Dec 17, 2020At plenty of weddings, he said, guests in their eighties and nineties walk around maskless. “I saw a guy with an oxygen machine. He was carrying around an oxygen machine to breathe, but he didn’t have a mask on.”
↩︎ Texas Monthly
Tuesday headlines: Sheila take a cow
Israel's diplomatic isolation grows over its offensive on the Gazan town of Rafah. / Semafor
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, the overall Palestinian death toll in the war is now above 36,000. / The Associated Press
Taiwanese activists are using Meta's threads app to organize protests. / rest of world
A K-pop group bundles copies of its new album with a small CD player, and the pre-orders quickly sell out. / The Korea Times
What it's like to live at present in Brownsville, Tx., Elon Musk's company town. "Mr. Musk is properly understood as a kind of spiritual leader." / The New York Times [+]
See also: Report from a sinking Himalayan village. / Granta
For the first time, Rafael Nada is eliminated in the first round of a clay-court tennis tournament; he says lately his body is "a jungle." / Tennis & Beyond
A new study says "cow cuddling" may be an effective form of animal-assisted therapy. / NYU
Siblings share "weird" things they have in common—e.g., sleeping habits, food idiosyncrasies. / Goats and Soda
A woman analyzes 83,000 text messages exchanged with her ex-boyfriend. / Teresa Ibarra
Reflections on what it's like to go viral these days, now that companies are in the comments. / The Trend Report
In the miscellanea: sweatpants and jeans are a thing, Johnny Depp and Mohammed bin Salman are a thing. / The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair
"If you want your party to be sexy, do not advertise that you want this." A list of things known by a man. / Sasha's "Newsletter"
Friday headlines: High on the dog
We're taking the weekend off for the holiday, so we tried to make today's edition extra good. See you Tuesday.
The US Air Force tracks more than 25,000 pieces of space junk larger than 10 centimeters. / Scientific American
A question for the weekend: Do we live in an infinite nesting doll of black hole universes? / Kottke
London gets a museum dedicated to homelessness. / Bloomberg
A London-born teenager, once known as "God's influencer," will be the first millennial to become a saint. / BBC News
Remember the Pennsylvania cheerleader deepfake story? It turns out the videos and images were all real. / The Guardian
Purported trends among young people: bubble tea (but not from Starbucks). Also, moving to Connecticut. / The Guardian, The New York Post
Related: A sexier version of ChatGPT is "wooing young Chinese." In Japan, it's men's volleyball. / Sixth Tone, The Japan Times
"What is the meaning of life? The question always makes my mind go blank." A philosopher makes the argument to "just live." / The Dublin Review of Books
See also: Dopamine, explained. Suspense, explained. Rudy Giuliani's new coffee company, a mystery. / Vox, The New Yorker, Sprudge
Architectural update on the new $750 million David Geffen Galleries. Photos of a new home from Eric Owen Moss. / Archinect, Sotheby's
IKEA launches a line of furniture for pets. / dezeen
A new airline uses chartered Gulfstream jets to offer luxury dog-centric air travel. (Incidentally, RIP, Doge.) / Uncrate, Metafilter
Thursday headlines: Miracle in the desert?
Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the United States is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration. / The Guardian
Britain's prime minister calls for a general election in July, which the Tories are likely to lose. / Politico.eu, The Economist
"Somewhere between half and two-thirds of [Myanmar]" has fallen to its resistance movement. / BBC News
Btw: Putin And Xi are way beyond the Rubicon." At the same time? "Face it, Putin, China is just not that into your gas pipeline." / Noema, Bloomberg
Climate change is increasing turbulence for air travelers. / The New York Times [+]
Almost half of car crashes take place at intersections, and nearly a third of them involve a vehicle turning left. / The Wall Street Journal [+]
So far this year, Massachusetts has collected $1.8 billion from a new "millionaire's tax" on the state's highest earners. / WGBH
Last year marked the first time frequent marijuana use overtook frequent drinking. / The Associated Press
See also: Coffee drinking in America is apparently only half of what it was in the 1940s. / Sprudge
Alex Honnold and other top rock climbers say Las Vegas is the nation's best city for outdoorsy folks. / The Los Angeles Times
"The range of colors in the plumage of hummingbirds exceeds the known diversity of colors found in the plumages of all other bird species combined." Hummingbirds are amazing. / Plough Magazine
Wednesday headlines: The pigeon funnel
Spain, Ireland and Norway say they will recognize a Palestinian state. / The Associated Press
Members of Israeli security forces are giving settlers the location of aid convoys so they can intercept them. / The Guardian
The EU is financing operations to detain tens of thousands of migrants in North Africa and move them to remote areas, "often barren deserts." / The Washington Post [+]
Due to assaults on paramedics, large swaths of Cape Town are off-limits to ambulances without an armed police escort. / Goats and Soda
See also: "Rideshare work attracts older drivers. Older drivers attract criminals." Also, "When you're a clickworker, no one knows you're old." / rest of world
Some African diplomats in Washington moonlight as delivery drivers, also as gas stations clerks. / Politico Magazine
Among the 3.5 million parents working in America's restaurant industry, roughly 1 million are single mothers. / Eater
Indian housewives own approximately 11% of the entire world's gold. / Vestoj
Unrelated: Pavement gets its first gold record, thanks to TikTok. / Vulture
Reportedly, eighty percent of new members in pigeon racing clubs are 20 years old or younger. / The Guardian
Joanna Kavenna: I've always loved salmon because salmon jump and no one knows why. / The Paris Review
"If I had to summarize what it does, I would say that it summarizes like crazy." Anthony Lane on the value of book-summarizing apps. / The New York
Tuesday headlines: Not her, actually
Yesterday's edition was foiled by a technical reason called forgetfulness. Blargh
Iran sets new elections, which may serve as a "dress rehearsal" for the upcoming power struggle. / Semafor, Atlantic Council
Analysis of who inside Iran may benefit from President Raisi's death. / The Atlantic [+]
Unrelated: Abu Dhabi's "Autonomous Racing League" is said to be "a big mess." / YouTube
OpenAI suspends the ChatGPT voice that sounds eerily like Scarlett Johansson in Her. / Variety, Platformer
Employees at OpenAI are forbidden, for the rest of their lives, from criticizing their former employer. "Even acknowledging the NDA exists is a violation of it." / Vox
See also: Former contestants on Love Is Blind say the show is a toxic workplace. / The New Yorker
College students find a way to do laundry for free due to a vulnerability in internet-connected machines. / The Verge
A dedicated teacher in Arizona quits over his students' smartphone addiction. / The Wall Street Journal [+]
Jessa Crispin: The professionalization of the arts was always going to end up here. / The Culture We Deserve
Some thoughts on whether Sabrina Carpenter's "Espresso" has what it takes to be this summer's big bop. / The Trend Report
"I always tell people I'm afraid of two things: men and distracted drivers, and that's it." A profile of Joshua Tree's premier rattlesnake wrangler. Also, profile of a watercolorist Simon Palmer. / The Los Angeles Times, Countryfile
Saturday headlines: The medium is the message
Views of the aurora borealis should return in a couple of weeks, as the massive solar storm rotates back toward Earth. / BBC
"Some political scientists describe this strategy as 'state crime,' violence tacitly permitted or encouraged by the government." Why did Greg Abbott pardon a racist murderer? / Texas Monthly
Tariffs don't work, thanks to back channels and loopholes—as well as the industrial lobbyists who shape the policies. / The New York Times [+]
Jia Tolentino: "I decided to try a modest experiment. I wanted to see whether I could hide my pregnancy from my phone." / The New Yorker
A brief foray into detective work to ascertain the legitimacy of an early Apple employee's badge that went up for auction on eBay. / Cabel Sasser
"When you print images onto a paper carrier medium, you are adding another layer of mediation to an already loopy transmission." A history—and appreciation—of LSD blotter paper. / Aeon
Link rot is rampant. A quarter of webpages that existed in the past decade are missing, and the fallout affects everything from news sites to Wikipedia references. / Pew Research Center
"Do you remember what it was like to wake up before you had a smartphone? Perhaps I would smile at my wife, say something sweet or ridiculous to her, judge the light through the window." / The Point
In 1947, a 10-year-old earned today's equivalent of a couple hundred dollars, disappeared from home, and spent a week at movie theaters in San Francisco. / Gazetteer
Even when they talk, generative AI "apps, in their current instantiation, are best thought of, like magic tricks, as a form of entertainment." / Read Max
In a fascinating history of Magic: The Gathering, the phenomenon's creator discusses how rare cards have threatened the point of the game. / Defector
See also: That time we learned how to play Magic from Jon Finley, one of the game's greatest-ever players. / The Morning News
Friday headlines: Torta reform
A deep investigation into how the Chinese underworld has come to dominate America's illegal marijuana trade. / ProPublica
"Fewer than one in 1,000 US university courses include references to critical race theory or other so-called "woke" topics that have become flashpoints in the country's culture wars." / Financial Times
With bipartisan support, this week the House passed legislation that will require ticket sellers to provide transparency in fees. / Pitchfork
As part of a zoning case, an Indiana judge rules that tacos and burritos are "Mexican-style sandwiches," breaking with a Massachusetts judge's 2006 decision. / The Washington Post [+]
The enzyme that's essential for photosynthesis—and therefore nearly all life on Earth—doesn't work especially well in hot weather. And that's bad news for a warming planet. / Grist
"I like functional lawns. And sod lawns are not functional." It turns out there's little science to support the idea that No Mow May aids biodiversity. / Undark
See also: Fake science is killing journals. As retractions pile up, publications' future—and even "the credibility of science as a whole"—is thrown into doubt. / The Wall Street Journal [+]
"The H5N1 avian flu outbreak needn't be a rerun of Covid-19's 'public health versus the economy' battle." / STAT
"Human beings don't like to hear bad news, especially if it means that they're personally responsible for the bad news." How Darwinism can help humans in case of collapse. / The MIT Press Reader
See also: As its population dwindled, a bird species in Florida evolved to be able to eat bigger snails in a little more than a decade. / YouTube
On collectible bitcoin, and why some fragments—such as those that were used in transactions by the currency's inventor—are more valuable than others. / Ars Technica
Doves Type, a famous typeface that was dumped into the Thames a century ago after a dispute between business partners, has now been recovered. / Artnet
Thursday headlines: The truck stops here
What's worse for disease spread: animal loss, urbanization, or the climate crisis? The climate crisis. / Goats and Soda
Donald Trump allegedly asked big-oil executives last month for $1 billion in campaign donations. / The Guardian
DNA analysis shows baobab trees first arose in Madagascar 21 million years ago. / BBC News
Paul Ford on generative artificial intelligence: "AI is like having my very own shameless monster as a pet." / WIRED
A quick list of improvements in the latest version of ChatGPT. / X
Related: OpenAI is framing GPT-4o as a translation service, "which raises real questions about how it'll hold up in widespread use." / rest of world
"Circular construction" refers to building new projects in a way that allows raw materials and parts to be reused. / Bloomberg CityLab
Related: A Seattle company is selling home-building kits based on Frank Lloyd Wright designs. / The Wall Street Journal [+]
In "perhaps the most-Japanese contest," gardeners compete to create seasonal landscapes in the bed of their trucks. / Spoon + Tamago
Unrelated: A "portal" sculpture, connecting residents in New York and Dublin, is shut down after reports of people mooning each other. / The Telegraph
The great Alice Munro dies at 92. A tribute to her work from Munro's Books, and a selection of stories and essays. / The New York Times [+], Instagram, The New Yorker
Attention readers: Camp ToB, the Tournament of Books' summer popup event, is coming soon, and we need your help picking the books! / The Tournament of Books
Wednesday headlines: Cheatgreen
A study says last summer was the hottest in the past 2,000 years. / USA Today
Today's solar and wind deployment rates are much faster than most countries during the nuclear boom period. / Sustainability by Numbers
Investors and developers expect 8 to 10% annual growth in refrigerated warehouses. / Sherwood
See also: Historical production data from 122 of the world's largest oil, gas, coal, and cement producers. / Carbon Majors
Headline of the week? "All eels in America and Europe come from the Bermuda Triangle (but no one's ever seen them there)." / Atlas Obscura
"Business is booming." A brief dip into the market for "pet milk," aka raw milk. / STAT
A typical Gen Alpha child spends $45 of their own money each week. / Fast Company
Some tips on how to encourage a white boyfriend to eat so-called ethnic food. "Use children's foods as a gateway for spice tolerance." / Letters From the Chinese Room
See also: The economics of a $15 salad at Sweetgreen. / Sherwood
The "accessory of the season" in the upper Midwest this summer is said to be a Naz Reid tattoo. / The Wall Street Journal [+]
A stuntman explains what it was like to double for heights-fearing Ryan Gosling in a movie about stuntmen. / InsideHook
Australia's richest woman demands the National Gallery remove her (unflattering) portrait. / The Guardian
Chairs with high heels for feet, meant to reflect "female individuality," are just creepy. / dezeen
Unrelated: "Above all, do not lose your desire to walk." Advice from Soren Kierkegaard regarding despair. / The Convivial Society
Tuesday headlines: Here comes the sun, but not the sunscreen
Secretary of State Blinken visits Ukraine, intended to signal "strong reassurance" that the West will continue to back Kyiv. Meanwhile, Putin heads to Beijing. / Semafor
Russia is conducting "hybrid warfare" in Moldova, i.e., anything "short of bombing the country." / The Week
Notes on how US intelligence is moving aggressively to adopt and integrate artificial intelligence. / Forever Wars
Antiwar protesters from the 1960s respond to today's unrest. "It gives you a little rush of school spirit." / The Wall Street Journal [+]
Naomi Fry on Stephanie Clifford, or Stormy Daniels: "As I watched her, I thought that she could have handily won The Apprentice." / The New Yorker
See also: "Trump Reflexively Asks Michael Cohen To Silence Michael Cohen." / The Onion
Members-only clubs are proliferating for rich New Yorkers. "We've still got a long way to go before we reach peak club." / GQ
Unrelated: Am I seriously choosing to contribute to the destruction of the natural environment because I want to look cuter? / The Kramer Is Now
Meanwhile, a recent fad on TikTok of "boycotting" celebrities suggests an era that's inclined to strike or complain. / The Trend Report
A reporter visits China and drives a dozen electric cars. "Western automakers are cooked." / Inside EVs
See also: None of the traditional big three automakers make a sedan anymore. / Fast Company
Americans aren't likely to get better sunscreens—as found in Japan, South Korea, and France—anytime soon. / Undark Magazine
What makes a card game great? Among other things: "It can't be boring. Ever." / Matt's Five Points
Monday headlines: Concrete and clay and general decay
Along with the aurora borealis, this weekend's solar storm wreaked havoc on farmers' GPS systems ahead of a critical moment in the planting season. / 404 Media
The CDC is expected to release a public dashboard today that will track influenza A viruses, including H5N1, in sewage. / STAT
"A person hit by a vehicle going 30 mph is 70% more likely to be killed than by a car going 25." Why more cities and states are lowering speed limits to 20 mph. / Vox
Explaining why stone, when carved by robots, might become a cheaper building material than steel and concrete. / Construction Physics
Researchers find evidence that spending at least two hours a day outdoors can reduce a child's chances of developing myopia. / NPR
"Social media companies get off far too easy too when the status anxiety they provoke as a business model is attributed instead to human nature." / Internal Exile
In the early 20th century, astronomer Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was pressured to walk back her findings on the composition of stars, then a male supervisor took credit for her work. / History Today
A new study proposes that volcanic activity on the lunar surface, combined with a major impact on the far side, are why the near side of the Moon has more volcanic rock. / Ars Technica
Once a mainstay of the Billboard charts, a cover song hasn't entered the top 100 in nearly 20 years. / Reddit
An excursion to Chuck E. Cheese to see the animatronic band, which will be phased out of all but two locations by the end of the year. / The New York Times [+]
See also: A dispatch from the weekend-long cruise where Creed reunited for the first time in 12 years. / Slate
Lose your week in Taper, "an online literary journal for computational poetry and literary art published twice yearly." Here's the latest issue. / Taper
Saturday headlines: You think it’s candy but it’s not
Sports Illustrated was only the beginning—the company behind those fake bylines has been working with dozens of well-known publications to provide AI-generated content. / Futurism
The Drake/Kendrick rap battle briefly shut down Genius, as users rushed to annotate "Euphoria" moments after its release. / The New York Times [+]
Warner's Disney/Hulu/Max bundle signals how the "cablefication" of streaming is here, and it's also exactly what the entertainment industry needs in order to survive right now. / Den of Geek
A satellite network startup has successfully made a Bluetooth connection from Earth to space. / TechRadar
New floppy disks haven't been manufactured in 13 years, but there's still a market for them, some enthusiasts, some corporations that still rely on the technology. / BBC
"I started making edible jewelry as a way to appreciate beautiful items without them needing to take up space." The history of trompe l'oeil sweets. / The New York Times Style Magazine [+]
Hypothesizing how pareidolia—seeing specific imagery in vague patterns—could have inspired ancient cave artists. / Aeon
See also: What it's like to have prosopometamorphopsia, also known as "demon face syndrome," a rare condition that causes hallucinations when viewing people's faces. / Slate
"It becomes a terrible positive feedback—a never-ending dance of destruction." How aging immune systems contribute to overall aging. / Nature
Why we're turning psychiatric labels into identities. / The New Yorker
After decades of efforts to save red squirrels from their gray counterparts in Wales, a gray has been captured in the reds' habitat, possibly arriving by train. / Llyn Parc Mawr, BBC
"The machine you're scrolling around in the comic isn't real. It's hyperreal." How that amazing xkcd Rube Goldberg machine was made. / xkcd, chromakode
Friday headlines: Gardening for the galaxy
Explaining the Biden-Netanyahu rift over Rafah: It's about how realistic it is to dismantle Hamas, and at what cost. / The New York Times [+]
See also: Will Gaza hurt Biden's reelection chances? If you ask younger voters, yes, but not as much as a host of other issues. / The Bulwark
To address the racial wealth gap, students at a set of charter schools will each receive $10,000 to invest: "The parents will definitely lose their minds." / The New York Times [+]
Researchers say "biodiversity loss, climate change, and introduced species" are driving the spread of infectious diseases. / The Guardian
An interactive explanation of what happens when you stop mowing your lawn. / The Washington Post [+]
Increased solar activity means there's a chance the northern lights may be visible in parts of the US this weekend. / Space
"Those who want to show they've done their homework can take pointers from the Count and Countess." The Met Gala is a Ballardian nightmare. / UnHerd
Apple's awful "Crush" ad works better in reverse or by saying the quiet part out loud. / X, A Whole Lotta Nothing
"2004 doesn't seem so long ago, but then this exchange feels almost 19th century." How Gmail became our diary. / Intelligencer
Stretching back to at least the 1990s, Germany's intelligence agencies have relied on neo-Nazi informants, but it's been unclear who's using whom. / The Dial
"Steve's attention was not hierarchical." RIP Steve Albini. / Welcome to Hell World
Related: The Steve Albini sound, a playlist. / Spotify
"When you look up a word in one language, do it for all other languages too." How to be an amateur polyglot. / LessWrong
Thursday headlines: Too big to mail
President Biden says the United States will halt some weapon shipments to Israel if it launches a full invasion of Rafah. / CNN
Interviews with people living in Rafah, forced to flee Israel's attacks. / Al Jazeera
NATO members (excluding the US) increased military spending last year by 19%. / The Ecoomist
Regarding yesterday's link about Saudi Arabia's Neom project, a former security officer says he was permitted to kill villagers who protested being evicted. / BBC News
Unrelated: A drone company tells an Arkansas mayor exactly how he should endorse it. / 404 Media
Kevin Roose develops a crew of AI friends. "On balance, they've been a positive addition to my life, and I'll be a little sad to delete them when this experiment is over." / The New York Times [+]
"When we die, most of our cells are still alive, paradoxically." Interview with an expert on aging who's critical of longevity "breakthroughs." / GQ
Related: Interviews with female OnlyFans performers who are over 65. / Huck
A study finds men are less likely to respond to email if the sender identifies themselves with them/them pronouns. / American Psychological Association
Remembering the "mail runner" who raced to tell the world about Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary summiting Mount Everest, and died a few weeks later. / Outside
Athletes' elaborate performance rituals are said to be tied to a game's uncertainty. / Sports Illustrated
Unrelated: A few weeks ago in Dallas, 18,000 men, women, and children "relentlessly booed a man, all because of his timely recovery from a lacerated spleen." / Why is this interesting?
Wednesday headlines: Espresso moro
Only a small minority of American college students—8%—have participated in recent protests. / axios
In Mexico, immigration officials and the National Guard are said to be working together as a "new cartel." / SAGA
Peter Salmon on the death penalty: By establishing whether the sovereign can kill us, we build the laws and our idea of justice. / New Humanist
A trial against Chiquita begins, regarding payments to a militant group "known to kidnap civilians in the middle of the night." / The Palm Beach Post
A look at the UK's "second empire" of tax-free jurisdictions, which "enables corruption, drains public budgets, and exacerbates inequality." / The New York Review of Books
Unrelated: A scientist finds cocaine in wild shrimp in Suffolk. / The Guardian
A Frank Stella painting was used for years in Chile as a lunch table for museum workers. / Hyperallergic
Much of the cash spent on Saudi Arabia's "Neom," the twin 105-mile-long skyscrapers, has gone to consultants and architects. / The Wall Street Journal [+]
Stand-up comedy has tripled in size over the last decade. / Bloomberg
"That makes sense to me." A grammarian unpacks Sabrina Carpenter's "that's that me espresso." / Them
Related: The Drake vs. Kendrick Lamar feud, explained. And the greastest diss tracks of all time, ranked. / Vox, The Ringer
A visualization of what it would be like for a camera to enter the event horizon, "sealing its fate." / YouTube
Tuesday headlines: All cool, moms
Israel bans Al Jazeera and raids its offices. Meanwhile, the blasting of Rafah continues. / Semafor, Al Jazeera
Thomas Friedman: MBS put his country's worst religious extremists in jail, while Netanyahu put his worst religious extremists in his cabinet. / The New York Times [+]
Palestinian artists describe their daily struggle for survival. / The Art Newspaper
Unrelated: How to make newspaper blackout poetry. / The Kid Should See This
Zadie Smith on student protests: "The only thing that has any weight in this particular essay is the dead." / The New Yorker
A woman whose mother self-immolated explains why people set themselves on fire. / The Los Angeles Times
In terms of cervical-cancer cases, a proving ground for the elimination drive is Alabama. / The Wall Street Journal [+]
An interview with the artist behind San Francisco's controversial Tetris house. "I take it really seriously as a designer." / California Sun
The new video for Washed Out's "The Hardest Part" uses OpenAI's Sora video model. / Vimeo
Rolls-Royce gets approval to build nuclear power plants in Poland. / World Nuclear News
A Dutch designer retrofits an old Volvo to run on fuel produced by a "plastics definery" mounted on the roof. / dezeen
American children in third and fourth grade are beginning to stop reading for fun. / Slate
In the UK, it's "quite common" among some teenage boys to record their partners giving verbal consent before having sex. / The Guardian
A high-quality mother's day gift guide. "Let's just assume they are all cool moms." / A Continous Lean
Monday headlines: Plantasia
Russia will hold military exercises near Ukraine, apparently intending to show it could use battlefield nuclear weapons there. / The New York Times [+]
It's impossible to tell how far H5N1 has spread in the US, since dairy farmers—unlike poultry farmers—aren't compensated for reporting infections. / WIRED
The Texas dairy worker who got H5N1—seemingly the first case that spread from mammal to human—had only mild symptoms and no one he lives with fell ill. / STAT
Updated for 2024, how to prepare your phone for a protest—that is, if you bring it at all. / The Markup
A wastewater scientist discusses the various ways analysis can be used—from supporting communities to providing intelligence to law enforcement. / The Guardian
Another way to look at the feel-good Randy Travis AI story: This could open the door to music labels digitally resurrecting deceased artists. / The Verge
"We want to understand what we have made, and believe its shape is ours." The fatal flaw in assessing AI risk is assuming a shared understanding of rationality. / Programmable Mutter
See also: "Our understanding of plants is still developing—as are the definitions of 'intelligence' and 'consciousness.'" / NPR
"Certainly Terence McKenna is a silly ass. But his heart is so clearly in the right place." Will Self on Food of the Gods. / Times Literary Supplement
Starting May 15, Hot Frank Summer is a group reading of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. / Bluesky
See also: Did you know you can still take part in Infinite Summer, the group reading of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest? / Reddit
Citing issues with computer systems, North Yorkshire bans apostrophes from street signs, irking linguists, professional and otherwise. / BBC
Saturday headlines: How to make friends and influencers
Protestors want universities to divest from Israel, yet schools' endowments are frequently—conveniently—opaque. / The Washington Post [+]
Photos: Fifty-four years ago today, the Ohio National Guard arrived at Kent State University and opened fire on student protestors. / The Atlantic
"The fact that Palestinian children are children doesn't seem obvious to many in the western media." / The Guardian
Photographs of life in Palestine, ca. 1896–1919. / Public Domain Review
Williams-Sonoma has been fined $3.18 million for claiming some foreign-made products were made in the US—the second time it's been caught doing so in recent years. / Scripps News
Instead of the dead internet, Facebook is now something worse: the zombie internet, an unhinged mix of bots and humans and everything in between. / 404 Media
For some teens, an AI chatbot service has provided a helpful way to talk about problems, but it's not uncommon for users to say they're addicted to the platform. / The Verge
When watched in VR rather than in two dimensions, a documentary about refugees resulted in an increase in sympathy among conservative viewers. / Phys.org
Selfies and remote work have reduced the stigma long associated with facial cosmetic injections. / Business Insider
See also: The freedom and joy of a photo dump account, where chaos is the primary aesthetic. / Bustle
"I hurt because I knew I'd handed the world a weapon." Brittney Griner opens up about how her time in a Russian prison changed her. / The New York Times Magazine [+]
See also: I wish I'd never become the NFL weed guy. / Defector
"Nothing is more boring than a lot of noise." In search of silence. / The Common Reader
Friday headlines: I think therefore I can’t
Members' voting patterns reveal the eight types of House Democrats and Republicans, based on how much they do (or don't) align with their caucuses. / FiveThirtyEight
See also: "The House passed bipartisan bills on climate change and border security this week, and almost no one noticed." / Wake Up to Politics
Scientists are becoming frustrated with the USDA's continued failure to provide data that would facilitate tracking H5N1's spread. / STAT
The botched rollout of the federal government's new financial aid application has left countless students unsure where, or even if, they're going to college in the fall. / AP
See also: "This is, quite frankly, where [students] should be in this moment, as they are opening their eyes to what that world actually contains." / Slate
"The most common dilemmas had to do with relational obligations: dilemmas about what we owe to others." To study morality, philosophers analyze r/AITA. / Vox
Is AI-generated audio good for anything? Rarely. In a list of examples, most "seem at best misguided and at worst actively hostile." / Read Max
"You can't just come to terms with yourself once and for all." On "deep reals" and how realism can be so real it seems fake. / Internal Exile
See also: An AI-generated image of the Baltimore bridge collapse, built from drone footage, shows the wreckage in startling detail. / Quartz, Voluma
In a first, a wild animal—in this case, an orangutan—was observed treating a wound with a plant known to have medicinal properties. / The Guardian
"All of Murray's top four contributors had connections to mental asylums." A history of the Oxford English Dictionary. / Commonweal
A list of some of the things Brian Cox hates—method acting, the word "process," Quentin Tarantino. / GQ
Thursday headlines: Barista warfare
A dozen student demonstrators say they fear being doxxed by pro-Israel groups accusing them of antisemitism. / The New York Times [+]
Spencer Ackerman explains how warrantless spying on campus protesters is easier than ever. / Forever Wars
See also: Tracking the nationwide arrests of more than 1,700 campus protesters. / The Appeal
Unrelated: A video shows what would happen today if a nuclear bomb hit a major city. / Open Culture
Lobbyists for plastics say "massive societal benefits" mean we shouldn't produce less of the stuff. / Grist
Researchers create a plastic containing bacteria that can digest it. / Ars Technica
See also: Should designers think more like ecologists? / It's Nice That
The great Hannah Ritchie explains how the "the Molloch Trap'' applies to environmental problems. / Sustainability by Numbers
Louisa Thomas, one of our favorite sports writers, questions if the "hot hand" in hockey is a myth. (Answer: maybe.) / The New Yorker
Baseball players have mixed feelings these days about being free agents. / Fangraphs
Did Ted Williams really once hit a homerun that traveled 502 feet? Data suggest the ball actually went farther. / Major League Baseball
In case you've ever wondered: What exactly is a barista competition? / Sprudge
A Finnish coffee roaster uses AI to create a blend that's "perfect," with "no need for human adjustments." / The Associated Press