The shortlist and judges for the 2020 ToB!

It's a Rooster-y time of year. Announcing the shortlist and judges for the 2020 Tournament of Books!

The Morning News

The debate over climate change, the eroding of workers’ rights, the rise of the private prison industry, and the media’s increasing refusal to talk about all of these in favor of focusing on soundbite propaganda and celebrity news.

The 2020s were pretty well predicted by Octavia E. Butler and other science fiction authors.
↩︎ OneZero
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Some 22% of the shares of the typical S&P 500 company sits in the portfolios of three index fund companies.
↩︎ Bloomberg 4d

Held in the Musée d'art et d'histoire Neuchâtel, in Switzerland, is an early precursor to the computer: a mechanical writer. As described by Futility Closet: 

Designed in the 18th century by Swiss watchmaker Pierre Jaquet-Droz, the automaton clutches a goose feather with which it can write any custom text up to 40 characters, guided by a stack of cams in the interior. Its eyes follow the pen, and it shakes extra ink from its quill after dipping it in an inkwell.

4d
A small city mayor went public about constant online harassment. So a man attacked her staff, demanding to see her.
↩︎ The San Luis Obispo Tribune 4d
"Maybe this is the highest thing a person can hope for." Helen Rosner on creating a recipe that's Instagram-famous.
↩︎ The New Yorker 4d

Classic songbirds and rotund groundbirds like grouse and ptarmigans have the advantage: They look like little balls of fluff, an important component for birbness.

Three basic rules to determine if a bird qualifies to be a “birb.”
↩︎ Audubon
4d
Nearly half of the Manhattan luxury-condo units that have come onto the market in the past five years remain unsold.
↩︎ The Atlantic 4d
Nearly 74% of UK pet-owners play music for their animals. Spotify now has playlists and a podcast for that.
↩︎ Reuters 4d

Maybe you've heard of Rhode Island's Yawgoons, but have you heard of WOW? Celebrating over 10 years of making goofy snowboarding videos, the Weird Japan crew is mostly about leader Doggy creating shenanigans at ski resorts. Never not fun.

4d
Photographs from the 42nd annual Dakar Rally, a 4,660-mile off-road adventure held entirely in Saudi Arabia this year.
↩︎ The Atlantic 4d
A reason to pay attention to the NFL: the story of the 49ers' Katie Sower, the NFL’s third full-time female coach.
↩︎ The Guardian 4d
Canada has a "unique and highly successful monarchy." To keep it that way, it should block Prince Harry and Meghan at the border.
↩︎ The Globe and Mail 4d
Virginia becomes the final state necessary to ratify the ERA, though legal battles remain in reviving the original legislation.
↩︎ The Washington Post 5d
Thirty-seven artists send a letter to MoMA asking it to divest from "sources of funding that profit from the suffering of others."
↩︎ Observer 5d
"To be with a pessimist is to know that you are with a pessimist. But you can be with a nihilist and have no idea."
↩︎ The MIT Press Reader 5d
Amazing, large-scale geometric designs made in snow—on foot—by cartographer Simon Beck.
↩︎ My Modern Met 5d
A writer's self-conducted experiment in reducing screen time: "It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done."
↩︎ OneZero 5d
A plot with music samples lets you experience the 13 dimensions of emotions music may evoke.
↩︎ University of California, Berkeley 5d
New advances in neurobiology could help explain the role of stress pathways in suicidal behavior.
↩︎ The Scientist 5d

Growing up, if there was one thing our household lacked, besides communication skills, it was business savvy. Of course, my parents never let on to specifics, but Dad’s fickle industry (film and TV) coupled with Los Angeles’ cost of living had long produced an ambient scarcity.

A usually stoic family finds a new way to talk more—by using a personal finance app to observe each other’s cash flow.
↩︎ Input
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