Morning Coffee (7/12/19)

This was the longest week ever, wasn't it? Okay. We made it. FRIDAY HAPPY LINKS.

I don't know if I can take it: Veronica Mars First Look: Old Friends, Foes and an Ex Return for Hulu Revival

This sounds great! Alaska Native girl leads animated kids TV show in US first

Here's a VERY USEFUL infographic: So You Want to Watch Women's Soccer

Oh, this is gorgeous: The First Mulan Trailer Teases a Sweeping Warrior's Adventure

Dahlia Adler's editing a Shakespeare retelling anthology!!

Bear spotted taking in sunrise over Mount Washington

WHAT: Buckingham Palace Is Hosting a Leonardo da Vinci Escape Room All Summer

I love this headline: Cockatoo choreographs his own dance moves, researchers believe

And in other bird news: The Queen takes a morning stroll with a duck called Olive in Edinburgh

Mix and Match Fruits and Spreads for an Easy, Customizable Fruit Tart

Morning Coffee (5/3/19)

Time for Friday happy links!

VERONICA MARS TRAILER. I can't wait.

Ooh: Presidential Production: Barack and Michelle Obama Announce New Netflix Slate, Including a Frederick Douglass Biopic

This is a great profile of Chasten Buttigieg.

SO CUTE: Princess Charlotte’s Fourth Birthday is (Almost) Here, and We Have New Pics

I want to watch pretty much everything in the PBS summer slate.

Aw: A Stray Dog Joined a 140-mile Race in the Sahara (and Stayed to Get His Medal)

This video of Taylor Swift meeting her new kitten is adorable.

A Violent Splash of Magma That May Have Made the Moon

Genetic History Debunks Legend Of Blue Cheese Origin

Italians try to crack Leonardo da Vinci DNA code with lock of hair

Afternoon Tea (4/18/19)

The Day the Dinosaurs Died

Poets in Power: the 1919 Bavarian Soviet Republic

Here's a great interview with the Fug Girls about their new book!

There Is No Purer or More Joyful Reality TV Show Than ‘Antiques Roadshow’

Why I Take All My First Dates to Olive Garden

Morning Coffee (3/20/19)

US government uses several clandestine shelters to detain immigrant children

I've seen Sirota's now-deleted tweets and THIS IS SO GROSS: Bernie Sanders Just Hired His Twitter Attack Dog

It is wildly unclear whether Beto O’Rourke supports Medicare-for-all

PBS Chief Paula Kerger Responds To Third Donald Trump Push To De-Fund

Whoa: Nowata County Sheriff, Deputies Resign Over Jail Concerns (EVEN THE K-9. What a good boy.)

lol: Devin Nunes Suing Twitter, Twitter Accounts 'Devin Nunes' Mom' & 'Devin Nunes' Cow'

Baltimore mayor resigns from board of U.-Md. Medical System FOR HAVING THEM SPEND $500k ON HER SELF-PUBLISHED KIDS' BOOKS.

After Years Of Abuse By Priests, #NunsToo Are Speaking Out

Good for them: WNBA stars respond to homophobic SNL skit

US detects huge meteor explosion

Morning Coffee (12/14/18)

FRIDAY HAPPY LINKS.

!!! Get a first look at Netflix's Carmen Sandiego animated series

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Here's When the Mr. Rogers Documentary 'Won't You Be My Neighbor?' Premieres on HBO (and PBS!)

Ooh, Taylor Swift's Reputation tour movie will be on Netflix on New Year's Eve!

Tegan and Sara are writing a memoir!

Olympic figure skater Eric Radford is starting a gorgeous music career

This sounds great! Announcing IF IT MAKES YOU HAPPY by Claire Kann!

Have a Gouda Time: There is a cheese theme park in South Korea with cheese wheel buildings and it’s just as glorious as it sounds

Fug Nation Loves Super Cozy Jammies!

Time-wasting quiz of the day: Which Dewey Decimal Number Are You?

Okay, one more: Which Ice Dance Team Should You Check Out?

Morning Coffee (11/4/17)

This is not how anything works! Trump just called for the New York terror suspect to get the death penalty

Russian Influence Reached 126 Million Through Facebook Alone

Tell me again how the candidates were the same: Notre Dame will drop birth control coverage for students, faculty, and staff

We know by now that he didn't win this but SIGH: Trump apparently wants to name his tax reform plan the “Cut Cut Cut Act”

James Comey Announced His Book Title and It’s a Clear Jab at Trump

What Experts Know About Men Who Rape

Miss Peru hopefuls chose to highlight women’s safety onstage instead of their measurements

!! 'Big void' identified in Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza

This has a lot of good workplace advice, actually, beyond what it sounds like in the title: Ask a Boss: ‘My Co-worker Talks Too Much!’

This sounds fun: PBS Orders Food Series 'No Passport Required' From Vox Media

Weekly Rec: Endeavour

Weekly Recommendation posts are made possible by my Patreon sponsors. Join us now for more content!

Many of the best mystery series - book or television - take place during periods of great social change and upheaval. Widespread cultural, social, and political shifts present all sorts of new opportunities and motivations for people to commit crimes, and the effects of abstract changes are portrayed in pointed, personal ways. It makes the whole context of the investigations much more interesting; a delicious tension is created between what's happening in the world and the need for detectives to put at least small parts of it back in order.

This is one of the reasons why the British show Endeavour works so well. It's a prequel to the long-running classic Inspector Morse mysteries, but you don't need to have seen Morse to enjoy Endeavour. (I haven't!) It's set at Oxford in the 1960s, where a young Endeavour Morse is starting out as a policeman. It has all the things you look for in a traditional British mystery show - dead dons, class maneuverings, gorgeous architecture, mostly decent police officers, tea - but it's the sixties and things are changing rapidly around Endeavour, as students protest, women enter the workforce, and conventions crumble. In a recent episode, "Canticle," he even gets involved with a mystery surrounding a Beatles-esque rock band and a woman protesting their supposed obscenity. It's one of the finest of the series so far.

The first three seasons of Endeavour are streaming on Amazon Prime: one, two, three. Season four is currently airing on PBS, so you can probably catch all of it on demand or on the PBS site; I'm sure will be headed to Prime eventually!

Afternoon Tea (5/19/17)

A wild read for your Friday afternoon: The Mad King of Juice: Inside the Dysfunctional Origins of Juicero

Fascinating: India's Lost Party Mansions

The Forgotten History of American Working-Class Literature

Amazing: Every Color Of Cardigan Mister Rogers Wore From 1979–2001

The Sad History of Hydrox Cookies, Which Were Probably Doomed Because They Were Called Hydrox

Morning Coffee (4/12/17)

... Spicer Says Hitler Didn’t Use Chemical Weapons 'In The Way Assad Used Them'

Sean Spicer can’t possibly mean what he just said about Syria. Can he? (I mean, no, seems more likely he just doesn't know what he's talking about.)

They can't even figure out the Easter egg roll.

Stanley McChrystal: Save PBS. It Makes Us Safer. (Stanley McChrystal!)

The president as pharaoh? Trump is turning up in Passover seders.

The affair and cover-up that just landed Alabama's governor in jail, explained

I read Trump's trade adviser's anti-China book. It’s wilder than you can imagine.

Let the Filibuster Burn!

A Mexican populist rises to face Trump’s America

The ’80s Spy Novel That Uncannily Predicted the Rise of Donald Trump

Cristela Alonzo on Sexual Harassment in the Comedy World (And here's the video series that goes along with.)

Ooh: Rome if you want to: university offers free virtual tour of ancient city

Morning Coffee (3/20/17)

The first day of spring Google Doodle is very cute.

Me elsewhere: TV news for the week.

Whoa if true, as they say: Basque Separatist Group ETA Is Said to Promise to Disarm

Well, this sounds... great: White House installs political aides at Cabinet agencies to be Trump’s eyes and ears

In case you wanted to see the actual results of Meals on Wheels, here you go.

Defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting won’t kill PBS. It will hurt Trump voters.

Donald Trump Sees Himself in Andrew Jackson

GOOD: Man who triggered seizure in Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald on Twitter arrested by FBI

Please do: Palm Beach may slap Mar-a-Lago with big tax to pay for ‘devastating’ cost of Trump’s weekend trips

Well this is horrifying: Brazilian Goalie Who Fed His Lover to His Dogs Is Now Free, Signed to a Team, and Wants Custody of Their Child

Today in things I wish were surprising: Women in finance work just as hard as men — and are more likely to get fired

The Forged ‘Ancient’ Statues That Fooled the Met’s Art Experts for Decades

Morning Coffee (11/14/16)

Current Events:

A letter to America from Leslie Knope, regarding Donald Trump

I have many issues with the Huffington Post in general, but I appreciate the way they're not mincing words: A White Nationalist Is The New White House Chief Strategist

Trump has no interest in living in the White House.

Trump U Lawyers Ask That Trial Be Postponed Until After Inauguration (Because then he thinks he won't be busy anymore???)

How Trump Conned America

Other:

This sounds like a thing some of you may need? PBS to air marathons of The Great British Baking Show spin-off

One Great Way to Reduce Gun Violence? A Whole Lot of Data

How Virtual Reality Is Helping Prosecute Nazi War Criminals

The age of streaming is killing classic film. Can Turner Classic Movies be its salvation?

Fact-Checking: the Polar Bear Test

Morning Coffee (6/12/16)

Woke up to terrible news about ANOTHER shooting in Florida, this one at an LGBT nightclub, with mass casualties. I'm still catching up on the details, but here's the Guardian's liveblog.

Two Bossy Dames on Lady Rage is a must-read.

For a bit of good news: The Great British Baking Show is returning to PBS on July 1st. (So it's going to be on Fridays now? Interesting.)

How N.H. Went from Deep Red to Swing State Over the Course of a Few Elections

I'd somehow never read about this Mickey Mouse cartoon that was the last thing the BBC aired before going off the air in WWII and the first thing they aired when they came back.

God, I'd sort of forgotten about the Lizzie Grubman thing.

More realness from The Onion: Elderly Voter Never Thought She’d Get To See Female Presidential Nominee Called Heartless Ice Bitch During Her Lifetime

This look at Beyonce fans is interesting but they don't seem more committed or "obsessive" than fans of lots of other things.

I just like this headline: Searching for Atlantis Really Isn't the Best Career Move

Why Everyone Is Attracted To Baristas (It’s Because Of Late-Stage Capitalism)

TV Recommendations: Shakespeare's Tomb & Vikings Unearthed

I don't pay as much attention to non-Sunday night PBS programming as I should - I love documentaries, so I don't know what my problem is - but recently two shows caught my eye and I'm very glad they did. They're both documentaries that combine traditional history and archaeology with new investigative methods made possible by SCIENCE!, and they're very well done.

Shakespeare's Tomb, hosted by the great Helen Castor, investigates, well, Shakespeare's tomb, and along with it the circumstances surrounding his death, his will, later rumors and myths about his skull, and more. They do some really incredible 3D scanning of a skull so that they can try to figure out whether it's Shakespeare's without disturbing the site where it was found, as well as tracing air pockets below the Shakespeare family's gravestones in the church floor to determine the configuration of their graves. You can watch it online here or check on demand or local listings - PBS varies a lot by local affiliate.

The second, Vikings Unearthed, was a BBC production aired as an episode of Nova, and it features historian Dan Snow, who you should be following on Twitter/Instagram, along with a bunch of other very interesting historians and archaeologists. They trace Viking expansion west, and specifically use satellite imaging to try to find undiscovered, buried Viking sites - including in North America. It's completely fascinating. Watch here or, again, check on demand or local listings for reruns.

Morning Coffee (9/9/15)

Me elsewhere: I'm not sure how to feel about the Shannara trailer.

Today Queen Elizabeth II becomes England's longest reigning monarch, passing Queen Victoria. Let's look at some rarely seen pictures of the young Elizabeth. (You know you pay too much attention to these things when almost all the "rarely seen pictures" look familiar.)

Fascinating and important: Jihad and Girl Power: How ISIS Lured 3 London Girls

NOPE: "Trump said that his experience at the New York Military Academy, an expensive prep school where his parents had sent him to correct poor behavior, gave him 'more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.'"

Speaking of: Nixon sent Trump a letter in 1987 saying Pat Nixon thought he should run for office. SO. (Yes, Dad, this one was for you.)

Sam Smith is doing the new Bond song. I am . . . underwhelmed by the choice, but had to bring you an article that features someone called Barbara Broccoli who is apparently a real person and not a Sesame Street character.

I really feel like Julie Plec understands me on a deep level.

I'm excited about PBS's new Civil War drama Mercy Street, but it's going to take some time to see Josh Radnor as an old timey surgeon without just giggling. (In the video linked there he says his character is arrogant. That must have been SUCH A STRETCH for him.) (I mean, because of his HIMYM character. I have no reason to think Radnor himself is anything but delightful.)

"hi i’m so sorry to bother you
it’s me
Dante Alighieri
from life?
from being alive?"

Morning Coffee (9/7/15)

I know I said I might take today off, but! I had to come tell you that the remastered The Civil War is starting on PBS tonight. I've never seen The Civil War, somehow, so I'm excited, but even if you saw the original, you should probably read Alyssa Rosenberg's piece on the remaster and consider giving it a try. And make sure you check out this interactive graphic that shows the differences. It's really neat.

Me elsewhere: Lots of TV news!

I've seen several friends asking for basics on the refugee crisis and why it has suddenly become such a big thing, so here's a combination of three pieces that I think do a good job of making things clear while not eliding too much of the complexity: start with the New York Times's Desperate Crossing interactive photo essay; then read Vox's explainer; then head to Slate for We Could Stop More Refugee Children From Drowning. But We Won’t.

Inside Jeb Bush’s fall strategy to deflate Trump and court conservatives

I'm curious to see the outcome if Iowa Democrats have satellite caucuses and Republicans don't. It's not like the parties are up against each other at that point, so relative turnout doesn't matter in that way, but how will it affect the type of candidates who do well (and get momentum) or don't?

The Witches of Salem is what finally pushed me over the edge to resubscribe to the New Yorker. (I tried giving it up to save money. I lasted eight months. It was TERRIBLE.)

The Fascinating Afterlife of Peru's Mummies

I have fond memories of a school field trip to the Wadsworth Atheneum, and I'm curious to see its big new renovation.

The Onion: I-90 Adds Lane For Drivers Traveling Cross-Country To Stop Woman From Marrying Wrong Man

Morning Coffee (8/17/15)

Me elsewhere: TV news summary for the week.

This is a horrifying but very important read: ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape

This Jeff Flake profile is interesting.

‘Sesame Street’ goes to HBO and makes it clear why we should fund the arts

Not that I USUALLY understand the Bush family's choices, but as someone who also calls her grandfather "Poppy," the idea of using it as a child's name just BAFFLES me.

Man Poses as Target on Facebook, Trolls Haters of Its Gender-Neutral Move With Epic Replies

The new War and Peace looks super pretty.

TV critic James Poniewozik is leaving Time for the New York Times, and his retrospective goodbye post is worth a read.

If this happens, DC Comics will have shows on four of the five main broadcast networks.

Morning Coffee (8/12/15)

New Hampshire news: apparently the ballot selfie ban is unconstitutional.

This is perfect: "Hell Is Empty and All the Devils Are Here": A Shakespearean Guide to the 2016 Republican Primary

Confused about the Google/Alphabet thing? Read Timothy Lee here and here.

My friend Chris is in this film currently crowdfunding - take a look!

I am absolutely one of those people who will read anything about Roanoke.

Fascinating and tragic: The children taken from home for a social experiment

Remember I Wanna Marry 'Harry'? This interview with the winner is actually very interesting! (Random factoid: A promotional shirt they sent out for that show is the most comfortable item of clothing I own, but I refuse to wear it out of the house, as it says "Keep Calm & Marry Harry.")

I know I've said it before, but I really mean it this time: This is the greatest thing The Toast has ever done. "SUIT #3: Literally Wishbone is wearing a Romeo costume and standing in front of a grown woman in an Elizabethan gown who’s asking him to deny thy father and refuse thy name, but no mention of the fact he’s a dog?

VISIONARY: Correct.

[Suits shrug, like ‘I guess that checks out’]

SUIT #2: All fours or hind legs?

VISIONARY: That really depends on the themes of the book."

Morning Coffee (5/11/15)

Me elsewhere: TV news for the week (THERE'S A LOT OF IT) and NBC's fall schedule.

I also have a public Google spreadsheet of TV info - premiere dates, pickups/renewals/cancellations, etc. I'll be updating it all week as upfronts progress.

Related: You may wish to look at descriptions of PBS's upcoming programming. There's some exciting stuff.

And in this TV finale season: Did you know the term "cliffhanger" apparently came from Thomas Hardy?

I haven't had a chance to read the Times nail salon series yet, but I'm glad to see it's getting real results.

Speaking of Cuomo: Sandra Lee is getting a lifestyle show. Will it answer our burning question of whether she makes tablescapes at the governor's mansion?

This piece on dogs waiting sadly outside polling stations is the most delightful coverage of the UK election you'll read.

I can't believe I kind of forgot about the Demon Sheep.

I'm not sure my brain is ready for Daniel Radcliffe playing Lee Atwater.

Morning Coffee (11/7/14)

Happy Friday!

Promising news: Twitter is working with an advocacy group to investigate the harassment of women

There's a new Into the Woods trailer, and . . . fine. I'm in.

If your Friday could use twenty minutes of pure delight, I highly recommend I Ship It, a romantic comedy set in the world of wizard rock, by Yulin Kuang, who's making a good case for become The Nora Ephron of My People. It stars Mary Kate Wiles of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Sean Persaud of Shipwrecked Comedy, and Joey Richter of StarKid. (If none of those words made any sense to you, you might not entirely get this, but it will still be funny and adorable.)

Ooh: Vlogbrothers Bring “Crash Course” Videos to PBS Digital Studios

I read this oral history of Sports Night and now I need to rewatch the entire show immediately.

OPI has Peanuts nail polish and I want "WHO ARE YOU CALLING BOSSY?!?" with every fiber of my being.

Speaking of things I want, look at this Rainbow Brite bib necklace.

20 Style Tips On How To Wear a Plaid or Flannel Shirt I didn't necessarily realize this was a difficult subject requiring 20 tips, but this is absolutely speaking my language.

Two Words: Kitten Graduation

Morning Coffee (4/11/14)

Happy Friday!

Eeee, here's the Masterpiece summer schedule!

If you're wondering about the fate of your favorite yet-to-be-renewed show, Dan Fienberg's write-up is very good.

I want Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon's bookcase risers.

Wife insists Welsh dragon must go

Previously.tv's Firefly theme remix series is great. Here's yacht rock and polka.

This is your brain on knitting

This look at TV writer Julie Plec's office and work routine is great.

Klingon beer, anyone?

The Onion: All Of Man’s Time-Wasting Websites Exhausted Before Lunch