Sucks to your Monday. Have some downer links.

  • The WHO posts what may be the most mendacious study results ever, claiming 1.7 million children under the age of five die from “environmental risks such as indoor and outdoor pollution, second-hand smoke, unsafe water and poor sanitation”. I’ll leave the commentariat to guess which of these the article focuses on.
  • 7 places where the science still isn’t quite settled. It’s weird that fundamental physics like gravity and nuclear strong force are more open to discussion than other, less rigorously observed fields.
  • For all of you super-intelligent, maladjusted commenters, a rumination on why you might turn to crime. And no, the answer isn’t because literally anything you do is probably illegal anyways.
  • China releases $150B military budget. “China has the world’s second-largest defense budget, although it is still only about one-quarter of what the U.S. spends.” No, that’s one quarter of what gets appropriated during the budgeting process. It ignores all the “emergency” spending.
  • Today marks the 228th anniversary of the US operating under the Constitution. Maybe some day we can return to that.

If only the Illuminati actually ran things