Global warming is a serious problem (as I've reported since 1988). But... "Experts and skippers say" is a warning sign in stories like this @reuters article straining to find a #climatechange angle in a tragic fatal yacht sinking in a freak windstorm in Sicily. A #singlesource

It's odd that the trailer for Coppola's "Megalopolis" begins by quoting slams of his previous movies ("The Godfather," "Apocalypse Now") from famous critics. It's even odder that the famous critics apparently didn't say any of those things. vulture.com/article/did-th…

Stumbled across this 7-yr-old review by the great Patricia Limerick of a Laura Ingalls Wilder bio, and if you're curious about Wilder's weird story and troubled place in history or just want excellent litchat this Sunday you could do way worse than this. rb.gy/yhxd4m

One part of industrial policy is working, argues Jesse D. Jenkins in Heatmap News -- "Biden-Harris policies [especially the IRA and CHIPS] have created hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the industries of the future" heatmap.news/economy/us-man… /v James Fallows

Thrilled that NYTimes Science Writing superstars Carl Zimmer and Robin Marantz Henig are joining me at this Brooklyn Book Fest bookends event--do stop by if you can--we'll be talking eels, story telling and a whole lot more: powerhousearena.com/events/book-la…

Ha! Thanks for the nod. ("So nice they made it twice," as my mom used to say.)

Nebraska atty general and secretary of state suddenly ban Nebraskans w/ past felony convictions from registering to vote, even though in April the Republican-controlled legislature overwhelmingly passed (38-6) bill allowing anyone w/ a past felony to vote. boltsmag.org/nebraska-votin…

A Joycean single-sentence summary of RFKJr's campaign from an old "Spy" writer -- it took me back to the magazine's late-'80s heyday: airmail.news/issues/2024-8-… (Published, fittingly, in the "Spy" cofounder's new online mag.)

American Unagi is featured in Slippery Beast--along with its intrepid and tireless founder, Sara Rademaker! The finest American eel available in the US today!

Best writing advice I ever got was from the novelist Robert Stone, whom I was lucky enough to have as a teacher in college. I'd given him a piece that was full of Fine Writing. He put it down and said with a sigh, "You know, some poor bastard is going to have to read this stuff."

"This is the first time in 27 years that not a single named tropical storm has developed in the [Atlantic] basin between Aug. 21 and Sept. 2." The last one was Ernesto on August 12. accuweather.com/en/hurricane/a…

This is a fascinating shift. On some copyright issues, the anti-capitalist left and free-market right have switched positions. programmablemutter.com/p/the-politica… (/v Robinson Meyer )

I had a writing teacher who once remarked that a piece I had submitted contained a lot of Fine Writing. This was not a compliment. Fine Writing = over-elaborate, pointlessly "elegant" prose used by the writer to show off. Wild that the AI folks are now selling Fine Writing.

This is a terrific series of posts about what seems to be a marvelous photographic book project, and the only thing I have to add is that what seems to be a PDF of the whole thing is available gratis at kuscholarworks.ku.edu/entities/publi…

Hey, I didn't know Eadweard Muybridge had made movies of running bison back in 1883: rb.gy/wfl4f6