A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. And there's a certain symmetry to that since sugar might be the reason why we need so much medicine in the first place. In the New Yorker, Michael Specter examines the an increasingly common question: How Much Harm Can Sugar Do? Specter also explains one of the reasons we're losing the war on obesity: "In most wars, the enemy stays the enemy. In this one, however, our allies and demons keep swapping places. When I was young, fat was the principal nemesis, and any other form of calorie was considered acceptable. My mother, keenly interested in the health of her children, insisted that we put margarine on our Wonder Bread." (He was lucky. I didn't start experimenting with Wonder Bread until college.)

+ LA Times: Half of Americans have diabetes or pre-diabetes. And believe it or not, that's the good news.

A Baltimore panel has "unanimously approved a $6.4 million payout Wednesday to settle the threat of a federal lawsuit in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray." How much of a difference did it make that mainstream and social media covered this story? Consider this: Between 2011 and 2014, Baltimore paid out a total of $5.7 million over lawsuits that claimed excessive force by police.

Give me an E, Give Me a U. What's that spell? We're about to find out. "The president of the European Commission has called for the mandatory distribution of about 160,000 asylum-seekers among the EU's 28 member states." Greece was an economic test. This is a political and humanitarian test.

+ Why are some countries more open to refugees than others? One reason is demographics. From WaPo: This map helps explain why some European countries reject refugees, and others love them.

+ Vox on the refugee crisis: 9 questions you were too embarrassed to ask.

"But guess what everyone's been missing in the middle of their keening for the dear, soon-to-be-departed Earth? There is good news. And not just incremental good news but transformational good news." In NY Mag, Jonathan Chait argues we've hit peak climate change and that this Is the year humans finally got serious about saving themselves from themselves.

"Over 63 years and counting, she has advised a dozen prime ministers (the first was Winston Churchill) and observed 12 U.S. presidents and seven popes." And Queen Elizabeth II just became her country's longest reigning monarch. In the old days, we'd celebrate a milestone like this with some good wine and a few beheadings. But today we'll settle for this look back at some of the Queen's key milestones in photos and videos.

+ Bloomberg: Queen Elizabeth II isn't as rich as you'd think, at least relative to today's super-rich. (She should have launched an app.)

"Despite all of these hours of tennis in the course of all these years -- including another one and a half compelling ones on Tuesday, which ended with Serena beating Venus in three sets and continuing her march toward the calendar Grand Slam -- we aren't much closer to an answer." Ian Crouch on the odd and often upsetting experience of watching the Williams sisters compete against each other. (During yesterday's match, they couldn't have looked much more unhappy.)

+ Grantland: How Venus Williams helped create Serena.

Apple had its biggest day of product launches in recent years. The new phones (and new ways to purchase them) were almost an afterthought as Tim Cook introduced a new, massive iPad, an iPencil (yes, Apple went stylus), and a major upgrade to the Apple TV product, which will soon have its own app store. My favorite moment from the event was when Phil Schiller said, "You can get a new iPhone every single year." Seriously. Pablo Escobar wishes he had a product that addictive. Here's Buzzfeed with the key video moments from the event.

+ And if you're an iAddict like me, you might enjoy my collection of tweets from the event. (If you sense something desperate about live-tweeting an Apple event and then collecting those tweets in one place, you're probably onto something.)

United's CEO resigned for a reason other than the fact that every flight you've taken on United has been terrible. So it had to have something to do with a scandal in Jersey. Meanwhile, if Jeff Smisek wants to keep his very large severance package, he'll need to cooperate in the ongoing investigation.

Everything -- from the coverage to the penalty to the appeals -- has seemed out of proportion when it comes to Deflategate. Maybe that's because the whole thing is about something else. ESPN's excellent Don Van Natta and Jr.Seth Wickersham take you inside what really split the NFL and Patriots apart.

+ "It was a special moment. remember saying ‘I couldn't have done it without you." Hilary Sargent shares the inside scoop on one of Tom Brady's closest confidantes: The quarterback's quarterback.

"For the first time, a lot of people had a lot of stuff, much of it new. And for the first time, there was better, fresher, more socially signifying stuff rolling in all the time." And somehow, that all led to a "yard sale that runs for nearly 700 miles along a mostly vertical line connecting Alabama and Michigan."

+ This guy rode the longest known NYC subway route. (He probably also set a record for Purell use.)