News

A shot, a glimpse of an AK-47, and U.S. Servicemen {and their friend} pounced on gunman on train to France - NYT

Stories

Taking my parents to collage - NYT Opinion

The end of walking - Aeon {discussion here @demure}

Big Data is for the Birds: solving nocturnal avian migration - Nautilus

Poetry

On a Train Crossing Eastern Colorado by Aaron Bauer {link}

    Skyline, like lines in a book—but less
    often broken.  Sea of sunflowers.

    Sea of tasseling corn.  Softness of a barbed wire
    viewed at fifty miles per hour, like speed-reading

    the Bible.  Your old men will dream waking dreams
    and your daughters will look for father figures

    in comic books and soap operas.  Any syllable,
    a brushstroke—irrevocable.  The goal of weaving

    a conversation, the same as tying a fly: make it look
    so real even you would think it’s real.

Kitchen Window by thenewgreen {link}

  The sound is different depending on what species hits it
  The grackles are all beak and their smack is tinny 
  The jays are more a thud
  But they all die the same way
  Fluttering on the ground
  We keep a shovel and a yard-waste bag handy
  
  Hear that? It's the ice-cream truck
  It sounds different now
  The kids all run behind it 
  Last year Caleb Turgess ran in front of it
  They have since changed the song
  I watch my sister walk to the truck 
  from our kitchen's large, picture glass window
  The same one I was at on Caleb's last day
  He was a short, round boy
  made the sound of a jay

Funnies

SMBC 3835