AdamSmith

42/51 Tennessee: Go Honky Tonkin' in Nashville. Nashville's music legacy is well known—especially since it got its own primetime TV show—but it's hard to know where to start your music education here. The Grand Ole Opry? Bluebird Cafe? When in doubt, head to Honky Tonk Row—a stretch of Lower Broadway where every bar has legitimately incredible live music, be it country, folk, bluegrass, or top 40 covers, and all ages are out to enjoy it. Let the bourbon-swilling septuagenarian teach you a thing or two about honky tonkin'. —L.D.R.

40/51 South Carolina: Feast on Lowcountry cuisine in Charleston. It's been five years since chef Sean Brock opened Husk—his white-hot love letter to Lowcountry food—but when it comes to dining in the South, Charleston is still the city on everyone's lips. Brock continues to draw serious acclaim at Husk, and at his nearby restaurant McCrady's, but he's not the only game in town these days. Mike Lata, whose beloved Fig (pictured) has been a Charleston staple since 2003, has since broken into the oyster bar business with The Ordinary where he celebrates the seafood traditions of the Carolina coastline. —Jordana Rothman

33/51 North Carolina: Head to the Outer Banks—but don't just stay on the beach. North Carolina’s Outer Banks (that’s OBX to you and your bumper sticker) are some of the most gorgeous beaches in America. And there’s still plenty to do if you take a break from sunbathing, including the North Carolina Aquarium in Roanoke, the memorial commemorating the Wright Brothers’ historic first flight in Kitty Hawk, and a series of iconic lighthouses, including the famous barbershop pole-style swirled one at Cape Hatteras. End the day with fried oysters in Nags Head—this is the South, after all. —L.M.

It. Sell$. Ad$. As a newspaperman since age 17 -- managing editor of my high school semiweekly [Mangy Editor, I was nicknamed by my co-student journalists and department editors , who resented -- but secretly liked -- my imposing authoritarian schedule-keeping], this universal practice of overdoing it, and almost deliberately losing perspective and framing, makes me sick too. I think it will come right again, once news media find whatever kind of financial model will keep them afloat in this new digital age. The practice is not endemic to news reporting itself. We have only to recall Jefferson: 'Had I to choose between a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to choose the latter.'

LMMFAO

A great set of reviews...! Conde Nast Traveler The 50 Best Places to Visit in the U.S.A. https://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2015-06-27/things-to-do-in-america-all-50-us-states/11

Farting Passenger Forces Plane To Make Emergency Landing https://www.yahoo.com/news/farting-passenger-forces-plane-emergency-185237663.html

Robert Mueller Has Trump Cornered https://www.yahoo.com/news/robert-mueller-trump-cornered-130900469.html

Invisible Priest: Contemporary American Poetry and the Echo of Stevens https://m.poets.org/poetsorg/text/invisible-priest-contemporary-american-poetry-and-echo-stevens

My leading personal intellectual (and otherwise) role models are probably (in no particular order) Karellen , Clarke, Kubrick, Dirac and Hawking.

Marvelous!

Meanwhile, the 'good news' out of all this... Trump and the GOP are making the Republican brand toxic for a generation https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/16/opinions/trump-gop-making-their-brand-toxic-opinion-zelizer/index.html

Society matroness to W. Churchill: 'Sir Winston, you are very drunk!' 'Yes, Madame. And you are very ugly. But tomorrow morning I shall be sober.'

Why DOES the sun shine? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Bethe

They Might Be Giants are among the greatest.

One suspects that statement was made in the sense of 'speaking narrowly.' The long trail of rubles... ...into the pockets of the Trumps, Kushners, Manafort, et al. is already a publicly documented certainty.

P.S. ...Said the 22yo BMW owner. (My own fave, even beyond the 325xi, was my peppiest little manual six-speed, turbo'd, Audi A4 Quattro. I one time on business visited their engineering organization in Ingolstadt. The most modestly brilliant humans I've ever met.)

LMMFAO I suspect Sully liked this just about as much as Julia Child loved Dan Aykroyd's parody of her. She would play a videotape of it, almost always, at the tail-end of her dinner parties for friends. And always (I am told) fell apart in laughter by the end. https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/the-french-chef/n8667

To go with the golden faucets! https://www.hautetime.com/haute-jet-of-the-week-donald-trump-s-100m-boeing-757/27773/

The staggering level of detail in these disclosures suggests this whole investigation is coming to a head astoundingly soon, for such a project. I think that if I were anyone remotely connected with Election 2016, I would take something for it, now.