Brasilien: Rückfall in brutale Zeiten.

Angriffe auf Expräsident Lula da Silva und seine Anhänger, das tödliche Attentat auf die linke Stadträtin Marielle Franco, die Ermordung von landlosen Bauern: Die zunehmende politische Gewalt in dem südamerikanischen Land geht in erster Linie auf das Konto der übermächtigen Agrarlobby.

Private space companies no longer have to follow the law.

It just got a whole lot easier for private companies to launch satellites, rovers, and spacecrafts, and pursue future industries like asteroid mining. The catch? The U.S. is completely ignoring what’s outlined in a 51-year-old treaty designed to keep space peaceful and war-free.

Just what the world is waiting for: even more mediocre music.

The Quest to Teach AI to Write Pop Songs (via rev.vu).

David Cope didn’t set out to make anyone mad. In 1980, the composer envisioned a tool to help cure his creative block: a machine that could keep track of all the sounds and loose threads running through his mind, find similarities, and produce an entire piece of music inspired by it. So he built it.

Reading American History Through Handkerchiefs (via inside.com).

There's more to them than meets your nose.

The pie chart: Why data visualization’s greatest villain will never die (via rev.vu).

“The circle with sectors is not a desirable form of presentation,” wrote the engineer and visualization researcher William Brinton in his 1914 book Graphical Methods. Brinton believed pie charts were difficult to decipher and that it was nearly always better to use a bar chart to convey information.

Explore Popular Debates, Discussions and Critical Thinking with Kialo.

Music Viz.

The Cultural Borders of Songs (via rev.vu).

We mapped last month’s #1 songs in 3,000 places. See where songs dominate across the globe.

Relevant: musicmap.info

The Illusion of Control in Web Design (via rev.vu).

Start simply. Code defensively. User-test the heck out of it. Recognize the chaos. Embrace it. And build resilient web experiences that will work no matter what the internet throws at them.

While Facebook Flounders [it does?], Women Build Their Own Social Networks.

In the midst of all the hubbub about Facebook privacy concerns, another social network launched over the weekend. That network, called Maverick, isn’t trying to compete with the Menlo Park-based giant, though. Instead, it’s focused on serving just one subset of the population: tween girls.

How to land the largest passenger aircraft in the world!