. / The New York Times [+]

“Magent fishing” refers to “a love of lobbing high-powered magnets on ropes into waterways to retrieve discarded metal objects.” / The Bell

LeBron James becomes the first player in NBA history to score 50,000 combined points. / BBC Sport

Unrelated: Teddy Roosevelt used to watch Duke Ellington play baseball. / Futility Closet

Stock markets around the world fall after President Trump imposes tariffs on goods from China, Canada, and Mexico. / BBC News

Some reactions in Ukraine after Trump halts all aid. / The Kyiv Independent

A study finds nearly half of US voters dissuaded from buying a Tesla by recent events. / The San Francisco Standard

See also: A Tesla showroom has become a protest site in San Francisco. / SFGate

Arab leaders meet in Egypt for a summit focused on Gaza’s reconstruction. Meanwhile, Israel and Hamas prepare for war to resume. / Al Jazeera, Semafor

In India, Whatsapp is found to be a thriving market for illegal firearms. / rest of world

A paper finds a new AI can “weaken the grip of conspiracy theories and cult ideology.” / The Washington Post [+]

Related: People’s gullibility is said to be a significant threat to democracy and national security. / Lawfare

Parents are throwing “bed parties” to celebrate their kids’ college acceptances. / The New York Times [+]

Interactive results from three years of surveying 40 million young people about what it’s like to be them. / Pudding

Lenovo debuts a solar-powered laptop. / dezeen

Balding treatments are reportedly “the new Botox.” / The Cut

Cases of cervical cancer were 25% higher and deaths were 42% higher in rural counties compared to urban counties through 2019. / STAT

A round-up of art galleries promoting overlooked female artists. / Artsy

Some more stunning black and white photography, this week by Barbara Ramos. / Black & White