• Astrophysicist Sanjana Curtis explores the elemental origins and chemical compositions of four artistic materials – charcoal, cobalt blue, cadmium yellow and helium – in American Scientist:

As chemistry developed, so did our discovery of new elements, and this shaped art as we know it. Among the elements identified from already existing minerals and ores was silver metallic cobalt, discovered by chemist Georg Brandt in 1739.

This element takes its name from the German wordKobelt,meaning kobolds – gnomes and goblins believed to haunt the mines. It owes its ominous name to the corrosivity of the minerals (often containing arsenic) with which it is associated, which was so dangerous to miners that they thought it must have been placed in the mines by malevolent subterranean beings.

• This summary by Ian Millhiser of Voice with regard to the latest anti-trans laws can give you hope:

It is important to have clear eyes on what the future will look like for LGBTQ litigants. Five of the current judges are unlikely to agree withRomer‘s conclusion that laws motivated solely by anti-LGBTQ animosity are unconstitutional, for example. And many lower courts have been reluctant to protect transgender rights in settings like public restrooms and sports teams, where gender segregation has historically been permitted.

Still, the situation for LGBTQ litigants has so far been more favorable than anyone could have reasonably predicted on the day Kennedy announced his retirement.

• After the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action rules at US universities and colleges, people are wondering why the biggest affirmative action on campuses (inherited admission) is not being challenged in court. GOOD, PA reports that this is finally happening:

The practice of prioritizing the children of alumni has been increasingly pushed back following last week’s Supreme Court ruling ending affirmative action in higher education. The NAACP added its weight behind the effort Monday, calling on more than 1,500 colleges and universities to level the playing field for admissions, including ending legacy admissions.

The civil rights lawsuit was filed Monday by Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston-based nonprofit, on behalf of black and Latino community groups in New England, alleging that Harvard’s admissions system violates the civil rights law.

• As Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth A. Harris explain for the New York Timesa feature of Goodreads that allows its users to give their opinion on a book that has not yet been released (or is still being written, in some cases) can jeopardize its chances of publication:

Even books that are still in the making can be revised. George RR Martin’s highly anticipated ‘The Winds of Winter’, the next installment in his ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ series, doesn’t even have an official release date, but it has amassed over 10,800 ratings and some 500 reviews on Good Reads.

It’s unclear how Amazon uses the data generated on Goodreads, which offers insights into reader preferences and consumer behavior. The company said Goodreads reviews and ratings do not influence its decisions about which books and how many copies it buys from publishers.

Given its influence, some authors have come to view Goodreads as a necessary evil and a minefield.

• In another remarkable ocean-related story this month, check out Alan Taylor’s recent photo gallery of sharks in all their curiosity in Atlantic.
• For the New surveywriter and TikToker Eleanor Stern discusses language, power and “folk etymologies” – the false origins of specific words that tend to circulate widely despite their inaccuracy:

These narratives about common language reveal a fear that our language will reproduce the political structures that already shape our realities and a simultaneous desire that they reflect those structures. Often these realities are fully visible on the very surface of everyday language, even without convoluted and bogus taxonomies. “Knocked up” doesn’t have its roots in the slave trade, but it does carry a tinge of misogyny, and “chav” is, in a British context, a slur that runs deep into the membrane of the British class system – even if its roots lie in the more mundane word-forming process of borrowing. Whites treated lynchings as entertainment, even though the origins of the “picnic” had nothing to do with them. Domestic violence, slavery and classism are too often omitted or insufficiently probed in official histories – this is clear in the panic around critical race theory and the frenzy to keep these facts as far away from children as possible. Americans. In this context, there is satisfaction in seeing language as an index of historical truth. Even if the specific linguistic story at hand is not real, it seems to vividly express a deeper reality of injustice. Injustices are revealed to lurk in the corners of our discourse, and reasonably horrified readers pledge to stop using this or that word or idiom. The overly belated and weak fact-checking that follows comes across as hyper-literal and know-it-all alongside the vivid evocation of historical horrors.

• Varuna Srinivasan, gender justice activist and sexual health researcher, shares her experience with gender and connecting with her non-binary identity in her 30s in an essay for Seduce:

While scrolling on Facebook during the pandemic, I came across this word: genderqueer. I had never really felt cisgender, even before I knew what “cisgender” meant, for some reason I felt too fraudulent to call myself trans. But that word, genderqueer, was nice. It was like a label big enough to hold all the feelings I had for myself. Understanding that my identity was on a spectrum, I felt liberated.

Soon I changed my pronouns fromshe sheForshe they. The first was given to me at birth. The addition of “they” was exciting. It gave me a sense of bodily autonomy, a feeling I had never experienced.

• Ahhhh… one surprise proposal always melts my heart:

• Have you ever wondered how traditional western music and indian music are different? Here is an interesting description:

• Ryan Broderick has a good summary of what we may be losing with the decline of Twitter. Read it in his Garbage Day newsletter:

I think hardcore Twitter users have rose-colored glasses about how cool the site is. The reason for his success, if you can argue he ever really succeeded, wasn’t that he was cooler than Facebook. It was because of his proximity to power. The reason it was so popular with activists, extremists, journalists and shitty posters was because what you post there can actually affect the culture. What connects just about everything that’s happened on Twitter since its launch in 2006 is the possibility that those who weren’t in power (or wanted more) could influence those who were. And I don’t think it’s an accident that some deranged billionaire broke this, or it’s an accident that we’re suddenly being offered smaller, island rigs or an offshoot of a Meta app as a replacement. Officials clearly don’t want this to happen again.

• Ships could have sails! Who knew?:

• Agnès Martin at the age of Google Spreadsheets: