There’s probably a moral here.

Putin hugs Assad during a rare meeting at a resort on the Black Sea. He promised to call Trump to let him know how it went. 1/16

Justice Department takes “a surprisingly tough stance” in its attempt to stop AT&T Inc.’s takeover of Time Warner Inc. Harvard’s admissions policies are also getting a hard look. 2/16

"The end of the Merkel era has surely begun." Uncertainty in Germany makes Emmanuel Macron the top leader in Europe. 3/16

The top officer at US Strategic Command says a presidential order to launch nukes can be ignored if deemed illegal. 4/16

White House Press Secretary Sanders asks pool reporters what they're thankful for, given the holiday. "The First Amendment." 5/16

For all the absurdities and hypocrisy, Ross Douthat says Ken Starr was right—Clinton should have been pushed out. 6/16

“I have learned a great deal as a result of these events, and I hope others will too.” Charlie Rose, like other harassers outed in recent weeks, apparently can’t help but sound like a total asshat. 7/16

An academic explains how he uses Google Street View to map urban populations for research purposes. 8/16

German regulator bans smartwatches for children, describing them as spying devices. 9/16

"Volcanism has coincided with most, if not all, mass extinctions." Volcanos are the worst serial killers. 10/16

“The fact that Charles Manson and his family looked like hippies and did lots of LSD gave a new breed of magazine journalists just what they wanted to see—the dark side to the youth movement they’d helped invent.” Charles Manson was a “scab mite” who arrived at the perfect time and place “to be enshrined in Baby Boomer lore.” 11/16

Strava updates its global map of human activity, with "a total recorded activity duration of 200 thousand years." 12/16

Some interesting inside-baseball notes on that $450,312,500 Da Vinci. "There's probably a moral here, but I have no idea what it is." 13/16

Video: Famed photographer Martin Parr demonstrates that he’s an adult who enjoys coloring books, especially his own. 14/16

Silent reading is a relatively new, dangerous form of leisure for Westerners. For centuries, Europeans read aloud. 15/16

There's only one Rooster in the world who eats turkey: Presenting the Long List for the 2018 Tournament of Books. 16/16

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