Welcome to the Tournament of Books!

Calling all Rooster fans: It's the final week of the 2017 Tournament of Books!

The Morning News
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A very stupid thing begins again. Credit: TMN.
The other White House, Moscow's Kremlin. Credit: Andrey Korzun.
Al Wadj Bank, Saudi Arabia. Credit: NASA.
Here are some beautiful images from optical satellites.
↩︎ Landsat365 5h
A Kyoto Tengu lost its seven-foot nose to heavy snow. The nose has since been repaired.
↩︎ Spoon & Tamago 5h

We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.

From Wallace Stegner's 1960 letter to the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission, which inspired the Wilderness Act.
↩︎ Adventure Journal
5h
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After 37 years as the United States' top crop, corn is expected to fall behind soybeans in production this year.
↩︎ The Guardian 7h
Unwilling to offer a counter-narrative, the Midwest is complicit in pop culture's stereotypes about the region.
↩︎ LitHub 7h
Retired park ranger apparently goes rogue and and posts 1,496 US National Park maps online for free downloading.
↩︎ Gear Institute 8h
Of "the Appalachian folk songs that a metal listener might appreciate best," most are murder ballads.
↩︎ Invisible Oranges 8h

Music made us get up and dance, or occasionally throw a rock. Food, especially if combined with wine, encourages a state of satiety and repose.

Our recent obsession with food may be inducing complacency in broader culture. "Eating everything is not much of a revolution. If anything, historical resonance has been achieved by people who refused to eat certain foods."
↩︎ Bloomberg
11h
NBC catches up with streaming era, nixes tape delay for live 2018 Winter Olympics.
↩︎ Los Angeles Times 11h
Homemade avocado burger. Credit: Marco Verch.
U.S. Counties and Zip Codes, 2015. Credit: Paula Scher.
More Features at TMN
An artist's concept of what it would be like to stand on the surface of exoplanet TRAPPIST-1f. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (IPAC).
Credit: Ian Sane.