Well-researched stories from around the web that bridge the gap between news and scholarship. Brought to you each Tuesday from the editors of JSTOR Daily.

Why Harvey hit Houston so hard (ProPublica)
by Al Shaw, Neena Satija, and Kiah Collier
Hurricane Harvey was an unprecedented natural assault on the City of Houston. The resulting devastation also reflected something else: the effects of fast development with limited regulation.

Math tips from the Babylonians (The Telegraph)
by Sarah Knapton
A 3,700-year-old tablet shows that the Babylonians knew how to do trigonometry before the Ancient Greeks. And it could give modern data scientists a new way of approaching the subject.

The moral quandary of doing research for Exxon (The Conversation)
by Katharine Hayhoe
A new study has found that ExxonMobil worked to mislead the public on the significance of climate change, even though it knew better from its own internal research. Here’s what that research looked like from the inside.

To give yourself good advice, pretend you’re someone else (New York Magazine)
by Breena Kerr
Can’t figure out what to do about a tough situation in your life? A study suggests that making things a little less personal can make it easier.

Reviving Kabbalah in the twenty-first century (The Atlantic)
by Arthur Green
Over the past 25 years, there’s been increasing interest in the Jewish esoteric tradition of Kabbalah. Can a new translation of a central text help bridge the gap between mysticism and the mainstream?

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