Weekend Reads 4/2/16

I Want to Believe This Surprised Baboon Gets What Magic Is

Teller wasn’t quite as impressed as I was. "The sleight of hand was pretty good," he said. "But not enough to justify that reaction. What the heck was on that card? Baboon catnip? Pheromones of the opposite sex?"

Microsoft Created a Twitter Bot to Learn From Users. It Quickly Became a Racist Jerk.

But Tay, as the bot was named, also seemed to learn some bad behavior on its own. According to The Guardian, it responded to a question about whether the British actor Ricky Gervais is an atheist by saying: “ricky gervais learned totalitarianism from adolf hitler, the inventor of atheism.”

John Kasich’s Plan to Stop Trump

The image of the party leaping past Trump and Cruz and nominating an establishment-approved distant–third-place finisher in a cycle defined by hatred of the political establishment would in and of itself lead to party-destroying levels of rage among GOP voters.

A Baseball Mystery: The Home Run Is Back, And No One Knows Why

Just as it began to seem certain that only a deus ex Manfred could rescue the sport from soccer-esque scores, baseball’s offense came back from the brink. The only problem is that no one knows why, or whether it will last.