The Night Before Space Launch

"What Is It Like To Be An Astronaut The Night Before You Launch Into Space?"

Your MLB Nickname

"The 20 rules for creating an MLB nickname (and what yours would be)"

Unfortunate Last Names

"Innocent people with dirty-sounding last names face the 'Scunthorpe problem'"

Black Holes And Computational Complexity

"Black holes, paradoxes, and computational complexity". (Via Tyler Cowen.)

Bad Social Science

"Social science has a complicated, infinitely tricky replication crisis".

Inventing a Longer-Lasting Popsicle

"Inventing a Longer-Lasting Popsicle"

Steak Vending Machine

"A meat vending machine exists, for all your midnight steak needs"

Swirling Wine

"Swirling your wine is not pretentious; it's just good physics".

My favorite part is how the analysis of the physics became someone's PhD dissertation. (Via H.R.)

Messages To The Stars

"Will the messages we sent to the stars be understood?"

Escape Rooms

The Escape Room Craze.

Ancient Egyptian Pregnancy Test

"Ancient Egyptian Pregnancy Test Survived Millenia Because It Worked"

Ancient Earth Globe

Excellent interactive globe showing what the Earth looked like at different times, millions of years ago. (Via H.R. and G.V.H.)

Win95 App

"Windows 95 app brings nerd nostalgia to macOS, Windows and Linux". (Via H.S.)

Flat Earth Believers

"Do People Really Think Earth Might Be Flat?"

Just 66 percent of millennials firmly believe that the Earth is round,” read the summary from the pollster YouGov. Kids today, right? But it’s not only curmudgeons eager to complain about the younger generation who ought to find the survey of interest. For despite the recent prominence of flat-earthery among musicians and athletes, YouGov’s survey seems to have been the first systematic attempt to assess the American population’s views on the shape of the Earth.

Moreover, the results raised a number of compelling questions that deserve attention...

Communicating With Subs

"MIT Researchers Develop Seamless Underwater-to-Air Communication System". (Via H.R.)

Best Bitcoin Explanation

Peter Backus: "This is the best explanation of Bitcoin I've ever seen." (Via A.B.)

Floating Dairy Farm

"All Aboard the World's First Floating Dairy Farm"

Thanos: I Am Not The Villian

"Thanos: I am not the villain here. Stop saying I'm the villain."

Battery Death Trope

"Battery death is the new horror film staple"

How Not To Anonymize Data

How not to anonymize data.

Concrete Energy Vault

"Stacking concrete blocks is a surprisingly efficient way to store energy"

Last Blockbuster

How the last Blockbuster store in the US (in Bend, OR) has managed to survive the digital era.

Hotel Safe Override

Hotel safes also have an administrator code that bypasses the user-chosen combination.

Unless the hotel management has changed it, the override is: LOCK-LOCK-999999

Ridiculous Medical Calls

Doctors discuss, "Most ridiculous thing you've been called about in the middle of the night?"

Missing Contact Lens Found After 28 Years

"MRI helps doctors find missing contact lens after 28 years".

Read full text of article for more details.

Geologists and WW2

"Meet The Covert Geologists That Helped The Allies Win The Second World War"

End Of Mayo?

"How Millennials Killed Mayonnaise"

Wormholes

"On the nature of wormholes".

Math And The Beaches Of Rio

"Math and the Beaches of Rio: Stephen Smale and the history of the Fields medal"

Sports Idioms

"We Use Sports Terms All the Time. But Where Do They Come From?"

Internal Asymmetry

"Why aren't internal organs symmetrical?"

Renting A Goat

"Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Renting a Goat"

Breaking Spaghetti

"Two MIT mathematicians have figured out the trick to breaking spaghetti strands neatly in two: add a little twist as you bend. They outlined their findings in a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences." (Via H.R.)

Origins Of Money

"Conflict reigns over the history and origins of money". (Via Marginal Revolution.)

Ghostbusters Logo

"The Ghostbusters Logo Only Became Famous Because Of A Legal Screw-Up"

No Time Travelers

"The Utter Failure of Fictional Time Travel". An answer to why we’ve not been visited from the future?

Poker Professional Maria Konnikova

Professional poker player Maria Konnikova explains how she exploits irrational prejudices by male poker players to her advantage:

There are people who’d rather die than be bluffed by a woman. They’ll never fold to me because that’s an affront to their masculinity. 

I never bluff them. I know that no matter how strong my hand, they are still going to call me because they just can’t fold to a girl.

Other people think women are incapable of bluffing. They think if I’m betting really aggressively, it means I have an incredibly strong hand. I bluff those people all the time. 

FWIW, she has won $200,000 over the past year of playing professionally.

Parker Solar Probe

"As strange as it may sound, it's much more difficult to reach the sun than it is to leave the solar system altogether":

“I’m always amused when someone says, ‘Shoot X or so-and-so into the sun,’” says Rand Simberg, a space consultant and an engineer. “Because they have no idea how hard that is to do.”

The reason has to do with orbital mechanics, the study of how natural forces influence the motions of rockets, satellites, and other space-bound technology. Falling into the sun might seem effortless since the star’s gravity is always tugging at everything in the solar system, including Earth. But Earth—along with all the other planets and their moons—is also orbiting the sun at great speed, which prevents it from succumbing to the sun’s pull.

This arrangement is great if you’d like to avoid falling into the sun yourself, but it’s rather inconvenient if you want to launch something there.

More Superbugs

"Hospital superbugs are evolving to survive hand sanitizers"

My Father Is Steve Jobs

"I have a secret. My father is Steve Jobs."

Ultimate Bush Plane

"One man designed and built the ultimate bush plane". (Via H.R.)

Laundering Money With In-Game Purchases

Bruce Schneier: "Evidence that stolen credit cards are being used to purchase items in games like Clash of Clans, which are then resold for cash."

Xanadu Today

"Verses Composed Upon Reading A Review From TripAdvisor"

Battery Progress

"The next major innovation in batteries might be here":

Pellion’s battery can pack nearly double the energy of a conventional lithium-ion battery, making it able to, for example, double the time a drone can spend in the air. That 100% increase in energy density is a step change compared to the annual 10% or so improvement the battery industry currently averages.

Best Words

"10 of the best words in the world (that don't translate into English)"

Humidity And HFT

How humidity affects high-frequency trading and the global stock markets. (Via H.R.)

Ethics And Dog Cloning

"Inside the Very Big, Very Controversial Business of Dog Cloning"

Geek Disaster Movie

xkcd: "Disaster Movie". (Via B.E.)

Money-Losing Hardware

"Why Hardware Makers Rarely Make Their Money From Hardware"

Pure Sand

"The Ultra-Pure, Super-Secret Sand That Makes Your Phone Possible". (Via H.R.)

Lip-Reading AI

"Lip-reading artificial intelligence could help the deaf -- or spies"

Etymology Of “Orange”

"The etymology of 'orange': Which came first, the color or the fruit?"

Young People Who Can't Use Keyboards

"A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards"

Popcorn Robotics

"Prepare for Popcorn Robotics". (Via D.M.)

Paper Cutting And Electronics

"How Ancient Arts Are Inspiring Modern Electronics"

Hammacher Schlemmer

The World's Most Peculiar Company: How does catalog-loving retailer Hammacher Schlemmer continue to survive in the age of Amazon?

Kindle Clock

"This hack turns your old Kindle into a clock". (Via H.R.)

Darth Vader In Demand at Summer Weddings

WSJ: "Forget flower girls. Couples want stormtroopers throwing petals, and Vader leading the congo line."

Picard Returns

"Sir Patrick Stewart to reprise Picard role in new Star Trek series"

Daily Double Heat Map

Heat map of where the Daily Double appears on "Jeopardy!"

McScammer

"How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald's Monopoly Game and Stole Millions"

Check Engine Light

"What Your Check Engine Light Means and What To Do About It"

Big Pipe

Ars Technica: "661Tbps through a single optical fiber: The mind boggles". (Via H.R.)

Lockheed Fusion?

"Will Lockheed Martin Change The World With Its New Fusion Reactor?"

AI And Other Minds

"Artificial intelligence has learned to probe the minds of other computers"

TSA Surveillance Update

"Have you gained or lost weight? Congrats, TSA is now tracking you for suspicious activity."