Again, the pace of daily news overwhelms me — are we still talking about Kellyanne Conway? If not, it’s a bit of a shame, if only because I was really looking forward to sharing Erin Gloria Ryan’s recent New York Times op-ed, which includes language so amazing, I can’t resist it even now, when we’ve all moved on:
I watched her the way a person might stand at the kitchen window and watch a raccoon abscond with the first tomato of summer. I didn’t agree with what she was doing, but I admired her chutzpah.
It’s a good, actually pretty compassionate piece. Don’t let it get lost in the churn.
- In 2009, I had the pleasure of hearing Amy Harmon speak about her Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on genetics. She’s a journalist I always read as soon as she comes out with something new, and she also basically has the career I covet for myself. Her latest story, “Beyond ‘Hidden Figures’: Nurturing New Black and Latino Math Whizzes,” is an exemplar of what journalism can be.
- Likewise, the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal has just shared a meticulously reported and reconstructed look at a murder on the high seas — and the price we really pay to eat fish.
- Much less seriously, Facebook’s algorithm chose to pull up this story right after the above in my feed: from New Scientist, “Fish recorded singing dawn chorus on reefs just like birds.”
- This isn’t going to make you feel good, but you should read comics artist Dale Beran’s “4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump.” Don’t get too comfortable celebrating Milo Yiannopoulos’ downfall yet.
- There are two ways to look at this story from Popular Mechanics, “Scientists Find 50,000-Year-Old Life Forms Trapped in Mexican Cave Crystals.” One, this is how endless aliens/epidemic/eldritch horror movies start out. Two, they might be doing us all a favor at this point.
- Oh no, cynicism! You could always meet the evangelicals trying to make the GOP care about refugees as a palate-cleanser. For a completely nonpartisan story to end on, Pixar is offering a storytelling course for free on Khan Academy.
Stay brave, friends.
