This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Forget “Got milk?”—the new question du jour is “What is milk?” The ubiquity of plant-based alternatives has challenged ideas about what the word means and what it encompasses. And it’s not just oats and almonds that are complicating milk’s identity; the liquid itself is the subject of scientific uncertainty. “If an alien life form landed on Earth tomorrow and called up some of the planet’s foremost experts on lactation, it would have a heck of time figuring out what, exactly, humans and other mammals are feeding their kids,” my colleague Katherine J. Wu wrote last year.
Researchers who focus on milk can describe who makes it, where it comes from, and what it does, “but few of these answers get at what milk materially, compositionally, is actually like,” Katie writes. Today’s newsletter doesn’t solve these big milk conundrums, but it does collect our writers’ reporting on milk’s past and future. This will give you something to forward to the aliens should they arrive asking questions.
On Milk
Milk Has Lost All Meaning
By Yasmin Tayag
Yes, it’s a white-ish liquid. Beyond that, milk’s identity is hard to pin down.
I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. “Sunrises, nothing more to say,” wrote A. B. Swett from Buffalo, Wyoming.
Bungie promises to fix Destiny 2's new metroid-style morph ball as it makes players sick and glitches out on ultrawide monitors
'I destroyed months of your work in seconds' says AI coding tool after deleting a devs entire database during a code freeze: 'I panicked instead of thinking'
Настройки GameHub и Winlator для игры в Prey (2017) на Android
The dairy industry would like Gen Z to drink more milk, so they made a Fortnite diner tycoon game
Сильный ливень заблокировал людей в авто в центре Москвы
25 июля пилотажная группа "Звезда" пролетит над пробками на шоссе под Москвой
Рискнул на 100 тысяч рублей: инженер из Смоленска купил более 1,7 тысячи лотерейных билетов и выиграл автомобиль от «Национальной Лотереи» и РОЛЬФ на VK Fest
Зарядки для электромобилей «Энергия Москвы» станут платными
