Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy. Sunshine on my solar panels makes me ecstatic. It turns out we're capturing more energy from the wind and sun these days. A lot more. "Renewables in the form of solar and wind now account for more [new] installed capacity than any other form of electricity, including coal." Last year around the world, a half a million solar panels were installed ... each day. We started with a John Denver lyric. Let's finish with some Springsteen. Mama always told me not to look into the sights of the sun ...
Oh, but Mama, that's where the fun is.

+ In other environmental news, someone is building a machine to turn your corpse into compost.

Will the AT&T acquisition of TimeWarner get federal approval? Before you place your bet, consider this data provided by the NYT: "AT&T is the biggest donor to federal lawmakers and their causes among cable and cellular telecommunications companies, with its employees and political action committee sending money to 374 of the House's 435 members and 85 of the Senate's 100 members this election cycle."

+ "Hemisphere was used far beyond the war on drugs to include everything from investigations of homicide to Medicaid fraud." The Daily Beast explains how AT&T is spying on Americans for profit. (It would be weirder if they were just doing it for fun.)

According to the latest Pew numbers, "more than a third of American social media users are 'worn out' by how much politics they see in their social media feeds, and more than 80 percent of social media users try to ignore political posts with which they disagree." And "About six in 10 respondents said they found discussing politics online with someone who disagreed was stressful and frustrating." Look. I know it's been a long election. But there are only two more weeks to go. So let's suck it up and attack the crap out of each other.

+ Americans from both sides of the aisle share a "yearning for a more civil and less divided nation." But we disagree on almost everything else.

Next year, the Affordable Care Act will become less affordable. From NPR: The cost of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act is expected to rise an average of 22 percent in 2017... Still, federal subsidies will also rise, meaning that few people are likely to have to pay the full cost after the rate increases to get insurance coverage."

+ "This is not merely a problem of optics or political credit. Perception can create its own reality." Jonathan Chait argues that Obamacare is a policy triumph and a political failure. When it comes to the politics of Obamacare, the messaging has always been a mess.

"We have been able to verify Marlowe's presence in those three plays strongly and clearly enough. We can now be confident that they didn't just influence each other, but they worked with each other. Rivals sometimes collaborate." With a little help from computers and big data, experts are now convinced that Christopher Marlowe deserves credit and should even be listed as a co-author on some of Shakespeare's works.

+ Narratively: "Every year, half a million brawny bikers descend on one small South Dakota town. This is the first time they hopped off their Harleys to recite Shakespeare."

+ Here's a pretty incredible list of words and phrases coined by Shakespeare. (This guy would have killed on Twitter.)

"The Defense Department is designing robotic fighter jets that would fly into combat alongside manned aircraft. It has tested missiles that can decide what to attack, and it has built ships that can hunt for enemy submarines, stalking those it finds over thousands of miles, without any help from humans." Yes, we're building weapons that can autonomously make decision about what to kill.

"The result today is a paradox. At the same time that the nation has achieved perhaps the most tolerant culture in U.S. history, the destruction of the anti-monopoly and anti-bank tradition in the Democratic Party has also cleared the way for the greatest concentration of economic power in a century." The Atlantic's Matt Stoller: How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul.

+ The New Yorker's George Packer: Hillary Clinton And The Populist Revolt.

+ Vox: What a liberal sociologist learned from spending five years in Trump's America.

One of Uber's self-driving trucks just made a major beer run. This is the beginning of a massive economic shift. And seeing a truck with no one behind the wheel is going to take some getting used to.

First LeBron's Cavs won the NBA championship. And now the Cleveland Indians are in the World Series. As WaPo reports: In Cleveland, sports prosperity is almost too much to believe. Kudos to the Browns for keepin' it real and remaining loyal to the city's identity.

+ The storyline has been all about the Cubs. But to get a feel for sports in Cleveland, check out the 30 for 30 doc, Believeland.

It's "a $1,500 to $3,000 procedure that temporarily improves the look of the scrotum and decreases sweatiness for three to six months." Yes, Scrotox is real.

+ From flossing to peeling veggies, here are 40 things you can stop doing right now.

+ CNN: Before his coma he spoke English; after waking up he's fluent in Spanish.

+ Dos Equis debuts its new Most Interesting Man in the World. I reject this.