Welcome back to Tidings. All the stories in our newsletter were shared first by users on Seabird. You're invited to share your own favorite reads there too! On to this week's links...

​Inside the outrageous collapse of a 'Montessori Ponzi"​

How an outwardly successful chain of Montessori preschools ended up losing more than $400 million and left parents scrambling to find replacements for its shuttered facilities. [Gift link.]

The New York Times | Claire Suddath

​The missing ingredient of modern life​

Are you wonder-maxxing, bro? [Gift link.]

The Atlantic | Ian Bogost

​The American religion of self-storage facilities​

"People who work in self-storage often say that their market is driven by 'the four D’s': death, displacement, divorce, and downsizing, all life events that entail sudden collisions between stuff accumulation and reality."

The New Yorker | David Owen

​Why racoons have been so successful in taking over Toronto​

"If New York City has 8 million stories, Toronto has just as many—but they’re all about some crazy raccoon."

The Walrus | Dan Werb

​A bat in my sink revealed a dark truth about our healthcare system​

How a home invasion by bats led a family to treatment with a life-saving rabies vaccine and more than $10,000 in medical debt.

The Salt Lake Tribune | Kayti Sullivan

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​The future of the Republican Party after Trump is in Texas​

Checking in on the current politics of the Lone Star State for one possible future of the GOP.

Liberal Currents | Alan Elrod

​The world's stupidest trade war claims its smallest casualty​

On the tiny Canadian island Campobello, Trump's trade war kills a family-owned nanobrewery.

The Long Bar | Wayne Curtis

​Why is my mustard spicier than normal?​

A unusually spicy jar of mustard takes a journalist on an investigation into what went wrong. Written from Canada, the world's largest exporter of mustard seeds.

Toronto Star | Jake Edmiston

​Driscoll's gave China its blueberries​

On China's blueberry boom and the perils of bringing proprietary crops to the country. [Gift link.]

The Wall Street Journal | Jon Emont

​Bite by bite​

In defense of virtue signaling: "[...] maybe the most important thing about virtue signaling is not what it does to the world around us, but what it does to us."

Liberalism.org | Sarah Skwire

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​I got paid $5,000 to move to a place I'd never heard of​

A Portland woman moving to Muncie, Indiana, is one of many remote workers taking advantage of incentives to relocate to smaller towns.

BBC | Stephen Starr

​A dolphin named Bubbles makes other fish vomit, then eats it​

On one smart dolphin's seemingly unique approach to kleptoparasitism.

Ars Technica | Jennifer Ouellette

​Spectacular images from the 2026 Ocean Photographer of the Year awards​

Mostly not seabirds, but some amazing photography nonetheless.

Popular Science

​The incredible journey of a migratory shorebird​

Finally, in birds news... an appreciation of the Hudsonian godwit, a small bird with a remarkable ability to migrate up and down the Earth. “They look diminutive, fragile, and delicate. But they’re these high-performance Ferrari machines.”

The New Yorker | Rivka Galchen

Tidings is edited by Jacob Grier. The links in our newsletter were all shared first on Seabird, our minimalist platform simply designed for recommending worthwhile links. Learn more about us here and join to discover and share articles like these every day. Your recommendations may appear in a future edition of Tidings.