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.

  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

SMBC 3835