Want to read Reddit but don’t have the time? Our daily Reddit Digest highlights the most interesting or important discussions from around the social news site—every morning.
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I lived abroad for three years, and when I came back to the United States in 2009, I asked this very same question: “Where did all the lightning bugs go?” Remembering the calm beauty of lightning bugs flashing on a summer night makes their disappearance one of the more poignant reminders of the terrible things we do to the environment. (/r/askscience)
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r/subredditoftheday profiles r/tifu (“Today I Fucked Up”), “pure, uncut, grade A schadenfreude.” (/r/subredditoftheday)
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A double-dose of amateur planetary photography. In exhibit A, a redditor at r/1000words captures a passenger jet passing below Venus. And at r/Astronomy, null_value shows off Saturn, its rings, and the blackness of space. (/r/Astronomy, /r/1000words)
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In case you were planning on opening a boutique medieval medicine shop, redditors nilhaus and Daeres have helpfully explained what worked and what didn’t back in the day. Most things didn’t work. But they did have aspirin! (/r/AskHistorians)
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Should you use multiple accounts to control your Reddit experience? That is, one account for your your more serious redditing and another when you want to indulge in guilty-pleasure meme-viewing. “I’ve really enjoyed the ability to still view a lot of pics/screen shots/memes in small doses and being able to flip back to this account for more discussion-oriented material,” plaqate writes. (/r/TheoryOfReddit)
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Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, did an AMA yesterday. Apparently, he’s a pretty popular guy. (/r/IAmA)
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r/wikipedia digs up Mt. Kalish, a 21,778 foot-high “pyramid-shaped peak in the Himalayas sacred in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Bön” that “has NEVER been climbed.” Bonus to this story: a sherpa named Satan. (/r/wikipedia)
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It’s that time of the year (month?) again. Redditors are posting pictures of themselves at r/AskReddit. Here’s a fun drinking game: Take a shot every time you see a 20-something white male. (/r/AskReddit)
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Is the volcano under Yellowstone going to erupt anytime soon, and will it destroy the United States? “Not likely to happen anytime soon, but if it does happen it will fuck shit up, but not as badly as you might fear,” redditor Bones_Jones writes at the end of a long, interesting essay on the subject. (/r/askscience)
Did I miss something? Let me know in the comments.
Photo by kodomut