North Korea launches an intercontinental ballistic missile, perhaps looking for attention prior to the US presidential election. / USA Today

The Economist magazine endorses Kamala Harris, saying "being independent and being opinionated" aren't in conflict with each other. / Semafor

Election officials in battleground states are trying—and mostly failing—to fact-check Elon Musk in real time. / CNN

An argument that social scientists don't seem to know how to incorporate the nonlinearity of chaos. / Aeon

Unrelated: Dodgers fans set a Metro bus on fire after their team wins the World Series. / KTLA

Facebook is auto-generating militia group pages. / WIRED

Users report still being able to use Microsoft's controversial AI-powered gender classifier. / 404 Media

Schools are banning Crocs because the shoes are said to be a distraction, and dangerous. / Fortune

Related: How the font Comic Sans became the Crocs of typefaces. / FastCompany

An eating tour of eastern France's choucroute garnie, pretzels, and pork knuckles. / The Financial Times [+]

Diwali and Halloween overlap this year, producing "Diwalloween." / The Washington Post [+]

An annual favorite, a round-up of "mundane" Halloween costumes from Japan. / Spoon & Tamago

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Foreign interference in this year's election is said to be far more sophisticated, and far more difficult to track. / The New York Times [+]

China is considering approving $1.4 trillion in extra debt to revive its economy. / Reuters

Related: If "Xi Jinping Thought" is not a vision for a genuine socialist movement driving toward a communist utopia, what is it? / China Books Review

An explainer for why forecasts continue to miss the pace and persistence of falling birth rates. / The Financial Times [+]

The United States' Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST) is a group of volunteers who have high-level security clearances. / NPR

Personal assistants for billionaires earn around $250,000 a year—and the job is a logistics nightmare. / The Cut

Related: "Private rail cars were, and still are, very much a high-end luxury." / Why is this interesting?

Regarding yesterday's news about the art market, Maurizio Cattelan's Comedian—a banana fixed to a wall with duct tape—is estimated to sell for $1.5 million. / Artsy

A brief video about the tumbleweed's 19th-century arrival in America. / YouTube

A short film about two brothers traveling alone from Boston to the 1967 World's Fair in Montreal by pony cart. / The New York Times [+]

Britain's cheese world suffers the loss of over £300,000 worth of clothbound Cheddar. / NPR


How do different species respond to death? "In ways that are learned rather than instinctive, not rigidly responsive to specific stimuli, and highly variable." / The New Yorker

European scientists develop an algorithm capable of interpreting pig sounds. / Reuters

Examples of people who cultivate "divine discontent." "The tendency to revise, in particular, seems especially common." / Personal Canon

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Saudi Arabia and Iran conducted a joint military drill last week in the Sea of Oman. / TRT World

A good summary of current conflicts in the Middle East from Spencer Ackerman. / Forever Wars

Oren Yiftachel: "Apartheid is not only a moral abyss and a crime against humanity; it is also an unstable regime." / +972 Magazine

President Biden waits in line for 40 minutes to cast his vote in the election. / The Associated Press

Philadelphia's District Attorney sues Elon Musk over his million-dollar sweepstakes for voters in battleground states. / Deadline

Unrelated: SpaceX wins a new round of military contracts worth $733 million. / Ars Technica

The term "clippers" refers to people influencing the political news cycle by making snappy videos for social media. / CNN

Related: A brief online test to check your susceptibility to misinformation. / University of Cambridge

A deep dive into how Chinese firms are evading US controls on advanced technologies. / Semianalysis

Collectors spent roughly a third less on art in 2023 than in 2022, with the largest decrease in spending at the highest levels. / Artsy

A book review connects recent novels about women's midlife crises to older stories about witches. / The New Yorker

United Airlines prints its final in-flight magazine, the last connected to a major US carrier. / Columbia Journalism Review

See also: A short film about the States' last fabric flower factory. / YouTube

Analysis of baseball's minor leagues finds persistent bias against Black and Latino players dating back to 1950. / The Guardian

An argument for enjoying the World Series aurally: "Listening to baseball on the radio requires a patience—and provides a catharsis." / GQ

Confessions of a Spotify vandal. / Hearing Things

Some thoughts on what exactly is human spirit. "Our energies often come from a combination of neurotic drive and positive response." / Lapham's Quarterly

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"Donald Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden last night that was so racist it got the New York Times to dust off the actual word 'racist' and use it in a headline." / Welcome to Hell World

A look at the billionaires and businesses getting in line for Trump, who's vowed to punish dissenters. / The Washington Post [+]

Why a longtime LA Times editorial writer resigned after the spiked Harris endorsement: A non-endorsement on Harris's home turf is an un-endorsement. / The Hollywood Reporter

Bird flu tracking among humans couldn't be timed worse, with researchers trying to discern whether someone's "flu-like symptoms" are a cold, Covid, influenza, or actually bird flu. / STAT

The 18th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, a stalwart of editorial citation, has a hell of a job, landing amid an era of digital misinformation and disinformation. / Los Angeles Review of Books

A video of someone destroying ballots marked for Trump in Bucks County, Pa., is a fake planted by Russia, according to US officials. / NPR

See also: Maricopa County officials are contacting around 20 voters whose mail-in ballots were damaged after someone set a mailbox on fire (but not for political reasons). / The Gazette

In a review of BBQ joints in a small Texas town, a restaurant loses a recommendation over its owner's use of racist language. / Texas Monthly

A USGS model of more than 1,200 groundwater samples shows millions of people in California, Florida, and Massachusetts may be drinking forever chemicals. / Gizmodo

See also: Tesla's engineering headquarters in Palo Alto released some kind of lime-green liquid—purportedly a nonhazardous coolant—into a storm drain. / SFGATE

The US Copyright Office ends a longstanding frustration for fast-food restaurants, granting them the right to repair the soft-serve machines at their locations. / Ars Technica

Related: From 2021, hacking McDonald's always-broken soft-serve machines so restaurants could repair them. / WIRED

When Google Street View data is incorrect, either by accident or intention, hardware store interiors can appear in the middle of the Atlantic. / Futurism

Thirteen years later, a scandal-laden development of Disney-style palaces in Turkey remains unfinished and deteriorating. / The Guardian

Before buying a domain name, check to see if it's haunted—in other words, whether something terrible happened there in the past. / Bryan Braun

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In attempting to investigate its own citizens' abortion history, Texas is suing to access out-of-state medical records. / The Nation

"Do not tell voters that Trump is rude and boorish and impolite. Tell them that Donald Trump is the motherfucking problem." The rich cause the problems they want you to blame immigrants for. / How Things Work

AI search results from Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity are stating as fact white supremacist theories that tie IQ to race. / WIRED

Earlier this year, a historian showed how the New England Journal of Medicine opted out of covering Nazi atrocities; now, she argues the journal is choosing to ignore the health crisis unfolding in Gaza. / The Intercept

How to know which new studies are worth paying attention to? Keep an eye out for "statistical power." / Parent Data

A newly discovered species of tardigrade has a genome with the astounding ability to repair its DNA when exposed to radiation. / Gizmodo

"If every era has a characteristic condition, ours is indigestion." A new book considers the stomach, which doctors once called "the most enigmatic of organs." / The Washington Post [+]

As McDonald's tries to track down the source of its E. coli outbreak, other major fast-food chains pull one likely suspect—onions—from their menu items. / Ars Technica

From the factory to your sandwich, why deli meats provide a haven for potential microbial activity. / Vox

Testing of products on store shelves shows Brach's Candy Corn, Autumn Mix, and Mellowcreme Pumpkins candy contain the known carcinogen Red Dye 3. / Consumer Reports

See also: Your children's Halloween candy might contain Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. / X

"I Am a Bunny stands as one of the true tranquil masterpieces of children's book art." Chris Ware on Richard Scarry. / The Yale Review

It doesn't matter whether students read Faulkner or whether society thinks that's bad, except that it can be good to read things you hate. / The Culture We Deserve

Style advice from a fashionable 12-year-old. "I do wish I would see more self expression, and fewer trends." / Picnic

"Burton has a mop of fine brown hair that rises straight up from the roots whenever he is dropped from height on a ride." A profile of the designer behind the UK's tallest roller coaster. / The Guardian

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Israel has damaged more buildings in two weeks than in a year of fighting with Hezbollah. / BBC News

A brief history of Hezbollah, Israel, and Lebanon. / Vox

China cracks down on "uncivilized" puns that people use to get around censorship controls. / The Guardian

One of the foremost American experts on fascism comes around to applying "this most toxic of labels" to Trumpism. / The New York Times Magazine [+]

An argument for making an "emotional hedge bet" on the presidential election—among 27 observations from a political insider. / Matt's Five Points

For Millennials, "wealth may have gone up, but if that's mostly housing wealth, then that's not actually making people better off." / The Washington post

Housing prisoners in "containment cages" for days—standing-room only, with no toilet or sink—is a widespread and unchecked practice in Texas. / Slate

In the past 40 years, the number of catastrophic injuries sustained by cheerleaders is greater than those sustained by female athletes playing all other high school and college sports combined. / The New York Times Magazine [+]

As of 2022, only about six percent of the nation's doctors identified as Black and only seven percent as Hispanic. / The Atlantic

What is the trendy recreational drug "pink cocaine?" A grab bag of different drugs dyed pink that often doesn't include cocaine. / The Associated Press

A "fruit detective" studies old paintings for produce we no longer eat. / Smithsonian Magazine

Photographs by Lars Tunbjörk of corporate worklife in the 1990s. / Lars Tunbjörk

"I don't have to tell you that posting on the internet is a weird thing to do." Lessons learned from a 90-day course taught by a TikTok influencer. / Defector

Watch: A carpenter fires his nail gun in time to a band performing next door. / Kottke

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Regarding the election, most of Europe is pro-Harris. Israel, Russia, India, and other countries favor Trump. / Semafor

A round-up of the rampant disinformation circulating about the election. / The New York Times [+]

Related: Vladimir Putin hosts a summit for global leaders, including China's Xi Jinping and India's Narendra Modi. / The Hill

Do political fundraising texts actually work? "A well-done text marketing program can be really good at fundraising." / Vox

According to a nonpartisan aommittee, Trump's Social Security plan would empty the coffers by 2032, three years ahead of current projections. / Quartz

"[Tax cuts] are the political equivalent of someone chopping your house to pieces with an axe and then offering the remains back to you under a sign that says, 'Free Firewood!'" / How Things Work

Journalists are composing "pre-writes" to prepare for whoever wins. One shares his ahead of time. / Wake Up to Politics

Interviews with Harris's sorority sisters: "The first Black woman to fill-in-the-blank is almost always a sorority woman." / The New Yorker

A new coronavirus variant, XEC, is spreading across the United States. / Newsweek

Experts say a proposed revamp to the recycling symbol is still deceptive. / Grist

Boar's Head, a privately owned company run by two intensely guarded families, is said to be "the Jay Gatsby of the meat industry." / The New York Times [+]

Meanwhile, a German crime ring is found to be delivering cocaine by tucking it under pizzas. / The Guardian

NASA debuts a new traffic management system for aircraft operating above 60,000 feet. / NASA

Inside a tool purchased by law enforcement agencies that can track smartphones at abortion clinics. / 404 Media

Anthropic's latest model of Claude AI can now use a computer on your behalf. / Platformer

Your odd words of the week: condisciple, scripturiency, refocillation. / Futility Closet

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Russia has suffered catastrophic losses during its invasion of Ukraine, but its policies suggest the end justifies the means. / The Guardian

Mara Karlin: An era of limited war has ended; an age of comprehensive conflict has begun. / Foreign Affairs

A new rideshare company in South Africa is reportedly using intimidation to coerce drivers and passengers. / rest of world

In the past two years, Donald Trump has called for every major American TV news network to be punished. / Reliable Sources

An ethicist says making presidents and candidates share their medical history is a bad idea. / STAT

Street psychiatrists in Los Angeles offer a solution for mentally ill people—basically, "DoorDash for meds." / The New York Times [+]

Related: Observations from an hour spent last week in an LA coffeeshop. / Meditations in an Emergency

The WNBA players union opts out of its collective bargaining agreement, two years before its expiration. / The Associated Press

Unrelated: Multiply the number two by itself 136,279,841 times, minus one, and you get the new largest known prime number. / The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search

The late-in-life partner of Oliver Sacks movingly recalls the neurologist's search to build a cohesive life. / The New York Times [+]

Anthony Bourdain's french fries recipe. "If you don't blanch your fries first, you'll get a scandalously bad result." / The Melt

See also: Remembering Ka, the "quiet sage" of underground rap (and firefighter). / Pitchfork

"A group of woodcocks is a fall. A flock of seagulls is annoying." Some ruminations on words connected to wood. / Harper's

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Amid shortages of food, fuel, and medicine, Cuba's electrical grid has collapsed four times since Friday, leaving 10 million people without power. / Reuters

The presidential election is down to more than swing states; in fact, the outcome appears to rest on these 21 microcommunities. / The New York Times [+]

Elon Musk's $1 million daily sweepstakes for Pennsylvanians promising to vote Republican is "either an incentive for someone to vote or it's a reward. And either way, it violates federal law." / NPR

See also: The misery of living in a swing state during election season. / The New York Times [+]

"This key is awarded if the candidate can persuade the public that they are conscious." The real 13 keys for winning the White House. / McSweeney's

As if this year's US election wasn't already chaotic enough, the FBI has arrested a man planning an election day attack on behalf of the Islamic State. / The Guardian

Laugh about Trump's ridiculous dance party all you want, but the kitschy nostalgia is exactly in line with the world his supporters long for. / Intelligencer

In a dispatch from a prisoner, the horror of Texas's containment cages. (Content warning.) / Slate

This year's flu shot doesn't protect against a once-common influenza strain that now appears to have been eradicated through Covid distancing and masking. / NPR

In an interesting comparison of median home values and median incomes, these are the most and least exclusive communities for homebuyers in America. / The Hustle

An "unusually narrow" skyscraper—at only one apartment wide, or 22.5 meters—could be going up in downtown Dubai. / Dezeen

See also: "The Neom giga-project in Saudi Arabia is currently using one fifth of all the steel produced in the world." / AGBI

Unrelated: "it is time to commit to building the largest physically possible space telescope." / Palladium

Kurt Vonnegut once designed a board game, General Headquarters, that is finally available, some 70 years after it was originally conceived. / Open Culture

Amazon says it will be getting rid of those plastic inflatable air pillows by the end of the year, but the plastic blue-and-white mailers may be sticking around for a while. / Grist

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Researchers find that people think they know enough to make informed decisions—regardless of what information they have. / Ars Technica

A detailed investigation into how Russian propaganda reaches and influences Americans. / NBC News

Donald Trump blames Ukraine for Russia's invasion. / The Washington Post

Analysts at the Department of Homeland Security warn of right-wing extremists attacking election facilities. / WIRED

What does merch mean to political campaigns? "It's a medium for expressing a networked collection of different beliefs and values." / It's Nice That

Some thoughts on what the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar means for the Middle East. / NPR

A short quiz about Shein, Delhi's Chandni Chowk market, and the global fashion business. / rest of world

See also: Notes from a day in the life of a small British bookstore. "Shop goes quiet for ages but it's okay." / Receipt from the Bookshop

A young person's tips for navigating an urban social life while newly sober. / plant life

A deep dive into all things tech-related from 2004. / The Verge

Some aerial photographs of scrap yards with their junk arranged into collages. / Kottke

For everyone who's not from southern Ontario, an explainer for understanding the rare game of Crokinole. / The Pudding

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Israel's military is investigating whether Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was killed during a military operation. / CNN

Mohamad Elmasry: The US warning to Israel to "let aid in Gaza"' is merely a distraction. / Al Jazeera

European leaders are calling for new laws to ramp up deportations. / Politico

See also: For Germany, it's a remarkable switch "given that it welcomed more than a million mostly Syrian refugees." / Semafor

The FBI says investment scams are surging this year because criminals are using AI tools to seduce their victims. / The San Francisco Standard

Kyle Chayka falls back in love with iPhone photography through an app that skirts Apple's AI optimization. / The New Yorker

Forgive us, but: a round-up of apps people look at on their phone while they're sitting on the toilet. / Defector

At this year's Paris Auto show, "glitz is out" and the focus is on lower-cost offerings. / Clean Technica

What is it like to work on a megayacht? "You're a fly on the wall, but it's very one-sided." / The Cut

Unrelated: Axiom Space, NASA's commercial partner, reveals its new spacesuits developed with Prada. / Gizmodo

China ends its international adoption program, sending shockwaves through the adoption community. / Goats and Soda

Three years later, there's still no satisfying answer as to the whereabouts of disappeared Chinese tennis pro Peng Shuai. / Sports Illustrated

Some examples of Korean painters pushing feminist art forward. Also, 10 contemporary artists who are innovating landscape painting. / Artsy

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China's appetite for an Iran-Israel war is said to be limited. / The Economist

Five takeaways from Kamala Harris's interview with Charlamagne Tha God. / The New York Times [+]

Donald Trump turns a town hall into a 39-minute "living-room listening session." / The Washington Post [+]

Why does the media still struggle to portray Trump accurately? Partly because of the "myth of the reasonable man." / Degenerate Art

A reporter's road trip through the Southwest, talking to voters, finds that "Latinos are as American as anyone else, if not more so." / The Los Angeles Times

Farmers worry that Trump's proposed "mass deportations" will decimate the US food supply. / Grist

Unrelated: Russia to unveil a new statue of Joseph Stalin. / Politico

Billionaires are said to be dominated by existential crises, "although each displays nuance when it comes to confrontation." / MacGuffin

Who left the United States a $7 billion payment? Theories suggest a Texan investment manager, but it's maybe someone still alive trying to minimize their taxes. / Sherwood

See also: There's no evidence the Internet Archive was hacked to edit history—but what if it was? / Interconnected

Unrelated: A video tour of New York City's so-called fake buildings. / Open Culture

TikTok is turning users with relatively low follower counts into paid shopping influencers. / rest of world

A new AI company enables users to create bots in the likeness of any person—without their consent. / WIRED

Old fashioned bookshops are now cool destinations for young people. "I can spend hours browsing—I think that's a big part of it." / The Guardian

Writers and authors create adhoc writing programs to compete with institutional workshops. / Airmail

Astrophysicists are "exulting" in new findings about the universe's first billion years, such as an image of the earliest known galaxy. / Quanta Magazine

Video and photos of 14,000 prescription lenses dangling in a Japanese forest. / Colossal

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Due to some unforseen events, we missed a couple days last week. Sorry about that! All is better and we appreciate the readers who reached out.

Israel reportedly says any attacks on Iran will target its military, not nuclear or oil facilities. / CNN

Republican campaigns spend more money at Shake Shack and Jimmy John's while Democrats eat at Sweetgreen and Le Pain Quotidien. / The Washington Post [+]

People whose homes were damaged by recent storms are likely to be forced to "build up or move out." / Heatmap

Related: Emergency workers in North Carolina were withdrawn for fear of trucks of armed militia "saying they were out hunting FEMA." The local sherriff's office says otherwise. / The Guardian, Citizen Times

Nepalese teenager Nima Rinji Sherpa breaks the record for the youngest mountaineer to summit Earth's 14 highest peaks. / BBC News

A team finds the remains of one of the first climbers to attempt Mount Everest. / National Geographic

Prior to the 20th century, oyster reefs covered more than 1.7 million hectares across European oceans. / Bloomberg [+]

Do more people die from heat or cold? Cold, but most die from "moderate cold." / Sustainability by numbers

The amount of tents on the streets of San Franicsco is down 60% since July 2023. / The San Francisco Standard

New Yorkers deploy "anti-influencer architecture" in neighborhoods popular with TikTokers. / Curbed

See also: A nonprofit called Mothers Against Media Addiction aims to follow the model of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. / The Information

Fitness bros on TikTok participating in "locktober" may not know the term's history as a chastity kink. / Them

Author Rumaan Alan's solution for his midlife crisis is to get tattooed with things he doesn't want to forget. / Esquire

An argument for skipping wellness and personal development for "wasteful intervals of pure, delicious nothingness." / The Good Question

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Millions are without power after Hurricane Milton tears across Florida. / The Tampa Bay Times

The hurricane also tore open the Tampa Bay Rays' roof and felled a crane. / The Weather Channel, X

Photographs of Los Angeles's 400-mile network of aqueducts and hydropower plants. / Science History Institute

New Mexico works to preserve its network of ancient gravity-fed irrigation ditches. / Undark Magazine

A theory tries to explain why more Latinos are supporting Donald Trump—basically, because they're a diverse group of people with diverse interests. / The New Yorker

A round-up of under-discussed political races. / Wake Up to Politics

A few things learned from Melania Trump's new memoir. / The Cut

Fashion experts analyze outfits worn by the presidential and vice presidential candidates. / GQ

Unrelated: An analysis of the top fanfic pairings—"who gets shipped and why?" / The Pudding

Abu Dhabi overtakes Oslo to become the world's richest city in terms of assets managed by sovereign wealth funds. / Semafor

Elon Musk has long promised a fully autonomous vehicle, but don't expect him to follow through this week. / The Verge

Caitlin Dewey: Silicon Valley has—alarmingly, and increasingly—never looked more macho. / Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends

Wimbledon will replace line judges with electronic line calling next year, ending a 147-year tradition. / sky news

Rafael Nadal plans to retire next month at age 38. / Tennis & Beyond

South Korea's Han Kang receives this year's Nobel Prize in Literature "for her intense poetic prose." / The Literary Saloon

A profile of Kang from 2023: "That will be a problem when I die—I won't be able to finish all my ideas." / The Independent

Selections from Tara Booth's comics that were made to "cope with life" or "just lighten the mood." / It's Nice That

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Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu reportedly calls President Biden to discuss Israel's plans to strike Iran. / axios

The UK's Security Service says it has responded to 20 plots backed by Iran since 2022. / BBC News

A review of China as a sentinel state—phone monitoring, "grid management," and the forthcoming cyberspace ID scheme. / China Media Project

In light of this year's Nobel Prizes connected to AI, an explainer on how proteins fold. / The Economist

A team is protecting Wikipedia from AI-generated slop. / 404 Media

An audio sample finds Google Notebook's podcast bots experiencing an existential crisis. / Reddit

See also: In light of AI energy-consumption, the Department of Energy wants you to know your conservation efforts are making a difference. / McSweeney's

Mobile homes and manufactured houses are proving to be among the most vulnerable types of housing stock in climate disasters. / Grist

The White House launches a Reddit page to correct misinformation about storms. / The Hill

Schools are implementing backpack bans, which makes "the already difficult experience of navigating one's period as a teen even more difficult." / The Cut

One uncomfortable finding in psychology: trainees can be just as effective as fully licensed therapists. / Experimental History

Fifteen years later, Interview Project's 121 video profiles are now available on YouTube. / Open Culture

Something we didn't know: Nearly every station in the London Underground contains a plaque depicting a labyrinth. / Futility Closet

An artwork at a Dutch museum gets tossed in the trash for resembling a pair of beer cans too realistically. / euronews

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Hurricane Milton, headed for Tampa, becomes the second-fastest storm to reach Category 5 status. / Vox

John Morales: The proportion of tropical cyclones that reach very intense levels is projected to increase. / The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene tells her followers that the government controls the weather. / Grist

Unrelated: Ancient monsters from indigenous folklore. / Atlas Obscura

Britain opened the world's first coal-fired power station in 1882. It's now the first G7 nation to phase out coal power completely. / CarbonBrief

American communities are beginning to "decommission" dams, fearful of climate impacts. / Undark Magazine

A fun online quiz about "the weird, wild, wired world of new vehicles." / rest of world

See also, from last month: "Hollywood Can't Ditch its Teslas Fast Enough." / Hollywood Reporter

California becomes the first state to ban "sell-by" dates on food. / Food & Wine

Dr. Pepper ties Pepsi as the second-best selling soda in the US. / MSN

The style of Jula Child's kitchens was "subservient to flexible functionality," helping usher in Universal Design. / Places Journal

A relaxation of rules around using apostrophes in German has "triggered existential fears." / The Guardian

Tressie McMillan Cottom explains what it was like to interview Diddy at his Malibu home. (Very weird, not good.) / The Independent

A lovely visual essay about author Jaime Lowe rediscovering her libido by learning how to dive for sea urchins. / The New York Times Magazine [+]

A brief cultural history of cocaine. "I enjoyed myself hugely." / aeon

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Brief profiles of the 97 hostages who remain unaccounted for after last year's Hamas-led attacks. / BBC News

An eloquent essay from a former Gaza resident. "In the past year, I have lost many of the tangible parts of my memories." / The New Yorker

Computer analysis finds Donald Trump's Trump's rally speeches now lasting an average of 82 minutes, compared with 45 minutes in 2016. / The New York Times [+]

Three people with severe autoimmune conditions have gone into remission after being treated with bioengineered, CRISPR-modified immune cells. / Nature

Psychologists say Dungeons & Dragons has potential benefits as a group therapy technique. / Ars Technica

Underground electronic and experimental music are burgeoning in Asia. / Pitchfork

And why not: a synthesizer in a browser window. / jake.fun

A researcher on artificial life and intelligence says anybody who encounters an extraterrestrial should try to kill them—as a means of communication. / Nautilus

Researchers are using drones to search for a female partner for "the world's loneliest plant." / The Conversation

Botanists have grown a long-lost tree species from a 1,000-year-old seed. / CNN

A new book brings together images of trees from over the centuries. / The Guardian

See also: A Loch Ness maritime pilot thinks he's found "Nessie" with sonar imagery. / The Irish Star

Because it's October: a starter kit for reading horror, and an oral history for Home Depot's 12-foot skeleton. / LitHub, VICE

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"Bolivia, too, is undergoing a kind of disillusionment with democracy." How the rest of the world views this year's US election. / The Dial

See also: How British vernacular invaded America, or why everyone's saying "gutted" now. / The Guardian

More solar activity could again make the Northern Lights visible to more areas of the world this weekend. / BBC News

"A lot of people just said, 'This is too good to be true. This cannot be real.'" In early tests, visual therapy using flashing lights appears to halt the progression of Alzheimer's. / Nature

See also: Researchers find that, compared to viewing reproductions, experiencing art in person creates a 10-fold increase in people's emotional response. / Hyperallergic

"Not a single organism survived. This is unprecedented. It's Europe's first completely dead river." Ukraine accuses Russia of intentionally poisoning a river. / The Guardian

The US military has been updating various advanced weapons systems with gaming-style controllers. / WIRED

See also: The CIA is posting messages in Farsi, Mandarin, and Korean on social media and the dark web as part of an effort to recruit informants. / NBC News

This is a chilling development: By pairing Meta's smart glasses with facial recognition, Harvard students were able to instantly dox strangers on the street. / 404 Media

But at least the AI that Meta includes with the smart glasses seems incapable of deciphering much of what it sees, though it will confidently lie to you about it anyway. / Gizmodo

Parents of the surveillance era are facing the reality of having children away at college. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

"The emotions I feel for her are real." AI companions can be a lifeline for those who struggle with relationships. / Esquire

See also: Does anyone have time to be a good friend anymore? / Dazed

From initial novelty to immediate slop, the five qualities of every AI app. / Read Max

"Being online has always involved searching for the needles of 'real' content in a large and messy haystack of junk. But never has the hay been as convincingly disguised as needles." / The New Yorker

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Highlights from the newly unsealed election interference case against Donald Trump. / Politico

Some 56 percent of divorced men support Trump—more than single men, married men, and women of any relationship status. / The Cut

Jessica Grose: The misogyny of young Gen Z men has been overstated. / The New York Times [+]

Emails sent to Springfield, Ohio's city officials reveal threats and racist disinformation, but also offers of support. / 404 Media

A judge acquits two environmental activists, saying that gluing themselves to a painting is "proportionate in view of the climate crisis." / The Art Newspaper

When a climate scientist criticizes his own research, suddenly Fox News wants an interview. / Grist

Related: TMN's Rosecrans Baldwin profiles a Bay Area startup "retromodding" old cars to go electric. / GQ

In 2019, an estimated 53,000 juveniles were charged in adult criminal courts because judges, prosecutors, or state laws transferred them there. / ProPublica

In 1976, 40 percent of high-school seniors said they had read at least six books for fun in the previous year, compared with 11.5 percent who hadn't read any. By 2022, those percentages had flipped. / The Atlantic [+]

See also: A high school graduate in Connecticut blames her inability to read and write on "shocking" educational neglect. / ct mirror

Quantum physicists show that photons can seem to exit a material before entering it, demonstrating "negative time." / Scientific American


Listen to a new version of OpenAI order 400 chocolate-covered strawberries by calling a store (around the 4:00 mark). / X

A researcher explains the sex lives of pygmy seahorses: "Not all seahorses are the portraits of domestic bliss that we assumed." / Nautilus

Some notes on furniture's influence on love: "We should live in rooms and on chairs built to our measure." / Chartbook

Laura Hall does another pop-up newsletter dedicated to Halloween. / 31 Days of Halloween

"It's decorative gourd season, motherfuckers." / McSweeney's Internet Tendency

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In light of Israel's incursion into southern Lebanon, a look back at its 1982 invasion that became an 18-year occupation. / Politico Magazine

Viewers say last night's vice presidential debate was an even match, and an overwhelming majority felt the tone was positive. / CBS News

Interviews with 10-year-olds about the presidential election: "I wouldn't like someone who committed crimes to be my president." / CNN

A fact-check finds that no, there are not 13,099 illegal immigrant murders roaming free on American streets. / Alex Nowrasteh

See also: Researchers say a second Trump term could add an extra 4 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere by 2030. / Grist

A visit to Michigan and China shows how the US lost the solar power race. In short? Good old capitalism. / Bloomberg

New milk-tea chains in China have an aesthetic known as guochao, meaning "national and hip." / The New Yorker

Geologists make the counterintuitive case that Mount Everest is growing taller thanks to erosion. / Smithsoniian Magazine

DNA testing company 23andMe is sinking quickly, partly because it's run out of customers. / WIRED

Drug developers are developing birth control pills aimed at male Gen Zers and millennials. / axios

A study finds cannabis enhances the enjoyment of music, "confirming what every stoner already knows." / Marijuana Moment

A smartphone in San Francisco's Mission District is broadcasting what songs are currently playing nearby. / Bop Spotter

Video of "a particularly beautiful" murmuration of starlings observed in The Netherlands. / Kottke

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The White House sides with Israel's ground assault of Lebanon while much of the world calls for a ceasefire. / Al Jazeera

Meanwhile, Iran is said to be preparing to launch a ballistic-missile attack. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

A long profile of Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose new book criticizes Israel and the corrupting influence of power. "I'm sad, but I was so enraged." / New York Magazine

Things to watch for in tonight's Vance-Walz debate. / Wake Up to Politics

Helene slamming a small town in North Carolina may disrupt the global supply chain for microchips. / NPR

A nuclear plant in Michigan will be the first in US history to restart. / CNBC

Your weekly white paper: "A systematic review about similarities in dog-human dyads." / Science Direct

A fascinating survey of how religious believers are using new technologies in their daily practices. / rest of world

An audio dive into Google's new niche product Notebook, which can turn a bunch of PDFs into a convincing podcast. / The New York Times [+]

See also: Barry C. Lynn on "Liberal democracy's last stand against Big Tech." / Harper's

From July, have you seen the trend of new books using multi-panel illustrations on their covers? They're called "bento books." / I Need a Book Cover

A celebrated new short story collection is about "people who just can't hang." / The New Yorker

Also, have you noticed worse service at restaurants lately? For the sake of society, that might be a good thing. / Economist Writing Every Day

See also: Britain experiences a rise in "zebra striping," where pub patrons alternate between alcoholic and non-alcoholic beer. / Semafor

Japan's smaller museums are praised for their elegance. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Photographs of Japanese forests shimmering with fireflies. / Colossal

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The death toll from Hurricane Helene has now reached 91 as Asheville, isolated by floods, struggles to get supplies airlifted to emergency workers. / Associated Press

Every time a climate disaster like Helene happens, insurance companies gouge customers, who complain to politicians, who claim climate disasters rarely happen. / How Things Work

Leonard Leo led the right-wing takeover of America's judiciary. Now one of his organizations is trying to block the efforts of a group that educates lawyers and judges about the climate crisis. / The Guardian

See also: Using an absurd legal basis, a Leo-funded think tank is suing the Consumer Product Safety Commission, arguing its structure is unconstitutional. / Rolling Stone

From inside Shein warehouses, gig workers—who don't have the same protections as full-time staff—are posting videos to expose grueling working conditions. / WIRED

"Perhaps this is appealing to you, but I find this revolting." The future of your Instagram and Facebook feeds is Meta's own AI-generated content. / Pixel Envy

Why AI is like the advent of the microwave oven: It's good at certain tasks and underwhelming at others—and just try to convince its advocates otherwise. / The Atlantic

Hardly a surprise, but according to a new FTC report, social media companies are gathering data far beyond users' expectations, sometimes with thousands of attributes per user. / EFF

See also: Ireland is fining Meta $101 million for "storing hundreds of millions of user passwords in plaintext and making them broadly available to company employees." / Ars Technica

According to a new study, "There will never be enough computing power to create AGI… because we'd run out of natural resources long before we'd even get close." / Radboud Universiteit

When AI scores higher on an IQ test than a third of people, have we "reached peak human?" That depends on whether "more" is necessarily "better." / VentureBeat

See also: The case for having lots of kids. / The New Yorker

Because of a legal dispute with a copyright group, a vast swath of popular music is currently blocked on YouTube. / Variety

Postcards were the memes of their day a century ago, replete with cats and everything. / BBC

How the 1937 hoax photo of a man holding a giant grasshopper—that later became a popular postcard—came to be. / Boing Boing

On Friday, the Chicago White Sox lost their 121st game of the season, the most for any Major League Baseball team in modern history. / ESPN

In a list of the world's 38 coolest neighborhoods, Marseille's Notre-Dame-du-Mont tops them all. / Time Out

Unrelated: A collaborative map for anyone interested in urban fruit harvesting. / Falling Fruit

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Nearly four million homes and businesses in the South are without power as Helene makes landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in Florida. / Associated Press

Conservative purists may hope a Trump defeat will end Trumpism, but the GOP is likely to remain ruled "by, and for reactionary business interests and social conservatives." / Vox

Regardless of any reduction in emissions, climate change will raise the sea level of Pacific Island nations by at least six inches in the next 30 years. / NASA

See also: The climate has changed many times and in many ways over the past 485 million years, but never as quickly as what's happening right now. / The Washington Post [+]

The Secret Service spent $50,000 on AI and won't say why. / 404 Media

Households in the US can now order more free Covid tests. / USPS

"No billionaires will fund work like this because there's no money in it." The Jet Propulsion Laboratory does amazing things; equally amazing is that JPL even exists. / The Washington Post [+]

With the news that OpenAI is moving to a for-profit model, its stated mission to develop artificial intelligence safely and transparently is no more. / Vox

Why is generative AI being shoehorned into every software product? Because businesses need you to keep paying for a thing, and it's a new thing to pay for. / Where's Your Ed At?

An exoskeleton company's refusal to repair a $20 battery left their customer, a man paralyzed from the waist down, unable to walk. / 404 Media

Using advanced machine learning, researchers were able to solve 100 percent of Google's CAPTCHA challenges. / Decrypt

"A real-world contrarian could not have written the piece: it was completely predictable, littered with complaints about the artist's inflated reputation and dodgy brushwork." AI cannot bring Brian Sewell back to life. / New Statesman

Eighty-five years after a misspelled plaque was installed at Poets' Corner in Westminster, the dots have finally been added to the Brontë sisters' names. / The Guardian

To unlock why Greenland sharks can live 400 years, scientists study its DNA and reveal about twice as many base pairs as in humans. / The New York Times [+]

"It was stupid, immature and amateur to keep going forward when I still had the energy to get back." How a hiker survived a month in the North Cascades without food or shelter. / Cascadia Daily News

Analyzing the evolution of baseball's perfect lineup. / The Pudding

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Are you ready to immerse yourself in everything ChatGPT Search has to offer? This quick trick may be for you.

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