Pokémon Go set off a wave of paranoia in US intelligence

From Foreign Policy: "As the game’s popularity exploded, pokémon materialized at NSA headquarters; near America’s top-secret nuclear weapons laboratories in New Mexico; and at covert CIA facilities in northern Virginia, thanks to ardent devotees of the game working there.This set off alarm bells for U.S. counterintelligence officials. Why were pokémon appearing at such sensitive locations? Could this conspicuous placement be evidence of some sort of malicious intent? Could the app be functioning as a targeted spying tool, as part of a “Pokémon Go hack me” scheme? Security experts from the CIA, NSA, and Energy Department (which manages the country’s nuclear arsenal) subsequently sent memos instructing colleagues to stop playing Pokémon Go at their workplaces—and perhaps entirely.

JFK staged his own death in a James Bond–inspired movie just before he died

From Vanity Fair: "A visit to the website of the John F. Kennedy Library reveals a silent motion picture, some 16 minutes long, shot on the weekend of September 21 and 22, 1963. The footage depicts scenes of Kennedy, his family, and a few friends at various locations around Newport, Rhode Island. The first lady had made an unusual request. She explained that she and the president were making a humorous short film—a kind of spy movie. At one point, according to Landis, Jackie asked the agents to hurriedly drive up to the main house and react as if they had just heard shots. Landis says the agents entered the house and found the president lying on the floor in the foyer with ketchup smeared on him. Two months later, he was assassinated."

The strange theft of a priceless portrait of Sir Winston Churchill

From The Walrus: "It wasn't the cheap frame that gave the forgery away. Nor was it the photocopied image of the scowling Winston Churchill contained inside. It was the way it hung, crooked against the dark oak-panelled wall—a slight tilt, down and to the right. Bruno Lair couldn’t understand how the portrait had come detached from the wall. As head of engineering at the Fairmont Château Laurier, he had personally bolted it in place twenty-five years earlier, using what, at the time, was a state-of-the-art locking mechanism. Inside that frame, he’d been told, was one of the most valuable photographs in existence: a signed, rare, original copy of The Roaring Lion, captured by the greatest portrait photographer of the twentieth century. The signature—Karsh—in the bottom left corner of the frame was said to be priceless."

Hi everyone! Mathew Ingram here. I am able to continue writing this newsletter in part because of your financial help and support, which you can do either through my Patreon or by upgrading your subscription to a monthly contribution. I enjoy gathering all of these links and sharing them with you, but it does take time, and your support makes it possible for me to do that. And I appreciate it, believe me!

Fish have a brain microbiome. Could humans have one too?

From Quanta: "A study published in Science Advances provided the strongest evidence yet that a brain microbiome can and does exist in healthy vertebrates — fish, specifically. Researchers at the University of New Mexico discovered communities of bacteria thriving in salmon and trout brains. Many of the microbial species have special adaptations that allow them to survive in brain tissue. Matthew Olm, a physiologist who studies the human microbiome at the University of Colorado, Boulder and was not involved with the study, found the new research convincing. “This is concrete evidence that brain microbiomes do exist in vertebrates,” he said. “And so the idea that humans have a brain microbiome is not outlandish.”

His wives kept dying mysteriously and they finally figured out why

From the LA Times: "William Dale Archerd drank highballs, married frequently and despised 9-to-5 employment. He was Arkansas-born, slender, with pale blue eyes and wavy silver hair. He inspired romantic devotion in women and trust in criminal confederates. For decades, his wives and acquaintances were fatally stricken with sudden, convulsion-inducing illness that coroners did not grasp as murder.His motive was greed, though he never made much. He was a frail 55 when police finally arrested him at his Alhambra home in 1967. “Well, it took you long enough!” he quipped. Even on death row, he retained his aura of blithe unconcern. Archerd was a natural salesman, at various times hawking vitamins, hearing aids and folding doors. The merchandise he sold best was himself. From 1930 to 1965, he married seven women, sometimes not bothering to divorce the previous one."

China has developed an autonomous tire-shaped robot

Acknowledgements: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other newsletters that I rely on as "serendipity engines," such as The Morning News from Rosecrans Baldwin and Andrew Womack, Jodi Ettenberg's Curious About Everything, Dan Lewis's Now I Know, Robert Cottrell and Caroline Crampton's The Browser, Clive Thompson's Linkfest, Noah Brier and Colin Nagy's Why Is This Interesting, Maria Popova's The Marginalian, Sheehan Quirke AKA The Cultural Tutor, the Smithsonian magazine, and JSTOR Daily. If you come across something interesting that you think should be included here, please feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com