1. A shockingly detailed and lengthy oral history of the poop emoji.

"It struck me as a particularly flexible and effective emoji. It provides a way to say shit or crap in an email without explicitly typing the words, and it catches the reader's attention in a way that smiley faces don't. Most importantly, it always elicits a smile from the reader and the writer, which is ultimately the purest purpose of emoji: to add emotional expressiveness to written communication."

2. The Status Rug, that grubby little fixture of the airport experience.

"A number of airlines have them. But even if you fly more frequently than I do, you may have overlooked this common object, or even the details of the system it allegedly serves. So, quickly: A routine manifestation of the modern air-travel caste system is a stanchion-and-belt divider that theoretically creates two distinct paths to the jetway. One side is for higher-status customers — first class, etc. The other is for the rabble. The function of the Status Rug is to help signal which side is which."

3. We've almost got that turkey genome worked out, and only a few decades after we began rapidly changing it through super intense selective breeding.

"Intense genetic selection for increased growth rate, meat yield, and growth efficiency, has enhanced the turkey industry's ability to roughly double its U.S. annual production of turkeys over the last 30 years to almost 300 million birds, while supplying more value to consumers. During this same period of time, a number of economically challenging consequences have developed for producers. These include increased skeletal problems, cardiac morbidity, reduced immune response to some pathogens, and some instances of meat quality issues, among others – all issues that have been, despite years of effort, difficult to address through conventional approaches to breeding."

4. Vets may be the most important sentinels for defending humanity against emergent diseases.

"It was the summer of 1999, and Tracey McNamara, then the chief veterinary pathologist at the Bronx Zoo, was growing concerned. The crows were dying in scores—staggering, having seizures, keeling over. Soon, the mysterious illness came for the zoo's exotic birds. Three flamingos, a cormorant, an Asian pheasant—all dead within a few days of one another. 'Anything that dropped dead on our grounds got necropsied, and I pursued a diagnosis,' says McNamara, now a professor at Western University. McNamara had a mystery: What was killing the birds? 'I already knew that we were not dealing with anything known to veterinary medicine,' she says. 'It was something new. And then when I heard that people were dying of an unusual encephalitis, I'm like, 'Oh, there's a link.'' That September, several residents of New York City had contracted and died of a similar illness."

+ Spoiler: it was West Nile Virus.

5. Mark your calendars! There is going to be a solar eclipse across the US in 1000 days.

"I remember reading about the total solar eclipse of February 26th, 1979 as a kid. Carter was in the White House, KISS was mounting yet another comeback, and Voyager 1 was wowing us with images of Jupiter. That was also the last total solar eclipse to grace mainland United States in the 20th century. But the ongoing 'eclipse-drought' is about to be broken. One thousand days from this coming Monday, November 24th on August 21st 2017, the shadow of the Moon will touch down off of the Oregon coast and sweep eastward across the U.S. heartland before heading out to the Atlantic off of the coast of South Carolina."

Today's 1957 American English Language Tip

contumac(it)y. Defiance of authority. The shorter form is more usual & is preferred.

The Credits:  1. fastcompany.com / @ashlaf 2. medium.com  3. poultryscience.org 4. nationaljournal.com 5. universetoday.com

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