A round-up of African migration trends to watch in 2024—e.g., state fragility, seasonal economic opportunities. / Africa Center

The world’s most “powerful” passports, ranked. / The Points Guy

A very big battery replaces Hawaii’s last coal plant. / Grist

TW Lim: We went from mining nature for particular fats, to mining fats for their components. / Scope of Work

From November, “tyromancy” refers to an ancient fortune-telling practice that uses cheese. / Saveur

What it’s like to organize a race that goes up and down a mountain in the middle of winter? “If I sit down, I get snoozy.” / Patagonia

A paraplegic rock climber decides to climb Yosemite’s legendary El Capitan “one tiny pull-up at a time.” / The Los Angeles Times [+]

A man spent $1 million—and seemingly wrecked part of his family—to turn his modest living room into “the world’s greatest hi-fi.” / The Washington Post [+]

Related: How to make a traditional Japanese-style kitchen knife. / Chicago Magazine

Unrelated: A video tour of “the world’s best houseboat.” / YouTube

A profile of the Hollywood screenwriter who’s paid $300,000 a week to rewrite other people’s scripts—”a fee that he acknowledges is ‘insane.'” / The New Yorker

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Internet and telecom services in Gaza get cut as a result of the Israeli bombardment. / Al Jazeera

Jeremy Bowen: It’s time to stop talking about the war spreading elsewhere—it’s already happened. / BBC News

Spencer Ackerman: You did it, Joe! You escalated the war you spent the week saying shouldn’t escalate. And you have a plan now, right? / Forever Wars

Museum curators and ordinary citizens are trying to preserve Ukraine’s experience of Russia’s invasion. / Atlas Obscura

A team of physicists finds a new kind of magnetism “playing out within an engineered material only six atoms thick.” / Quanta Magazine

A 2023 study finds physician shortages in medically underserved areas in the United States unimproved by increased pay or student loan forgiveness. / Undark

The Federal Highway Administration wants less sign language that uses pop-culture references or humor. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Why does a cul-de-sac in Los Angeles have an ordinance barring skateboarding? Public safety. / The Los Angeles Times

Related: The great skate show Epicly Later’d is back. / GQ

London-based illustrator Edie Medley draws a comic about what it’s like for women to grapple with urinary tract infections. / It’s Nice That

British artists like Damien Hirst and Glenn Brown are running their own museums. / Artsy

What it’s like to look at flora and fauna through AI-powered binoculars. / Outside

Fashion’s favorite color for 2024 is predicted to be “deep, muddy yurples.” / Blackbird Spyplane

See also: An open letter to Jeremy Allen White regarding his recent Calvin Klein ads. / McSweeney’s Interent Tendency

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A report says Niger, Senegal, and Rwanda will be among this year’s highest growth economies. / Semafor

Whither pandemic preparedness and global health cooperation? Helen Branswell’s public health questions for 2024. / STAT

Unrelated: Collective online archiving as a way to mourn a friend. / Dirt

In normal times the Panama Canal carries about 5% of global maritime trade—but “normal” is being upended by the climate crisis. / The Economist

A map shows where homes in the United States repeatedly flood. / The Washington Post [+]

Efforts to sell better chicken in the US are stymied by the birds being known as “the cheapest of the meats.” / Noema

Unrelated: A Florida car dealership opens a fine dining restaurant—inside the dealership—headed by a Michelin-starred chef. / axios

Hotel prices are already soaring in anticipation of Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour of Europe. Though is Swift a Pentagon psyop? Probably not. / Le Monde, Vice

A new app enables businesses to charge to use their bathrooms. / TechCrunch

Scientists in Iceland aspire to take direct measurements of molten rock in a magma chamber. / NewScientist

In one photo: an Italian Basilica, a mountain, and the moon. / Colossal

Tajja Issen: Every book that finds you is a minor miracle. / The Walrus

“It is still surprising that Apple turned us loose onto strangers.” What it was like to repair Macs door-to-door in the early aughts. / Mat Duggan

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Taiwan says it doesn’t consider the launch of a Chinese satellite, whose rocket flew over southern Taiwan, an attempt at election interference. / Reuters

Related: Breaking down Wang Yi’s speech on China’s diplomacy in 2023 and priorities for 2024. / Tracking People’s Daily

Ethiopia is very likely on the road to recognizing Somaliland. “That is a big deal.” / An Africanist Perspective

Emmanuel Macron makes a “daring” choice by appointing modern France’s youngest-ever prime minister. / The Economist

Extremely online conservatives in the United States have been fighting about a pinup calendar. / Vox

New research finds a typical liter of bottled water to contain 240,000 microscopic pieces of plastic. / Grist

As devices get better at connecting brains to computers, neuroscientists launch an international movement advocating for “neurorights.” / Undark

Meta says it will restrict teens from viewing content that deals with topics like suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders. / The Verge

Casey Newton: If you believe that at least some teens experience harm on social media, it seems unlikely that a parental permission slip will solve it. / Platformer

Anne Helen Petersen: if you think someone uses too many exclamation points: maybe the person with an exclamation problem isn’t them, but you! / Culture Study

See also: Analyziing the harms of “almond moms.” / Airmail

A former competitive Skee-Ball player breaks the world record for rounds of golf played at different courses in one year. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

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Hezbollah says one of its commanders has been killed in a strike in southern Lebanon. / BBC News

Alon Pinkas: Maybe the most ominous thing about an Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon is the feeling that it’s a foregone conclusion. / Haaretz

In 2024, more than half of humanity will live in a country holding a nationwide vote. / The New Yorker

See also: Semafor’s inaugural “Global Election Hot List,” TIME’s “Top 10 Global Risks for 2024,” and a list of unpredictable but possible events that could “throw 2024 into turmoil.” / Semafor, TIME, Politico

Futhermore: A round-up of current visual trends, with guesses on how they’ll unfold this year. / It’s Nice That

“There’s probably never been a better time to believe in aliens than right now.” The UFO movement is experiencing “otherworldly” growth. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

In Antartica, an increase in human traffic and effects from the climate crisis are opening the door for invasive species. / The Revelator

A study finds flowers are rapidly evolving to have less sex. / The New York Times [+]

An animation recreates central Washington’s “stunningly dramatic” geological history. / Futility Closet

Salt Lake City police fired more than 135 shots in 18 months. Most incidents involved injured deer. / Deseret News

A Russian oligarch accuses Sotheby’s of helping an art dealer trick him into overpaying for art. / The Guardian

Unrelated: Grilled spicy ice cubes are said to be trending in China. / Instagram

From a year ago but new to us, a man asks people from around the world to teach him their favorite dance move. / YouTube

And in case you missed it: A wildlife photographer captured footage of a mouse cleaning his shed, night after night. / The Washington Post [+]

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Xi’s military leadership shake-up—apparently part of his plan to tackle corruption and disloyalty—raises questions about China’s combat readiness. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

The history of the US government’s comic books, which run the gamut from educating Americans on safety to pushing all-out propaganda. / Beautiful Public Data

“Electrons may exist in a dense state of quantum entanglement with one another, forming a kind of fluid.” The very strange properties of so-called “strange metals.” / IEEE Spectrum

Americans are getting shorter, and the likely reason why is wealth—and therefore health—inequality. / The Week

In a century-long battle of sandwich cookies, Oreo has almost entirely vanquished Hydrox, which claims its competitor employed dirty tricks to get to the top. / The Hustle

Elizabeth Spiers on how working with ChatGPT is like raising an eight-year-old, or, “So you knew it was wrong and you did it anyway?” / The New York Times [+]

How Pyongyang’s architecture and city planning is an expression of state ideology and asserts control over its citizens. / Atlas Obscura

This is cool: Using Lego-like bricks made of a material similar to fiberglass, a small crew built a 96-unit apartment building in under two months. / Fast Company

“A mouse has been filmed secretly tidying up a man’s shed almost every night for two months.” / The Guardian

A website dedicated to documenting every British record shop since the 20th century—”the legendary, the lost, the infamous and your forgotten favourites.” / British Record Shop Archive

“The first month was excruciating; the 35 or so others have been mostly fine.” Rich Juzwiak on his decades-long addiction to quitting. / Slate

John Warner has never watched ET, but he’s read the novelization multiple times, and honestly it sounds better than the movie. / The Biblioracle Recommends

“I think it’s nice to remember that songs can never be fixed in place.” An oral history of PC Music, the influential label that’s now 10 years old. / Dazed

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Three years after Jan. 6, more than 80 people are yet to be identified for their roles in the violence, and the mystery of who placed the pipe bombs remains unsolved. / AP

Related: This morning, three Jan. 6 fugitives were captured at a ranch in Florida. / NBC News

A breakdown of how Republicans have rewritten Jan. 6 to give Trump a viable path back to the White House. / The Washington Post [+]

“It was an event that, in some sense, didn’t happen…it clearly was a failure, a debacle, even a farce.” Make no mistake about Jan. 6, the original fascists were morons too. / Unpopular Front

A modest proposal for New Year’s resolutions, or why “anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.” / The New York Times [+]

See also: “Frustration, a sense of lack, is the necessary precondition for any kind of satisfaction.” What we talk about when we talk about giving up. / The Guardian

Still: A large medical trial finds regular exercise is linked to lower incidence of specific types of cancer. / Gizmodo

In the largest-ever settlement for California garment workers, the Beyond Yoga apparel brand will pay $1.1 million in back wages and damages to contractors. / Quartz

Lululemon’s founder slams his former company’s brand inclusion initiatives: “You’ve got to be clear that you don’t want certain customers coming in.” / The Cut

An interactive retrospective of Cologne’s legendary WDR Studio for Electronic Music, where experimental artists gained access to equipment to bring their ideas to life. / Google Arts & Culture

“It maybe feels more like Philip Glass not being able to get hired in his side career as a plumber.” More from Tom Scocca on his medical plight and the health of journalism. / How Things Work

Taylor Swift has now surpassed Elvis for the most weeks at no. 1 by a solo artist. Only the Beatles have more weeks at the top spot. / Billboard

See also: An AI-generated image of the Beatles drinking tea mysteriously includes a fifth bandmate that could be any one of them (but is probably dead Paul). / Indy100

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The White House has confirmed that Russia has been using ballistic missiles provided by North Korea in Ukraine. / The Hill

House Democrats claim during Trump’s presidency his businesses took in at least $7.8 million from foreign entities—similar to what Republicans allege against Biden. / CBS News

A set of theories for how the US brought down inflation without, as many economists predicted would happen, triggering unemployment. / Noahopinion

Whether AI will meaningfully change photography comes down to—among other quandaries—whether photography is intended as a depiction of truth. / The New York Times [+]

Paul Ford: “If the current narrative holds—if AI is victorious—well, liberal arts types will be ascendant.” / WIRED

On the likelihood of the “Zoo Hypothesis,” which posits that extraterrestrial civilizations exist, they just don’t want us to know that. / Universe Today

Probably related: Twenty-one species were removed from the US endangered species list in 2023 because they are now presumed extinct. / The Guardian

New books about slime, a misunderstood substance that is everywhere, and that never fails to produce a visceral response in humans. / Los Angeles Review of Books

“I paused longer and longer each time. Disabled? I was … less able. To do things. Than I’d been. For now? I clicked ‘no, uncertainly.” Tom Scocca’s medical unraveling. / Intelligencer

Crosswords are a uniquely American innovation, and at more than a century old, the puzzles’ stalwart US-centricity is in serious need of reconsideration. / The New Yorker

“The rise of McCartney’s reputation at the expense of Lennon’s over the last few decades has something to do with the way popular music has become a less crucial part of youth culture.” / The New Left Review

“Oh, this is unlocking something I didn’t know about the gay experience.” Why 2023 was a landmark year for onscreen gay male sex. / GQ

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Recent events—the killing of a senior Hamas leader, explosions in Iran and Lebanon—raise fear of wider conflict in the Middle East. / Politico

A round-up of trends likely to drive humanitarian need in 2024. / The New Humanitarian

Theaters report seeing a lot more standing ovations. “You’re swept along with it, aren’t you?” / BBC News

In 2023, a record low was reached in global child mortality, with only 3.6 percent of newborns dying by the age of 5. / The New York Times [+]

China’s population, now around 1.4 billion, is projected to drop to around half a billion by 2100, and women are taking the blame. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

A small polling of American women from different generations on plastic surgery. / TZR

Unrelated: Phrases like “conspicuous consumption” and “dependence effect” can obscure as much as they reveal—”but then I read a novel by Émile Zola.” / UnHerd

How big exactly is YouTube? One estimate says 13.325 billion videos. / Ethan Zuckerman

Mark Zuckerberg’s Hawaiian estate is thought to suggest “a petty overlord hiding in his castle keep, incapable of imagining anything but a siege.” / The Nation

The great Ana Gavrilovska’s favorite jazz albums from last year. / Sick Sad Motherslug

The past year in lost ships and underwater discoveries, and Strava’s year in sport. / Atlas Obscura, Strava

A $70,000 watch is said to be the first made entirely in the United States in over five decades. / GQ

See also: One reason why we may not have been visited by time travellers: we aren’t important enough. / The Seeds of Science

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A political crisis may be brewing in Israel, as its Supreme Court strikes down a law proposed by Netanyahu’s government that would have limited the court’s government oversight. / Axios

As we head into a major election year, you can expect a tug of war over the US economy—here are 12 charts comparing Biden’s economy to Trump’s. / The Washington Post [+]

We asked some of our favorite journalists, writers, and thinkers: What were the most important events of 2023, and what were the least? / The Morning News

Related: The biggest discoveries in physics in 2023. / Quanta

The shoegaze music scene mostly died in the mid-’90s, but is now back and bigger than ever. TikTok is the reason why, and here’s a deep dive into how it happened. / Stereogum

See also: A look at the big musical trends of 2023 and what could be coming next, including a Spotify backlash and more music from Africa. / Can’t Get Much Higher

TMN’s Andrew Womack brings us the top albums of 2023. / Andrew Womack

“The human web, the one made by regular people, is resurgent.” Anil Dash on how the internet is about to get weird again. / Rolling Stone

Erin Kissane on how to solve the problem of Threads, whose stated embrace of decentralized social media should absolutely be taken with as much salt as you can find. / Erin Kissane

Archaeologists discover a 2,300-year-old Roman banquet room with a large, intact mosaic made of shells and coral. / CNN

See also: In Pompeii, archaeologists unearth a “bakery-prison” that reveals the brutality endured by those who were enslaved. / The New York Times [+]

“It is a sign that we are more than just bodies, thoughts, and emotions.” Kierkegaard’s theory of despair is not so despairing. / The Nation

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