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Here’s a cool bodyhack to remember next time you’re embroiled in battle against a jar lid that refuses to budge: use your go-to expletive. This trick was recently uncovered by Keele University psychologists whose experiments suggest that swearing might make people stronger—at least for tasks requiring short and intense bursts of power. This mildly unsurprising…
The North Korean government is famous for coming up with some peculiar theories. But have you heard the one about how the CIA and South Korea’s intelligence agency paid a “lumberjack” $20,000 to kill Kim Jong Un and his cronies with “radioactive” and “nano poisonous” substances? It’s a doozy. The allegation surfaced on Friday in…
The traditional speaker design involves the use of a vibrating membrane that pushes air to create sound waves that travel to your ears. The technology has been in use for well over a century, but scientists at the University of Exeter might have found a way to improve how speakers work—eliminating movement altogether—using the wonder…
Elon Musk, best known for running Tesla and SpaceX, has recently turned his attention back to Earth. Specifically, under the earth: His Boring Company wants to build a tunnel under Los Angeles to alleviate its traffic problem. It’s a bold plan, and details are still relatively scarce. But more crucially than mundane details like “permits”…
Reuters is reporting tonight that Uber faces a criminal investigation by the Department of Justice for using software to avoid scrutiny by government regulators. In March, the New York Times’ Mike Isaac reported the existence of the “Greyball” software, used to “identify and circumvent officials who were trying to clamp down on the ride-hailing service.”…
On Thursday, the Department of State issued a notice to the Federal Register, soliciting public comments on a new procedure for vetting immigrants and asylum-seekers applying for US visas. If approved, applicants will be asked for their past five years of social media handles and could be denied entry if they refuse. The new rule,…
Count up all the stuff in a galaxy and you should have a pretty good understanding of how much light is being emitted. But that doesn’t seem to be the case for our own Milky Way. Our galaxy’s got a source of extra gamma rays, the highest-energy light, right in its center. And scientists don’t…
At approximately 2:15pm today, 217 House Republicans voted to repeal much of the Affordable Care Act, sending their own plan to the Senate and potentially destroying healthcare for millions. Then they had a little party. Bon appétit, you fucking vampires.
Since we’re all friends here on the internet, I’ll let you in on a little secret: I hate driving. I drive too slowly, lurch violently when I change lanes, and the thought of having to merge onto a speeding California highway makes my heart speed up a little even as I write this. I’m no…
The fate of America’s healthcare system on Thursday came down to four votes: 217 House Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with the latest version of the much-maligned American Health Care Act, while 213 votes against it. After public outcry against the bill, in the end, twenty Republicans voted against it,…
Babies can’t tell us how much pain they’re in, which poses a problem for healthcare practitioners who are trying to manage their care. A new technique that uses non-invasive brain scans overcomes this frustrating limitation by providing what may be the first objective measure of infant pain. The new system, developed by researchers at Oxford…
Here are some tweets, ranked bad to most bad: Please send any thoughts or feedback to [email protected].
You’ve spotted an app, site, or service you like the look of, it’s completely free to use, and so you’re ready to sign up—but how can you tell the service is above-board and legit? That you’re not going to be subject to nefarious dark pattern tactics or see you or your teens sensitive data shared…
Soylent, a substance, is about to be everywhere. A team of queasy venture capitalists just invested $50 million into the company. This, despite the fact that Soylent is perhaps best known for lying about its ingredients and giving people fits of relentless vomiting and uncontrollable diarrhea. Welcome to the clammy embrace of late capitalism. This…
The gene editing tool CRISPR could one day mean that we can simply edit away disease, blight and undesirable genetic traits. Now, it’s also gaining traction in another realm of medical technology: diagnosing disease. On Thursday, researchers at UC Berkeley announced that they’ve discovered ten new CRISPR enzymes that can potentially be used to diagnose…
Over a million Gmail users got hit by a phishing worm on Wednesday afternoon, sending the security world into a cacophony of screams and laughter. Screams, because the attack looked like it came from Google itself. Laughter, because the attack looked like it came from Google itself. While some chin-scratching observers called it “sophisticated,” Wednesday’s…
Mitochondria are the only cellular organelle you probably remember—they’re the powerhouse of the cell, after all. It turns out, they might be a little more powerful than you thought. That, at least, is what an international team of scientists have measured. One new (but not yet peer-reviewed) study took the temperature of the cellular batteries-turned-memes…
If you’ve ever been inside New York City’s Penn Station, you know that it often smells like piss and shit. Yesterday, things somehow managed to get worse when commuters were greeted with a waterfall of rotten-smelling, poo-colored water that gushed from the station’s ceiling. The Associated Press reports that people “were holding their noses” because…
Several states across the American Midwest are experiencing intensive flooding in the wake of unusually vigorous storm system that passed through earlier in the week. Images taken from above and on the ground show the extent of the record-breaking floods, which now threaten areas downstream. From April 29 to May 1, a volatile weather system…
A YouTuber going by the name RossCreations is one of those loathsome channel operators that doesn’t really understand what a prank is. Recently, he removed some stop signs that he deemed “unnecessary” and now, he’s been arrested. In a video published to his channel today, Ross is pleading with his half a million subscribers to…
