Some mind-expanding articles for this autumn #FridayReads

A cozy sunkenarium, with nearby home-library access, is the perfect spot for reading.
(Large indoor plants optional.)
It's autumn. Time to tuck away, like acorns for your brain, these articles and blog posts and essays that I've come across in recent weeks. Read them now, or save them for a blustery winter day. Make sure you have some soup and oyster crackers in the pantry, too.

• The New Yorker: "The Risk of Nuclear War with North Korea. On the ground in Pyongyang: Could Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump goad each other into a devastating confrontation?" by Evan Osnos
• The Atlantic: "The First White President: The foundation of Donald Trump’s presidency is the negation of Barack Obama’s legacy" by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• The New York Times: "In Amish Country, the Future Is Calling" by Kevin Granville and Ashley Gilbertson
• Longreads: "A High-End Mover Dishes on Truckstop Hierarchy, Rich People, and Moby Dick" by Finn Murphy [an excerpt from the new book The Long Haul]
• Granta: "Second Mother" by Sinéad Gleeson (described by author Robert Macfarlane as "a shatteringly good essay about dementia & love")
• Hyperallergic: "How Renaissance Painting Smoldered with a Little Known Hallucinogen" by Forrest Muelrath
• The Atlantic: "There and Back Again: What J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic The Hobbit still has to offer, 80 years after its publication" by Vann R. Newkirk II
• Longreads: "Here at the End of All Things: On losing oneself in the geography of fantasy worlds, from Middle Earth to Westeros" by Adrian Daub
• My Inside Voices: "On B.O., incompetence and new adventures," "It ain't easy being a grownup," and "Two days back in middle school," by writer Susan Jennings, whose blog I hope you have bookmarked by now
• Atlas Obscura: "The Women Who Rode Miles on Horseback to Deliver Library Books" by Anika Burgess
• The Guardian: "The BFG, Skellig, Aubrey ... children’s books boom: Booksellers and new publications are challenging pessimism about reading habits" by Robert McCrum
• The Atlantic: "Shaka, When the Walls Fell. In one fascinating episode, Star Trek: The Next Generation traced the limits of human communication as we know it — and suggested a new, truer way of talking about the universe" by Ian Bogost
• The New York Times: "'Friends,' the Sitcom That’s Still a Hit in Major League Baseball" by James Wagner (features the Phillies' Freddy Galvis)
• The New Yorker: "The Podcast That Tells Ingeniously Boring Bedtime Stories to Help You Fall Asleep" by Nora Caplan-Bricker
• The A.V. Club: "The utter insanity that was The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon" by Joe Blevins

And, finally...

Here's the link to the article.