* From the New Yorker, “Making Sense of Modern Pornography: While the Internet has made porn ubiquitous, it has also thrown the industry into severe decline.” The article is not as good as it could be but it is worth reading.

* “How Bolivia became a drug war success story—after ousting Uncle Sam.”

* “Whatever We Dig Up, We’ll End Up Buried,” a fascinating piece whose title does not do it justice.

* American against itself: does the future belong to authoritarians, left and right?

* “A Librarian Left $4 Million to His University. It Spent $1 Million on a Football Scoreboard.” Relative to the total budgets of universities this is not so bad, and remember that fancy dorms are not the reason tuition is skyrocketing, but the symbolism of this is vital.

* “Trumpism Is the Symptom of a Gravely Ill Constitution: No matter what happens in November, the sickness may be terminal.” In other words, we may be reaching the limits of non-parliamentary political systems, though there is no good way to get from where we are now to where we might like to be.

* Someone followed one of my Amazon links and then proceeded to buy an ebook version of Booty Camp Dating Service (no link here, sorry, but I did find the product page description amusing).

* On the role of blogs in the science reputation crisis.

* Old book, new look: why the classics are flying off the shelves. Maybe. Dubiously.

* “Want to hold police accountable? The evidence is clear: film them. Always.” Otherwise, cops can basically do anything, up to and including murder.

* “A beginner’s guide to socialist economics” (and why capitalism kicks its ass).

* “The Game at 10: Reflections From a Recovering Pickup.” See also me on The Truth, Strauss’s latest book.