Robbie Gonzalez

It’s the Final Sunday Puzzle, People. Let’s Talk Tubers.

The Martian is a book by Andy Weir about how potatoes will become the first food crop on Mars. Alright, it’s about more than that, but anyone who has read Weir’s novel knows potatoes get plenty of mentions. Anyway, the point is: This week, in honor of Mark Watney’s space spuds, we’re featuring a puzzle…

Godspeed, io9

Dearest Internet mammals: This is it. After years of faithful service, I’m leaving io9. If you’re reading this, you already know how special this place is, so I’ll do my best to keep this brief and spare you my gushing praise. But, if you’ll permit me just a tiny bit of gushing, I’d like to…

How to Build a Globe From Scratch

Time, patience, time, dedication, and time are just a few of the things Peter Bellerby needed to found and subsequently operate Bellerby & Co. Globemakers, one of the only companies on Earth that still makes globes by hand. Here’s Jenny Zhang via My Modern Met: Bellerby and a small team of dedicated globemakers construct high-quality,…

Check Out “Noticing,” a New Project From Robert Krulwich and Aatish Bhatia

Two of our favorite science writers, Robert Krulwich and Aatish Bhatia, just launched a new science blog about “noticing small things and exploring big ideas.” They call their project “Noticing.” [Noticing is] for folks who like to look around. Who can’t not. Who find it hard to get anywhere on time because there’s always something…

It’s Impossible to Watch This Profile of AeroPress-Inventor Alan Adler and not Fall in Love With Him

Inventor-engineer Alan Adler is the man behind the record-setting Aerobie Flying Ring and the widely beloved AeroPress coffee maker. In this profile by filmmaker David Friedman, Adler tells the stories behind his superior designs— and man, is he ever charming*. I defy you to watch this and not fall in love with the guy. Some…

How Much Water is Enough? How Much is Too Much?

The health tip about drinking eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day has been roundly dismissed by scientists, doctors, and upstanding bloggers for years, but this baseless myth refuses to die. Meanwhile, exercise-associated hyponatremia, a consequence of overhydration, is being reported across a broader range of athletes. Aaron E. Carroll, professor of pediatrics at Indiana…

A study published in the journal Acta Psychologica claims to be the first to investigate lying behavior across all age groups. “Young adults – defined here as people aged 18 to 29 – are the most skilled liars,” writes Christian Jarrett at the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest blog, “while teens are the most prolific.”…

Are Stories and Histories the Same Thing?

European languages often use the same word for “story” and “history,” but many English speakers regard these words as antonyms. But how different are they really? At The Last Word on Nothing, Ann Finkbeiner asked some practicing PhD historians for their opinions. Philadelphia-based writer, editor, and historian Audra Wolfe opens the conversation with this response:…

These Are the Shapes of an Inhabited Earth

Conner Griffith combined images from Google Earth, Wikipedia, the Rhode Island School of Design’s Picture and Materials collections, and his own photography to create “Ripple,” a concise, top-down overview of the shapes we use to organize the world. Griffith, a senior at RISD, calls the film “an advertisement for planet Earth,” and “an exploration of…

Cooper Tire wants to make tires out of guayule, a flowering shrub native to the southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico. The NYT reports the company “is expected to demonstrate tires this week with components” made from guayule-derived rubber, and expects “to make a complete tire… by early 2017.” [NYT via PopSci] Contact the author at…

Exciting News: This Pterosaur Fossil May Be Full of Crap!

Fossilized feces, aka “coprolites,” are an uncommon paleontological find. But fossilized poop inside a fossilized creature? That’s rarer, still, and why researchers are so excited about the pterosaur fossil pictured above. The specimen dates back 146- to 161-million years, to the Late Jurassic, and is exceptionally well preserved. Its soft tissues, including its wing membranes,…

When Did You Last Share a Gaze With Someone for More Than a Few Seconds?

A recent study found that extended bouts of eye contact could trigger “dissociative symptoms, dysmorphic face perceptions, and hallucination-like strange-face apparitions.” Sounds like a fun experiment to try at home, right? Maybe—if you can stomach ten minutes of direct eye contact. For the study, Italian psychologist Giovanni Caputo had 20 people stare into one another’s…

This Week’s Puzzle Puts Your Logical Reasoning to the Test

Don’t answer this puzzle too quickly. Read the question closely, and consider your answer carefully (especially if you’ve seen this kind of puzzle before). Sunday Puzzle #45: A Devious Selection Task This week’s puzzle is a twist on a logic problem devised in 1966 by cognitive psychologist Peter Cathcart Wason (we’ll talk more about its…

One Last Look at Dione

This week, the Cassini spacecraft made its fifth and final flyby of Dione, Saturn’s fourth-largest moon. This image, in which Saturn and its rings can be seen looming behind the moon, was captured in the leadup to the mission’s last close approach, on August 17, 2015. “I am moved, as I know everyone else is,…

Hexagon Cake Knife? Hexagon Cake Knife. Hexagon Cake Knife!

A hexagon cake knife is a knife that can cut cake into hexagonal pieces. Matthias Wandel, who is an engineer by trade but moonlights as a woodworking wizard (see his eminently watchable YouTube channel), was in need of such a knife, so he designed and crafted one himself. I’m not kidding about Wandel’s YouTube channel;…

Welcome to Dismaland

The apocalyptic “bemusement” park is Banksy’s newest, and biggest-ever, pop-up exhibition. Located in the British seaside town of Weston-superMare, it features the work of some 50 artists from around the world. Colossal’s Chris Jobson has great photos, and Juxtapoz has an exclusive interview with Banksy. Above: A legend to the park. Contact the author at…

“Albert Einstein made mistakes, and like many physicists he sometimes published them. For most of us, the times when we go astray are happily forgettable. In Einstein’s case, even the mistakes are noteworthy.” Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss explores “what Einstein got wrong,” in the latest issue of SciAm. (Warning: Paywall ahead.) Contact the author at…

An Animated Short About the Ocean That Will Almost Definitely Make You Laugh

I know an animated short about an environmentally conscious shark maybe isn’t the kind of thing you’d normally watch but STAY WITH ME. DON’T GO INTO YOUR ZONE WHERE YOU DON’T WANNA HEAR, OKAY? This video is hilarious. It will make your day better, and you should watch it. “I’m Going to Bite Someone” was…

You’re biased about your biases. “We judge whether we have a bias by examining our thoughts, and because we believe our thoughts are rational, we often think we’re not biased when we are… And the more we convince ourselves that we don’t have certain biases, the more likely we are to exhibit them.” [Nautilus] Contact…

What Color is a Mirror?

Popular answers to this question included “silver,” “white,” “whatever color it’s reflecting,” and “no color at all.” But most mirrors are actually very faintly green. Yes, green. I love this question, because it reveals how a little bit of knowledge can, paradoxically, muddy our understanding of the world. What do I mean by that? Consider…