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The Morning News
In case you missed it: an armed soldier on a hoverboard flew above the Champs-Élysées for Bastille Day.
↩︎ Metro 3h
The murder trial of Drakeo the Ruler offers a way "to examine the toxic plaque corroding the American criminal justice system."
↩︎ FADER 4h
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The Editors' Longreads Picks

Documentarian Ken Burns gives a very good defense of burning the American flag, and why “Old Town Road” was the kind of hit country music needs.

4h
"Think of your mother / as one discrete corner / of a person with a multiple / mental disorder." From "Split," by Jennifer Hecht.
↩︎ Poetry Magazine 4h
For your summer wanderlust: A trip through French mountains in a vintage, troublesome Citroën 2CV.
↩︎ The New York Times 4h

The best aspects of liberal democracy cannot survive without any commitment to finding some common way of seeing and talking about the world.

Fights over truth claims may simply be “the price we have to pay for living in a democracy.” But we still need to fight.
↩︎ The Hedgehog Review
4h
Academia likes to think it's above trends when it's actually beholden to them. But there can be good, productive fashions.
↩︎ The Chronicle Review 4h
Grip strength is in decline—a corollary of a longer-living, increasingly sick population.
↩︎ Nautilus 4h
Abstract painter Frank Bowling gets his due with a major retrospective at the Tate Britain of his Atlantic-spanning career.
↩︎ The New York Times 5h
A community-generated mapping project marks moments of queerness wherever they occured.
↩︎ Queering the Map 5h
Twelve percent of British men say they could win a point in a game of tennis against 23-time Grand Slam winner Serena Williams.
↩︎ YouGov 5h

This was not a particularly high quality final. Its ebb and flow was usually reliant on one of the players failing or erring rather than succeeding or winner-ing (with a few notable exceptions). But holy moly was it chock full of drama.

How Novak Djokovic beat Roger Federer in the longest Wimbledon mens final in history, illustrated in GIFs.
↩︎ The Racquet
5h
The smoke from California's Camp fire blotted out the sun. The effect on people's lungs won't be known for years or decades.
↩︎ The Chico Enterprise-Record 5h
Why many pencils are yellow: to communicate their graphite's connection to "long-held Chinese associations of royalty."
↩︎ Artsy 5h

Newly discovered footage of the Velvet Underground playing “I’m Waiting for the Man,” “Beginning to See the Light,” and “I’m Set Free” at an Oct. 15, 1969, Vietnam War protest in Dallas.

2d

Here’s what goes in the air: sulfur dioxide, nitrates, sulfates, phenols, industrial dust, heavy metals. Sometimes you can’t see the neighboring houses in Norilsk because of the air pollution.

Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova on Russia’s “rivers of blood, black snow, toxic waste, and acid rain.”
↩︎ BuzzFeed News
2d
TMN is reader-supported. Please consider becoming a Sustaining Member or making a one-time donation—thank you!
↩︎ TMN Membership 2d
Whether a tennis player can serve at 150 mph has a lot to do with height, but many at the tour level say speed isn't so important.
↩︎ WIRED 2d
Found in an air duct at a former Illinois high school, a cache of stolen wallets give a glimpse of teen life in the 1940s.
↩︎ Atlas Obscura 2d
Moons that escape their planets and orbit their stars are "ploonets." Today's telescopes may be able to locate such objects.
↩︎ Science News 2d