The Legend of Sleepy Taco
China begins a third day of military exercises around Taiwan after Taiwan's president returns from meeting with American lawmakers. / NBC News
Stuart Lau: Beijing wants to use France as a wedge between European and American strategies on China. / Politico
Analysis of the US intelligence documents circulating on social media. / The New York Times
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has a secret, 20-year-history of accepting luxury vacations from a billionaire Republican donor. / ProPublica
Levi's says it plans to use AI to increase diversity in its models, rather than hire more models of color. / Business Insider
"I have the freedom of not being stuck in Dearborn, Michigan." A week in the life of a woman trucker. / N+1
See also: A day in the life of German climate activists. Also, some thoughts on the glory of trams. / Patagonia, The Los Angeles Review of Books
A bike ride through Avi Kwa Ame, the American West's newest national monument. / The Radavist
TMN's Rosecrans Baldwin explores contemporary art around the Joshua Tree region. / Travel + Leisure
Excerpts from notebooks kept by Marilyn Monroe while she underwent psychoanalysis. / Noted
A sampling of cheese-based cocktails, which are having a moment. / The Guardian
See also: "On TikTok, I'm the new face of taco salad." / The Boston Globe
Experience what it's like to see things color blind—e.g., where avocado paste and peanut butter pretty much look the same. / The Verge
Some gorgeous watercolors from illustrator Kyutae Lee. / Behance
And now a brief chat with new Sustaining Member Alex T.!
Hi, Alex! What brought you here? As a longtime subscriber to Rosecrans’s excellent Substack "Meditations in an Emergency," I think I must have first heard about TMN there—and I likely subscribed immediately after reading an issue.
Wonderful! What keeps you coming back? I read TMN daily, first always making sure to click on the "Currently" link at the top for a dose of randomness. I really admire how the day’s main themes can be distilled down into 15 or so relevant—and, most importantly, interesting—links. That can’t be as easy as it looks! Infuse everything with a healthy dose of humor and you’re hitting my sweet spot.
That's nice to hear. We definitely try—and definitely don't always succeed. Why did you decide to support today? We expect so much of what we digest daily—be it various forms of entertainment or quality journalism—to be free, or at least offered at a low price point. But it takes a lot of time and effort to put together something as coherent and informative as TMN. And—if I do the math—paying a few cents each day to support something I look forward to time and again just makes plain sense to me.
🪴 So many thanks to Alex and all of our supporters. Become a Sustaining Member today or support via PayPal, crypto, or Venmo (open in app). And thank you!
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Your headlines are sourced and written by Rosecrans Baldwin and Andrew Womack, Monday through Saturday. View this edition and the latest headlines at TMN.