Daily Bafflements

• Ground sensors and satellites are being deployed to help predict and slow the crumbling of ancient Pompeii. As BLDGBLOG describes, “guards will receive electronic updates from the city itself while out on their daily rounds, including automated pings and alerts of impending structural failure or deformations of the ground, like some weird, semi-militarized version of ambient music, as if listening to the real-time groans of a settling city by radio.” Baffling.

• Here is a map showing the thirty-one states in which daycare is more expensive than college (via Mother Jones).

• Sad news in NYC: the last Kim’s Video & Music location will be closing its doors this summer. If you haven’t read it, the Village Voice story about the strange fate of the film collection from Mondo Kim’s closing back in 2009 is really worth your time.

• Fun fact about Ellison “Tarzan” Brown, one of the two Native Americans to ever win the Boston Marathon (and he won it twice, in 1936 and 1939), as reported by the Day: “Mr. Brown once won a foot race from New York City to Port Chester, N.Y. and then traveled by car to compete the next day in a 26-mile race in Manchester, N.H. He also won that race.”