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The Journal of Brief Ideas is an online scientific research journal of “brief ideas” that accepts submissions of, at most, 200 words. “This is an interesting experiment, but it’s not a sign of things to come,” astrophysicist Katie Mack tellsNature. “There is a risk of it being just a bunch of half-formed thoughts.”

Add Folders as Favorites for Easy Access in Windows

The Favorites section of File Explorer is designed to hold the folders you use most often. It makes opening those frequently accessed parts of your drive that little bit easier. If there are new folders you want to add, or redundant ones you don’t want to see, making changes isn’t difficult (and the seconds you…

A History Of The Most Impractical Weapons Ever Used In War

A lot of brainpower goes into designing weapons of war. Unfortunately, in a complicated situation, brainpower is a terrible substitute for testing. Here are some of the ingenious weapons of war that were great on paper and terrible in practice. I remember an engineer giving a talk at my college. He and a team had…

The $1 Billion Movie Could Be An Endangered Species

Over the past half dozen years, the American movie industry has benefited massively from overseas box office, and a number of movies that underperformed domestically rocked out overseas. A number of movies made over $1 billion worldwide. But that could be about to change, thanks to a strong dollar. As recently as last summer, Transformers:…

Windows 10 Will Help Kill the Password for Good

A consortium of tech companies adopted a new standard in December intended to usher in a more secure future without the hassle of passwords. On Friday, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 will incorporate those specifications, enabling new biometric identification features like fingerprints and eye-scans. Good job, Microsoft. This means the folks designing useful things like…

Meet The New Face Of Marlboro: Jeff The Diseased Lung In A Cowboy Hat

On Last Week Tonight, John Oliver reports on Philip Morris International’s unsavory habit of suing countries over laws requiring health warnings on cigarette packaging, while proposing a compromise that preserves Big Tobacco’s marketing goals while protecting public health: Meet Jeff, the Diseased Lung In A Cowboy Hat. Oliver’s proposed mascot is a humorous coda to…

The ​​​​​Very Best Toys From New York Toy Fair 2015

We’ve combed through New York City’s annual Toy Fair to bring you all the best and the brightest toys, treasures, costumes and action figures presented this year. And what we found is both amazing and awesomely terrifying. Behold a sentient Barbie, virtual reality View-Masters and Block! Virtual Reality View-Master View-Master partnered up with Google Cardboard…

Massive Forest Fires Could Be Cooling the Earth

Wait, what? A forest fire may not sound like a great way to cool off, but Earth’s climate is a complicated beast. It turns out that some of the world’s fiercest blazes are actually lowering our planet’s temperatures. Top image: Wikimedia The remote boreal forests that blanket massive swaths of Canada and Alaska aren’t just…

This Smart Gun Could Be the Colt .45 of the Future

The above Terminator-like weapon is Colt’s latest, greatest invention. Developed with Defense Research and Development Canada, (our northern neighbors’ version of DARPA) this is the smart gun Canada wants to fight the wars of the future. And it’s hard to look at this insane level of firearm innovation and not think about the birth of…

The only fun fact about Apollo 13’s dramatic failure is this invoice

I didn’t know about this fun factoid: On April, 1970, the Grumman Aerospace Corporation—manufacturers of the Lunar Module—sent a $312,421.24 bill to North American Rockwell—who made the service module that malfunctioned in the Apollo 13 mission—for towing services. Why, you ask? Here’s the story. On April 14, 1970, 56 hours after its launch from the…

The Marvel Play Arts Figures Are Great, But Nowhere Near Crazy Enough

Ever since Square-Enix announced they’d gotten the Marvel license for their Play Arts Kai Variants line, I’ve been looking forward to what ridiculous designs they would create for Marvel’s finest heroes. But a few new figures were at Toy Fair, and while they’re cool, they’re lacking the wonderful absurdity. All images via Toyark. As well…

How Does The Scoville Scale Measure The Exact Hotness Of A Pepper?

The hottest chili ever measured rates a whopping 1,569,300 Scoville Heat Units, but what exactly does that mean? Where does the Scoville Scale come from? What exactly does it measure? And how do we end up with such a precise number to describe the heat sensation a pepper can produce? First, it’s necessary to make…

25 of the Most Desirable Objects Ever Made

We’re surrounded by scores of gadgets so well-designed it’s almost impossible not to fall in love with some of them. I wanted to share some of my personal favorites. The following set of images serves as a confession for me; call me crazy, but I adore these objects so much, that simply to touch and…

This Timelapse of Dubai Is the Dubai of Timelapses

Remember when timelapses first started hitting the internet? Simple sunsets over the word’s greatest cities were enough to enthrall. This over-the-top time lapse of Dubai is a perfect reflection of its very subject: opulent, excessive, awe-inducing. Just watch this three-minute tour-de-force by timelapse professional Rob Whitworth. The amount of production, effort, and indeed, time involved…

Constantine Has Revealed Its Long Con, And We’re Rooting For Its Return

This week, Constantine aired what might be the show’s final episode, a creepy story about otherworldly polygamous teenagers. But it’s the episode’s last few moments that ups the stakes and has us hoping that Constantine returns, perhaps with a bit of rebranding. I will admit, I’ve been a bit ambivalent about Constantine. Like a lot…

Last Night’s Jetsons Parody on The Simpsons Was Pretty Weird

The Simpsons and The Jetsons are two of the greatest American cartoons ever created. So it was exciting to see those two worlds collide in last night’s new episode of The Simpsons. Too bad it was so uncomfortable. The whole thing plays out as you might expect, with Bart skipping school for a Spaceball game,…

The Story of the First Photo on the Web

CERN, the world’s most awe-inspiring physics research facility, is pimping some images of its newly renovated Large Hadron Collider today. It reminds me of the very first time CERN pimped some images on the web nearly a quarter century ago. Let’s just say they were not entirely scientific in nature. That’s the photo above—or at…

Producers Of That Wheel Of Time TV Pilot Are Suing Robert Jordan’s Widow

A week ago, a pilot episode for a Wheel of Time TV show aired at 1:30 in the morning on the cable channel FXX. And its producers, Red Eagle Entertainment, explained it was basically to hold onto the rights past their Feb. 11 expiration date. But now, they’ve sued Harriet McDougal, the widow of author…

Why Would Someone Stick These Crystals In Your Heart?

These are piezoelectric crystals. Their use is based on one insight — sound is a physical wave which can deform a crystal — and it’s how we measure the changing size of organs while they’re still being used. It works like this: Two crystals are embedded in a material, and both are attached to wires.…

Crows Are Even Smarter Than We Thought Possible 

We know that crows understand causality, the relationship between cause and effect. We also know they have mad tool skills. Now, a new research collaboration between Moscow State University and the University of Iowa suggests that crows are also capable of analogical thinking, a realm of reasoning thought only available to primates. https://gizmodo.com/crows-understand-a-fundamental-part-of-logical-reasonin-1553222215 Scientific American…