Jelani Cobb on honoring MLK 50 years later. Here are some quarries for you. (Some) frogs are doing great! Today in the dystopia: direction apps are taking people up streets too steep to drive. Here are some miniature absurdist dioramas for you.

And you may ask yourself: why are there so many Thai restaurants? Maybe we can partner with the climate skeptics to work on geoengineering? Maybe AI can stop shark attacks? Maybe there’s life on Venus? There are walls.

In honor of yesterday: terrifying Easter bunnies and horrifying 19th century pranks. Let us now discuss Ursula K Le Guin’s electronic album. We should probably talk about this new organ. Appreciating Marie Tussaud and her wax figures.

Today in the dystopia: elderly Japanese women are getting themselves thrown in jail in name of security and support. What is life but a fatberg? Hey look at these very old footsteps in BC! Photographing Chinese bicycle graveyards. Where’s the dark matter though huh?

Scoping out March For Our Lives via a grandpa and a high school kid. Hey look it’s a male angler fish! Where did bugs get their wings from anyway? Now let us discuss the long strange history of medicinal turpentine.

While you were offline probably doing super unimportant things, a flat-earther blasted himself into orbit. Tragically lost in Joshua Tree. What is life but a museum of collapsed buildings? What is life but a Craigslist mirror? In 1933, four cows went to Antarctica.

It’s Friday so let’s talk about Drag Race as linguistic driver. You’ll always be an alien to me Atacama Mummy. What is life but a cemetery slum? You can never have too much North Korean photography. The long strange life of dagnabbit.

Just in case you were feeling good today: the last male northern white rhino has died. Let’s take a look inside North Korea’s tourist hotels. Even Amnesty International has had enough of Twitter abuse. At least we’ve got space junk harpoons to look forward to. Photographing Mexico’s sprawling housing developments.

Guess what? We live in a horrifyingly racist country and the effects of that are far reaching. So you want to know about Hawking’s final paper. Meanwhile: why does the universe have to be so empty? Has 21st Century urbanization gotten out of control? (probably!) And now some cuban Quinceañera photography.

Today in the dystopia: hey why not arm the homeless too? David Foster Wallace and the horrors of Neuroscience. Let’s all go on an anti-road trip. What is life but a violin made from destroyed NYC buildings? Photographing the unplanned city.

PSA: Ear Hustle, the very best podcast, is back! Time for some time crystal research. We here at MC are no fan of Scott Weiner, but thanks for this new statewide Net Neutrality bill. Sudan’s forgotten pyramids (are nice to look at). Remembering Puffin Books’ Kaye Webb.

Good morning, microplastic pollution in our oceans is much worse than we feared. Oh cool, just what the world needed, an even whiter thing. Maybe we found Amelia Earhart after all? The death and life of a great American building. Here’s your 19th Century German caterpillar calendar for the day.

Good morning! Youtube is radicalizing all of us! Meanwhile AI has a hallucination problem. Perhaps you have wondered: what is the noisiest city? The phone booth is BACK. (cool?) Some ghost neon to start your week.

Spend your weekend enjoying banknotes and stamps from dead countries of the world. Maybe water vapor will save us. Important news: Japan’s flood defense system is very pretty. Time is moving extra slow in Europe (because of an international dispute). Now enjoy some surreal urban photography.

Hey look! A whole new penguin supercolony! Today in the tech community is a caricature of themselves: attendees of a crypto convention were all fed weed without their consent. But at least we have a burger flipping robot. Also, drones are pretty to long-exposure photograph, I guess. Early 20th Century Russians imagine the future.

Sweden has been bank heisted into becoming a cashless society. Look at this tiny prehistoric bird! If you want to! I’ve linked to a couple of the articles already, but be sure to check out The Atlantic’s Metropolis Now project. Here are you Soviet logos for the day. We are all sick with memory.

Asking the important questions: when did Americans stop marrying their cousins? Sometimes it feels like we’ve seen everything, and sometimes we find whole new ancient Egyptian necropolises. Photographing Pakistan’s crumbling architectural heritage. The strange and twisted life of Frankenstein. Important news: termites are cockroaches!

Money laundering through Amazon garbage books (what a time to be alive). People are fleeing the Bay Area in such high numbers that we are running out of Uhauls. Abandoned farmhouses of Iceland. Nighttime factories of Japan. Very important beginnings of the universe news.

Start your day by contemplating some ancient elephant on mastodon sex. There is life on (the closest earth has to) Mars! Here are your decked out Japanese work trucks for the day. Gray squirrels are very good at problem solving (way to go gray squirrels). The geography of poverty.

Now that we all care about curling let’s talk about the Scottish island key to it all. Welcome to the age of cities that never forget. Charting polution through taxidermied bird feathers (is a thing you can do). Give a moment of your day to the humble weird-ass camper. Here are your pylons for the […]

Ok fine maybe one more Black Panther thinkpiece. Please stop looking for the Fenn Treasure. The children, on the other hand, are not being as destroyed by social media as we thought! Why is silicon valley so against transparency tho? Our infrastructure is built on economic inequality (so that’s cool too).

Life in the Russian edgelands (aka the United States AM I RIGHT?) Here are your Bulgarian lotto tickets for the day. On the shape of dice and the shifting attitudes of chance. What is life but a Japanese love hotel? Back to the Eastern Bloc: welcome to Comrat, the Moldovan Soviet relic.

Don’t want to alarm you, but for the first time a ship crossed the Arctic in winter without an icebreaker. Can’t believe this much time went by before I heard about the “holy grail of dinosaurs.” I promise I’ll just post one Black Panther think piece. Here’s your volcano photography for the day. Tokyo is […]

Actually horrifying and important: does your state let cops rape the people they arrest? Everything you think you know about domestic bunnies is wrong (one thing you know about them). Lest we forget that Nostradamus made jelly too. Give a moment of your day to appreciating Canada’s modernism. The mutant crayfish that took over Europe.

It’s Valentine’s day so enjoy some underwater and overrun ruin photography. The New York Times has done some questionable things recently, but at least they took the time to analyze every dog registration in the city. A brief history of Albanian movie posters. Using anti-plagiarism software to prove Shakespeare wasn’t so great.

Today in Everything Is Very Bad: Google Maps is misleading women into going to pro-life centers. Let’s all go to Austin to see Ellsworth Kelly’s final work. What is life but a Mickey Mouse gas mask? Is this a good time to eradicate measles? (probably!) Picturing the vanishing quirky storefronts of Ireland.

Jelani Cobb on The life and death of a Black Lives Matter activist (very actually important). Sometimes you just want to start your week with Nordic ruins and that’s ok too. Lots of animals understand counting, you aren’t so special! Here are your 100-year-old penguin chalk drawings for the day. Cities are making foxes and […]

Spend your weekend with some Polish illustration and ads from East Germany. I hope you’re all enjoying the Olympics, home to the darkest building on Earth. We need to stop talking about the right or wrong sides of history. The dogs of Chernobyl.

Humans gave up so many colors but we see red and green like you wouldn’t believe. Guess it’s time to go inside a pencil factory. What is life but a French fire test tower? It is time for Japanese toilet appreciation. How long is a moment anyway?

The Berlin Wall has officially been gone as long as it was up, so let’s look at these pictures of people trying to escape East Germany. Honestly shocked it took us this long for a VR church. David Grann on a solitary trek across Antarctica (is worth reading). The dark art of stealing from self-checkouts. […]