To the right: What an interplanetary Pangaea might look like.

James Fallows chats with a space entrepreneur about colonizing Mars. James McGirk says we should look at floating cities above Venus.

If we do decide to colonize Mars, we may have figured out how to do space farms. {More}

Mental Floss asks “When did Americans lose their British accents?” Relatedly, I don’t like superfluous ‘u’s, but it sure would be simpler if we’d never deviated from British spelling.

A police officer in Houston was pulled over and noticed something funny about the ticket he was given. A scam and a scandal was unraveled.

The Internet filter of a school district in Connecticut decided to start blocking conservative websites. Obviously, this is an issue of funding and if we gave the Internet filterers more of it, they would not have to gang up only on conservative websites…

I’m pretty bummed about what it’s looking like the government is about to do to Voice of America.

China is conglomerating a city that will have a population of 130,000,000 people.

Embarrassing (and funny) of comments the Chinese have made unaware that the person they are talking to speaks Chinese.

Antarctica inhabits an odd place in the nation-state dynamic, perhaps making us rethink sovereignty. More on Antarctica.

Fanisha Fazal and Ryan Griffiths ask why secession is becoming so popular. Open Democracy attributes it to increasing internationalism.

Another ineffective weight-loss strategy: “Eat more fruits and vegetables.”

Nick Hanauer argued that wealth inequality was going to lead to pitchforks on the richers front lawns. John Aziz says that our institutions aren’t sufficiently corrupt.

When I did my Links Across America thing on July Fourth, I really should have had an entry for Denmark. Also, a 1988 TNR piece on the international reaction to the American Revolution.

Perhaps touching the Ark of the Covenant got Uzzah electrocuted.