Great reads to get you through Toby

It's not #FridayReads yet, but I figured that all y'all might need some curated reading suggestions today, especially if you're living in the northeastern United States and are stuck in your house thanks to Toby, the fourth nor'easter of March 2018.

So, here are some articles and essays to help you expand your mind while you sip your hot cocoa and watch the grackles desperately vie for positions at the bird feeder.

• The New York Times: "'I Cheated,' Says Woodworker Who Fooled the Antiques Experts" by John Banks
• The Atlantic: "The FBI's War on Black-Owned Bookstores" by Joshua Clark Davis
• Esquire: "Silicon Valley's Tax-Avoiding, Job-Killing, Soul-Sucking Machine" by Scott Galloway
• NJ.com: "'The most hated player in Jersey' is still kneeling for anthem, with a twist" by Matthew Stanmyre
• Mother Jones (and ProPublica Illinois): "How Does Chicago Make $200 Million A Year On Parking Tickets? By Bankrupting Thousands of Drivers." by Melissa Sanchez and Sandhya Kambhampati
• Popular Mechanics: "Burning Out: What Really Happens Inside a Crematorium" by Caren Chesler
• Mother Nature Network: "Border collies run like the wind to bring new life to Chilean forest" by Mary Jo Dilonardo
• We Are the Mutants: "Brothers in Harm: Common Threads in 'The Terminator' and the Myth of the Minotaur" by Andrew Wallace
• The Atlantic: "How Would People React to News That Aliens Exist?" By Marina Koren
• Public Square: A Congress for the New Urbanism Journal: "The next great urban reset" by Kevin Adams (Subhede: "Sometime this century—perhaps in the next decade—America will be physically repurposed in a new urban form that is different from sprawl or 19th Century gridded towns.")
• The Week: "America's Junk Epidemic" by Matthew Walther
• The Washington Post: "The myth of the lonely gamer playing in solitude is dead" by Avi Selk and Emily Guskin
• Politico Magazine: "The Financial Whisperer to Trump’s America" by Tim Alberta (Subhede: Dave Ramsey has spent 25 years helping radio listeners climb out of debt. What does he see behind their economic anxiety?)
• The Kansas City Star: "Missouri is a destination wedding spot — for 15-year-old brides" by Eric Adler
• Politico Magazine: "This Is What Happens When Bitcoin Miners Take Over Your Town" by Paul Roberts
• The Guardian: "Welcome to Powder Mountain – a utopian club for the millennial elite" by Paul Lewis
• Science: "It wasn't just Greece: Archaeologists find early democratic societies in the Americas" by Lizzie Wade [with great maps and photos]
• Forbes: "Archaeological Finds Suggest That Ancient Maya Religion Was Inspired By Fossils" by David Bressan
• Atlas Obscura: "The Experimental Forest Where Scientists First Recognized Acid Rain" by James Gaines
• British Film Institute: "More Handmaid’s Tale than Peter Rabbit – Why Watership Down remains a terrifying vision of the land" by Adam Scovell
• Roadside Wonders: "Vintage Fantasy Island Brochure" by Wendyvee
• Hyperallergic: "Artist Vandalizes Virtual Koons Sculpture, Questioning Silicon Valley’s Fake Public Space" by Claire Voon
• The Atlantic: "Why I'm Writing Captain America. And why it scares the hell out of me." by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• The Lazarus Corporation: "Notes on re-enchantment as resistance in Deep England" by Paul Watson
• Quartz: "Without Hokusai’s Great Wave there would be no modern art" by Angus Lockyer
• Mother Nature Network: "Meet the woman who elevated conservation photography to a whole new level" by Jaymi Heimbuch
• Los Angeles Times: "Grocery bags and takeout containers aren't enough. It's time to phase out all single-use plastic" by The Times Editorial Board

Canadian folk art artist Maud Lewis, Three black cats, 1955 #womensart pic.twitter.com/iOxUZ3IWs1

— #WOMENSART (@womensart1) March 16, 2018