Chinese President Xi Jinping wraps up a Southeast Asia tour to strengthen already robust trade relations. / The Associated Press

Goldman Sachs says a decoupling of the United States and China may cost the US $2.5 trillion. / The South China Morning Post

The World Trade Organization expects trade of merchandise between the two countries to drop by 80 percent this year. / axios

The CEO of a consumer products company says he’s alarmed by anticipated shortages of transformers, air conditioners, and other complex goods. / X

Unrelated: Scientists in Sweden develop a battery that has the texture of toothpaste. / Gizmodo

An interactive guide to changes in the White House press briefing room. / The New York Times [+]

What if scrolling on social media is more “akin to an alcohol-induced blackout?” / Luke Burgis

Despite all of yesterday’s details about Elon Musk manipulating the known and unknown mothers of his children, what remains unclear “is how many other women Musk has approached on Twitter to have his kids.” / The Wall Street Journal [+], Jezebel

Some Relationship lessons from Erich Fromm’s 1956 The Art of Loving. E.g., “wanting the other person to unfold ‘as they are.’” / Philosophy Break

Unrelated: We are all living in the world porn made. / The Atlantic 

For the first time, a colossal squid has been filmed in its natural habitat. / YouTube, NPR

Photographs from a trip through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by pack raft. / Patagonia

Photographs of Lenny Kravitz’s lavish home in Paris. / Architectural Digest

An heir to the Porsche fortune stokes a class war over plans to build a private tunnel to his “cavernous” underground garage. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Notes from a visit to Costco in Europe. “I don’t see someone in France buying that much mustard at once.” / David Lebovitz Newsletter

A day in the life in northeastern Ukraine, where there are no signs Vladimir Putin wants to end his war. / The New York Times [+]

A whistleblower explains that as DOGE staffers exfiltrated data, someone in Russia followed them through the door. / NPR

Related: The EU issues burner phones to officials traveling to the US for fear of espionage. / The New Republic

From last month, a list of things possibly in store for us if President Trump keeps running the show. / Terra Nullius

An economist rates who’s up and who’s down right now in American politics. / The Pursuit of Happiness

A former congressman explains what representatives do all day. / Understanding Congress 

Those gold medallions now hanging in the Oval Office are strikingly similar to items available on Alibaba for between $1 and $5 (before tariffs). / Sherwood

Companies that make their goods in the US struggle to sell Americans on domestic manufacturing. / Business of Fashion

Related: Fifty “Made-In-America” clothing and footwear brands. / Gear Patrol

The National Weather Service stops translating radio alerts for non-English speakers. / The Associated Press

Timothy Snyder: “It is easier to move people away from law than it is to remove law from people.” / Bluesky

A timeline for how Israel has used humanitarian aid to punish Palestinians in Gaza for the last 17 months. / Al Jazeera

Tesla’s 50-day average share price falls below its 200-day measure, aka a “death cross.” / Semafor

Research suggests girls are being hit by a mental health crisis, but the problem is overshadowed by boys’ struggles. / The Guardian

Explaining how “you won, Jane” became the UK’s new “Keep Calm and Carry On.” / Experimental History 

Unrelated: “Ultra-poptimists” are said to believe that celebrities should always be profitmaxxing. / Culture: An Owner’s Manual

Some photographs from the chaotic Minecraft Movie screenings in theaters. / Instagram

Portraits of Texas ranching communities by Alex Bek. / Booooooom

Some thoughts on the appeal of running a marathon. “When you go to extremes, new things happen?” / Interconnected

The man arrested for breaking into and setting a fire in the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion planned to beat Gov. Shapiro with a small sledgehammer. / AP

The Trump administration is privately discussing how to “denaturalize American citizens and deport them to other countries, including El Salvador.” / Rolling Stone

In an agreement among major shipping nations—the US was notably absent—ships that emit greenhouse gases over certain thresholds will incur additional fees. / AP

“We need a right to remember.” By deleting entire government databases, the Trump administration is intent on imposing control through data loss. / The New York Times [+]

A look at the US Naval Academy library’s book purge: ”The Bell Curve, which argues [Black people]...are genetically less intelligent than white people, is still there. But a critique of the book was pulled.” / The New York Times [+]

See also: Among the studies purged from the National Institute of Justice’s website is one that found undocumented immigrants commit crimes at far lower rates than US citizens. / Bluesky

Yes, DOGE is chaotic and dangerous, but it’s also been wildly ineffective in its stated aim of saving money—and in some cases has increased the costs of governing. / Intelligencer

With its company town in coastal Texas now all but imminent, SpaceX also wants the county to cede its authority in deciding when to close a nearby public beach for launches. / KUT News

“A manifestation of power and wealth meant to communicate that power and wealth to others as explicitly as possible.” When a McMansion looks like the White House. / McMansion Hell

Compared to a year ago, travel to the US is down from nearly all regional markets—the UK has dropped by 15% and Germany by 29%. / Forbes

The menswear guy breaks down how tariffs infiltrate the pricing formula for a pair of Nikes that’s made overseas, shipped to the US, sold to Foot Locker, and then purchased by you. / Bluesky

A new book explores the important role teeth have played throughout history, from facilitating animal diversity to aiding post-mortem analysis. / London Review of Books

Job- and date-seekers are leaving notes inside Waymos. / The Washington Post [+]

See also: Photos of notes left on Los Angeles windshields. / The Morning News

“Picture it: A grown man lying on the carpeted floor of a living room, legs up on the couch, listening to music on headphones in the dark for an hour.” I learned to listen from my dad. / Hearing Things

“The Trump administration believes it has what game theorists call escalation dominance over China... [but] it is China that has escalation dominance in this trade war.” / Foreign Affairs

The EU and China are in talks to set minimum prices on Chinese-made EVs, six months after Brussels raised tariffs on the vehicles to as much as 45.3%. / Reuters

See also: A new US Senate bill aims to prevent Chinese vehicles from entering the US market. / The Detroit News

Even with the revised tariffs, the average US household will lose $4,700 in 2024 dollars. / The Budget Lab

According to the US Economic Uncertainty Index, concerns about financial futures right now far surpass what was reported at the onset of the pandemic. / Bluesky

Related: Estimate how much the tariffs will affect your grocery list. / The Cost Index

Jamelle Bouie: Trump’s insistence on making every interaction a zero-sum game means he won’t be satisfied until everyone bends to his will—US citizens included. / The New York Times [+]

After Nvidia’s CEO spent $1 million for a dinner at Mar-a-Lago last week, Trump loosened restrictions on the company’s China exports, threatening America’s hopes for AI dominance. / Platformer

See also: Trump’s deportations are hampering the nation’s bird flu strategy; farmworkers are terrorized and fearful of talking with health outreach workers. / KFF Health News

The White House moves to classify thousands of living immigrants as dead to cancel their Social Security numbers and pressure them to “self-deport.” / AP

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways: First, there is your executive order saying that it’s illegal not to.” Poetry revised for 2025. / McSweeney’s

A visual guide to the Christian nationalist flags representatives display outside their offices in the US Capitol. / Baptist News Global

The National Park Service updates to the Underground Railroad website that removed Harriet Tubman and downplayed Black abolitionists has been restored to its original text. / Hyperallergic

“Each frame of integral film is a small, square machine with an even smaller chemistry set inside of it, working at a pace of any time but now.” On Polaroids and time. / The Georgia Review

From March, a list of the world’s best eating cities says the top three are New Orleans, Bangkok, and Medellín. / TimeOut

Push notifications, a simulation. / xkcd

Analysts say President Trump’s pause on some tariff measures “upends any pretence that we understand his strategy.” / ING

Meanwhile, Trump now faces accusations of market manipulation. / Al Jazeera

The Financial Times: “We now know the market has Trump on a leash, and we have an initial estimate of its length.” / The Financial Times

A full list of the new updated tariff rate country by country. / The Guardian

See also: Research strongly suggests America’s 19th-century tariffs were probably harmful. / Economic Forces

Switzerland launches a trial program offering young criminals psychotherapy and increased freedoms while keeping them in a confined environment. / NZZ

In the US, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants a system of trucks to handle mass deportation similar to how Amazon’s fleet delivers packages. / The Guardian

Why aren’t universities using their billion-dollar endowments to fight Trump? “It’s easy to see the next four years as a blip when you’re about to celebrate your 400th birthday.” / Vox

Unrelated: A collection of “improprieties in pronunciation” among people from New England in 1808. / Futility Closet

A biologist says insects from the ’70s and ’80s were already collecting microplastic, decades before the term even existed. / Bluesky

Remembering heiress Katharine McCormick, who funded development of the pill and Planned Parenthood. / The New York Times [+]

Reviews of Meghan Markle’s sold-out raspberry jam: “It’s too runny for a PB&J or, God forbid, an open-faced slice of toast.” / The Cut

Hunter Biden says sales of his paintings have plummeted since his father left office. / The Art Newspaper

Some notes on Pablo Picasso’s drawing notebooks. / Noted

Some photorealistic oil paintings of urban landscapes. / Colossal

Modern culture and emergent tech are said to be reshaping our relationship to dreaming. / Noema

The world used clean power to meet more than 40% of its electricity demand last year. / The Guardian 

Between 1999 and 2023, heat deaths in the United States more than doubled. / Grist

Lithium-ion batteries became the leading cause of fire deaths in New York City last year—how LA removed 1 million pounds of them from its burn zones. / The Los Angeles Times

China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—a new axis called CRINK—unite to defy Western sanctions. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

The tariff war between China and Donald Trump’s White House now looks like a big game of chicken. / The New York Times [+]

Economists find only 15.1 percent of the decline in goods-sector employment from 1992 to 2012 stemmed from US trade deficits. / Marginal Revolution

Unrelated: “Slime supersedes economic and social status.” A visit to a shrine to slime. / i-D

Physicists propose a new model of space-time that may provide “the first observational evidence supporting string theory.” / LiveScience

OpenAI makes ChatGPT Plus free for college students through May. / Adweek

Lessons learned from tracking AI use in global elections in 2024: “It became another tool to generate content on the cheap.” / rest of world

Lessons learned from teaching an AI model to become a therapist: “We got a lot of ‘hmm-hmms,’ ‘go ons,’ and then ’Your problems stem from your relationship with your mother.’” / MIT Technology Review

See also: Psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster on mass anxiety and “nasal menstruation.” / Interview Magazine

Tesla’s Cybertruck is said to be the auto industry’s biggest flop in decades. / Kottke

Cybertrucks are thought to be such failures that Tesla won’t take them as trade-ins, forcing owners seeking compensation to enter the Lemon Law process. / NJ.com

Some illustrated thoughts on maximalist interior design, or “the art of too much.” / Misfits’ Architecture

The 2025 US Barista Champion explains his recipe for “super milk,” a blend of full-cream dairy, cashew, and pistachio milk. / Sprudge

President Trump plans an expensive military parade for his 79th birthday. / Washington City Paper

Economic tensions with the United States’ trading partners begin to escalate. / Semafor

Tariffs may not make other countries respect the US, “but they can make them move on without it.” / The Atlantic

A 5-4 Supreme Court lifts an order that blocked the deportation of suspected Venezuelan gang members to a prison in El Salvador. / Reuters

Meanwhile, three-quarters of those deported had no apparent criminal record. / CBS News

Tips for people visiting the United States to minimize the risk of Border Protection accessing their data. / WIRED

A round-up of high-speed rail projects in the US that have a chance. / The New York Times [+]

A billionaire in Southern California owns about 75% of the apartment units in his Orange County city. / Bloomberg [+]

Unrelated: A skateboarding trip through the Golden State. / YouTube

For nearly a year, the FBI secretly ran a money laundering scheme named after Elon Musk. / 404 Media

To justify its power, Silicon Valley obsesses over IQ, “the term of choice for the man who doesn’t just think he’s smart, but thinks he’s smarter than everyone else.” / The New York Times [+]

Children of the wealthy spend upwards of $6,000 a month to live in luxury housing near Ivy League schools. / Airmail

See also: “Inside Boston’s Luxury Brothel Scandal.” / The Wall Street Journal [+]

A long essay on what it’s like to live next to malevolent neighbors. / Electric Lit

Thomas R. Wells: There’s no good reason for small countries to exist if their primary business is enabling tax avoidance. / 3 Quarks Daily

Some analysis of male characters who appear in Michael Mann movies, for whom nothing is fun and everything is work. / The Los Angeles Review of Books

Some paintings by Emma Beatrez, “the most intriguing of which examine prototypical cheerleaders and the spectacle of small town pep-rally bonfires.” / Booooooom

Jesse Pearson interviews his mother about her collection of 8-track cassettes. / Apology Magazine

Trump often blames popular resistance to his policies as bad polling, but the size and scope of the Hands Off protests were far too large to be the product of faulty data. / Strength in Numbers

The Israeli military walks back its account of killing 15 Palestinian medics after video contradicts its claims that the victims’ emergency signals were not on. / AP

Related: If you are in the US military, you are about to be asked to betray your own values. / How Things Work

According to a researcher, authoritarian regimes tend to break down when elites turn on each other when faced with an economic crisis. / Bluesky

Unrelated: Billionaire hedge fund manager—and Trump booster—Bill Ackman calls Trump’s tariffs “a self-induced, economic nuclear winter.” / BBC

Now that a second death has been recorded in the Texas measles outbreak, it increases the likelihood that we’re going to see more. / STAT

Related: “The generation of physicians who are currently, for the most part, treating patients haven’t actually seen what a measles case looks like other than from a textbook or a video.” / The New York Times [+]

Trump is offloading the cost of disaster response to cities and states, which could drive them to invest more proactively in climate adaptation and other risk mitigation. / Energy & Environment News

ICE Air flight attendants say in case of a water landing they’re instructed to ignore passengers and “make sure that you and the guards and the people that work for the government get off.” / ProPublica

The National Park Service’s Underground Railroad webpage is being literally whitewashed—sometimes not by direct order, but by low-level NPS workers seeking to comply with what they believed Trump wanted.” / The Washington Post [+]

“Are we at the point where universities across the country must have presidents who are agreeable to President Trump or else risk calamitous cuts to their federal funding?” / David Pozen

US cuts leave Democratic Republic of the Congo—a country of more than 100 million—down more than 70% of humanitarian aid, cutting off potable water and HIV drugs overnight amid simmering conflict.  / Think Global Health

See also: “You don’t improve global security by allowing the World Food Programme to run out of funds to feed 2 million desperate people in the Sahel.” / Financial Times

International standards organizations are said to be a current of anticapitalism in the corporate stream. / MIT Press Reader

Splitting more than atoms: Physicists form factions for and against a new, bigger, budget-hungry Large Hadron Collider. / Guardian

Economists consider switching from “gross domestic product” to “net domestic product.” One big difference: Counting depreciation of natural resources makes petrostates appear less wealthy. / IMF, Climate Home

As states like Texas enact fossil-reliant energy strategies, a stark reality: New gas turbines are wildly expensive and difficult to procure right now. / Canary Media, Gas Outlook

Winter ice long visited by a dragon spirit no longer freezes; Shinto devotees blame climate change and disharmony with nature. / The New York Times [+]

See also: According to the company behind the initiative, de-extincting mammoths is a win against climate change—but it’s almost sure to fail, and the money burned getting there would be better spent on actually fighting climate change. / Ars Technica

A forbidden workplace romance ends with a Major League Baseball player marrying the mascot—or, rather, the woman in the costume. / People

About 70 percent of adults in the United States say they are following news about the White House. / Pew Research

The administration plans to build a “war-fighting headquarters” in Japan to deter China. / NBC News

Donald Trump says he is not joking about running for a third term. / BBC News

We now know what a Millennial American president looks like, and he has a beard. / The Trend Report

Canadians turn “elbows up” into a movement rallying the nation against President Trump. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Corey Robin: Fear works most potently and powerfully when it threatens our highest sense of ourselves. / Corey Robin

Behind the design of a new Swiss passport. / SWISS Magazine

A tour of an “ultra-narrow” Tokyo hotel. / Spoon & Tamago

A round-up of the best things ever made by Microsoft. / The Verge

Tressie McMillan Cottom: AI is a stellar tool for demoralizing workers. / The New York Times [+]

Blocking the internet on your smartphone improves “sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being.” / PNAS Nexus

Related: Easy steps for lobotomizing your smartphone. / She’s a Beast

Former tennis pro Andrea Petkovic says greatness in the game is a question of tension. / Finite Jest

Unrelated: A new college course likenes heterosexual partnerships to eating disorders. / The Cut

This year’s Tournament of Books, presented by Field Notes, reaches its closest-ever conclusion! / Field Notes, The Tournament of Books

Due to fatigue from producing this newsletter and the ToB, TMN is going to take the rest of the week off. See you next Monday.

Canada’s Prime Minister says the country’s old relationship with the United States, “is over.” / BBC News

An alliance providing vaccines to poor communities says a loss of US funding could potentially cause a million-plus deaths. / The Associated Press

Scientists are stunned that a long-discredited researcher will conduct a federal study on whether vaccines cause autism. / STAT

Researchers are being told to remove any references to “mRNA”—one of the most promising areas of medicine—from grant applications. / Semafor

See also: A poll finds 75% of US-based scientists are considering emigrating, likely to Canada or Europe. / nature

Hillary Clinton: It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity. / The New York Times [+]

The White House revokes hundreds of visas to crack down on students who support Palestinians. / NPR

There have been more than 170 violent vigilante attacks by “pedophile hunters” since 2023. / The New York Times [+]

Headline of the week? “Kansas babysitter checking for monsters finds man hiding under bed.” / The Guardian

Walking through a thought experiment about: what if jobs were purchasable? / No Dumb Ideas

Related: A brief poem about not working too hard. / Futility Closet

A former Meta employee says a new Facebook memoir “puts a face to the horrific events and dangerous decisions.” / rest of world

Today’s books and films depict agriculture in outmoded fashion, rather than as “an industry that’s ruthless and exploitative in ways peculiarly modern.” / The Dial

Eighty percent of women are said to be wearing the wrong size sports bra “with wide-ranging consequences.” / The Athletic

Amidst all the anime-izing of photos with ChatGPT, Hayao Miyazaki, founder of Studio Ghibli, is “disgusted” by AI. / The Verge, 404 Media

See also: The Tate Museum got rid of a Van Gogh portrait about a century ago because the subject’s beard was “too funny.” / The Art Newspaper

“You get really high and you answer emails.” Pedro Pascal explains why his Starbucks order is six espresso shots over ice. / Sprudge

If the news is getting you down, why not join the conversation at the Tournament of Books, presented by Field Notes, on its penultimate day?! / Tournament of Books, Field Notes

The European Union tells residents to stockpile enough food to last 72 hours in readiness for war. / Politico

The week’s long read: A reasonably condensed version of one person’s seven-year saga of escaping Iran for the United States. / Outliving Iran

Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza protest against Hamas. / The Associated Press

A 19-year-old engineer working for DOGE once provided tech support to a cybercrime ring that bragged about trafficking in stolen data. / The Guardian

A round-up of issues dividing GOP lawmakers—including whether to acknowledge their planned tax cuts will cost $4 trillion. / Wake Up to Politics

The contact details for White House security advisers—and even some of their passwords—can be found in leaked customer data caches. / Der Spiegel

Meta, Google, OpenAI, and others ask the White House to block state AI laws and say it’s legal for them to use copyrighted material to train their models. / The New York Times [+]

See also: A federal judge rules that a newspaper copyright lawsuit against OpenAI can proceed. / The Associated Press

A researcher says one reason people are making fewer babies is the “hyper-engaging” media found on phones. / Vox 

Four college students explain how they make “positive masculinity” videos for TikTok that are appealing to young men. / Rolling Stone

Two-thirds of single people in the US hold on to clothes that belonged to an ex. / Women’s Wear Daily

See also: How to become a contemporary fashion critic. / Ssense

An in-depth interview with actor Michael Shannon about his R.E.M. cover band. / Bitter Southerner

George Saunders: “The first and only time I ever did acid, I looked down at my hands and noticed that they were not, in fact, ‘flesh-colored’ after all.” / The Paris Review

A first look at Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne’s archive at the New York Public Library. / Vulture

Russia agrees to a ceasefire in the Black Sea following talks in Saudi Arabia, then almost immediately demands new terms. / Semafor

Unrelated: President Donald Trump is gifted a new portrait from Vladimir Putin. / BBC News

Consumer confidence in the United States falls to a four-year low. / Al Jazeer

The US put tariffs on goods from Canada in the late 1800s, thinking the country might join the Union—instead, nationalist sentiment surged. / TIME

Security officials say “heads are exploding” after a journalist was added to an administration group chat on Signal. / NPR 

The White House insists nothing clasified was shared—so the Atlantic decides to publish the entire chat. / The Atlantic

There are few things more dangerous than firing a spy—and a researcher says Chinese intelligence networks are already recruiting ex-USG officials. / The Associated Press, Reuters

Unrelated: Everything you need to know about Elon Musk’s new restaurant in Los Angeles. / Eater

Business jets operating at Mach 5 are becoming closer to “a workable reality.” / Robb Report

Malcolm Harris reviews a new book by Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein, who can “brook no structural conflict between social classes” and believe abundance requires no tradeoffs. / The Baffler

The average non-elderly American household only has 46 days of cash savings. / People’s Policy Project

A paralysed man can stand on his own after receiving an injection of stem cells to treat a spinal cord injury. / Nature

From last year, a round-up of the 10 hardest dayhikes in the US. / Backpacker 

The winners of this year’s British Wildlife Photography Awards are said to “celebrate the diversity of animal life across Great Britain.” / Colossal

Photographs capture Mexico City’s water crisis. / Long Lead

A trendy new way to microdose alcohol? A shot-and-fake-beer setup. / Punch

Gay men recall the kindly waitresses at Hooters who made their restaurants “a secret sanctuary.” / The New York Times [+]

A Palestinian director of this year’s Oscar-winningn documentary is arrested by the Israeli army after masked settlers attack his house. / The Guardian

In the fallout of a journalist being added to a Signal group discussing White House war plans: a lot of loathing for Europe is made public. / The Atlantic [+], Politico

Republicans coalesce around a defiant message despite the news. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Signal is typically not allowed on government phones, which means officials were likely using their personal devices—which are much easier to hack. / Today in Politics

Is President Trump a natavist or a neocon? He’s basically being both at the same time. / Forever Wars

Unrelated: Heartwarming thoughts from an indie bookseller in the South. / Kottke

In China, income taxes collected from individuals were 7.5 percent below expectations last year. / Marginal Revolution

The DNA of 15 million people is up for sale after the bankruptcy of 23andMe. / 404 Media

A science journalist says the US needs a “reckoning” over its handling of Covid. / Vox

See also: A round-up of interesting things learned by researchers during Covid that don’t have much to do with Covid. / The New York Times [+]

A brief history of “accelerationism”—i.e., the theory that human history is a small mechanism within techno-capital’s history. / The Latecomer

Colorado begins overseeing legal use of psychedelic mushrooms in mental health treatment. / Undark Magazine

Architects explain how they restored the skylight in Houston’s Rothko Chapel. / Architect

The amount of hair-loss content on TikTok is said to cause many to “think about their scalps too much.” / The Cut

Turkey takes a step toward full autocracy after President Erdoğan jails his main political rival. / Politico

The Turkish government says 1,133 people have been arrested in five days of protests across the country. / BBC News

High-profile US officials are planning to visit Greenland this week, reviving concerns. / Semafor

Hamilton Nolan: There isn’t a secret reason driving behind that’s happening right now. “This is the outcome of the class war... This is what happens when it is lost.” / How Things Work

What does it say about these times that “we’ve replaced Christ figures with fictional serial killers?” / The Trend Report

See also: A teenager subscribed to at least 49 extremist Telegram chats and channels before he killed two people at an LGBTQ+ bar. / ProPublica

Ethiopia’s fastest-growing EV maker is producing electric motorcycles. / rest of world

The science behind longevity is said to be “fiercely” debated by those in the field. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Millennials are reported missing 2010s media, wishing for a period prior to everything being owned by private equity and tech billionaires. / Get a Shelf

From Mariam Mahmoud earlier this month: Where have the amateur researchers gone, and how do we bring them back? / Kasurian

A Dublin-based company has designed upwards of 2,000 Irish pubs in more than 100 countries. / Smithsonian Magazine

A self-described autistic nerd writes a guide on how to date after 15 years of celibacy. / Fantastic Achronism

Find out what the Hubble telescope saw on your last birthday. / NASA

The latest edition drops of experimental web writing journal The HTML Review. / thehtml.review

The Tournament of Books, presented by Field Notes, basically has one week left—which means there’s still time to dive into the action! / Field Notes, Tournament of Books

The Sudanese army says it has recaptured the presidential palace in Khartoum after nearly two years of fighting. / BBC News

An explainer for how Germany’s “fiscal flip” this week stunned Europe’s diplomats. / Politico

Unrelated: Photographs from Berlin’s feminist noise-punk scene. / VICE

London’s Heathrow Airport will restore some flights after being completely shut down. / CNN

Yaroslav Trofimov: Lessons from the 20th century offer a range of possible outcomes for Ukraine. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Sally Rooney explains the pleasures of watching—but not playing—billiards. / The New York Review 

The owner of Carrie Bradshaw’s house in Sex and the City implores fans to leave him alone. / The Cut

American women between 19 and 30 now consume more cannabis than men. / The Face

See also: A round-up of odd Canadian liquors. / Nuvo

A 115-year-old Belgian religion called Antoinism is said to be dying out, partly from refusing to explain itself. / The Dial

Before the discovery of gravity or magnetism, “angels were one way of accounting for the movement of physical entities.” / Aeon

“There have been times I have dug for complete strangers, and other times for close family.” What it’s like to dig graves. / The Spinoff 

European leaders gather to find the money and rules needed to turn the bloc into a military superpower. / Politico

Hungary passes a law banning pride marches held by the LGBTQ+ community. / BBC News

President Trump removes all democrats from the board of the Federal Trade Commission. / Vox

Tesla protesters are planning their “biggest day of action” yet at the end of the month. / The Verge

See also: A list of things to be done that “probably won’t magically catalyze a mass movement against Trump but are still wildly important.” / The White Pages

A jury in North Dakota says Greenpeace must pay hundreds of millions of dollars to a pipeline company. / The Guardian

Expedition companies are testing out drones to airlift heavy loads normally carried by Nepali Sherpas. / The New York Times [+]

A climber reports on efforts to protect Chile’s Cochamó Valley from overtourism. / Patagonia

Friends of the world’s leading thinker on decisions explain what it was like to learn he intended to end his life. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Young women describe acquiring “facial dysmorphia” from spending too much time on social media. / The Cut

Young people in Lithuania are said to be the world’s happiest. / Dazed

Eighty-four percent of employed Gen Z TV viewers say they watch shows and movies at work. / The Wrap

Unrelated: Lessons learned from apologies issued on reality television. / The Pudding

Also unrelated: “Actually, Living in Carrie Bradshaw’s House Is Hell.” / The Cut

A seven-minute visit to painter Amy Sherald’s studio. / YouTube

Four new fairs demonstrate Mexico City’s “meteoric” rise as an art world capital. / Artsy

An explanation of how sculptures are made to burn during Las Fallas, Valencia’s largest festival. / Atlas Obscura

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