1. The New York Times asks: Why Are Some Crows Committing Acts of Necrophilia?. A fascinating article in itself…and includes one of the best corrections ever (at the end of the article). Pairs well with podcast listening: ► HBM038: Do Crows Mourn Their Dead? and ► The Genius of Birds: Live From the Aspen Ideas Festival. Closer to (my) home and involving the greatest of corvids: Hundreds of birds seem to mourn deaths of fellow ravens.

2. BAP! BARM! COB! BLAA! → Why the UK has so many words for bread. Thanks, Reader B.!

3. The Digital Newberry collections feature more than a million “manuscripts, maps, books, photographs, artworks, & other rare & unique materials” from the famed Chicago research library. Such as my first cool find: a 1931 map of Chicago’s gangland from authentic sources.

4. Myrtis Dightman not only broke the color barrier, but became one of the best bull riders who ever lived…and then he just kept going. → The Jackie Robinson of Rodeo

5. Science says: You Should Actually Send That Thank You Note You’ve Been Meaning to Write

6. The OEDILF—pronounced /oh-DILF/—aims to create “at least one limerick for each meaning of each and every word in the English language.” Currently at about 100,000 entries but most are marvelous! → OEDILF: The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form || Via the highly-recommended A Way With Words podcast

7. Terrifying, sad and emblematic. → Alt-Right Troll To Father Killer: The Unraveling Of Lane Davis

8. Sichuan, spice and spies. → How the chili pepper got to China

9. This week in bots: Botnik’s Twilight Zone but creates eerily apt ideas for revivals of the iconic show. On Twitter, @venmodrugs culls public profiles on Venmo to highlight … umm … strange transactions … and @ThinkPieceBot creates hot take, think piece headlines that often sound much more interesting than the real thing.

10. Today in 1849, poet, translator and teacher Emma Lazarus is born in New York City. Lazarus would publish her first volume of poems and translations, to no small acclaim, at just 18, but her most enduring work was the sonnet “The New Colossus,” which is (for the time being?) inscribed on a plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, ending with the famous lines:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”