Happy Wednesday! We’ve reached the end of July. Why, it feels like it was only yesterday I was saying “We’ve reached the end of January.” Time flies when there’s a lot of news happening all the time.

This morning I’ll spotlight some of this news, with some good pieces of longform reporting I hope you’ll read.

The New York Times investigated supply chains for sugar, which are monitored to ensure that human rights are respected. But, spoiler alert, human rights are not respected. An ugly reminder of where so many of our comforts come from.

ProPublica also has a grim report looking at failures in medical care in a Louisiana prison, and how federal law stymies efforts at reform.

Over in The Atlantic, a look at another new frontier in the world AI: lie detecting. Lie detectors are, of course, notoriously useless. AI lie detectors are probably going to be another way that tech tries to sell its goods to law enforcement to really ugly ends.

Something nearer and dearer to my professional world, the science journal Nature sent a reporter to explore a predatory academic conference (predatory as in getting people to pay for a poorly organized and disreputable conference that presents itself as being more scientifically legitimate than it claims). Predatory publishing and conferences are becoming yet another part of the academic world that scholars must be vigilant of, and sometimes it can be hard to tell until you’ve already spent money.

And lastly, an article about the man buying up failing famous brands and keeping them going along while outsourcing all of their production, repeating the profits while offloading the risks. I had no idea Brooks Brothers had collapsed and was being propped as a zombie brand.

Hope your day is good! Come join us in the Olympics thread, which is a great way to celebrate the games and learn about sports you’ve never really looked into before. And, above all, be kind and thoughtful today. Cheers.