This week, Donald Trump decided to soften his image after publishing a tweet in which he encouraged violence against journalists.

Hey, Bones McCoy, I gotta seem like a nice guy. Let’s do a photo op at a petting zoo or a military cemetery or some crap like that.

I wish I was dead.

Why is that orangutan pointing at me?

Somebody bring me that little shithead so we can get out of this dump.

• Thoughts on Garry Kasparov’s Deep Thinking from Nicholas Carr and me.

• Frank Rich compares the scandals of Nixon and Trump.

• Bruce Bartlett offers a searing takedown of GOP anti-intellectualism.

• In 1952, Wernher von Braun dreamed of launching gas chambers into space.

• Steven Levy quizzes Sebastian Thrun about the necessity of flying cars.

• Alexis Madrigal wonders about the wisdom of brain-to-brain interfaces.

• Jennifer Doudna addresses her key role in the “CRISPR Revolution.”

• Vice explores pet cloning, a very inexact and terribly expensive art.

• A brief note from 1928 about Rockefeller dimes.

• This week’s Afflictor keyphrase searches: Jack Dorsey, the Wonderland murders.