Millions are without power after Hurricane Milton tears across Florida. / The Tampa Bay Times

The hurricane also tore open the Tampa Bay Rays' roof and felled a crane. / The Weather Channel, X

Photographs of Los Angeles's 400-mile network of aqueducts and hydropower plants. / Science History Institute

New Mexico works to preserve its network of ancient gravity-fed irrigation ditches. / Undark Magazine

A theory tries to explain why more Latinos are supporting Donald Trump—basically, because they're a diverse group of people with diverse interests. / The New Yorker

A round-up of under-discussed political races. / Wake Up to Politics

A few things learned from Melania Trump's new memoir. / The Cut

Fashion experts analyze outfits worn by the presidential and vice presidential candidates. / GQ

Unrelated: An analysis of the top fanfic pairings—"who gets shipped and why?" / The Pudding

Abu Dhabi overtakes Oslo to become the world's richest city in terms of assets managed by sovereign wealth funds. / Semafor

Elon Musk has long promised a fully autonomous vehicle, but don't expect him to follow through this week. / The Verge

Caitlin Dewey: Silicon Valley has—alarmingly, and increasingly—never looked more macho. / Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends

Wimbledon will replace line judges with electronic line calling next year, ending a 147-year tradition. / sky news

Rafael Nadal plans to retire next month at age 38. / Tennis & Beyond

South Korea's Han Kang receives this year's Nobel Prize in Literature "for her intense poetic prose." / The Literary Saloon

A profile of Kang from 2023: "That will be a problem when I die—I won't be able to finish all my ideas." / The Independent

Selections from Tara Booth's comics that were made to "cope with life" or "just lighten the mood." / It's Nice That

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu reportedly calls President Biden to discuss Israel's plans to strike Iran. / axios

The UK's Security Service says it has responded to 20 plots backed by Iran since 2022. / BBC News

A review of China as a sentinel state—phone monitoring, "grid management," and the forthcoming cyberspace ID scheme. / China Media Project

In light of this year's Nobel Prizes connected to AI, an explainer on how proteins fold. / The Economist

A team is protecting Wikipedia from AI-generated slop. / 404 Media

An audio sample finds Google Notebook's podcast bots experiencing an existential crisis. / Reddit

See also: In light of AI energy-consumption, the Department of Energy wants you to know your conservation efforts are making a difference. / McSweeney's

Mobile homes and manufactured houses are proving to be among the most vulnerable types of housing stock in climate disasters. / Grist

The White House launches a Reddit page to correct misinformation about storms. / The Hill

Schools are implementing backpack bans, which makes "the already difficult experience of navigating one's period as a teen even more difficult." / The Cut

One uncomfortable finding in psychology: trainees can be just as effective as fully licensed therapists. / Experimental History

Fifteen years later, Interview Project's 121 video profiles are now available on YouTube. / Open Culture

Something we didn't know: Nearly every station in the London Underground contains a plaque depicting a labyrinth. / Futility Closet

An artwork at a Dutch museum gets tossed in the trash for resembling a pair of beer cans too realistically. / euronews

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Hurricane Milton, headed for Tampa, becomes the second-fastest storm to reach Category 5 status. / Vox

John Morales: The proportion of tropical cyclones that reach very intense levels is projected to increase. / The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene tells her followers that the government controls the weather. / Grist

Unrelated: Ancient monsters from indigenous folklore. / Atlas Obscura

Britain opened the world's first coal-fired power station in 1882. It's now the first G7 nation to phase out coal power completely. / CarbonBrief

American communities are beginning to "decommission" dams, fearful of climate impacts. / Undark Magazine

A fun online quiz about "the weird, wild, wired world of new vehicles." / rest of world

See also, from last month: "Hollywood Can't Ditch its Teslas Fast Enough." / Hollywood Reporter

California becomes the first state to ban "sell-by" dates on food. / Food & Wine

Dr. Pepper ties Pepsi as the second-best selling soda in the US. / MSN

The style of Jula Child's kitchens was "subservient to flexible functionality," helping usher in Universal Design. / Places Journal

A relaxation of rules around using apostrophes in German has "triggered existential fears." / The Guardian

Tressie McMillan Cottom explains what it was like to interview Diddy at his Malibu home. (Very weird, not good.) / The Independent

A lovely visual essay about author Jaime Lowe rediscovering her libido by learning how to dive for sea urchins. / The New York Times Magazine [+]

A brief cultural history of cocaine. "I enjoyed myself hugely." / aeon

Brief profiles of the 97 hostages who remain unaccounted for after last year's Hamas-led attacks. / BBC News

An eloquent essay from a former Gaza resident. "In the past year, I have lost many of the tangible parts of my memories." / The New Yorker

Computer analysis finds Donald Trump's Trump's rally speeches now lasting an average of 82 minutes, compared with 45 minutes in 2016. / The New York Times [+]

Three people with severe autoimmune conditions have gone into remission after being treated with bioengineered, CRISPR-modified immune cells. / Nature

Psychologists say Dungeons & Dragons has potential benefits as a group therapy technique. / Ars Technica

Underground electronic and experimental music are burgeoning in Asia. / Pitchfork

And why not: a synthesizer in a browser window. / jake.fun

A researcher on artificial life and intelligence says anybody who encounters an extraterrestrial should try to kill them—as a means of communication. / Nautilus

Researchers are using drones to search for a female partner for "the world's loneliest plant." / The Conversation

Botanists have grown a long-lost tree species from a 1,000-year-old seed. / CNN

A new book brings together images of trees from over the centuries. / The Guardian

See also: A Loch Ness maritime pilot thinks he's found "Nessie" with sonar imagery. / The Irish Star

Because it's October: a starter kit for reading horror, and an oral history for Home Depot's 12-foot skeleton. / LitHub, VICE

"Bolivia, too, is undergoing a kind of disillusionment with democracy." How the rest of the world views this year's US election. / The Dial

See also: How British vernacular invaded America, or why everyone's saying "gutted" now. / The Guardian

More solar activity could again make the Northern Lights visible to more areas of the world this weekend. / BBC News

"A lot of people just said, 'This is too good to be true. This cannot be real.'" In early tests, visual therapy using flashing lights appears to halt the progression of Alzheimer's. / Nature

See also: Researchers find that, compared to viewing reproductions, experiencing art in person creates a 10-fold increase in people's emotional response. / Hyperallergic

"Not a single organism survived. This is unprecedented. It's Europe's first completely dead river." Ukraine accuses Russia of intentionally poisoning a river. / The Guardian

The US military has been updating various advanced weapons systems with gaming-style controllers. / WIRED

See also: The CIA is posting messages in Farsi, Mandarin, and Korean on social media and the dark web as part of an effort to recruit informants. / NBC News

This is a chilling development: By pairing Meta's smart glasses with facial recognition, Harvard students were able to instantly dox strangers on the street. / 404 Media

But at least the AI that Meta includes with the smart glasses seems incapable of deciphering much of what it sees, though it will confidently lie to you about it anyway. / Gizmodo

Parents of the surveillance era are facing the reality of having children away at college. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

"The emotions I feel for her are real." AI companions can be a lifeline for those who struggle with relationships. / Esquire

See also: Does anyone have time to be a good friend anymore? / Dazed

From initial novelty to immediate slop, the five qualities of every AI app. / Read Max

"Being online has always involved searching for the needles of 'real' content in a large and messy haystack of junk. But never has the hay been as convincingly disguised as needles." / The New Yorker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photographs of Japanese forests shimmering with fireflies. / Colossal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Devastating flooding sweeps through Central and Western Africa. / DW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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