Facebook’s throng of users are still hazy on how the tech behemoth, consumed by scandal after scandal, makes money. A new study shows that a large percentage of Facebook users aren’t aware of the store of behavioral and relationship data the platform has on them—a list of “traits and interests” for almost all active users (you can see what Facebook has on you, here).Recent Facebook feeds have been filled with users’ before-and-after pictures, from 2019 versus 2009. Some wary critics speculate that the meme could be a nefarious ploy to hone Facebook’s facial-recognition algorithms. But “if you think that not posting these two photos does anything to surveillance capitalism or the platforms that succeed through it, that’s just not right.”

— Saahil Desai

Unthinkable

(Gary Cameron / Reuters)

Unthinkable is The Atlantic’s catalog of 50 incidents from the first two years of President Trump’s first term in office, ranked—highly subjectively!—according to both their outlandishness and their importance.

At No. 3: Trump is the first modern president not to release his tax returns. He’s also making substantial money outside the presidency.

Join the conversation: Which moments from the Trump presidency would you add to this list? Email us at letters@theatlantic.com with the subject line “Unthinkable,” and include your full name, city, and state. Or tweet using the hashtag #TrumpUnthinkable.

Evening Read

For decades, researchers have chronicled infants’ first words and how humans develop language. But what about the words people say just before they die?

Many people die in such silence, particularly if they have advanced dementia or Alzheimer’s that robbed them of language years earlier. For those who do speak, it seems their vernacular is often banal. From a doctor I heard that people often say, “Oh fuck, oh fuck.” Often it’s the names of wives, husbands, children. “A nurse from the hospice told me that the last words of dying men often resembled each other,” wrote Hajo Schumacher in a September essay inDer Spiegel. “Almost everyone is calling for ‘Mommy’ or ‘Mama’ with the last breath.” It’s still the interactions that fascinate me, partly because their subtle interpersonal textures are lost when they’re written down.

→ Read the rest.

Looking for our daily mini crossword? Try your hand at it here—the puzzle gets more difficult through the week. Concerns, comments, questions, typos? Email Shan Wang at swang@theatlantic.com. Did you get this newsletter from a friend? Sign yourself up.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Saahil Desai is an associate editor at The Atlantic, where he covers politics and policy. Connect Twitter