White Noise, Black Hole and the Dopest of Seas

“Anything could happen. This morning, it did.” Paul Wells writes in Maclean’s about yesterday’s shootings in Ottawa. What we know about Cpl. Nathan Cirillo. What we know about the accused gunman. Some say our security failed us. Others are thankful it passed at all. Either way, an adjustment period is in the offing.

"White noise. Black hole. The gravitational pull of nothingness. The silence as its own insistent ecosystem, nourished by Apples and Cokes and plotted upon plastic products whose names begin with i. On the Internet, it is always spring."  Don DeLillo reviews Taylor Swift's deepest of deep cuts.

Watch a trailer for the proposed Joan Didion documentary. Then fund it, maybe?

Here’s what it sounds like when a concert cellist is hooked up to an EEG headset and plays a duet with her own brain.

"Shelter from the tweetstorm."

The sea is dope.

Doug Ford, everyone.

“A federal jury in Washington, D.C., returned guilty verdicts against four Blackwater operatives charged with killing more than a dozen Iraqi civilians and wounding scores of others in Baghdad in 2007,” Jeremy Scahill reports at The Intercept. Blackwater founder Erik Prince, meanwhile, “now has a new company, Frontier Services Group, which he founded with substantial investment from Chinese enterprises and which focuses on opportunities in Africa.” Ha ha, all’s well that ends well.

Oh good, another way to feel bad about our eating habits. Plants can tell when they're being eaten and they don't like it.

Also on Modern Farmer, five writers who also farmed.

Professional advice on how to sell a haunted house.

"Truly, has there ever been a whiter problem than worrying about your level of basicness?" Writing for Jezebel, Kara Brown closes the book on that word. (One can hope.)

Set Your Thoughts Free.