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

Germany's incoming chancellor says Donald Trump's Oval Office clash with Zelenskiy was an obvious trap. / Reuters

Secretary of State Rubio is believed to have canceled aid programs without review, knowing it would cause immediate deaths. / ProPublica

A source says FAA officials ordered staff to find tens of millions of dollars for a deal with Starlink, Elon Musk's company. / Rolling Stone

The US Army is deleting online content related to keywords like "justice," "dignity," and "respect." / Military.com

Josephine Riesman: The genius of The Wall is the message that fascism never really died. / Flaming Hydra

A DOGE staffer appears to be posting his work on his public GitHub. / X

An interview with an expert on the Federal Reseve's computer systems. "The most dangerous thing is just how little we know." / Paul Krugman 

When AI companies say their computers are beating humans in creativity competitions, it's because the tests ask the humans to behave in machine-like ways. / The Guardian

What if our notion of privacy could protect something like quiet? / The Nation

Instructions for how to remove your personal information from Google's "results about you." / Ars Technica

From January, should people who blast their music in public receive fines, "or be slowly tortured to death?" / I Might Be Wrong

Ten observations from a new resident of Tokyo, "the world's most successful failing society." / Persuasion

Unrelated: "I left private equity to work on shrimp welfare. When I tell anyone this, they usually think I've lost my mind." / Asterisk Magazine

And just a reminder, our annual event, The Tournament of Books—presented by the very great Field Notes— begins on Thursday! / The Tournament of Books

In Washington, the Democratic Party is historically unpopular—and on track to retake the House of Representatives in 2026. / Vox

Why the DOGE takeover is worse than we realize: Agencies are being dismantled, but we haven't felt the ripples of that—at least not yet. / WIRED

Most of the Social Security Administration's regional commissioners are retiring this week. / Government Executive

Unrelated: Ranking the fastest and easiest second passports obtainable by Americans. / International Living

Writer Elif Batuman wishes the US would do couples therapy on a national level. / Who We Are to Each Other

The USAID initiative focused on Ebola prevention that Elon Musk said he "accidentally canceled" and then "restored…immediately" was not, in fact, restored. / The Washington Post [+]

As Musk is proving, "working 120 hours a week is not the same thing as doing a good job." / The New York Times [+]

See also: "If you'd like less DOGE and more DOG, here are eight minutes of corgi puppies." / Metafilter

An "error" in Instagram Reels causes its algorithm to repeatedly show violence. / 404 Media

The trend forecaster who predicted "normcore" and "vibe shift" explains the "boom boom" aesthetic. / The Cut

Headline of the week? "Park rangers battle Australians seeking rare earth minerals in old Mojave gold mine." / The Los Angeles Times

Hundreds of Severance fans have been visiting the Saarinen-designed Bell Labs research center in New Jersey. / Curbed

Analysis of 1,884 speeches given by winners at the Oscars finds that no, Harvey Weinstein was not thanked more often than God. / Stephen Follows

Diana Taurasi, the all-time leading scorer in WNBA history, retires. / TIME

The typeface Gorton is said to be "the hardest working font in Manhattan." / Aresluna

"Most of our life now is just: work, clean, sleep, repeat." Young people explain what would make them happy. / Dazed

Reportedly, the "icing" prank is back. "Everybody remembers that this is just a dumb, fun thing to do." / Punch

Just a reminder: The Tournament of Books, presented by Field Notes, begins next week! / The Tournament of Books

European Commission leaders go to India in a bid to strengthen trade ties. / Semafor

Around a billion people in India lack enough money to spend on discretionary goods or services. / BBC News

Natalia Antelava says Vladimir Putin has scripted a new ending to the Cold War. / coda

Some reasons why American democracy will likely withstand President Trump's term—e.g., a firm expiration date, and the United States' multiculturalism. / Vox

A letter to congressional staffers. "Make no mistake: They are coming for you next." / We the Builders

Unrelated: A Land Rover likely driven by King Charles goes to auction. / Iconic Auctioneers

In Los Angeles, immigrants turn to the public library for help. / The Los Angeles Times

An FDA meeting to choose flu vaccine composition for next fall is canceled without explanation. / CNN

A new study published analyzes nearly 1,000 Instagram and TikTok posts about five popular medical tests—and finds the overwhelming majority "utterly misleading." / The Conversation

Pennsylvania's governor says more than $2 billion in federal funding for his state has been unfrozen. / Democracy Docket

Nearly $700 billion in funding went to infrastructure- and climate-related projects under President Biden—you can use ZIP codes to find out where. / Grist

A well known paper that reported high levels of microplastics in human brain tissue is found to contain duplicated images. / The Transmitter

A former National Geographic Expeditions guide explains how to photograph Antarctica. / Field Mag

Stunning black and white pictures from Jinyong Lian. / Booooooom

See also: A 19th-century photo of a bundle of hay descending along a wire over a lake in Western Norway. / Futility Closet

South Korea's fertility rate rises for the first time in nine years, supported by an increase in marriages. / Reuters

Denmark's economy is one of Europe's fastest-growing thanks to Novo Nordisk's Wegovy and Ozempic drugs. / BBC News

Brooke Harrington: Trust in government to do what is right, at least most of the time, is a form of wealth that breeds prosperity. / The New York Times [+]

A federal judge gives the Trump administration less than two days to release billions of dollars in US foreign aid. / The Associated Press

A sampling of a dozen trans people finds all of them educating themselves about guns. / The Washington Post [+]

Trump wants to offer a "gold card" visa to wealthy foreigners—something often found attractive by criminals and corrupt officials. / NPR, FATF

On a lighter note, "the Natalie situation" in the White House refers to an aide who doesn't "do well with boundaries." / The Cut

Federal courts in Maryland, New York, and DC are hearing lawsuits challenging DOGE as a "threat to democracy." / The New York Times [+]

Unrelated: Apple is working on a glitch where iPhones replace the word "racist" with "Trump." / The Wall Street Journal [+]

A new smartphone app will prevent you from accessing other apps until it knows you've "touched grass." / Touchgrass.now

John Oliver offers advice on how to make yourself less valuable to Meta. / Last Week Tonight

The publishing industry says goodbye to mass-market paperbacks in airports. / Publisher's Weekly

A remembrance of when William Faulkner set the record for the longest sentence in literature—with one consisting of 1,288 words. / Open Culture

A contemporary art museum in Norway offers a private tour for $26,300. / The Art Newspaper

The Waldorf Astoria is selling apartments in New York City for up to $18.75 million. / The New York Times [+]

Descriptions of winners from the 2025 World Whiskies Awards. / Gear Patrol

See also: Some recipes involving tinned fish. / The Tinned Fish Market

Ukrainian and US negotiators are said to be in the final stages of a minerals deal. / The New York Times [+]

The White House's mixed signals on Russia and Ukraine may reflect an internal strategic clash. / Just Security

Facilities in Mississippi and Texas are holding the most detained immigrants. / axios

A list of things restaurant owners and workers can do to protect themselves from immigration raids. / Eater

See also: Video of people standing up to President Trump. / Bluesky

Nearly one in 10 adults in the United States identifies as LGBTQ, almost triple the number since Gallup started counting in 2012. / USA Today

Three incarcerated queer people explain their tattoos. / Them

The uproar around last week's "small" paper about Covid vaccines is "a parable for the ways in which the internet is being used to weaponize basic vaccine research." / STAT

See also: Lessons from a science journalist who lived underground for 10 days. / Vox

Archaeologists use laser mapping technology to find an ancient Zapotec city in Mexico. / The Art Newspaper

From last year, a short video (best muted) about the largest cruise ship ever built in Germany. / YouTube

A Norwegian humanoid robot, designed for home chores, comes wrapped in beige knitwear. / dezeen

An interview with a woman who makes people's decisions for them. "The answer to, 'Should I break up with this person?' 98% of the time, is 'yes.'" / Café Anne

Unrelated: Profiles of young women who are becoming nuns. / Cosmopolitan

A longtime food critic retires and leaves behind morsels (sorry) of succinct advice. "Some of the best foods carry with them the faint whiff of death." / The Guardian

Economists say the DOGE purge of federal workers could trigger local recessions, and how bad it gets depends on the scale of the layoffs, which is still unknown. / CNBC

An explainer on how the billions in cuts that DOGE's public ledger claims to have uncovered are riddled with miscalculations and embellishments. / The New York Times [+]

Current and former federal workers launch a website to share anonymous stories about DOGE's efforts to dismantle government agencies. / We the Builders, The Verge

In October, the lawyer who is reportedly now DOGE's general counsel said ignoring the courts would destroy the country. / The Intercept

The FDA is trying to bring back hundreds of workers from the thousands who were cut by DOGE. / The Independent

"Trump is turning off all 8,000 EV chargers at all federal government buildings." / The Drive

"Much of the chaos, lawlessness, and destruction of the past few weeks can be understood as part of the administration's central ideological project," which is to reestablish segregation. / The Atlantic

See also: "Any company whose value is this dependent not on its balance sheet but instead on a shared popular narrative is unusually vulnerable to narrative shifts." How to cost Elon Musk $100 billion. / How Things Work

In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was everywhere, riding an "America First" slogan into the mainstream. They felt unstoppable, until people stopped them. / Dan Sinker

"LANA KIHN flips a switch as the SJWs look on." Leaked pages from Amazon's James Bond script. / Read Max

What's it like for an author to realize the book that took years to research and write is suddenly available as a "summary" someone is selling for $4.99 on Amazon. / 404 Media

One interesting similarity between AI and the public domain is how, used improperly, both are shortcuts that elevate aesthetics over meaning. / It's Nice That

"It is inescapably relevant that Ono was a Japanese woman who demanded to be let into the avant-garde scene in New York just a few years removed from the end of World War II." At the Yoko Ono symposium. / Defector

The White House and the Treasury will restrict DOGE's taxpayer access to read-only, anonymized data—the same as what academic researchers and IRS IT professionals can see. / The Washington Post [+]

See also: Finally, my tax dollars are being used to uncover publicly available government information. / McSweeney's

An agency-by-agency list of how far Project 2025 has succeeded in its goals—for example, USAID is now at 100% completion. / Project 2025 Tracker

After Texas banned abortion in 2021, "the rate of sepsis shot up more than 50% for women hospitalized when they lost their pregnancies in the second trimester." / ProPublica

Elon Musk says he will "fix" fact-checking on X that contradicts Trump's claims Zelenskyy is unpopular in Ukraine. / Al Jazeera

See also: X is reportedly intimidating advertisers to return to the platform by suggesting companies who don't may trigger the federal government's ire. / Gizmodo

Probably unrelated: X is in talks to raise money at a $44 billion valuation, the same amount Elon Musk purchased it for more than two years ago. / Reuters

Germany's top court rules Birkenstocks are not works of art, a designation the company sought to access stronger copyright protections and fend off copycats. / The Guardian

Microsoft says it has created a new state of matter that is neither solid, liquid, or gas. / The New York Times [+]

Google's ad tech violates its own policies, allowing targeting of users based on personally sensitive data—potentially to where a specific individual could be identified. / WIRED

See also: Ways to rethink how your online shopping tools and habits to fight surveillance pricing. / The Cut

Always-on social media and location sharing means we all know too much about each other. / Dazed

Fascists do love to exert power over art communities that have long rejected them. / Hyperallergic

What it's like to be queer in Nigeria, where "to live safely as themselves, they have to do so underground." / The Dial

From the menswear guy: What do James Baldwin's clothes tell us about him? / PBS

Five Trends that will shape urban Africa in 2025—e.g., the Addis Ababa model. / The Week in Africa

William Shoki: Elon Musk's outrage over South Africa wants to reinforce an idea that black political power is threatening. / Africa Is a Country

How to understand President Trump best? By tracking Maggie Haberman's byline. / Wake Up to Politics

Unrelated: His mugshot hangs outside the Oval Office. / NPR

European leaders and Ukraine are scrambling—what would a UK-Europe force look like? / Sky News

The White House sends out an order to study how in vitro fertilization can be made more affordable. / CNN

Abortion rights groups dismiss the move and tie Trump to abortion bans and other limits on women's health care. / axios

An issue that RFK Jr. and his critics agree on: a troubling loophole that allows Big Food to introduce new additives without getting approval from the FDA. / STAT

Iowa advances a bill targeting public librarians. / Bookriot

An argument says local journalism is as essential to well-functioning communities "as potable drinking water, safe streets, and reliable emergency services." / The Walrus

To celebrate Robert Rauschenberg's 100th birthday, six contemporary artists to follow. / artsy

Portraits of cats from Hong Kong's Sheung Wan district. / Huck

A profile of the new shameless "dupe" company Quince. / The Cut

A pharaoh's tomb is discovered in Egypt for the first time since 1922. / BBC News

Amazon now controls who plays James Bond and when the next film goes into production. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Former Brazilian President Bolsonaro is charged with leading a plot to overthrow the government. / Reuters

Argentina's Javier Milei tries to deflect criticism after a cryptocurrency he endorsed on X collapses, erasing $4 billion in value. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

President Trump suggests Kyiv is to blame for Russia's invasion. / The Guardian

Ukrainian President Zelensky says Trump lives in "disinformation space." / CNN

Fifty hot takes from a moderate Canadian academic. / X 

Kishore Mahbubani: Trump's meeting with Putin shows how irrelevant Europe has become, even when its geopolitical interests are at stake. / Foreign Policy

Research suggests phenomena like pandemics reduce young people's trust in scientific and political authorities. / The Atlantic

See also: Gen Z prefers influencers over experts—"not because they are wrong, but because they are inconvenient." / Fortune

An interview with a young woman digging up ephemera from Flickr. / Molly Soda

A new study links a protein variant found only in humans to the origins of spoken language. / The Associated Press

The "artificial cryosphere"—basically, the world of industrial refrigeration—is reportedly "vast and still growing." / The London Review of Books

Mapping dispossession in San Francisco's Black communities. / Logic(s)

Meta's AI-powered glasses are said to give blind people accessibility benefits "at a price point people can afford." / The Wall Street Journal [+]

A clothing company makes a jacket from 250,000 pieces of wood. / dezeen

"Coincidental" photographs from Eric Kogan's daily walks around New York City. / Colossal 
 

Scientists worry about the politicization of vital statistics. / Undark Magazine

Spencer Ackerman connects the dots between Vice President Vance's "Nazi apologia" and his artificial-intelligence boosterism. / Forever Wars

See also: Thanks to under-moderated social platforms, anyone can write their own Mein Kampf now. / Garbage Day

President Trump's assault on DEI is also an assault on rights for the disabled. / The New Yorker

"What Google is doing here is changing the name of the continental shelf of Mexico and Cuba." Mexico threatens to sue Google. / axios

Twenty-four hours of aerial firefighting in Los Angeles, animated. / LinkedIn

Art handlers explain how they dealt with Los Angeles's recent fires. / The Art Newspaper

For people who view the late Angeleno thinker Mike Davis as "a prophet of doom," they're reading him wrong. / The Los Angeles Times

The top of Yelp's annual list of the best US restaurants is an LA seafood counter. / Yelp

Related: When the Michelin star becomes a restaurant's curse. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Dr. Bronner's is dropping its B Corp certification, saying its standards are too weak. / FastCompany

Confessions of a former online hater. "I do feel like the snark sub-Reddits aren't helping anybody." / The Cut

People in smaller towns are forming nonprofits to save their local movie theaters. / The New York Times [+]

A new proof solves "the moving sofa problem." / Quanta Magazine

See also: Some tips from a very experienced traveler. / KK

Jon Krakauer is once again defending his mountaineering book Into Thin Air, this time from a YouTuber. / Slate

For your weekly wanderlust, a report and some beautiful pictures from a bike tour of the Turkish Highlands. / The Radavist

Paintings by the artist Bianca Raffaela, who is registered as blind. / artsy

Even as a decline in illegal border crossings is a gift for Trump, it makes it harder for ICE to put up the arrest and deportation numbers it wants. / The Washington Post [+]

More journalists were killed in 2024 than ever before, and Israel was responsible for two-thirds of those deaths. / Democracy Now!

Will the IMF survive Donald Trump's presidency? Only if it can avoid—or at least limit—arm-twisting by the world's big three economies. / The London School of Economics

How Trump is weaponizing financial payments—potentially to the point where the administration could target organizations it opposes. / Programmable Mutter

Anyway, the IRS is reviewing a request from DOGE to provide access to a classified system that contains personal taxpayer data. / The Guardian

See also: "Right now it feels like we're being hacked from the inside." The federal tech workers facing down DOGE. / Blood in the Machine

Full authoritarianism in the US is unlikely. The more probable scenario is competitive authoritarianism—here's how other countries have managed to fend it off. / The Detox with Neil Abrams

Checking in on how the party of the working class has helped American workers, one month in. / How Things Work

"Many in the mountains find it hard to trust government and city people who want to tell them how to take care of the land." Pitchaya Sudbanthad on Thailand's wildfires. / Orion

The lie we've been told about recycling is worse than we thought: It's poisoning residents where the world's plastic refuse is dumped. / The New York Times [+]

"It still boggles my mind that my books end up being classified as dystopian literature." Fernando A. Flores's new novel is about Elon Musk's Texas. / Texas Monthly

Helped by Peter Thiel and Y Combinator, an initiative to push Christianity to Silicon Valley via direct-to-consumer marketing. / The New York Times [+]

"You gotta take care of your own soul, and I'm writing this because I want to clarify mine." On AI, and more importantly: Is it OK? / Robin Sloan

Rooster fans: From John Warner, here's an inside look at the Tournament of Books and the ideal book review. / The Biblioracle Recommends

A central aspect of negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war is that the US would provide Ukraine with post-war security in exchange for access to rare earth minerals. / Reuters

See also: "Even now, most Ukrainians see continuing to fight as incomparably better than the terror of Russian occupation." / Foreign Affairs

"I am safer than every single one of you reading this in the United States." A dispatch from a train out of Kyiv, headed to a city 20 miles from the front. / Thinking about…

Verge Editor-in-Chief Nilay Patel on how Trump is weaponizing the FCC against media companies that don't fall in line—and how it's already working. / The Verge

Since Trump's inauguration, the Dept. of Education's Office for Civil Rights has stopped fielding investigations based on student complaints, and switched to those initiated by Trump's agenda. / ProPublica

Health insurers deny some 850 million claims a year—but when people actually appeal, around three quarters of patients end up winning their cases. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

To understand some of Elon Musk's business practices, as well as what appear to be his aims in US government, look to how apartheid began as an economic strategy. / The Nation

Probably related to all this: Inside the retreat where wealthy heirs are trying to give away their fortunes. / Business Insider

"We know that the feds and police will target vulnerable communities in Los Angeles. The Olympics will only bring more violence to them." / Welcome to Hell World

Clay Risen: The last time a president purged "disloyal" government workers it was under the guise of the Red Scare—and that was about loyalty to the US, not to an individual. / Politico

"It has provided me a foundation, something to hold on to when the waves are swelling." Jhumpa Lahiri on Ovid's Metamorphoses. / The Dial

How the illustrator for the Guardian's weekly sex column does what he does. / It's Nice That

The past, present, and uncertain future of the fashion show. / High Snobiety

The most powerful neutrino ever detected—at 10 times the energy of the previous record—has been spotted "tearing through the Mediterranean Sea." / New Scientist

Historians say the United States is on the cusp of "competitive authoritarianism." / Foreign Affairs

Chris Geidner: Trump is a salesman, as is Musk, and they are both trying to sell America on being an authoritarian state—but they can't do it unless we allow them to do so. / LAWdork

The State Department plans to spend $400 million on armored Teslas. / The Guardian

Tressie McMillan Cotton: What Musk is sowing is chaos as content. / The New York Times [+]

President Trump's "energy whisperer" is Harold Hamm, the billionaire behind fracking company Continental Resources. / Heated

See also: "You know what Denmark needs? More sunshine, palm trees, and roller skates." Nearly 200,000 Danes—seemingly—sign a petition to buy California. / KTLA

Fewer than 40% of the 465 homes destroyed by the 2018 Woolsey fire in Malibu have been rebuilt. / The Los Angeles

The story behind history's largest and most famous disability access ramp. / Ex Urbe

Landlording in New York City is said to be a nesting doll of companies and agents that "protects wealth and shields against consequence." / Curbed

Unrelated: Why you stacked plastic cups in elementary school gym class. / Defector [+]

Anticipating Valentine's Day, some comic panels that resemble the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. / Ironic Sans 

Singles in India are turning to AI for help with arranged marriages. / The Walrus

What does it say about philosophy that almost all of its canonical figures were unmarried men? / aeon

See also, from January: What was the "horny profile?" / Flaming Hydra

A beautifully designed, "humiliating list of all the ways your brain can deceive you." / Futility Closet

The playbook on how to win influence over President Trump is well known—and it still works. / Wake Up to Politics

Law professors explain what happens if the White House ignores the courts. / NPR

Benjamin Wittes: How effective can judges be in this task? Courts, after all, don't have armies. / Lawfare

Noura Erakat: Surviving this next chapter demands that we see ourselves as the rest of the world sees us too. / Boston Review

Google's online and mobile calendars no longer include references to Black History Month, Women's History Month, or LGBTQ+ holidays. / BBC News

The chief information officers of at least three major government agencies have been replaced by Silicon Valley executives. / WIRED

From January, a look at how luxury real estate owners in Montana save thousands of dollars annually, thanks to the state's agricultural tax code. / High Country News

A report from residents of America's "first car-free neighborhood" in Arizona. "It reminds me of Mykonos." / dwell

Unrelated: "The Bop House Is an OnlyFans Paradise That Pulls Millions Per Month." / VICE

The fact that Los Angeles can aspire to host a "car-free" Olympics owes a great debt to researcher Donald Shoup. / Torched

A mystery woman has been revealed in the upper right corner of Picasso's "Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto." / Hyperallergic 

Novelist Tom Robbins dies at 92. / The Seattle Times 

An essay connects Goodnight Moon to Louise Glück's final book, regarding her granddaughters. / The Paris Review

See also: "Whatever else it is, deep reading is slow reading." / The Hinternet

Some interviews with India's finest carvers of chess sets, many of whom specialize in just one piece. / Atlas Obscura

Retired athlete Diego Schwartzman explains how having a small body made him one of tennis's biggest players. / ATP

M. Gessen explains the five categories of arguments people use when they engage in "anticipatory obedience." / The New York Times [+] 

Spencer Ackerman: Regarding Palestinians, Trump is "a fulfillment of longstanding currents in American history." / Forever Wars

A trend forecaster plots the chart between Brat Summer and Capitalism XCX. / After School

Google, OpenAI, Discord, and others fund the development of new online safety tools. / Platformer

A newly discovered asteroid, named 2024 YR4, has a 2.3% chance of striking Earth on Dec. 22, 2032. / Marginal Revolution

Microplastics can move through mice brains and block blood vessels, a peer-reviewed paper says. / ScienceAdvances

A study finds worse weather amplifies social media activity. / Sage Journals

Do states with more renewable energy have more expensive electricity? It seems not. / Sustainability by numbers

Luigi Mangione's defense team is set to accept more than $300,000 in donations. / The Guardian

An animated Chinese film becomes the first non-Hollywood release to gross $1 billion in a single market. / Semafor

Why have music biopics gotten so banal? To give audiences uncomplicated stories, and to avoid messing with the money. / Little White Lies

Reporting on the strength of the Japanese vintage market: "All the best American vintage in the world is sitting in Tokyo." / KCRW

"I often tell people there's too much blood in my caffeine stream." Details from a visit to the UC Davis Coffee Center. / Atlas Obscura

It wasn't until 2021 that the US included domestic extremism in its counterterrorism scope; Trump's pardons of insurrectionists calls into question who counts as a terrorist now. / ProPublica

How to access the full data.gov archive, which as of now contains 311,000 datasets harvested in 2024 and 2025. / Library Innovation Lab

"The public can not wait on the government to come tell them not to discriminate." A Dept. of Labor staffer describes life on the inside right now. / How Things Work

Photos from the US government buildings where Trump's anti-DEI policies are already plainly visible. / Bluesky

"The age of corporate social media has been a roaring success." You can't post your way out of fascism. / 404 Media

See also: When a seemingly innocuous photo of you reveals personal information, what exactly is being detected? / Internal exile

"Silicon Valley believes they are big enough now to create the future, rather than scale up to meet it." The Super Bowl was filled with delusional ads for AI. / Garbage Day

A portal containing personal data on hundreds of environmental advocates has been shuttered—the company counts major chemical and pesticide manufacturers among its clients. / The Guardian

Coke's next big thing is milk, and it's at least in part driven by people taking GLP-1 drugs, who are advised to consume more protein. / Bloomberg [+]

"Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation condemned the viral Russian pop song 'Sigma Boy' as a tool of 'information warfare.'" / The Moscow Times

Hank Azaria on AI and the future of voice acting: It's more than sound, it takes inspiration and improvisation. / The New York Times [+]

A trip to JICO, where some of the best turntable styluses anywhere are still produced by hand. / Hearing Things

Testing ChatGPT's "deep research" with the famously misunderstood Section 230: "the facts aren't wrong, but the omissions sure change what story they tell." / The Verge

Researchers from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon find greater use of generative AI can "result in the deterioration of cognitive faculties that ought to be preserved." / 404 Media

Why is everyone sick right now? Unlike most flu seasons, this year there have been two spikes: one from late December to early January, and now. / Gizmodo