The White House releases a plan showing how the US could produce almost half of its electricity from solar power by 2050. / CNBC

Burning fossil fuels must decline almost immediately, a new study finds, for us to avoid more extreme disasters. / NPR

The world's largest "direct air capture" machine—essentially, a giant carbon-slurping device—opened yesterday in Iceland. / Quartz

Here are some of the "more or less one-man bands" running to replace California's Gavin Newsom. / The Los Angeles Times

Ezra Klein: Newsom is more than the lesser of two evils. For example, he is "three years ahead of Joe Biden in terms of pro-family policy." / The New York Times 

Conor Friedersdorf: Australia's emergency restrictions, incredibly successful against Covid-19, have rendered it a police state. / The Atlantic

About 11% of Covid sufferers acquire parosmia, a distortion of smell that can make food taste like garbage. / The Cut

A curveball in the vaccine world: Manufacturers that trail the first wave of Covid vaccine producers may not be able to prove that their vaccines work. / STAT

A database accounts for every apology made in the UK's House of Commons since 1974, for doing things like "throwing the mace to the floor." / House of Commons Library

The act of throwing things has been seen as distinctively human, but it appears that octopuses do it too. / Vox

Tonight's US Open women's semifinal matches feature a pair of teenage women who are surprising everybody. / The Washington Post 

John McEnroe talks to TMN's Rosecrans Baldwin about his teenage angst and temper tantrums. / GQ

Gabrielle Hickmon goes data-rich in an appreciation of the Black community's embrace of the card game Spades. / The Pudding

What's wrong with book reviews today? Perhaps that they're "first and foremost an audition," not meant for readers at all. / n+1

Watch: A man wearing a tuxedo, with long fingernails and what appears to be a stiff martini, plays Ennio Morricone's "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" on classical guitar. / TMN

Some nice pictures of breakfast, by Scottish photographer Niall McDiarmid. / Booooooom