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The water rights that govern how California’s water gets used are not the easiest things in the world to understand; working out how they came to be, and how they shaped Los Angeles, is an even trickier thing. Tom Scott tells the story of one small part of it: the St Francis dam, a project…
A spacesuit is all that stands between an astronaut and certain death in the cold void of space, so no wonder some astronauts develop a certain bond of affection with their gear. Fully suited up for the fit test. This is European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano at NASA’s Johnson Space Center preparing to for…
Bad news for all greedy aspiring murderers out there: a new technique allows companies to more easily date documents — like wills —by examining a chemical component of the ink. Until now, if you wanted to suffocate your wealthy uncle with a pillow after typing up and faking his signature on a will, you had…
It’s a traffic jam, when you tried to use Waze. A no smoking sign, when you brought your vape. It’s like swiping left on your future soul mate. On the Late Late Show with James Corden, Alanis Morissette gamely gave the lyrics of her 1995 hit “Ironic” a 2015 spin. Appearing in a red ski…
A group of scientists wanted to find the most effective mosquito repellents. So they tested 10 different substances, including campout standbys like DEET, as well as a random choice: Victoria’s Secret perfume Bombshell. Turns out the perfume is almost as good as DEET. The work was done at New Mexico State’s Molecular Vector Physiology Lab,…
At tonight’s GOP debate in Wisconsin, the RNC seems to be hoping to draw attention away from what’s happening on stage with a bit of levity, reportedly choosing StopHillary as the wifi password for press. CNN’s Betsy Klein was one of the first to notice the password on a confirmation email earlier this week, while…
It’s always fun to look back at movies set in the future and see what their vision of the future was. Even though it’s more a reflection of the time period the movie was made and their imagination is limited to what was around them, it’s cool to see what was right and what was…
The 300-year-old linen-lined trunk is filled with over 2,600 letters that were mailed out—but never received—between the years 1680 and 1706. Historians are now taking a closer look. The trunk, ignored for centuries, had been stored away by a Dutch postmaster in the Netherlands. The extraordinary collection contains letters from all manner of society, including…
Before there was a CIA there was England’s Special Operations Executive. And, as WWII heated up, it put all of its collective tradecraft knowledge into a single training manual. And, it turns out that training spies to operate behind enemy lines is often good training for going outdoors, too. The abridged history of this manual…
Satellites: Is there anything they can’t do? From studying our climate to investigating archaeological mysteries, it feels like we’re learning as much about our planet from orbit as we are from the ground. The latest thing we’re better off doing in space? Tracking our global food supply. Scientists at Stanford have devised a new method…
I know, right? Another debate! How many times can Jeb Bush describe in enthusiastic detail exactly how he’d kill Baby Hitler? Tonight he’ll get yet another chance, on live television. What’s different from the other 456,680 debates? Chris Christie got booted to the sideshow debate for low-pollers. Donald Trump has declared a War on the…
It took 2,500 seismometers, 23 explosive blasts, and countless earthquakes, but researchers now have a much better idea of what the magma chambers look like deep below Mount Saint Helens. The weird bit? It looks like it shares a magma chamber with a whole field of local volcanoes. The iconic volcano of the Pacific Northwest…
Puberty has a clear physiological signpost in girls: sooner or later, they have their first period. That’s been a critical part of identifying genes that influence when puberty starts in girls, but it wasn’t clear whether those genes also affected boys the same way. To find out, researchers — led by University of Cambridge geneticist…
One of the best series on the internet right now is the always illuminating How to Make Everything series that shows us what it takes to make relatively common things from scratch. And it’s always a crazy, impossible amount of work. This time Andy George makes a root beer float and he had to gather…
Ted Cruz’s campaign has gamified its app as a way to create dossiers on voters. Provided you have a stupid friend who has been lured by “Cruz’s Crew,” it might even have collected and analyzed your information. “Cruz’s Crew” awards points to users who help them campaign. Volunteering gets you 50 points, and donating money…
For this tragic tale of youth, greed, and murder, we head to the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Mansfield, Texas. Specifically, we head to the town’s local IHOP, where dark schemes were plotted alongside vats of syrup and stacks of breakfast meats. Suzy and Rick Wamsley were a well-liked couple in their mid-40s. They lived a…
The U.S. Navy and the U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) both have released a photo of the actual Trident II D-5 ballistic missile which was secretly launched from the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, the USS Kentucky, on the 7th of November, causing fear and panic among thousands of West Coasters, some of whom cried alien invasion.…
T-Mobile’s whole “uncarrier” thing, an occasional series of events where CEO John Legere gets on a stage and puts down his cellular competition, has been going on for a few years now. But for its tenth event, T-Mo went big. Say goodbye to video streaming nomming away your data. We had a feeling this was…
Wow. This totally looks like the beginning of World War III but thankfully it’s just Operation Trident Juncture, a military exercise by NATO. But not just any old exercise, it’s the biggest military exercise NATO has done in decades and one that required 36,000 troops and more than 140 aircraft and 60 ships from over…
The folks over at Insignificant Fish Industries run a popular Etsy shop selling geeky merchandise like glowing arcade coin slot belt buckles. But they also just teased this wonderful Han Solo blaster flask on their website that is sure to make them overnight millionaires if they ever start selling it. It looks like a perfect…
