Can aliens sing? (Quanta)
by Dan Falk
We can imagine alien life emerging on planets that are very different from the Earth. But, one zoologist argues, the basic process of evolution means that complex alien life forms are likely to develop many of the same features as the life we know, perhaps including art and philosophy.

No, you really shouldn’t text and walk (Wired)
by Matt Simon
Those people who stare at their phone while they walk down the street are so annoying, right? But what makes them such a problem? An experiment neatly captures just what an entire sidewalk of pedestrians loses when a few people can’t keep their eyes off their phones.

The tough life of a Maya diplomat (Ars Technica)
by Kiona N. Smith
Being a Maya ambassador in the eighth century could be a prestigious job. But as an examination of the remains of a man named Apoch’Waal shows, it wasn’t an easy one.

What anti-Asian misogyny looks like (CNN)
by Harmeet Kaur
Much early coverage of the Georgia shootings centered on the question of whether the crime was motivated by racism or misogyny and sexual disorder. That misses the way that race, gender, and class intertwine in white American stereotypes of Asian women.

Learning about climate from nineteenth-century Hawaiian newspapers (Future Human)
by Lucy Sherriff
Part of the trouble with preparing for a 100-year disaster is that the last one may have happened before the advent of modern meteorological techniques and records. One solution in Hawai‘i: Gather data from the huge volume of Hawaiian-language newspapers published in the nineteenth century.

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