Astronomers and space fans may have set up lawn chairs outside to watch the eclipse, but Nathaniel Frissell set up his ham radio. As the sky dimmed and daylight turned into an uncanny dusk, the reports started coming in: Communication was dying off over the 20 meter (14 MHz) radio band.
The year is almost over and Americans are reflecting on the highs and lows of 2017. Here at Paleofuture we’re obsessed with time capsules, so it got us thinking about what a 2017 time capsule might include. Which objects would you bury to show people of the future what it was like to live through 2017?
As the year draws to a close, we’re not going to pretend that 2017 is going to be fondly remembered by everyone around the country. But instead of taking the easy route and simply pretending that 2017 never happened, let’s instead focus on the fact that lots of awesome people did some really amazing things this year.
Remember when everyone was screaming for 2016 to just end already? Well, it did. And 2017 managed to be even more horrific. Twitter has essentially verified that fact with its end of the year roundup of the most popular tweets, accounts, and hashtags. Appreciate them now, because next year is just going to be worse.
Just when you think 2017 couldn’t get weirder, two countries get into a spat on Twitter and use a Simpsons GIF to accuse the other of aggression. Seriously.
Everybody knows 2016 was a weird year. But guess what: So far, 2017 is even weirder. Like dystopian, wake-me-from-this-nightmare, am-I-living-in-an-episode-of-Black-Mirror weird. We’ve got the tweets to prove it.
Mark Zuckerberg is considerably better at New Year’s resolutions than you are—last year, he built his own home AI, voiced by Morgan Freeman, and ran all over the world. This year, Zuck’s New Year’s resolution is more noble, more selfless. He wants to get offline and immerse himself in the nitty-gritty land of IRL. The…
It’s a brand-new day in a brand-new year, and there’s a lot to be excited about in 2017. We’re getting a brand-new Star Wars movie, Game of Thrones comes back with its penultimate season, and Marvel’s got not one, not two, but three major films debuting this year. Plus, you’ve got a ton of books and comic books. What…
2017 is bound to usher in an assortment of changes to our society. Most of them will be bad—we’re sure to suffer—but some will be good. For example, last night a Los Angeles-based hero vandalized, or rather modernized, the city’s iconic Hollywood sign to read “Hollyweed.”
Practically any halfway decent Rube Goldberg machine is worth taking a few moments to watch. Sex toys would’ve been enough to make this one a fairly solid addition to the canon. But the excellent sound effects bring it to life and the moment that the ball-gagged sub is roused from slumber to play his part is worth the…
The emoji-powers-that-be at Unicode seem to have their finger on the pulse of the world’s zeitgeist with the latest additions. Many symbols of social progress were approved to be added to the official emoji lineup yesterday and many handy signifiers of what-the-hell-just-happened were as well.
Are we really just nine years away from cars that weigh half a ton, with super-efficient nano-paper batteries and pedestrian airbags? It may seem like fairy-tale tech, but one auto design whiz-kid thinks it's realistic. Australian Harsha Ravi won the Young Designer of the Year award for his far-out Globetrotter 2017…
