March 9, 2017

Here’s the official study. / link.springer.com

Ron Swanson, aka Nick Offerman, has his own family woodshop, and he’ll sell you a handmade canoe and other things made of wood. Apparently you can also attend a meat-grilling, whiskey-drinking “Ladies Night” if you bring donuts. / offermanwoodshop.com

Development in the West. Dummies in the wilderness. / Adventure Journal

Fifty years later, here’s a brief history of the bike lane in America, which got its start in Davis, Calif, in 1967. / Outside

“For a mole-catcher to be successful today, he or she must engage the client with the most romantic notions of his profession.” We’ll let the article’s summary do the heavy lifting: “A bitter battle is raging within the mole-catching community over the kindest way to carry out their deadly work.” / The Guardian

“As allegories for our present go, pairing The Underground Railroad with Black Wave was a little obvious. Just the one—a popular juggernaut about white supremacy—or the other—a drug-fueled, one-way trip to the apocalypse—sure, fine. But both together?” Day two of the ToB finds Kirstin Butler deciding between an indie hit and one of the biggest books of the year. / The Tournament of Books

Last year a black Chicago pastor offered to help Trump make peace in the streets. Here, a social scientist closely reads the encounter to argue that African-Americans live under neocolonialism, held in place by economic forces and prevented from political engagement by threats of violence. / items.ssrc.org

“Logographic writing systems are not devolutions from alphabetic systems.” And English never passed through an logographic phase anyways. Also, “stickers” both hearken back to our earliest writing and express information more densely than English can. In short, anyone telling you emojis degrade language isn’t a linguist. / Digital Culturalist