Welcome back to Tidings! In this issue you'll find stories about cheese, cotton, a fake disaster, and much more. If you're enjoying this newsletter, help us spread the word by sending it to a friend! These links were all shared first by the community on Seabird, our minimalist platform for sharing links. Sign up to check it out on web or mobile and contribute your own recommended links.

​Elite young runners are becoming freakishly fast​

On "trackflation," the boom in youth running and the adolescents hitting track performance times that were nearly unthinkable a decade earlier.

Wired | Brendan I. Koerner

​Everybody loves cheese​

Tariffs, war, and post-pandemic shifts in retail are making this a tough time to be a cheesemonger. [Gift link.]

The New York Times | Pete Wells

​Street Cheese goes for (dairy) gold​

And what does it take to medal in the Mondial du Fromage, aka the World Cup of Cheese? Ask this cheesemonger from Seattle.

Seattle Met | Naomi Tomky

​Disaster rehearsal​

A firsthand account of what it's like to be a minor actor in a simulated mass casualty event.

n+1 | Morley Musick

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​Breivik massacred 77 people. Norway is determined to treat him humanely.​

A visit to the Norwegian prison system, where the country treats its most-reviled mass murderer more humanely than the US treats detainees accused of far more minor infractions.

The Nation | Jean Casella

​Christopher Nolan vs. the chuds​

Responding to reactionary outrage against Nolan's Odyssey: "The glory of Homer’s story is, in part, how endlessly generative it has been of fresh interpretations by artists who know that honoring it means changing it to keep alive the tale’s eternal lessons."

Jacobin | Matt McManus

​The anti-IMAX populist backlash​

And if you can't see The Odyssey on IMAX, that's probably OK.

Read Max | Max Read

​The looting of science fiction​

From Star Trek, Snow Crash, Palantir, and more, how the tech right embraces "reactionary futurism" to pluck aesthetics from sci-fi and fantasy while leaving respect for democracy behind.

Aeon | Ali Rıza Taşkale

​The voice of Google​

And an excerpt from Don't Be Evil, a new book by a longtime Google insider on the tech giant's changed corporate culture.

The New Yorker | Claire Stapleton

​Rust and boll​

Lessons for idealistic AI executives from the invention of mechanized cotton-picking machines: "The Rusts are a reminder that there is a thin line between thoughtful, socially-minded planning and outright hubris."

Asterisk | Dylan Matthews

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​The real life mermaids of Florida’s Weeki Wachee Springs​

Before Disney, "Floridian tourism was a ramshackle collection of weird roadside attractions, shot through with a deep and abiding faith that if something was sufficiently peculiar, somebody would pay 50 cents to see it."

Huck | Jack Burke

​The organisms that make Earth's harshest places home​

A visual guide to extremophiles, the organisms evolved to thrive in permafrost, hydrothermal vents, toxic depressions, and other hostile environments.

Quanta | Jake Buehler

​The lonely fight to keep the cheap Las Vegas buffet alive​

Also clinging to life in an inhospitable environment: the all-you-can-eat Las Vegas buffet. [Gift link.]

The Wall Street Journal | Rachel Louise Ensign

​Cinnamon is out. Cardamom is in.​

In San Francisco bakeries, the Swedish kardemummabulle is giving the standard cinnamon bun a run for its money.

The San Francisco Standard | Madeline Taub

​Why and how birdsong differs across the world​

Finally, in bird news... scientists analyze 116,000 bird songs and find eight basic motifs, including trills, whistles, and "atonal chaotic notes."

Phys.org | Krystal Kasal

Tidings is edited by Jacob Grier. The links in our newsletter were all shared first on Seabird, our minimalist platform simply designed for recommending worthwhile links. Learn more about us here and join to discover and share articles like these every day. Your recommendations may appear in a future edition of Tidings.