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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related: An observation of Chinese small vehicles. / Medium

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Secretary of State Rubio says there's "no military solution" to resolving Russia's invasion of Ukraine. / The Guardian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An ASMR-style look through Carl Jung's "red book" of dreams and visions. / Open Culture

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

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

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

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

Unrelated: Some thoughts from top economists on Social Security's "Ponzi-like aspects." / Marginal Revolution

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

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

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

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

ABC shuts down the news website FiveThirtyEight. / Reliable Sources

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lenovo debuts a solar-powered laptop. / dezeen

Balding treatments are reportedly "the new Botox." / The Cut

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

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

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

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