Tropical Storm Beryl is now pushing inland, leaving more than two million people in Houston without power. / Associated Press
Scalpers have reverse-engineered the anti-scalping technology used by major ticketing platforms, and are creating counterfeit tickets that can be resold. / 404 Media
Slop is rampant in video games, and AI— “a tool designed to manufacture nothing but the obvious and average”—is about to make it worse. / The Baffler
See also: “Tech giants and beyond are set to spend over $1tn on AI capex in coming years, with so far little to show for it.” / Goldman Sachs
On the cinematic and real-life histories of AI voices and gender. / The New York Times [+]
See also: What should an electric car sound like? / YouTube
The company with a monopoly on ice cream truck music has a playlist that's barely changed since the 1970s, though it's about to mix in a 45-second jingle from RZA. / The Hustle
How the Library of Congress preserves audio from obsolete formats, the most fragile of which are lacquer discs, which are in a constant state of chemical degradation. / Library of Congress Blogs
“Remove hobbies, then risk, thrills, and adventures where you might have gotten hurt—imagine 80% of that gone.” Loneliness is rising among American teens—what's that feel like? / After Babel
The Look Book goes to Brooklyn Prep's prom. / Curbed
“That weekend in New York, the bars were still open, though at half capacity. By Monday, every venue in the city had gone dark.” One last rave before the pandemic. / The New Yorker
With no new buildings erected, and makeshift accommodations and BYO food for athletes, the first post-war Olympics, in 1948 London, were an exercise in austerity. / Messy Nessy
Cilantro fell out of favor after the fall of Rome, and its popularity has continued to ebb and flow ever since. / Atlas Obscura