Friday morning coffee reads

Some interesting stories to read while you begin the end of your week.

1. Urban bird feeders are changing the course of evolution.
2. A stolen Degas painting is recovered – on a bus.
3. Twenty years after its launch, Rotten Tomatoes’ verdict is now seen as vital to a film’s success or failure. Is the site too influential for its own good?
4. The tyranny of convenience.
5. You Can’t Have Denmark Without Danes. “What a small, happy country can teach a huge and fractious one. And what it can’t.”
6. The Wall Street Journal has built a paywall that bends to the individual reader. “Non-subscribers visiting WSJ.com now get a score, based on dozens of signals, that indicates how likely they’ll be to subscribe. The paywall tightens or loosens accordingly.”
7. Americans and Russians fought a battle in Syria — it’s time to care.
8. When a YA novel was criticized for racism prior to publication, the author attempted something radical — she pushed its release date and rewrote it.
9. How can a place with 58,000 homeless people continue to function?
10. The lost art of bending over: How other cultures spare their spines.