Hope exhausted years ago
but I still try.
Heart thumps on doggedly
and wants to know
if nice surprises might in time arrive,
and mind likewise. I read
to keep a lookout
unbeknownst,
or make a wild surmise. I dream
the ground I plough and plant
might even now
sprout greenery I never saw before
and not, as I expect, remain
as rolling oceans do in falling snow.
The Week’s daily crossword
The Week’s daily codeword puzzle
Lando Norris has hailed his maiden Formula One win at the Miami Grand Prix as a moment of immense pride and one that he insisted would finally silence the critics and doubters who have called his talent into question.
The McLaren driver claimed his debut victory in a thrilling finale at the Miami International Autodrome. Norris comprehensively beat the triple world champion Max Verstappen into second place to take the flag for the first time after 110 race starts since making his debut in Australia in 2019.
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.
Go Ahead, Try to Explain Milk
By Katherine J. Wu
No one can define it, much less fully replicate it.
Milk Has Lost Its Magic
By Yasmin Tayag
The bird-flu panic is getting out of hand.
Still Curious?
Other Diversions
P.S.
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.
— Isabel