“America is a land of contrasts, but at the end of the day there’s no place else we’d rather live. Our country is founded on immutable principles of liberty, equality, and freedom that, at their best, create an atmosphere for individual excellence. And also: video games! The world of electronic entertainment started here, and many video games have tapped into our love of country as subject matter.” Read more at PCMag. Read more at The Mary Sue. The Fourth of July is a bad holiday for dogs. Check out some ways to keep your pooch calm during the fireworks this weekend. “The Fourth of July can be rough for dogs. Fireworks displays light up their senses with unfamiliar noises, flashes, and smells, and parties flood their homes with strange guests who may invade the rooms they usually have as private retreats. And when distressed dogs escape, howl, or thrash around the house, Independence Day can quickly become a nightmare for their owners, too.” Read more at Mental Floss. From Armageddon to Batman Forever, here are eight movies that are way better than their Rotten Tomatoes scores suggest. Read more at Thrillist. Stay indoors this hot summer and brush up on your reading with these excellent new sci-fi and fantasy novels. “It’s hot outside, possibly hot as hell depending on where you live—but one way to keep cool is to plop down in front of a fan or the air conditioner, or perhaps inside a walk-in freezer, and crack open a fresh new sci-fi or fantasy book. We’ve got you covered this month with palace intrigue, space battles, doomsday prophecies, reinvented classics, inter-dimensional serial killers, chatty ghosts, and so much more.” Read more at Gizmodo. The newest episode of Loki just presented the MCU a great way to move the narrative of its universe past Thanos. Read more at Inverse.
