In this week's Tidings you'll find stories about a giant who hauled city buses, a color you may never see, and an adorable love story hidden in a photo from Wikipedia. These are just a few of the links recently shared by the community on Seabird. If you're not on the app, you're missing out! Sign up to check it out on web or mobile. And if you find value in reading Tidings, help us keep it going by spreading the word to other interested readers. On to this week's links...

​The mystery of the Great Antonio​

The story of the self-proclaimed strongest man in the world, a wild, eccentric, and ultimately tragic character who made his home in Montreal.

The Walrus | Daniel Allen Cox

​Let everything change​

"[Sonny] Rollins was the last feral master of an art that has become at least partly domesticated. His improvisations confronted you with the possibility of failure, and thrilled you when he succeeded in pulling back from the brink."

n+1 | Nate Wooley

​What if Freud was right?​

A new book makes a contemporary case for reappraising Sigmund Freud. [Gift link.]

The Atlantic | Scott Stossel

​What would it mean to see a new color?​

On seeing "olo," a green more green than anything found in nature, perceived by only a few humans in precise laboratory conditions.

The New Yorker | Rivka Galchen

​Why you should almost never use AI to write anything substantive​

A writer on why using generative AI is no substitute for doing the real work and how it breaks an implicit contract with one's readers.

Erich Grunewald

​The Wooden House​

Take a break from our usual non-fiction essays and reporting with a short story by a Hungarian writer.

The Dial | Miklós Vámos [trans. Ági Bori]

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​Germany's AfD is closer than ever to power​

"How did Germany, a country so acutely shaped by the memory of its own fascist catastrophe, arrive at this point—with a right-wing extremist party standing on the threshold of governing?"

The UnPopulist | Tim Ganser

​Liberal toleration and ordinary vices​

Revisiting the work of philosopher Judith Shklar and thinking liberally about everyday vices like snobbery and misanthropy.

Liberalism.org | Shal Marriott

​How politicians living and dead play the stock market​

When you've got a political campaign committee, death is no obstacle to making investments.

NOTUS | Mark Alfred

​A civilian plane crashed in New Mexico​

How a US military exercise using GPS jamming technology led to a fatal American plane crash.

Wired | Jeff Wise

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​The soothing unsubtlety of Unbroken​

Reviewing a new documentary meant to defend Shen Yun: "what a relief, a breath of fresh air, to be reminded what the barest, sloppiest propaganda can look like."

The Paris Review | Paul Thompson

​The lost civic life of movie rental stores​

On the video rental store as an Oldenburgian third place.

MIT Press Reader | Joshua M. Greenberg

​The adorable love story behind Wikipedia’s ‘high five’ photos​

From 2022: Tracking down the participants in a Wikipedia photo illustrating the "down low, too slow" high five prank uncovers a charming love story.

Inverse | Annie Rauwerda

​Lessons from a shipwreck​

What a four-hundred-year-old shipwreck in Sweden can tell us about contemporary follies.

Tim Harford

​Can growing mountain towns keep their soul?​

And lessons from Bend, Oregon, on making tourism work for the locals.

Outside | Graham Averill

​Bird droppings were a foundation of modern agriculture and American empire​

Finally, in bird news... a look back at when seabird droppings were a significant driver of geopolitics.

The Conversation | Edward D. Melillo

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.