• “Eight silver and gold tubes held in a Russian museum have long been thought to have been either ceremonial staffs or canopy supports. In reality, the long tubes are the oldest surviving drinking straws.” (Science News)

• “The coroner system has its roots in medieval England, where coroners protected the interests of the crown, including investigating deaths and collecting taxes. It arrived in the U.S. in the colonial period, where the first coroner election took place in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, in 1636. Today, nearly 80 percent of coroners are elected, and in some jurisdictions, the coroner and the sheriff—or the coroner and the district attorney—are one person.” (The New Republic)

• “Despite Joan Didion’s experience in Hollywood, only one film captures on film the unique writing of the author.” (Notebook)

• Reconsidering Bambi by Felix Salten: “This is not The Lorax or Maus. This is The Fountainhead, with fawns.” (The New Yorker)

• “For decades, archaeologists have had to rely on grave goods and the shape of bones to tell them whether a skeleton belonged to a man or a woman, but over the past five years, the use of new, sophisticated methods has resulted in a string of skeletons having their presumed sex overturned. The ensuing challenges to our ideas about sex, gender, and love in past societies have not been without controversy.” (The Guardian)

• On Mesopotamian ghosts. (London Review of Books)

• An art exhibition considers newcomers to America. (New York Times)

• “The Very French Culture War Over Digging Up a Playwright Who’s Been Dead for 349 Years.” (Slate)

• This week in obituaries: André Leon Talley, Terry Teachout, Lusia Harris, Israel Dresner, Howard Solomon, Ali Mitgutsch, Jean-Jacques Beineix, Paul Carter Harrison, Iraj Pezeshkzad, April Ashley, Fred Parris, Gaspard Ulliel, Laurel Cutler, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, Sara McLanahan, Paco Gento, Nino Cerruti, Ralph Emery, Yvette Mimieux, Ricardo Bofill, Eddie Basinski, Badal Roy, Everett Lee, Mike Cochran, Majid Al Futtaim, Charles McGee, Andrew Vachss, John Bowman, and Hardy Krüger.