At the close of the COP26 climate summit, commitments to end the use of coal and other fuels are falling apart as countries race to reach a deal. / BBC News

The Pacific island nation Tuvalu is looking at legal ways to be a state if it is submerged. / Reuters

Unrelated/related: How 12th-century Genoese merchants “invented the idea of risk.” / Psyche

Scottish engineers say "marine energy"—wind turbines dunked into the sea—could work within a decade. / The Washington Post

A new comics anthology launches in response to the climate crisis. / Ten Years to Save the World

France is investing $290 million to make the city of Paris completely cyclable by 2026. / World Economic Forum

The first pleasure railway ever built may have been a miniature train constructed for the family of Louis XIV, pushed by servants. / Futility Closet

The Biden economy is being defined by two numbers: monthly inflation and job-creation figures. / The Washington Post

How are children handling the pandemic? “They report being a lot more all right than we were expecting.” / FiveThirtyEight

See also: The rise and rise of the post-lockdown buzz cut. / i-D

A poll shows no significant difference between people with college degrees and those without them on the question of whether the US is becoming too politically correct. / The Atlantic

Photographer Phyllis Christopher remembers 1990s lesbian San Francisco. "It was a really special critical mass of queers." / studio international

Disdain for women increases the pay gap. Some hypotheses as to why—and why men in certain states search for rape videos. / Twitter

Remembering what happened to Janet Jackson at the 2004 Super Bowl and what happened to her career after. / Vox

Teju Cole explores how some authors attempt a kind of epiphanic writing. / Lit Hub

A painting for the season by Atlanta-based portraitist Ariel Dannielle: "Cheers to you, Friendsgiving" (2019). / Booooooom