March 29, 2017

#ThanksForTyping hashtag finds the many times that wives did all the work for their author husbands. / Buzzfeed

The Zombie round opens with Buzzfeed’s Isaac Fitzgerald reading The Nix and The Underground Railroad. / The Tournament of Books

Hyperrealistic drawings by Nigerian artist Arinze Stanley, painstakingly rendered in charcoal and graphite. / Creators

“Of all the arts, writers most envy music, for being both abstract and immediate, and also in no need of translation. But painting might come a close second, for the way that the expression and the means of expression are coterminous.” Julian Barnes on how writers and painters influence each other. / New York Review of Books

Starting today, the UK has two years to untangle itself from the EU: a brief explanation on how it’ll get done. / The Economist

Three rivers are now legally people—one in New Zealand, two in India—and gain new rights by consequence. / Quartz

NBC catches up with streaming era, nixes tape delay for live 2018 Winter Olympics. / Los Angeles Times

“Music made us get up and dance, or occasionally throw a rock. Food, especially if combined with wine, encourages a state of satiety and repose.” Our recent obsession with food may be inducing complacency in broader culture. “Eating everything is not much of a revolution. If anything, historical resonance has been achieved by people who refused to eat certain foods.” / Bloomberg

Of “the Appalachian folk songs that a metal listener might appreciate best,” most are murder ballads. / Invisible Oranges

Retired park ranger apparently goes rogue and and posts 1,496 US National Park maps online for free downloading. / Gear Institute

Unwilling to offer a counter-narrative, the Midwest is complicit in pop culture’s stereotypes about the region. / LitHub

After 37 years as the United States’ top crop, corn is expected to fall behind soybeans in production this year. / The Guardian

“We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.” From Wallace Stegner’s 1960 letter to the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission, which inspired the Wilderness Act. / Adventure Journal

A Kyoto Tengu lost its seven-foot nose to heavy snow. The nose has since been repaired. / Spoon & Tamago

Here are some beautiful images from optical satellites. / Landsat365