Hypertextual

🪶 9 reasons herons are much stranger than they look

I thought I knew what a heron was: a tall bird with a long beak that stands in water and always looks judgemental.

May 20 • Elia Kabanov

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🩹 7 facts I learned this week

Today’s list explains why peeling tape is basically a tiny sonic boom and how Ryan Gosling’s fox cardigan became the latest knitwear obsession.

May 7 • Elia Kabanov

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April 2026

🌐 A proposal that changed everything

When Tim Berners-Lee, a 33-year-old software engineer, submitted his proposal to CERN management for what would become the World Wide Web, he opened…

Apr 24 • Elia Kabanov

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☕️ 9 facts I learned this week

As you may have noticed, this newsletter has range. Today’s edition, for instance, takes us from a coffee house opened in 1654 to a survey of teenagers…

Apr 16 • Elia Kabanov

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March 2026

🌴 Nobel prizes, grapefruit and camouflage: Things I learned on a Caribbean cruise

I’m back from my Caribbean cruise on board the MV Britannia with a list of facts I learned along the way. For a science writer, even a holiday turns…

Mar 30 • Elia Kabanov

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⚱️ How do you mix up two giant pharaohs?

This week, a behind-the-scenes look at a story that started with a statue and ended with me correcting National Geographic.

Mar 3 • Elia Kabanov

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February 2026

🍄 13 things I learned this month

This week: how a Scottish mountain was once used to weigh the entire Earth, why “Viking” may have been a job title rather than a nationality, and how…

Feb 23 • Elia Kabanov

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January 2026

🦦 7 things I learned this week

This week took me from tool-using sea otters to the lack of female statues, via experimental pigeons, fast-evolving yeast, and Elon Musk enablers who…

Jan 16 • Elia Kabanov

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🗓 25 things I learned in 2025

Not sure anyone was waiting for this, but I couldn’t resist: here’s a partial list of facts I learned last year.

Jan 6 • Elia Kabanov

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🧠 7 discoveries from 2025 that changed how I see the world

I read a lot of science news, but only a few stories actually stick. This year, I kept bumping into facts that nudged my worldview a few degrees, and…

Jan 1 • Elia Kabanov

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December 2025

🔬 On jargon and the limits of science storytelling: My conversation with Mohamed Elsonbaty

This week’s interview is with Mohamed Elsonbaty, a science journalist and communicator. We talk about jargon, trust, AI, and why science communication…

Dec 18, 2025 • Elia Kabanov

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🐿️ Little wildlife stories that give me hope

My last couple of weeks went into building a small wildlife game, but the real-world updates are even better: red squirrels are back on the move, an…

Dec 8, 2025 • Elia Kabanov

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