What’s everyone reading these days? I finished the superb Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham and Miranda July’s excellent All Fours within the last few weeks. I’m about halfway through Long Island Compromise…

How Are Calories in Food Really Measured? “It’s not just a matter of burning food to see how much energy is produced…you need to measure the output and compare it to the input.”

Ace drone video by Turkish photographer İbrahim Şimşek. “The wheat is laid out in the sun to dry before being grounded in the mill to make bulgur.”

Artificial General Intelligence Might Be Humanity’s Last Invention. If AGI is achieved, “humanity is not ready for what will happen next — not socially, not economically, not morally.”

A website for taking selfies using NYC traffic cameras. “People can then use the traffic camera like a photo booth by posing for three seconds and tapping on the screen. The webpage will then show the most recent image from the traffic camera.”

Jamelle Bouie: “If Democrats win control of Washington in November, they should make reforming our democracy a priority” because the Republicans’ “ability to win power without winning votes is a powerful disincentive to change” their extremist ways.

I promise, your day will be better if you spend a few minutes with this letter from Nick Cave to a fan who is feeling cynical. “Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism.”

Not a joke: The Onion is bringing back its monthly print newspaper. It’s $60/yr for the print subscription.

I’d missed that Time magazine is naming a “Kid of the Year” now and this year’s recipient is 15-year-old scientist Heman Bekele, who has invented a soap that could treat and even prevent skin cancer.

Saw this in the bookstore yesterday: The Missing Thread: A Women’s History of the Ancient World. It looks great — the nonfiction equivalent of fiction like Circe and A Thousand Ships that centers women in ancient mythology.