Roundup: Reads that are riveting, educational and/or just plain fun

Here it is, folks. The latest collection of links that have caught my eye. Hope some of these are new to you and that you find something compelling or thought-provoking.

Side note: Are you following me on Twitter? I retweet cool links all the time. Many more than are listed here. I get pretty silly, too.

• The New York Times: "The Brazilian Bus Magnate Who’s Buying Up All the World’s Vinyl Records" by Monte Reel
• Salon: "'We can’t strain the entire ocean': The horrifying truth about where our plastic ends up" by Lindsay Abrams
• Collectors Weekly: "When Postcards Made Every Town Seem Glamorous, From Asbury Park to Zanesville" by Ben Marks
• The Atlantic: "Publishers Gave Away 122,951,031 Books During World War II" by Yoni Applebaum
• Cuepoint: "Encountering Miles: How I got a lesson in art, aesthetics and improvisation from the jazz legend" by Tom Moon
• Cuepoint: "We’re All DJs Now" by Jonathan Shecter
• The Atlantic: "When Schools Can't Get Online: About 70 percent of America's elementary schools still rely on slow Internet connections. But in rural areas, the challenges — and costs — make getting broadband particularly complicated" by Nichole Dobo
• The Guardian: "Cheap and nasty: the horrid legacy of the penny dreadful" by Matthew Sweet
• LancasterOnline: "In fan fiction, fans reimagine everything from 'Harry Potter' to 'My Little Pony' to 'Doctor Who'" by Suzanne Cassidy
• Vox: "What would happen if the Yellowstone supervolcano actually erupted?" by Brad Plumer
• Priceonomics: "A Case Study in Price Discrimination: Burning Man Car Washes" by Rohin Dhar
• The New York Review of Books: "The Dying Russians" by Masha Gessen
• The Atlantic: "The Insidious Rise of the Blockbuster Video Game" by Daniel Carlson

• Laura VanArendonk Baugh: "Peter Cushing and Asian Folklore"
• The Fairy Tale Traveler: "The Legend of Ljubljana’s Dragon" by Duncan Rhodes
• National Geographic: "The Evolution of Diet" by Ann Gibbons
• Vox: "100 years ago, the very last passenger pigeon died" by Joseph Stromberg
• Book Riot: "My Favorite Animal, the Book Scorpion" by E.H. Kern
• Hollywood Elsewhere: "Truly Levitational, Mozartian Birdman" by Jeffrey Wells
• Mental Floss: "Remembering Keedoozle, America's First Fully Automated Grocery Store" by Rebecca O'Connell
• Unschool Rules: "A birthday celebration: Into the Matrix with Keanu Reeves" by Joan and Ashar Otto
• LancasterOnline: "Tiny front-yard library in Strasburg is part of worldwide Little Free Library movement" by Cindy Hummel
• Atlas Obscura: "Secret Libraries of London" by Kevin Lo
• Columbia Journalism Review: "Apple can’t hide from a 20-year-old reporter" by Michael Rosenwald
• io9: "These Are the Brave and Fluffy Cats Who Served in World War I" by Mark Strauss
• Smithsonian.com: "What Lies Beneath Stonehenge?" by Ed Caesar
• The New York Times: "Lost in Translation: Germany’s Fascination With the American Old West" by Melissa Eddy