Very little is known about the Arnoux’s beaked whale. It is very similar to the Baird’s beaked whale (about which very little is also known) and is funny looking.

This August, as we prepare to unleash a truly remarkable fall catalog, MobyLives will be taking a bit of a breather. We’ll still post the occasional news item or feature, but for most of this month we’ll be posting a roundup like this every morning. We will, of course, remain active on Twitter and Facebook. We hope you have a great August, and that you’ll keep checking in with us!

• Oh man, are you okay? You’re kind of scraped up. And muddy. You’re really muddy. Is that a worm in your hair? How did you get under that rock in the first place? It seems kind of, well, nevermind, listen to this, JEFF BEZOS BOUGHT THE WASHINGTON POST FOR $250 MILLION.
• Bezos’s own statement to Post employees about the purchase is here. It has some assurances, some libertarian code words, and right in the middle a fun warning that things might get hairy sometime pretty soon.
• The New York Times reports many in publishing are “aghast” at the news of Jeff Bezos’ takeover of the Washington Post, but they only find one publisher willing to go on the record about it: our publisher. (The New York Times)
• French architect Matali Crasset has built a pop-up library on a beach. The Bibliothèque de Plage offers more than 350 books to beach-goers, as well as three shady reading areas; you can find it in the town of Istres in southern France. (PSFK blog)
• Scholastic is revamping its book club for kids as the Scholastic Reading Club. It’s now offering grade-specific flyers and affordable books that comply with the new Common Core Standards. (GalleyCat)
• The New York Times runs a great, in-depth report that says Europe is aghast at Amazon’s “antipathy to organized labor.” If only the Times would look at Amazon’s problems with American labor as closely. (The New York Times)
• “‘Deracination’ is an American ideal: not to strip from the roots, but to de-race oneself.” Jess Row has a great piece on the “fantasy of deracination in American fiction.” (Boston Review)
• First, Maxwell’s, now the grease trucks in New Brunswick? New Jersey is just fucking with us now.

A song for Tuesday: “Streets of Bakersfield” by Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OkkDAv-UUU