The Morning News

It never occurred to the first white settlers who came to Yosemite and exclaimed that it had the pristine beauty of a European garden that it in fact was a garden, that this untouched wilderness was formed from intentional and continual human interaction.

How photography and conservation of America’s public lands has written indigenous people out of history.

↩︎ Real Life

We learn that a “visionary and relentless” Jeff Bezos continued to drive a beat-up Honda Accord even as he became a billionaire, but his reported remark to an Amazon sales team that they ought to treat small publishers the way a lion treats a sickly gazelle is apparently not deemed worthy of the historical record.

Reviewing a new book that boosts the Silicon Valley mythos, Adrian Chen shows how tech has furthered toxic capitalism.

↩︎ The Nation

The Brooklyn Museum is selling a Francis Bacon painting the artist wanted destroyed before it reached the market.

↩︎ Hyperallergic 9h

How quintessential American foods—the California roll, gumbo, queso, and spaghetti and meatballs—came to be.

↩︎ The Washington Post 9h

Using aerial lasers to look beneath foliage in Belize, scientists discover a network of ancient Maya farms.

↩︎ MACH 9h

Chill-inducing photos of icy Utqiagvik, Ala., America's most northernmost town, by Mark Mahaney.

↩︎ Booooooom 12h

“Charles was up-and-down on the television show. He certainly enjoyed what The Addams Family did for his earning power, but he said the characters were 'half as evil.' To be honest, he didn’t even really watch it, because on Friday nights he was usually out to dinner or on a date.”

A cultural history of The Addams Family.

↩︎ Smithsonian

12h

China's new airplane is built with the aid of spies and hackers out to "narrow the aviation gap."

↩︎ ZDNet 12h

A sentiment analysis of Jane Eyre.

[OC] Sentiment Analysis of Jane Eyre from r/dataisbeautiful

It feels good to feel bad, apparently, as this comment on the post from Reddit user part-time-poet sums up:

I analysed the words in Eyre,
The foul, the fair, I laid them bare,
And put them on the net to share
The sentiments I found in there.

In doing so, I must confess,
I saw a trend I hadn't guessed:
That all the parts I liked the best
Were also all the most depressed.

via Reddit

13h

Tax documents for two of Trump's Manhattan buildings reveal multiple conflicting figures that are "versions of fraud."

↩︎ ProPublica 13h

Order early if you're considering TMN or ToB merch for your holiday shopping: Printing and delivery takes a good couple of weeks.

↩︎ TMN Member Store 13h

Major League Baseball's decision to allow funds to buy stakes in clubs opens the question: Do teams exist to win or profit?

↩︎ FanGraphs 13h

The Aru Islands, where Wallace came up with his ideas on evolution, are set to become a sugar plantation.

↩︎ The Gecko Project 13h

More about this

The Editors' Longreads Picks

The argument for life on Mars rests partly on the fact there is no evidence against its possibility.

↩︎ Scientific American 1d

France, among other nations, calls for a three percent digital tax—e.g., on any Facebook ad revenue "connected" to France.

↩︎ Marginal Revolution 1d

The French National Assembly passes a sweeping bioethics bill to provide IVF to lesbians and single women.

↩︎ Al Jazeera 1d

The whole thing that’s sprung up around the band has to be at least partly about something other than the music, because the scale of the success doesn’t make sense. But I don’t know what the fuck is happening or how it’s happening.

A long conversation with a candid, introspective Dave Matthews to figure out why people love his band so much.

↩︎ Vulture

According to Ronan Farrow's new book, Harvey Weinstein asked Woody Allen—Farrow's dad—for advice on how to deal with his accusers.

↩︎ The Cut 1d

"No debt, no debt, no debt." Five people, picked to test out Universal Basic Income, explain where the money goes.

↩︎ New York Magazine 1d

For fans of print publishing, this is pretty cute: a breezy look at an edition of the London Review of Books coming together.

See also: A look at the London Review of Books’ cover archive over the past 40 years.