The New York Times:

A nearly century-old law that turned New York bars into no-dancing zones, prevented singers like Billie Holiday and Ray Charles from performing and drew protest from Frank Sinatra, is finally set to be struck down.

The Cabaret Law was created during Prohibition to patrol speakeasies, and while its restrictions on musicians came and went, the ban on social dancing has remained — leaving generations of club owners flicking the lights or playing “Eleanor Rigby” to still the crowd, lest they be fined or padlocked by the police in midnight raids. It is an odd and archaic regulation in a city that thinks of itself as a night life capital, but one that has resisted multiple attempts at repeal.

Kevin Bacon wins again.

The New York Times:

A 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy has been detained by federal immigration authorities in Texas after she passed through a Border Patrol checkpoint on her way to a hospital to undergo emergency gall bladder surgery.

The girl, Rosamaria Hernandez, who was brought over the border illegally to live in Laredo, Tex., when she was three months old, was being transferred from a medical center in Laredo to a hospital in Corpus Christi around 2 a.m. on Tuesday when Border Patrol agents stopped the ambulance she was riding in, her family said. The agents allowed her to continue to Driscoll Children’s Hospital, the family said, but followed the ambulance the rest of the way there, then waited outside her room until she was released from the hospital.

What the fuck are we doing as a country? This is absurd.

Zachary Crockett, writing at Priceonomics:

But often lost in this narrative is the story of the invention itself, and the soft-spoken savant who pioneered it. For inventor Andy Hildebrand, Auto-Tune was an incredibly complex product — the result of years of rigorous study, statistical computation, and the creation of algorithms previously deemed to be impossible.

Hildebrand’s invention has taken him on a crazy journey: He’s given up a lucrative career in oil. He’s changed the economics of the recording industry. He’s been sued by hip-hop artist T-Pain. And in the course of it all, he’s raised pertinent questions about what constitutes “real” music.