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Dash cam footage of meteors aren’t particularly special anymore because the Internet has pretty much ruined everything. But this one that was taken in Bangkok the other day is pretty spectacular. The night sky gets completely lit up in that perfect hue of blue that we associate with aliens and then fades away as the…
Boston, city of charming Colonial-era brick rowhouses lining narrow cobblestone streets. Not exactly the place you’d expect to incubate a modern design revolution. And yet, when Brutalism first came to the US, the hard-edge architectural movement took its firmest hold here. The new book Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston by Mark Pasnik, Chris…
UAVs are great, but most of them are also dumb as a sack of batteries and plastic. So dumb, in fact, that they have a whole chapter of YouTube devoted to their crashes. But a PhD student at MIT thinks he’s figured out a way to give them brains–or the next best thing. As Andrew…
The SS United States is the world’s fastest passenger ship, and the biggest ever built in the U.S. Despite last-minute donations and plans to transform it into startup offices and awesome restaurants, advocates are still fighting to save it from the scrapyard. It’s an old ocean liner—relics of the past, they’re ships designed to ferry…
There’s nothing like a bit of minimalism to bring order to interior decoration. If you’re looking for a little low key wall candy, look no further than illustrator Sekonik. His simple line drawings of cities, gadgets, and other geek treats are just splendid. Sekonik is the pseudonym for British graphic designer Dean Robert Smith, who…
A 1940s psychologist named Robert Tryon wondered if rats could be bred to complete a maze more competently, and after seven generations of selective breeding he succeeded. That classic experiment is still shaping our thinking about the age-old question of nature versus nurture when it comes to human intelligence and behavior. Tryon’s Rat Experiment Robert…
“Operation KKK” seeks to expose high-ranking members of the white supremacist group. Asit did last year, Anonymous is leading a campaign to release the personal information of alleged Klan members, assuming its favorite stance—righteous sower of chaos. Hold the pitchforks: There’s good reason to doubt what these hackers are publishing. So far, hackers have published…
Adele’s remake of Lionel Richie’s classic ballad has hit a milestone that has not been achieved by any other song in history. According to Nielsen Music, the singer sold one million downloads of the song in just seven days. 1,112,000 downloads to be exact. And the only other artist to come close to that was…
One of two things happens when neutron stars collide: they merge together to form a new, larger neutron star, or they collapse into a black hole. But which happens when? That leads to another, trickier question: How big can a neutron star get? This is going to sound weird, but mathematically speaking, we aren’t entirely…
There’s something really peaceful about seeing this video of a bubble freezing in the still of winter. The shapes it makes, how the freeze slowly spreads all over and finally connects, how it turns opaque, it’s a very calm yet wonderful phenomenon. It’s also a hell of a reminder that winter is best experienced through…
Yemen is in for a mess as last week’s rapidly-growing Cyclone Chapala continues to hold it together while approaching the dry desert air. If it makes landfall, it’s anticipated to be the largest storm to hit the country since we started recording them. Based on the latest reports from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, the…
Rice: It’s not just delicious, it’s also the building block of a large percentage of the world’s diet. But rice—and how we finally figured out how to domesticate it—is responsible for shaping a lot more than just what’s on our plates. A new study published in Nature Plants by researchers from the University of Manchester,…
The government would love to get its hands on a foolproof way to break into the new highly encrypted iPhone. And it looks like some clever hackersjust gave it to them. Bug bounty startup Zerodium just announced that a team has figured out how to remotely jailbreak the latest iPhone operating system and will take…
Why is the word “meen” different from the word “glack”? A 1971 experiment showed that you will linger over the first and dismiss the second. But maybe it’s a bit more complicated. If you think you’ve gotten over the practice of sounding words out, you’re probably wrong. Although people watching you read will see you…
Ever been tempted to shoot your parachute with a flare gun mid-flight? Well, this is what will happen if you do. It looks like Brianne Thompson does this on purpose, I guess demonstrating what would happen if a ‘chute was ever hit by flaming debris. Thank god for backup ‘chutes! [Via GearJunkie] IndefinitelyWild is a…
Hungarian photographer Péter Komka wanted to capture the Halloween asteroid that looked like a skull, as it made its closest approach to Earth. What he got instead was a striking image of a meteor streaking across the sky. Komka set up his camera gear on an equatorial mounted tripod near the medieval castle of Salgó,…
Want to improve your ultralight water purification? Shopping for a new backpacking saw or hunting bow? What about a pair of hiking shoes? This is What’s New Outside. Easy Ultralight Water Filtration: Section Hiker has a great guide to a simple, cheap and, most importantly, light water purification system for ultralight backpacking. It’ll be applicable…
In 1957, American herpetologist Karl P. Schmidt was bitten by a poisonous boomslang snake. With no anti-venom available—and mistakenly believing he hadn’t received a fatal dose—he proceeded to do what any diligent scientist would do: he kept a detailed diary chronicling the last agonizing hours of his life. This fascinating video of Schmidt’s “Death Diary”…
Always eager for an angle to win over new customers, Sprint just announced a direct roaming agreement with Cuba. That means the last place carrier is the first to offer American customers mobile service in Castro-land. Take that Verizon. The new roaming deal also includes a direct long-distance interconnection agreement. This is all good news…
The geniuses behind Serial just announced that the podcast’s second season will debut on Pandora as well as iTunes. That’s good news for anybody that wants to binge-listen on a road trip without the hassle of downloading every episode! Contact the author at [email protected]. Public PGP key PGP fingerprint: 91CF B387 7B38 148C DDD6 38D2…
