eOpicle

You ever notice how the end of the year hits like a cosmic reminder that time is a practical joke? One minute you’re stuffing beach towels into a drawer, the next you’re standing in the aisle of a bookstore trying to remember which sci-fi epics you swore you’d finish before the frostbite kicked in. Then December strolls in wearing a smug grin, tapping its watch like, “Hey buddy, how’s that TBR pile looking? Big enough to qualify as a load-bearing structure?” Let’s be honest: December is when we all pretend we’re gonna catch up on reading even though half the planet is too stressed, too tired, too cold, or too busy screaming at holiday travel delays to absorb a paragraph. But every year, like desperate time-travelers with seasonal amnesia, we convince ourselves that these final 31 days are our chance to reset, recharge, and rediscover the joy of speculative fiction—also known as the genre that warns us about all the terrible ideas we’ll try anyway. And December 2025 brings a batch of ...

1. The Great American Sniff Test There are two kinds of field trips in America. The first kind ends with an overpriced gift shop magnet and a bus full of sleeping teenagers. The second kind ends with kids saying, “Yo, I think I can smell 1863.” Welcome to the Tenement Museum — a place where U.S. history has texture, scent, and questionable plumbing. Forget the marble monuments and patriotic murals. This is where history happens up close, personal, and slightly damp. It’s not about founding fathers in powdered wigs or eagles majestically perched on parchment. It’s about families stuffed into two rooms, frying oysters on kerosene stoves, praying the draft riots don’t burn down their block. If America is a melting pot, the Tenement Museum is the crusted, blackened edge of that pot — the part nobody cleans but everybody secretly knows is where the flavor lives. 2. Meet Kat Lloyd, Patron Saint of Plausible Pestilence In the dim light of an 1863 stairwell stands Kat Lloyd, the museum’...

America is turning 250 in 2026. Which means we are officially a quarter of a millennium old, which in human years makes us that cranky uncle who still calls TikTok “the Google.” It’s a milestone so big it makes the Bicentennial of 1976 look like a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. And because America can’t resist throwing a self-congratulatory pity party, Yale has swooped in to do what Yale does best: give lectures that nobody asked for but everyone will pretend to watch on YouTube. Enter: David Blight, Joanne Freeman, and Beverly Gage — three esteemed Yale historians with resumes longer than the Declaration of Independence and vocabularies sharp enough to slice through your patriotic balloon animals. They are leading the DeVane Lecture course this fall, titled “America at 250: A History.” It’s free, it’s public, and it’s streaming on YouTube in mid-September. Which means you can binge-watch the fall of the Roman Republic and America’s midlife crisis without leaving your couch. So...

If you thought 2025 couldn’t get dumber, congratulations—you have underestimated both Donald Trump and the art of cultural grievance politics. On August 19th, Trump logged onto Truth Social—the world’s least social social media—and declared that the Smithsonian museums were “OUT OF CONTROL” for doing the unthinkable: telling the truth about history. Specifically, he was incensed that they dared to suggest slavery was “bad.” Yes, you read that right. We’re apparently at the point where “slavery was bad” is now a controversial partisan statement. Welcome to America, where the museums are out here fact-checking the Confederacy, and the President of the United States is throwing a fit like a toddler denied extra sprinkles on his ice cream cone. Let’s unpack this circus, shall we? Trump’s Beef with Museums: Because Paintings Hurt His Feelings First, let’s state the obvious: museums exist to preserve and teach history, not to audition for a MAGA rally playlist. But Trump doesn’t see it ...

Well, folks, break out the fireworks and the caffeine IV drips — democracy just pulled an all-nighter, and she's not okay . In the wee hours of July 3, 2025, as most Americans were just trying to figure out if hot dogs count as a food group and whether their cousin’s fireworks stash was legally acquired (spoiler: it wasn’t), the U.S. House of Representatives set a new record: the longest vote in the chamber’s history. All this, of course, to bring us the legislative unicorn that is Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” — a $3.3 trillion monster so swollen with contradictions, loopholes, and ideological whiplash that even its table of contents probably needed a blood pressure check. And yes, the name is official. The Big. Beautiful. Bill. Because of course it is. Let’s take a journey through this political fever dream. Chapter 1: The Birth of a Behemoth So what exactly is in this Big, Beautiful Bill™ ? Imagine a legislative blender jammed with every pet project, campaign prom...

Ah yes, space—the final frontier, a vast cosmic playground for billionaires, government space agencies, and now... archaeologists? That’s right. While Jeff Bezos is busy firing phallic rockets into the stratosphere and Elon Musk is beta-testing his latest “space Uber,” a quiet rebellion is afoot. A scrappy bunch of academic rebels with trowels (and PhDs) are storming the launchpads with clipboards and moral outrage. They call themselves space archaeologists , and they’re here to save the stuff we left behind on the Moon before somebody turns it into a luxury Airbnb. Welcome to the most ironically overdue rescue mission in human history: saving our barely decades-old galactic garbage before it's lost forever to commercial expansion, cosmic radiation, or—most likely—some future influencer live-streaming a Moon selfie with their feet planted right on Neil Armstrong’s footprint. 🚀 “Houston, We Have a Preservation Problem” Let’s rewind. It’s 2025. Firefly Aerospace just landed its ...

Let’s be honest: when you think of a Kennedy striding into West Virginia, you probably picture JFK in a pressed suit, gripping hands like a rock star on a barnstorming tour through coal towns, trying to prove Catholics could be presidents too. Not someone talking about banning food dyes in school lunches while invoking the ghost of Al Smith and throwing subtle shade at soda drinkers. But hey, this is 2025, and everything is weird now. In his first field trip as Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. —America’s most earnest conspiracy theorist turned federal bureaucrat—descended upon Martinsburg, West Virginia , to officially launch his health crusade, the MAHA agenda (that’s “Make America Healthy Again,” and yes, he really went there). What began as a family history lesson about anti-Catholic bigotry in 1928 somehow morphed into a wellness pep rally, a soda-snubbing SNAP reform, and a statewide call for everyone to walk a daily “Mountaineer Mile.” Welcome to the...