• “How hot can the earth get?” A brief history of the past 4.6 billion years. (Science News)

          Further reading: The World in Time, Ep. 6: Interview with Rachel Richardson, author of Smother (excerpt: “Fishbowl”); and DISASTER (Spring 2016)

• On the study and spread of DMT in the twentieth century. (Literary Hub)

          Further reading: The World in Time, Ep. 6: Interview with Justin Smith-Ruiu, author of On Drugs: Psychedelics, Philosophy, and the Nature of Reality (excerpt: “The Cambrian Fall”); and Extracts, a new series on our Substack; this week from INTOXICATION (Winter 2012)

• Legacies of the war on terror: “There is a millenarian compulsion at work in the recurring clamor for war, one rooted in the righteous community’s need for periodic regeneration through violence.” (London Review of Books)

• On the Soviet dissident movement, which had “a certain abstract character, which caused it to keep being reinvented after repeated quashings.” (Leaflet)

• “The Mamdani surname tells a story of migration, resilience and community-building that spans centuries and continents.” (The Conversation)

• Revisiting Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s The Cycles of American History: “He failed to imagine that the darkest parts of American history were ahead of us or, if interrupted or abated, could still return in a more frightening form.” (The New Republic)

• The “glorious past” and “current predicaments” of Condé Nast. (Intelligencer)

• The nineteenth-century precursor to fake prank calls. (JSTOR Daily)

• A “museum of the strange and wonderful” in Abita Springs: “If you want an antidote to bleakness and boredom, and if you want to appreciate your country again, you might think of taking a visit to this country of the mind, embracing the Great American Weird, with its dogigators, singing cowboys, giant roadside dinosaurs, and legendary swamp spirits. We keep that America alive down here in Louisiana.” (Current Affairs)

• This week in obituaries: Sayfollah Mussalet, Fauja Singh, Andrea Gibson, Iris Williams, Connie Francis, David Kaff, Paulette Jiles, Henry Raymont, Martin Cruz Smith, Steve Benson, Toni Cruz, Raymond Guiot, Dave Cousins, John MacArthur, Muhammadu Buhari, David Gergen, B. Saroja Devi, at least 875 people killed in Gaza since July 13 while trying to secure food, and Christian Collado, the eighth person this year to die immediately before, during, or immediately following incarceration by the New York City Department of Correction.