The World Health Organization meets again to consider whether coronavirus—170 dead, over 7,000 infected—is a global health emergency.

Related: Questions about the virus  that scientists are struggling to answer.

Infectious disease mortality rates were declining long before vaccines or antibiotics, thanks to cleaning up the environment.

Hundreds of millions of desert locusts are swarming in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia, in some of the biggest numbers in 25 years.

The Guardian becomes the first global news organization to ban ads from oil and gas companies.

Rolls-Royce plans to build a dozen mini nuclear reactors, each about 1.5 acres in size, over the next 10 years.

Hundreds of Amazon employees are putting their jobs on the line this week by speaking out against the company’s climate policies.

An array of data for all known English-language darknet markets from Silk Road 1 (ca. 2011) to Horizon (2016).

In impeachment news, wavering Republican senators appear to appreciate Trump’s latest legal gambit: that anything he does to win reelection is in the public interest.

YelloPain provides a music video counterargument to that link we posted the other day (saying your vote doesn’t count): your vote counts hugely.

Related/unrelated: “The Bernie Campaign Is Fortified by a Human Shield of Millennials.”

Unrelated: Weird tweets from Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams.

Your weekly white paper: Elections are not only stressful on voters, they increase health care costs by as much as 19%.

"Working percentage goes down while food preparation goes up." From last July, how we spent our time in 2018 compared to 2003.

One reason your car insurance is going up: the cost of new features designed to keep vehicles in their lanes and out of trouble.

FYI: For all its troubles, Facebook now has 2.5 billion customers (on a planet of 7.7 billion).

New York's Gov. Cuomo is willing to consider helmet mandates for car drivers, because the data on brain injuries is terrifying.

Related/unrelated: Which emoji scissors close and which do not.

The Economist’s Middle East correspondent reveals he was secretly detained in Iran this summer.

Scenes from a recent reenactment of an 1811 Louisiana slave revolt.

When architects take jobs from oppressive leaders, do their buildings automatically glorify fascism?

See also: An annotated case study from 1970 in McMansion design. 

How to unharden your heart toward homeless people: try talking to them or simply listening.

Bong Joon Ho and his production designer explain how they built the layered house in Parasite.

Skateboarding, about to debut in the Tokyo Olympics, is still frowned upon in Japan, if not forbidden.

“It’s more like an appetizer than a bread." All hail lard bread.