It's the Short List for the 2021 ToB!

Books, judges, zombies, oh my! Announcing the field for the 2021 Tournament of Books, presented by Field Notes

The Morning News

“My God, we leave things green.”

Some poetry for your week, from "Foreday in the Morning," by Jericho Brown, from his (excellent) collection The Tradition.

My mother grew morning glories that spilled onto the walkway
toward her porch
Because she was a woman with land who showed as much
by giving it color.
She told me I could have whatever I worked for. That
means she was an American.
But she’d say it was because she believed
In God. I am ashamed of America
And confounded by God. I thank God for my citizenship in spite
Of the timer set on my life to write
These words: I love my mother. I love black women
Who plant flowers as sheepish as their sons. 

Jan 13, 2021
More Headlines
Your weekly soothe: Artist Tadao Cern suspends a field of grass from the ceiling.
↩︎ Colossal 1d
Starting at 13, women now can be screened for anxiety as part of a routine checkup—a "breakthrough" for mental health care.
↩︎ The Lily 1d

The team found that conversations almost never end when both parties want them to—and that people are a very poor judge of when their partner wishes to call it quits.

A study finds that only two percent of conversations end at the time both parties desire.
↩︎ Scientific American
1d
Remote, Ore., has become a job capital in the US—a placeholder on job boards when a listing is a remote-work position.
↩︎ BNet 1d

In case you also discovered classical music on Saturday mornings.

From "Barber of Seville" to "The Blue Danube," to a ton of Strauss, an extensive detailing of pieces featured in cartoons.

1d
Right-wing platform Gab gets hacked—"another gold mine of research for people looking at militias, neo-Nazis, the far right."
↩︎ WIRED 1d
Remembering the Harvard Computers: the 80 women who developed a classification system that identified nearly 400,000 stars.
↩︎ Open Culture 1d
The biggest archeological discoveries of 2020 include "a sprawling geoglyph in Peru, a trove of mummies, the tomb of Romulus."
↩︎ Live Science 4d
“It's a scapegoat. It’s an excuse.” Tuskegee is by no means a top reason why some Black people are reluctant to get vaccinated.
↩︎ KQED 4d
A group has $250,000 for anyone offering indisputable proof of supernatural abilities. No one yet has been able to claim it.
↩︎ OneZero 4d
Advice columns are often celebrated as universal, flawed, temporary—including the advice columns of Martin Luther King, Jr.
↩︎ The New Yorker 5d
The number of babies named Alexa in the US has dropped from 6,052 in 2015 (when Amazon's Echo debuted) to 1,995 in 2019.
↩︎ Statista 5d

“‘It's fine if that's what you're going to do and that's all you're going to do—but I don't want that person to be my accountant,’” he says of the prevailing attitude. “And I feel like that is a big hill to have to climb.”

Interviews with successful content creators (and sex workers) on OnlyFans.
↩︎ GQ
5d
The latest exit plan for politicians, whether you're Trump or the Obamas: content creators.
↩︎ Slate 5d

A trippy visualization of the internet's evolution. A key to the colors: white is the web's backbone, blue is North America, red is Asia Pacific, yellow is Africa, green is Europe. Dominant network names are located in the lower-left corner.

5d
An extremely small number of people have a genetic mutation that gives them no fingerprints.
↩︎ BBC News 5d
Researchers improve solar panels with capsaicin, whose extra electrons make your chilies hot and panels more efficient.
↩︎ The Conversation 6d

This is the era of late capitalism, where bigger is always necessarily better, without exception. To the true doom disciple, to listen to a song more times is to enjoy the song more deeply.

From 2015, an homage to playing the same song on repeat in a bar (e.g., “The Boys Are Back in Town”) until you get kicked out.
↩︎ VICE
6d
See More From TMN