Friday headlines: One man’s trash
Please note: We'll be off for Labor Day, and back in your inbox on Tuesday—see you then!
Hundreds of California officials have been convicted of corruption in the past decade—analysts say a political supermajority and little oversight have encouraged wrongdoing. / The New York Times [+]
Embroiled in a lawsuit after he broke a story about a player's alleged abuse, a top tennis writer is now disillusioned by the sport. / The Washington Post [+]
Multiple Gaza healthcare workers allege torture, abuse, and mistreatment while in Israeli custody. / Human Rights Watch
"If you're labeling some aerial image that's produced by a drone, are you training a toy airplane, or are you training a military drone?" Investigating the murky corners of AI training. / Inc.
As AI content proliferates, it's more likely AI will ingest that same content, which can dramatically degrade future results—here are examples. / The New York Times [+]
See also: From 2014, "The Triumphant Rise of the Shitpic." / The Awl
Likely due to faulty return instructions, a Denver man keeps receiving Trump "Chillin Like a Felon" shirts in the mail. / Gizmodo
See also: "Amazon is using my grocery purchases to sell me prescription drugs." / Vox
"To intentionally design something like, 'Let's make this worse.' It's like, wait, what?" The thinking behind satirical app design. / Embedded
Watch: A short documentary on the "Dumpster Archeologist" who sleuths out the stories hidden in people's garbage. / Vimeo
Meet the music obsessive behind Pop Music Activism, which organizes music fans to persuade labels to make forgotten tracks available for streaming. / BBC
The Moon now has its own time zone, "rather than having clocks gradually drift out of sync with Earth's time." / Atlas Obscura
Oakland's new fleet of electric school buses act as giant batteries that are capable of sending power back to the grid. / Grist
"Children's ability to wait for a treat…changed markedly depending on the context." The inherent bias of the Marshmallow Test and similar studies. / The Washington Post [+]
Eleven restaurants' unique variations on classic hamburgers, and a guide to the most beloved regional burger styles in the US. / The New York Times [+], InsideHook
The creator of One Million Checkboxes realizes a group of users were sending him a secret message in binary. / eieio.games
Thursday headlines: Sacred ciao
An explainer for why the Horn of Africa is on the cusp of war—basically because Ethiopia wants to be a coastal nation. / The New York Times [+]
Africa will finally get mpox vaccines amid a lot of criticism over delays caused by the World Health Organization's red tape. / The Guardian
Thanks to the new Kennedy-Gabbard team, Bernie-Trump voters are said to be back in play in American politics. / Wake Up to Politics
Ben Mathis Lilley: As a backroom power broker, Donald Trump Jr. is basically the complete opposite of Nancy Pelosi. / Slate
Unrelated: Almost half of TikTok users ages 18-29 use the platform to follow politics. / Pew Research Center
A global decline in condom use by adolescents in recent years is blamed on a drop in sex education. / The Associated Press
The risk of death for people who donate a kidney has dropped by more than half in the last decade. / NBC News
Everything you need to know about why experts struggle to count mortality from the Black Death. / Asimov Press
Devoted, regular volunteering is found to build social cohesion in communities. / The Garden of Forking Paths
A computer scientist says our ability to learn over the long term is "educability," and it's a lot more important than cleverness. / The New Yorker
Experts say paleontology is "a honeypot of narcissists," "a snake pit of personality disorders," and "an especially nasty area of academia." / Intelligencer
Should scientific fraud be prosecuted? "It might help provide accountability in cases where no one is incentivized to provide it." / Vox
Unrelated: An expert tests whether Dr. Andrew Huberman's advice "is ruining your morning coffee." / YouTube
Spotify releases its "2024 Global Songs of Summer," with Billie Eilish at the top. / For the Record
A look inside the "maximalist wonderlands" of contemporary Italian restaurant design. / Architectural Digest
During the US Open, a lot of Italian tennis players and coaches eat at the same East Village trattoria. / The New York Times [+]
Wednesday headlines: Niche niche is niche
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he's ready to present a "plan of victory" to end the war with Russia. / Semafor
More than 1.2 million oral polio vaccines have arrived in Gaza. How they'll be distributed without a ceasefire, or "polio pause," is unknown. / CNN
Following Venezuela's disputed election, journalists are using AI avatars to report news the Maduro's regime "deems unfit to print." / The Guardian
Since the pandemic, public school enrollment in the United States has declined by a million students, with closures falling disproportionately on Black schools. / ProPublica
Hong Kong tells any teenagers with sexual urges to ignore them and play badminton. / The South China Morning Post
Related: Hong Kong teenagers are "talking about 'friends with badminton' instead of 'friends with benefits.'" / The New York Times [+]
Elif Batuman on the difficulty of writing in August 2024: "What's the right word for looking inquisitively into an abyss?" / The Elif Life
A visualization of Elon Musk's tweets evolves from dad jokes and corporate ra-ra to right-wing politics. / The Wall Street Journal [+]
Lauren Bans: Kamala Harris is going to make America laugh again. / The New Republic
The Paralympics open in Paris. Meet some of the Ukranian athletes, including war-wounded people and soldiers on leave. / The Economist
A round-up of transportation strikes to anticipate in Europe this autumn. / The Points Guy
A researcher says "blue zones"—i.e., places where people supposedly live longer—don't actually have much relevance. / Cremieux Recueil
"We all have a stake in you finding your place, because we're all better off when you like your life." Making the argument that there's a niche in society for everybody. / Experimental History
The latest shopping-bonanza report from Patricia Marx is about bunkers. / The New Yorker
The artist behind "Immersion (Piss Christ)" says he finds a picture of Donald Trump gleefully posing with his book about Trump paraphernalia "very comical." / The Art Newspaper
Photographs by Peggy Nolan of her seven children growing up. / Flashbak
Tuesday headlines: Been there, done brat
This year is tracking to be the most deadly for police shootings in a decade. The previous record was set last year. / The Economist
"The moment of glamour seemed worth it." Kurt Andersen says RFK Jr. was his cocaine dealer at Harvard. / The Atlantic
Unrelated: Who is Kick Kennedy, reportedly Ben Affleck's new friend? / The Cut
Nearly half of American guys 18 to 29 say there is some or a lot of discrimination against men in society. / The New York Times [+]
About a third of women of reproductive age in the United States may not be getting enough iron. / Undark
Long Covid has pushed around one million Americans out of the labor force. / The Wall Street Journal [+]
See also: The government says that by the end of September people will be able to order up to four free Covid tests. / Goats and Soda
Restaurants and warehouses are outfitting workers this summer with ice vests. / The Wall Street Journal [+]
"Biocrusts" are communities of "tiny, dirt-dwelling organisms that form a distinct crust on the top of soil in arid landscapes." / Knowable Magazine
The rate of global sea level rise is now the fastest it has been in 3,000 years. / Politico
Related: "The Climate Is Changing Faster Than Culture Can Cope." / Noema
Some comments from artist Ralph Steadman about comics, drawing, and what a jerk Hunter Thompson was. / Rolling Stone
Remembering when Nazis opened a bookstore in Los Angeles in 1933. / Lithub
In literature, what endures seems to have minimal correlation to contemporaneous popularity or contemporaneous acclaim. / Counter Craft
Psychoanalyst Jameison Webster says a new book about Sigmund Freud's thoughts on Woodrow Wilson "shook her" for its contemporaneity. / The Los Angeles Review of Books
Related, from last summer: "I Don't Need to Be a 'Good Person.' Neither Do You." / The New York Times [+]
"The kids get to decide when it's over." Charlie XCX says she wouldn't mind if "brat summer" became "brat fall." / New York Magazine
Monday headlines: Secure the bag
"The outcome of the race might hinge on whether they can keep the former president on script." Six factors that will define the final stretch of the election. / Wake Up to Politics
See also: Here are the individuals and organizations that have pumped the most money into the 2024 election. / The Washington Post [+]
The Isaac Hayes estate is suing the Trump campaign over its repeated use of "Hold On, I'm Coming" at rallies. / Billboard
After coming into possession of a Project 2025 duffel, a journalist finds the most valuable thing about it is the bag itself. / The Washington Post [+]
See also: "Goodbye backpacks. The cool kids are going back to school with a $155 Longchamp tote in hand." / Business Insider
Insurers play an outsize role in determining how much mental health care people are able to access—which can have devastating effects for patients in crisis. / NPR
"Gaza's 2.2 million people are now mainly confined to an area of roughly 15 square miles—smaller than the footprint of Manhattan." / The Wall Street Journal [+]
By examining ancient crystals, scientists believe that the first rain fell on Earth four billion years ago. / My Modern Met
"The fight had stopped suddenly, so I quickly reacted and shot some photos with a long lens." How some of the best Olympics photos were taken. / The Guardian
An orange grove in Tarzana will likely be replaced with luxury homes, ending a century of commercial citrus production in the San Fernando Valley. / Los Angeles Times
Researchers find a diversity of bacteria living inside microwave ovens—like those in Antarctica, the organisms are capable of withstanding especially extreme conditions. / TecScience
Photos from inside a technicolor 1978 Las Vegas doomsday bunker, complete with lighting to simulate different times of day. / designboom
See also: The iconic house from the cover of American Football's debut album is available to rent on Airbnb. / Pitchfork
J.D. Salinger personally designed the rainbow-corner cover of The Catcher in the Rye—and his hand-drawn sketches are proof. / Literary Hub
"This music scene was shaped in isolation. You never created music with an audience in mind, only your friends." In Kosovo, techno is a symbol of resilience. / Condé Nast Traveler
Traded following a postponed game that will now resume, Danny Jansen will be the first player in Major League Baseball history to play for two teams in the same game. / Bleacher Report
Friday headlines: “Magic began singing”
TK CHICAGO
A veteran from Capitol Hill says if you want to take politics seriously, don't send money to candidates. / Matt's Five Points
This week in Chicago, a "Hotties for Harris" event was held for "the brat set," with slogans like "Tim Waltz Got Me Laid." / Intelligencer
Related: A guide to "the streamer dipshits" that Donald Trump keeps appearing with. / Read Max
For the first time in more than a decade, the Democrats' platform doesn't include abolishing the death penalty. / Huffpost
Most men in the United States support abortion rights—and a group of them are recruiting more guys to be active about it. / The Guardian
An early gay icon was a Republican who saw the federal government as the enemy of homosexuals. / reason
Unrelated: A very moving obituary for the globally famous gay penguin Sphen. / The New York Times [+]
A handful of companies are commercializing varieties of edible microbes. / Undark Magazine
A related white paper from last year: "From air to your plate: tech startups making food from atmospheric CO2." / Nature
Adopting a prosthesis as an extension of your body can be a challenge—moreso when the prosthetics company decorates it with logos. / The Atlantic [+]
Hinge releases a print zine full of love stories about couples that met on the app. (The stories are also online.) / MarketingDive, No Ordinary Love
"Snapchat is really good at making everyone involved think that they care about you." How teenagers rank each other on Snap. / The Cut
For your weekend long read: A story about the psychological dangers of doing big adventures when you're an experienced outdoors person. / Longreads
Thursday headlines: She’s a fun guy!
A mutated form of mpox has been circulating for months in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The country still doesn't have a single vaccine. / Bloomberg [+]
Former US national security adviser HR McMaster says Vladimir Putin deliberately exploited Donald Trump's "ego and insecurities." / The Guardian
Putin appears to be following the Soviet Bloc's Cold War playbook diligently, which means "more is yet to come." / War on the Rocks
Iran's morality police are beating and arresting men caught wearing shorts in public. / reason
Spencer Ackerman plans to destroy his Emmy if Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda's nomination is rescinded. / Forever Wars
An expert on white nationalists explains why she's hopeful about the presidential election: "I have faith in the normies." / Linkes I Would Gchat You if We Were Friends
Headline of the week: "How a small group of nuns in rural Kansas vex big companies with their investment activism." / The Associated Press
BIll Clinton's Labor Secretary says Social Security is in trouble because the trustees, himself included, didn't anticipate income inequality. / Robert Reich
The percentage of 19-year-olds in the US with a driver's license dropped from 87.3% in 1983 to 68.7% in 2022. / The Wall Street Journal [+]
Two-thirds of books released by the top-ten trade publishers sell fewer than a thousand copies. / The New Yorker
Why does Ireland produce so many great writers? "The scale of the country is perfect. You can get to know it in your lifetime." / The Guardian
From February, a peek inside Austin Kleon's commonplace diary. / Austin Kleon
See also—it's a bit NSFW—a brief history behind a beautiful Art Deco alphabet of nude and semi-nude figures. / Flashbak
"She's not doing crazy, she's not doing too much." Designer Jennifer Daniel explains the new "little brown mushroom" emoji
Wednesday headlines: The love tote
President Biden approved a secret strategy in March to prepare the United States for possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with China, Russia and North Korea. / The New York Times [+]
Condoleezza Rice: US-China relations badly need new procedures and lines of communication to prevent an accidental catastrophe. / Foreign Affairs
Political influence campaigns are found to be "running wild" around the globe on Elon Musk's X. (Eighty-two countries will see elections in 2024.) / rest of world
Musk's Twitter takeover is now the worst buyout for banks since the financial crisis. / The Wall Street Journal [+]
Related: X is the most popular app for 30 percent of 7- to 9-year-olds who use tablets. / TechCrunch
Unrelated: The reddest ("Hattie") and bluest ("Fiona") baby names. / nameberry
Federal authorities are looking to approve updated Covid vaccines late next week. / The Washington Post [+]
People are overdosing on semaglutide drugs they receive from compounding pharmacies. / Scientific American
Brett Scott: When you really think about it, the idea that corporations represent free markets is kinda ridiculous. / Altered States of Monetary Consciousness
A look at what it takes to manufacture a cotton T-shirt in the United States—not Bangladesh—and manage to sell it at Wal-Mart for $12.98. / GQ
"He looks like an NPR tote bag come to life." People confess to crushing on Ezra Klein. / Bustle
From earlier this month: What it was like to be a phone psychic for Miss Cleo. "I can't quickly explain the guilt I still carry." / Electric Literature
A new daily puzzle challenges you to find a quote in a crossword (of sorts). / Ironic Sans
Winners announced for this year's worst fictional opening lines. "She had a body that reached out and slapped my face like a five-pound ham-hock tossed from a speeding truck." / The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
Tuesday headlines: Age of adultery
China and the United States are making progress, albeit limited, in cutting their reliance on coal. / Semafor
At this point of the year, global wildfire burn is the highest it's been since 2012. / Sustainability by numbers
See also: A fashion designer's rain-harvesting hats, and a skiable museum from Netflix's former CEO. / dezeen, Artsy
A "growing number" of far-left vigilantes are said to be doing the FBI's work for them: infiltrating the far right. / The New Yorker
"Facebook has been our greatest weapon. It's gotten us where we are today." A report on a right-wing militia fighting for its survival. / ProPublica
A wild story accounts for the FBI secretly running a smartphone network for some of the world's biggest criminals. / 404 Media
A mayoral candidate in Cheyenne, Wyo., wants an AI bot to run the city. / The Washington Post [+]
Jack Herrman: Actual ChatGPT users mostly want help with their homework, but they're also very horny. / New York Magazine
Unrelated: A fun anagram finder. / Anagrams.io
Old offices are being transformed into "work resorts," complete with food stalls, speakeasies, and private spin classes. / The New York Times [+]
Hacks and tips for enjoying this year's US Open, particularly if you want to see the tennis for free. / Sports Illustrated
Some thoughts from The Simpsons' Matt Groening about not retiring. Also, a personal essay by Molly Rosen about going commando during menopause. / El País, The Cut
A woman calls on men to wear their baseball caps backwards again—mostly because that's how JFK Jr. wore his. / Insidehook
In your weekly long (long) read, what happens when infidelity occurs between two pairs of writers? Obviously, everybody decides to write about it. / Vulture
Monday headlines: Brain check
Even as the GOP publicly lambastes Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, some Republican mayors in Ohio say it's making local energy projects possible. / Semafor
A researcher at a US agency developing moonshot health therapies suggests replacing brain tissue as a way to treat stroke victims—and eventually stave off aging. / MIT Technology Review
In a first, at least a quarter of people with brain injuries who are unable to respond physically are found to show brain activity when asked to imagine themselves moving. / Scientific American
"It's galling enough that Google expects you to want to put AI slop in your 'memories'; that's like injecting [your] mind with styrofoam, having Chat-GPT generate your diary." / Internal Exile
People are becoming emotionally dependent on—and falling in love with—AI voices. / Vox
See also: "Replika CEO Eugenia Kuyda says it's okay if we end up marrying AI chatbots." / The Verge
"I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago…and it naturally stuck in my brain given I'm pushing 50 and getting predictably angsty about it." / Ribbonfarm
At 38 years old (at least), the world's oldest common loon recently hatched her 41st and 42nd chicks. (She was already the world' most productive loon.) / Smithsonian Magazine
See also: At 38, James Milner began a record 23rd season in the Premier League this weekend. / AP
"He started with sinks and toilets, and worked up to hot water heaters and interior pipes." The blue collar jobs of Philip Glass. / The Honest Broker
In an art market downturn, young artists whose works sold for hundreds of thousands just a few years ago are now in the low five digits. / The New York Times [+]
How to start a professional sports organization—in this case, the Oakland Ballers, a homegrown baseball team to replace the departing A's. / The Ringer
"Calling off the game would be counterproductive to an investigation." An excerpt from a new book about the fraud that nearly took down McDonald's Monopoly game. / CrimeReads
Faxing isn't going away; in fact, due to regulatory needs—such as in health care—and technology advancements, the market is expected to continue growing. / ACM
Surveillance, but fun: Using a website that accesses traffic camera data, users can take selfies—of a sort—on NYC streets. / PetaPixel
Make your own Blockbuster Video VHS clamshell case insert with this editable template. / GitHub
Aphex Twin DJ'd a friend's wedding over the weekend. / Dazed
Friday headlines: Mid or evil
US officials say that Israel has done all it can militarily against Hamas in Gaza, and any further actions will only risk harming civilians. / The New York Times [+]
See also: How Israel's finance minister is using obscure policy to connect a new West Bank settlement with Jerusalem. / The Wall Street Journal [+]
"In the future, we might look back and see the most important difference between the Biden and Harris campaigns is their level of trust in the press corps." / The Editorial Board
Why California's new AI legislation is so controversial: It's not just the tech companies who don't want oversight, it's also academics who say the law will hamper their work. / Platformer
See also: This week, a district court judge ruled a group of artists can proceed with a lawsuit alleging their art was used to train Stable Diffusion. / Hyperallergic
"It's mind blowing to think that Russian fisheries could capture in one week what one of the biggest seafood companies in the US forecasts for the year, but that is exactly what happened." / Why is this interesting?
By controlling land and financing, a small group of home builders artificially restricts the supply of new homes in America. / BIG
"Global banks aren't living up to targets to cut their financing of activities that are directly fueling climate change." / Bloomberg [+]
Out of print since the legal settlement over its album art, Kind of Bloop—the chiptune remake of Kind of Blue—will be available for preorder on vinyl starting tomorrow. / Waxy
"Forget Brat summer; we've moved on to Gregorian chants." From typography to synthesizers, the mood of the moment is Future Medieval. / It's Nice That
See also: An in-depth look at what Teenage Engineering's EP-1320, the "world's first medieval electronic instrument" actually does. / YouTube
And also: "They call it Dungeon Synth because anyone who makes it should be locked up." / X
Researchers find horses are intelligent enough to understand rules faster than many other animals—and to know they can ignore the same rules just because. / VICE
A Q&A with an expert who studies diseases common to humans and animals, in hopes of better understanding their root causes and finding new treatments. / STAT
See also: How the world's last wild red wolves are avoiding extinction. / The Washington Post [+]
"'No Excel spreadsheet wine list,' meaning: no taking a wine and multiplying it by 3x or 4x no matter what the wine is." NYC restaurants reveal their wine markups. / Punch
Wednesday headlines: Good luck, Barack!
Scientists discover "seismic signals" of liquid water on Mars. / BBC News
China is building a massive wall of solar panels to fight desertification. / Semafor
Analysts explain why Harvard canceled its solar geoengineering project. / The Verge
Is carbon offsetting basically greenwashing? I.e., "a mechanism that allows polluters to hide emissions behind misleading methodologies." / Climate & Capitalism
See also: A new book by forecaster Nate Silver predicts an economic future that belongs to those who can afford to take risks. / The New York Times [+]
Christine Emba says the song "Man in Finance" connects the end of the girlboss moment with a resurgence of vintage gender norms. / The Atlantic
People respond to President Obama not including Chappell Roan in his summer playlist. "It's like he doesn't even want to pretend to be bi anymore." / Them
Twenty thousand Taylor Swift fans, disappointed by cancellations in Vienna, visit museums after multiple institutions waive entry fees. / ARTnews
Unrelated: The girls are using ChatGPT to see if men are lying about their height on dating apps. / X
Downtown San Francisco is luring back businesses with free rent for up to six months. / The New York Times [+]
A roundtable of Millennial social media experts assess their industry. / The Trend Report
See also: Rising home prices and smart investments help explain a turnaround in Millennials' finances. / The Wall Street Journal [+]
An overview of "the long history" of tying actors' accents to ideology in movies about the Roman Empire. / Hyperallergic
In case you missed it: Every sport from the Summer Games ranked according to "how terrible it would be for the average person." / The Ringer
Tuesday headlines: We are young bunny
David Wallace-Wells explains why we shouldn't be applying lessons learned from Covid to bird flu. / The New York Times [+]
A British couple compares photos of a Swiss glacier taken in 2009 and 2024. / Kottke
Demand in the United States for avocados is encouraging deforestation in Mexico. / Bloomberg
Immigrants to the US are becoming citizens at the fastest rate in a decade. / The New York Times [+]
Which US state has the highest rate of homelessness? New York, followed by Vermont. / The New Yorker
A study finds people with consistent grocery shopping habits are more likely to pay their credit card bills on time. / The Conversation
Unrelated: On Etsy, searches for matchbook or matchbox art are up 92% in the last three months compared with the same time last year. / The Wall Street Journal [+]
Elon Musk's support of Donald Trump—e.g., trying to find 800,000 votes—is harming his business interests. / The Wall Street Journal [+], Fortune
Utah orders books by 13 authors—12 of them women—to be removed from every public school, classroom, and library. / The Guardian
See also: If American women were their own country, they would rank third in the 2024 Olympic medal count. / NPR
Photographs of what teenagers in Los Angeles wore for their first day of school. / The Los Angeles Times
UCLA's Nathan Deuel describes what it's like to teach travel writing when "the best possible story" is already happening on campus. / Lithub
Colm Tóibín on James Baldwin: "He sought to elevate what was complex, multifarious, intricate." / The Paris Review
"There are many wild theories for why bunnies ended up in the same bucket as pigeons." Counting things in Japanese is said to be quirky. / Aether Magazine
Monday headlines: Consider the sponge
Experts say Covid can now be considered endemic, although it may take another decade to reach the predictability associated with other endemic diseases. / NPR
"The CDC has likely been violating federal law for years by systematically deleting lower-level employees' emails, a federal judge ruled Friday." / Politico
The US has always struggled with defining its national security priorities—and because old policies are rarely discarded, the disarray only grows. / Foreign Affairs
"Sports Illustrated… explained the science of climate change in detail, advising people 'not to take 99-year leases on properties at present sea level.'" What Americans knew about climate change 60 years ago. / Grist
Kitchen sponges can be used as memory devices, and can mimic the structure of human brains. / Nature
OpenAI says during safety testing, GPT 4-o unexpectedly began speaking in the user's voice. / Ars Technica
See also: Margaret Watts Hughes's Victorian sound visualizations. / The Marginalian
After nearly 40 years, Andy Warhol's Amiga art—which includes a portrait of Debbie Harry—has officially been found. / The Silicon Underground
A new documentary seeks to find the actor who taught a generation to type via the 1987 education game Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. / Hyperallergic
"Upright strokes bend or break or go in all directions, vowels shrink to blobs, slant loses its smooth smart angle." Anne Carson mourns how Parkison's has changed her handwriting. / London Review of Books
At the Olympic Village, American athletes experienced something they don't back home: free health care. / The 19th
After winning Olympic gold, 16-year-old Quincy Wilson now has to go back to high school. / Us Magazine
Some of the more interesting Olympic medal trackers are those that implement sorting for surfacing those countries without podium-dominating resources. / Flowing Data
"It had everything you can possibly imagine." When Apple prototypes make their way to second-hand markets, they sometimes contain corporate secrets. / WIRED
A list of all the shows astronauts can watch on the ISS. / Gizmodo
Friday headlines: Satisfy the stitch
A deep dive into a US court's ruling that warrantless searches of incoming travelers' devices at the border are unconstitutional. / The Dissenter
How a prominent anti-abortion doctor in San Antonio somehow became the rural representative for Texas's maternal mortality committee. / The Texas Tribune
"It's radical to fix something versus throwing it away and buying something new." A visit to the anticapitalist Radical Sewing Club. / The Los Angeles Times
Noah Lyles took bronze in the 200-meter, his signature event, after testing positive for Covid, and is now out for the remainder of the Olympics. / ESPN, Bleacher Report
These are the first Olympics of the decade free of Covid restrictions—except for the Dutch delegation, who are choosing fistbumps over handshakes. / The New York Times [+]
How the judging system for breaking was devised in order to account for a unique set of skills and execution—and of course, battling. / WIRED
Online age verification is a privacy minefield. Identifying someone as underage requires learning a lot about them—in other words, gathering data on minors. / The Washington Post [+]
An El Paso middle school has banned students from wearing all-black clothing, saying it's "associated with depression and mental health issues." / KTUL
A massive scheme defrauded Istanbul soccer players and their colleagues of nearly $44 million, though it's unclear whether they were actually victims or willing losers. / The Dial
Music stardom typically ends within a year—more surprisingly, musicians' life expectancies trend shorter, "comparable to boxers, military figures, and race car drivers." / Stat Significant
See also: Bands are disappearing from the UK charts. / Kottke.org
"It is 3 o'clock in the morning, I am lying in bed reading on my phone, and this word pops up in my feed: petrichor." / Bitter Southerner
Thursday headlines: Swole earth catalog
Doctors say it doesn't work, but Olympic athletes swear drinking a Coke after emerging from the polluted Seine helps "flush out anything inside of us." / The Wall Street Journal [+]
Gyms depend on members not showing up—that's now a problem because new fitness trends include the kinds of weightlifting not everyone can do at home. / Business Insider
J.D. Vance's techno-authoritarian politics descend from Curtis Yarvin, a far-right neoreactionary whose ideas all seem rooted in him hating living in San Francisco. / The New Republic
"Apple didn't respond to a request for comment." Six ways the Google ruling could change the internet. / The Washington Post [+]
See also: Google's real monopoly is on the user data. / Propellernet
Price volatility and climate change mean the food we eat is almost certainly going to change, and while many solutions are on the table, it's going to take decades to happen. / The New York Times [+]
"The type—always Cheltenham, in a variety of weights—seems to follow typographic rules usually seen in magazines or books." An appreciation of L.L. Bean catalogs. / OK Perfect
The EPA has fined a Ford dealership in Nebraska for violating the Clean Air Act by illegally modifying vehicles' exhaust systems. / Jalopnik
Why are so many car YouTubers quitting? "Simply put, these channels are maturing." / The Verge
See also: A roundup of videos where car YouTubers drop their networks. / A Whole Lotta Nothing
"Some people would be really snobby… But I love it. I played it at my grandma's funeral." On the current wave of minimalist piano music. / The Guardian
See also: Welcome to "semi-spiritual" ambient music and the stuff of contemporary mourning. / The Morning News
Wednesday headlines: Follow their lead
The Trump campaign is attacking Tim Walz for a policy that allows felons to vote, conveniently forgetting that Trump is also a convicted felon. / The New Republic
Harris picking Walz as her running mate is a big win for the right-to-repair movement. / Gizmodo
How we are watching the Olympics this time around may be highly fragmented, but the tech is stable and it all still feels like a singular event. / WIRED
See also: Why the word "Taiwan" is banned at the Olympics. / The Guardian
"The severe restriction of movement at the border is an interspecies problem—one that requires an interspecies solution." / The Drift
Why you should take your dog on a "sniff walk." / Boing Boing
"You see so many abandoned citrus groves on the highways. Most of those trees are just dead now." Can Florida's orange growers survive another hurricane season? / Grist
Why you should choose white rice over brown: There's less arsenic, and otherwise they're practically identical nutritionally. Also, you know you want it. / Heavies
Billy Bean, the second openly gay Major League Baseball player, has died at age 60. / NPR
See also: "It hurts that I never got to meet you." Bean's video letter to Glenn Burke, the first openly gay MLB player. / YouTube
To bring the Michelin Guide to Houston, the city's tourism department is required to pay $90,000 a year for three years. / Eater Houston
"Cortisol face" is the latest dermatological obsession that's 1) fueled by how much we see our faces on screens now; and 2) not as real as we think. / The New York Times [+]
Tuesday headlines: (Bad) taste makes waste
As part of Olympic security, French authorities are using—and critics argue, abusing—an anti-terror law to restrict the movements of hundreds of people. / AP
"Aug. 2, 2024, was Black Friday for the artificial intelligence boom, as a week of rough earnings from Big Tech led to what felt like the entire media industry to ask: is the AI bubble popping?" / Where's Your Ed At
David Lynch says he's unable to leave his house due to emphysema, but has no plans to retire: "I would do it remotely if it comes to it. I wouldn't like that so much." / The Daily Beast
The ridiculous plot for M. Night Shyamalan's new movie—where an entire concert is staged for a sting operation—is loosely based on an actual, ridiculous sting operation. / GQ
"Over-describing something trivial can lead to your players fixating on it." Dungeons & Dragons taught me how to write alt text. / Eric W. Bailey
Why are so many prized midcentury homes being gutted right now—or worse, torn down? Money, obviously, and that's also the reason it hurts so much. / Snake
See also: It's another botched art restoration—this time at an 18th-century Spanish church, where one of the new cherubim appears to be wearing a backpack. / Hyperallergic
Facebook is the cause of Facebook's AI slop, which creators are using to generate engagement—and score performance bonuses from Facebook. / 404 Media
A US district judge rules Google has been running a monopoly in search and advertising—the decision could result in anything from a slap on the wrist to a breakup. / The Verge
Unrelated: A beautiful visual search for public domain content. / Public Work
Are book covers the reason men don't read novels? Depends on the man. / The Biblioracle Recommends
"It's unlikely that a DJ mix or a remix compilation will ever have such an impact again." For many, Kruder & Dorfmeister were the sound of a highly specific moment in time. / zensounds
Monday headlines: All that glitters
"Few questioned whether the MAGA tent was big enough to cover the tech futurists and the evangelical Christians." Inside the pro-Trump 2024 Bitcoin Conference. / The Verge
Hamilton Nolan: "The Democrats are a Big Tent Party…in the way you might feel if you arrived at a group camping trip to find that there were not individual accommodations." / How Things Work
How is Zoom now a thing for the Harris campaign? Compared to the 2020 election cycle, by this point voters had Zoom fatigue, but now it's novel again. / The New York Times [+]
By breaking with other news orgs and the White House, Bloomberg seemed willing to put the prisoner swap at risk in its pursuit of a scoop. / Intelligencer
Project 2025 aims to weaken the federal agency responsible for curtailing disinformation during elections, and seems to misunderstand what the agency actually does. / WIRED
Gaza's health ministry says 500 health workers have been killed and another 300 have been detained, which means both are happening at a higher rate than Gazans. / The New York Times [+]
"If these banned substances were as dangerous as WADA would have us believe, elite athletes should be dropping like flies. But they aren't." The myth at the heart of anti-doping. / STAT
At two gold medals, the winningest 2024 Olympic mountain bike is very expensive—to the tune of $12,500—but the bike that won silver costs $3,500 more. / Outside
See also: A recap of bike stuff from the first week of the 2024 Olympics. / A Whole Lotta Nothing
And also: The @artbutmakeitsports Instagram account has been having a field day with imagery from the 2024 Olympics. / Instagram
Africa likes mammals, South America likes birds, and more from a worldwide analysis of animals on currency. / Griffith University
"It's hard to imagine another artist where that radical leap forward took place on a Christmas album." On Low's Christmas. / Tobias Carroll
Saturday headlines: Eyes wide open
Germany's political shift toward right-wing extremism appears to be accelerating. / Semafor
The Pentagon deploys more warships and fighter jets to the Middle East. / Reuters
A review of bipartisan legislation that passed this week in Washington. / Wake Up to Politics
Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff's "insatiable" fan base is nicknamed the "D-Unit." / Vanity Fair
A professional influencer, climate activist, and ski mountaineer runs for senate in Utah, even though she'll most certainly lose. / Vox
See also: "Normal people judge movements and parties by their most prominent representatives." / X
The love story—and game show story—of the first married same-sex couple to work for Southwest Airlines. / Slate
Medical experts say they frequently see patients who injure themselves attempting Olympic feats. / The Guardian
Related: "A lot of Olympians push their bodies to a breaking point "just to see where they can go." / The New York Times [+]
Some travel tips on how to use the free wifi at your hotel safely. Also, networking tips for music festivals? / AFAR, Carrd
The argument to put fresh herbs on everything. / Blackbird Spyplane
One of the biggest video games in the world right now involves clicking a banana. Meanwhile, if you care to stare at strangers, there's a new site for that. / Sherwood, Eyechat