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The New Armor That Lets You Sense Surveillance Cameras
We pass under surveillance cameras every day, appearing on perhaps hundreds of minutes of film. We rarely notice them. London-based artist James Bridle would like to remind us. Bridle has created a...
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The 6-Year-Old Who Donated His Piggy Bank to NASA Just Got a Call From an...
Six-year-old Connor Johnson wants to be an astronaut. To realize that dream, however, he needs NASA to have a fully functioning space program when he's an adult—so he has started a White House...
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Zuckerberg's Dream: Everyone Sitting in One Room (Controlled by Invisible...
Facebook HQ rendering.The starchitecture of Silicon Valley gets the full Vanity Fair treatment in a new story that appears in next month's magazine, but online now. Paul Goldberger got remarkable...
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The Amazing Placenta
WikimediaI had not given much thought to placentas until the one inside me refused to come out. I’d never thought of the placenta as an object that had agency, let alone its own personality. But there...
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The Wrong Kind of Ethanol Boom
ReutersMost of the controversy over blending low-carbon ethanol with gasoline revolves around the impact on grocery prices as more farmland is converted to grow corn for fuel not food. Now a Rice...
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The Only Thing Weirder Than a Telemarketing Robot
The Turk Chess Automaton (Bibliodyssey)Sometimes, you have to think like a scammer. So, when I saw that an apparent robot telemarketer named Samantha West had randomly called a TIME editor and denied...
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5 Intriguing Things: Monday, 12/16
1. China landed the Jade Rabbit rover on the moon. If you're under the age of 37, this is the first time in your life that photos are being sent back from the surface of our satellite. "The 1-ton...
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Dickens, Darwin, Dr. Johnson: Millions of Images From the British Library Now...
The British Library’s release is Christmas for free image fans, basically. This litho comes from E.F. Manning’s The Coming of Father Christmas, 1894. (The British Library/Flickr Commons)Five years ago,...
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NORAD Tracks Santa's Path on Christmas Eve Because of a Typo
It was 1955, and Christmas was approaching, and Sears had a new idea for a yuletide gimmick. In local newspapers, the department store placed ads ... on behalf of Santa himself. "HEY, KIDDIES!" the ad...
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How Humans Created Cats
Universal Studios/The AtlanticWhy do people keep cats? As a non-cat person, I have long been perplexed by this state of affairs, in which millions and millions of humans around the world have wound up...
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Facebook Advice: Don't Mistake Anti-Racist Satire for Patriotism
Bioshock: Infinite/2K GamesHere is a tale of two right-wing groups in America—one sincere, and one satirical—and what happened when Facebook brought them together. The first is named the National...
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If a Tweet Falls in a Forest, Will Anybody Hear It?
Ah, the forest of social media. Have we finally found ourselves in the Facebooks and Twitters, or are we just lost in the digital woods? How has electronic communication changed the way we share our...
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Oh, No! Auto-Playing Video Ads Are Coming to Facebook
Zuck knows your needs—if you're a marketer. (AP/Craig Ruttle)Nobody likes auto-playing videos, most of which tend to be ads in one of the dozen or so tabs you have open. Such a scourge are they that...
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Robots of Yore: Lab Footage From the 1980s to the Present
Wiggling robots, juggling robots, and even flying swarms of quadrotor robots—engineers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a menagerie of bots over the decades. This short video focuses...
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Twitter Attackers Pacified With Lyrics From Broadway Musicals
Former Spurs manager Andre Villas-Boas (Reuters)Ashley Van Buren has been called some pretty nasty things this week, many of which are unprintable in a family-friendly publication such as this one. But...
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A New Map Reveals the Geography of American TV News
The Internet ArchiveMost Americans—some 55 percent—get their news from television. That’s more than double the number who look to the web first, and more than five times the number who turn to print....
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November Was the Warmest November Since We Started Keeping Track
NOAAIf you live in the eastern half of the United States, last month probably seemed like a normal November for you, perhaps even a bit chilly. But, historically, the month was anything but. According...
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5 Intriguing Things: Tuesday, 12/17
1. The HAPIfork has begun shipping. "Eating too fast leads to poor digestion and poor weight control. The HAPIfork, powered by Slow Control, is an electronic fork that helps you monitor and track...
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NASA's Original Lunar Images Are Housed in a Former McDonald's
At an old McDonald's at NASA Ames Research Park in Moffett Field, California, there are no Big Macs or chicken nuggets. Instead, there are reels and reels of original footage from the five lunar...
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The World's Newest Island, Niijima
Niijima (NASA)The Earth is geologically dynamic. Mountains and oceans are created and destroyed over millions of years. Almost nothing is permanent on the face of the planet. In a human lifespan, it's...
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