Morning Coffee

Happy birthday, America. We’ll back on Monday.

When it comes right down to it, do kangaroos have five legs? The art of b-movie title cards. Actually, there used to be all sorts of steam-powered cars. Hanging with…

Department of hometown pride: way to find a new elephant shrew SF scientists! Why are your chords such a mess? (Spoiler alert: it’s because of physics.) Important desert pool news.…

The fraught friendship of TS Eliot and Groucho Marx (something for everyone). Important news: the ocean around the Pitcairn Islands is, like, super cool. Soviet concept vehicles are also pretty…

It’s time to talk about chimpanzee fashion trends. “Why did Borges hate soccer?” Let’s all take an adventure into England’s nuke-proof underground city. The golden age of radioactive cosmetics. Paleofuture…

Ok, so maybe black holes DO exist and there are just, like, so many of them. An illustrated history of Led Zeppelin’s copywrite violations. I sure would like a spacelander…

A look inside the world’s northern most city. (Spoiler alert: it’s cold and polluted!) Elsewhere: a guide to the world’s lost cities. Don’t worry, there are still plenty of great…

Good news everyone: Sherlock Holmes is finally in the public domain. Wolves are spreading secrets with their eyes. Photographing Everest’s sherpas. Let’s all take a trip back to the first…

Nothing you ever do will be as cool as a Soviet-era western music bootleg. I bet you’d like to read Nabokov’s notes on the Lolita screenplay. Poisonous Victorian fashion. In…

Excavating the hippie commune. EVIL SPIRITS! It’s time to accept that fish aren’t that dumb. First and foremost, Neanderthals had giant teeth. Give a moment of your weekend to thinking…

I bet you’d like to read Anthony Burgess’s lost introduction to Dubliners. Something something ancient end of the world plague. Dioramas are what make life great. 19th Century diagrams aren’t…

Heck, maybe there’s a whole second ancient earth inside the earth. Important news: baby pygmy seahorses exist. Remember that time a beluga tried to speak human? Let’s talk about the…