Headlines Edition

Wednesday Headlines: Can I write that you’re like a nice day?

Another partial government shutdown will be triggered Friday if Trump doesn't approve the new funding bill currently making its way through Congress. In addition to falling well short of Trump's $5.7 billion demand for the wall, the bill specifies the barrier cannot be built with concrete.

Trump's main hurdle to his wall are powerful Texan landowners; even if they're Trump voters, they won't donate their land.

In bipartisan legislation years in the making, the Senate has passed the biggest public lands package in a decade. The bill declares 1.3 million acres as wilderness—prohibiting even roads and motorized vehicles—as well as permanently protecting more than 370,000 acres around two national parks from mining.

The student loan crisis has driven a societal wedge—between the indebted and the debt-free—that will take decades to overcome.

A murderer who’s now a lawyer is campaigning to include people convicted of violent crimes in the movement to reinstate returning citizens.

In the next few months, Russia will test cutting itself off from the global internet, to see if its content bans work.

Some Queensland anti-vaxxers' children are getting vaccinated using a law allowing 15-year-olds to do so without parental consent.

Strep A bacteria kills more than a half million people a year—but not in wealthy countries, so big pharma won't justify a vaccine.

Watch: Pieced together from multiple image sets, NASA software engineer Kevin Gill's low flyover of Jupiter's moon Europa.

Palladium is currently worth more than gold; thieves are targeting catalytic converters, where more than 80% of the metal is used.

Your support keeps TMN and the Tournament of Books from stealing catalytic converters. Please consider becoming a Sustaining Member!

An appreciation of minimalist painter Robert Ryman, who died on Friday at 88.

Adding to Fyre Festival's many cons is that the festival's marketing agency co-produced the Netflix documentary.

In a visual exploration of age and on-screen romance, age differences in Woody Allen films range from four to 40 years.

It's that time of year: 100 ways to say "I love you."

See also: Rejected pairings of content and form for Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, from rondelet to an acrostic hiding his name.

Takeshi Miyasaka takes photos and then illustrates them, injecting bold colors to bring new life to real life.

Emoji are becoming more specific and less flexible as more icons appear. That shift doesn’t just add more choice among emoji; it also changes their semiotic function. The increase in emoji—there are now 3,053—has resulted in their use as decoration, rather than communication devices.

Watch: Three figures are illuminated in an empty Los Angeles retail store, in Doug Aitken's installation Don’t Forget to Breathe.

Photos of abandoned villas and palaces in Italy, by Thomas Jorian.

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