Toni Morrison, groundbreaking editor (Zora)
by Arielle Gray
Toni Morrison was not just a singular literary genius. As an editor at Random House, she was a force for transformation in the publishing world, shepherding fellow Black writers through an overwhelmingly white landscape.

What’s the matter with Texas’s power grid? (CNBC)
by Emma Newburger
The disaster sparked by the winter storm in Texas is just the latest crisis caused by U.S. electrical infrastructures that aren’t prepared for climate chaos. What can we do to get ready before the next one comes?

How did that scale get in your bathroom? (Elemental)
by Kelsey Miller
The powers that be in the United States have long disapproved of fatness. Until the twentieth century, this wasn’t really a matter of health. Then new ideas about weight and eugenic “fitness” conspired with technological developments to bring us the ubiquitous bathroom scale.

The secret life of Earth’s “living skin” (Atlas Obscura)
by Ellie Shechet
Long before there were people, even before there were ferns, there was biocrust. This ancient material covers 12 percent of the Earth’s land, living where many other things can’t. And, despite its humble appearance, it’s made up of complex ecological communities.

Rush Limbaugh’s legacy (The Washington Post)
by Greg Sargent
Rick Perlstein, historian of the U.S. right, explains how Rush Limbaugh transformed the nation’s politics and paved the way for Trump—and who his core audience really was.

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