In this special report on the hidden danger of big pickup trucks, Consumer Reports notes that the trucks are getting larger and that many also lack advanced safety systems. Here’s why that makes them a hazard to pedestrians and drivers of smaller vehicles.

July 10, 1968 Dear Mr. Schulz, Do you know what it’s like to wander through life, having no significant conversations and participating in no significant events? Existing while not truly living? I’ve been doing it for years, breathing and walking around aimlessly while my peers engage in witty three-panel exchanges that reveal a depth of humanity and character. I wish it could be me. I wish I could be there, having relationships, demonstrating nuance, or ideally punching everyone in the face. You’ll recall that I was there at the beginning. Strip number one. October 2, 1950. I sat next to Shermy (who says hello, by the way) (actually he doesn’t, he doesn’t think you know who he is) as good ol’ Charlie Brown came walking by. “Oh, how I hate him,” said Shermy. I had no lines that day, but any reader knew that I was listening. I was learning. In the very next day’s strip, I walked down the road, saying, “Little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice.” Then I see Charlie Brown, and I punch him in the fucking eye. “That’s what little girls are made of,” I conclude.

His Nike commercials had fun with his multi-sport talents, showing him ready to play polo, golf, basketball and any number of sports that he came into contact with. But could he really excel at any of those other pursuits without much experience? Sports you wouldn't expect a 6-foot-1, 220-pound muscle-bound athlete to be able to pull off? Sports like, say, diving? "Oh yeah, the story that you're talking about is essentially true," former Auburn dive coach Rick Theobald told me over the phone. "All the divers who were there at the time, they still talk about it whenever we have a reunion."

Criminal organizations around the world thought they were using the latest, most exclusive encrypted cellphone technology available to conduct business away from the prying eyes of law enforcement. Instead, they were unwitting customers of a communications service that was secretly created by FBI agents and federal prosecutors in San Diego. Whether it was coordinating drug trafficking, money laundering or murders, every message tapped out on the phones was sent not only to the intended criminal underworld recipients, but delivered right into the hands of investigators. As Tuesday began on the other side of the world, first in New Zealand, Australia and later in Europe, hundreds of people were arrested as a result. Raids were ongoing into the night, and it was unclear if there were any arrests or charges in the United States.

Most magic tricks require a fairly sophisticated understanding of how humans perceive the world. To fall for a trick, people have to see things they perceive as important and ignore things that are actually important. Understanding why magic works can tell us important things about how humans direct their attention and form expectations. At some point, behavioral scientists realized they could take this idea and apply it to animals. If animals are also fooled by magic tricks, we can identify where our cognitive skills overlap. If the trick fails, we can identify points where our understandings of the world diverge. Unsurprisingly, most early experiments were done with other primates, as they would likely have a lot of overlap with us. But a new study attempts magic with birds and finds that many tricks just don't work with them.

Organizers told me they found that date appropriate because the ending of slavery and resistance to vaccines are both about "liberation"

Here are a just few groundbreaking pieces of queer cinema from early European, pre-code American, and the silent era of film.

Party leaders should act like they believe their own rhetoric on Republican extremism. The average consumer of political news can be forgiven for not being entirely sure how much to panic about the state of our democracy. On the one hand, one can read, in the mainstream press, that “more than 100 scholars of democracy have signed a new public statement” warning that “the future of our democracy itself” is in jeopardy. The president, a kindly old moderate who touted his ability to work across the aisle, even echoed this line, calling on Congress to fight back against the Republican “assault on democracy.” One can then read, from the same outlets, a White House statement saying “the President hosted Senator Capito for a constructive and frank conversation in the Oval Office about how we can drive economic growth and benefit America’s middle class through investing in our infrastructure.” Senator Shelley Moore Capito is a Republican from West Virginia. The subject of her conversation with the president was the White House’s current legislative priority, an infrastructure bill, the size and contours of which the administration is currently negotiating with the Republican minority that it also casts as an existential threat to representative democracy. Capito and Biden had another call on Friday and agreed to “connect again” on Monday. These negotiations have not only delayed action on an infrastructure package, they have sidelined every other piece of the ambitious agenda Joe Biden and Congressional Democrats ran on last year. But, even if the negotiations are doomed, they serve an important political function, according to insiders: “White House advisers like Steve Ricchetti have told Democrats that a concerted bipartisan attempt would benefit Democrats politically.”

The Senate on Monday unanimously passed a bill that would boost medical care for American diplomats and spies who develop mysterious brain injuries amid an uptick in suspected directed-energy attacks on U.S. personnel at home and abroad. The bill authorizes funding for treatment of illness linked to the attacks and gives the CIA director and the secretary of state expanded discretion on how the money is spent. The legislation also requires both the CIA and the State Department to keep Congress apprised of how the funds are being used — a nod to lawmakers’ long-standing frustrations with intelligence officials over what they see as a years-long failure to properly address the matter.

ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of IRS information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth — sometimes, even nothing.

Two people are reportedly arrested after Emmanuel Macron was slapped as he tours France.

A tale of online-sleuthing

YouTube Channel Tokyo Lens featured Japan's Nagoro (or Scarecrow Village) in a video that shows off a nearly deserted village that's home to hundreds of life-sized dolls.

In some small part, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Evil Dead owe their reputations and legacies to the conservative U.K. government and alarmist press that tried to ban these and other horror classics, branding them "video nasties."

DOJ argues that Trump’s “she’s not my type” denial of Carroll’s rape allegation was an official presidential statement and should be protected as one.

The Department of Justice announced on Monday that investigators were able to recover most of the ransom paid to hackers who interrupted operations at Colonial Pipeline last month.

Vice President Harris on Monday pleaded with migrants from Central American countries to stay home in a speech in Guatemala during her first foreign trip. Harris has the tricky task of reintroducing the United States as a friend and ally to the region while finding ways to reduce migration, which has often been Central America's only social safety valve amid worsening humanitarian conditions. The vice president was blunt in her message to Central Americans, repeating the line, "Do not come." To soften the blow, she framed the Biden administration's closed-door policy in a message of hope for the region. "I want to emphasize that the goal of our work is to help Guatemalans find hope at home. At the same time I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States Mexico border: Do not come, do not come," Harris said.

A photographer is suing Capcom for copyright infringement, accusing the video game maker of using her photos in games without permission.

Greg Abbott, Governor of Texas, has announced plans to expand the state's blockchain industry.

While Adam Curtis has been making films since 1983, he first gained a kind of international recognition that once might have been termed “cult” with The Century of the Self (2002) and The Power of Nightmares (2004). These films source-coded the psychological and political terrains of the neoliberal landscape, deftly flaying away the already-decaying narratives of the Bush/Blair era. Deploying a voiceover pitched somewhere between Marxian don and MI-5 briefing, the twisting, layered narratives of Century and Nightmares articulated answers that were neither easy nor comforting, but answers all the same. Contemporary society was a managed “dreamworld,” and the stories we told ourselves to live were deep cover for the real forces that controlled our world. Curtis unwound these narratives with sure hands.