September 7, 2016

Cozy understanding with state regulators allows coal giants to pawn off $3.5 billion in mine cleanup costs to federal government in hidden subsidy. / Vox

“Madam President, where has all the funding gone for arts in the schools? Could those kuts be the reesen we are all getin dummer?” If 50 writers sent letters to the president, this is what they’d say. / Poets & Writers

A writer is working to save Langston Hughes’s $3 million Harlem brownstone from being sold off as the surrounding neighborhood gentrifies. / CityLab

Trump has taken on an unexpected literary role—that of the muse. / The New Yorker

“Hope is an invasion of our privacy.” Poet Robin Myrick sets out to chronicle the election the only way she knows how—through verse. / Entropy

A GPS safety app designed to help would-be immigrants find water and food as they cross the Mexican-US border also includes a series of poems for spiritual sustenance. / truthdig.com

With chains like Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks now offering cold brew, it’s a sign our coffee tastes have become more refined. Or is it simply that we need food trends to latch on to, to speak about in matter of absolutes on social media? / The Washington Post

Post-Brexit, Britain is likely going to lose its right to brag about its famous curry houses—or it’ll probably continue to brag, but the food will indicate something else. One chef hopes that Brexit will be friendlier towards immigrants from former commonwealths, but the overall outlook is bleak. / Eater

“A gay restaurant is a throwback to that time, long, long ago, before the American palate had been Bourdained.” America’s “gay restaurants” operated on a fine balance of secrecy, notoriety, and bad food, but foodie culture—with its Instagram-ready snapshots—has driven them out of business. / Jarry

Bad reviews by Pete Wells, the New York Times food critic, tend to go viral. / The New York Times

The subject of welfare is Hillary Clinton’s “thread that, when tugged, begins to unravel her moral legitimacy and claim to represent women’s interests.” / nplusonemag.com