September 30, 2015

Life is very large. Under the right circumstances, you, too, could fall in love with a toaster.



Shark culling and overfishing may be contributing to climate change. Eliminating top predators destroys ecosystems.



New test detects all the viruses that infect people, animals.



It’s sleazy, it’s totally illegal, and yet it could become the future of retirement.



Historians Admit To Inventing Ancient Greeks.



Bioweapons … for dummies?



September 29, 2015

Longer fasts might help with weight loss but Americans eat all day long.



UN Again Ignores Population Growth.



Reversing the Tide: Cities and Countries Are Rebelling Against Water Privatization, and Winning.



Pull Your Own Weight: Resisting the modern obesity industrial complex.



If you ask German engineers to do something impossible without cheating….



We can’t get out of the bedroom now. Her history is 100% correct, btw.



Crazy American Obesity in Four Graphics. But it’s all “genetic” and “inevitable.” Bullshit.



When Schools Overlook Introverts. As the focus on group work and collaboration increases, classrooms are neglecting the needs of students who work better in quiet settings.



The Real Price of Oil.



September 28, 2015

Signs of Liquid Water Found on Surface of Mars.



GUYS in Movies vs. Real Life. Pretty much, except the small % of frat-type idiots.



Why Students Hate School Lunches. What you eat doesn’t matter much. How much you eat matters far, far more.



New York Cops Are Jailing Handymen For Carrying This Common Pocketknife. And yet we can’t seem to do a thing about guns.



Bees’ tongues are getting shorter because climate change.



The Season of the Witch.



Why time is a feminist issue.



Are you reading another YA novel?



“Food doesn’t all look the same and it shouldn’t”: It’s shocking how much “ugly” food we throw away.



September 27, 2015

If you go back and read Orwell, you’ll notice that Oceania was actually quite good at data security. Our own Thought Police is a clown car operation with no checks or oversight, no ability to keep the most sensitive information safe, and no one behind the steering wheel.



Epistemic learned helplessness.



Hard, NOT Soft, Kill Switches.



Martin Shkreli Is Just a Tiny Part of a Huge Problem. Americans were outraged over his 5,000 percent price hike of a life-saving drug. They should see what Big Pharma has in store.



How do we get people to care about the environment? What if we’re asking the wrong question?



Microsoft stores a backup copy of your encryption key on your OneDrive account that they can give to the FBI or anyone else they deem worthy if it is in Microsoft’s interests. “Encryption.”



Veblen good.



September 26, 2015

No, e-book sales are not falling, despite what publishers say. Indies more than make up for the fake “decline.” Very poor NYT article.



How a $2.7 billion air-defense system became a ‘zombie’ program.



Dustin Yellin’s stupendous, life-sized glass-pane humanoids made from NatGeo clippings.



The “consensus” is sometimes wrong.



The states where women are most likely to be killed by men. The Southern states? Shocking. Oh wait, it’s totally not.



Ghost hunting.



The 40 Worst Movie Posters Ever. Those are bad, but I’ve seen worse.



The frog is known to have a mutualistic relationship with the burrowing tarantula Xenesthis immanis.



Amia Srinivasan reviews ‘Doing Good Better’ by William MacAskill.



September 25, 2015

VW’s Cheating Proves We Must Open Up the Internet of Things.



Consciousness in meme machines.



Logic Is No Match For Science.



Walled world.



Stat check: No, women couldn’t just “go somewhere else” if Planned Parenthood closed.



Katniss when she is 70.



These are the ways robots deceive us.



Investors Are Mining for Water, the Next Hot Commodity. Aye. I invested us in a water company eight years ago. $$$.



September 24, 2015

The false science of cryonics.



Meanwhile, at VW’s emissions testing center.



Bell inequality violation finally done right.



It Might Be Time to Rethink How We Do Emissions Testing.



Hillary’s Taylor Swift problem: What the fight over “authenticity” — in politics and in pop — is really about.



Melting permafrost could cause $43 trillion worth of economic damage. Not to mention mass death and near-extinction. There’s that.



Adventures in Very Recent Evolution. But humans are immune to evolution by, like, magic!



September 23, 2015

OPM Now Admits 5.6m Feds’ Fingerprints Were Stolen By Hackers. Good chance mine were in that pile.



Scientists have uncovered a new species of duck-billed dinosaur, a 30-footlong herbivore that endured months of winter darkness and probably experienced snow.



Welcome to the Speakularity, Where Everything You Say Is Transcribed and Searchable. Fight the future; I don’t want to believe.



In Thrall to Barbarity.



The company CEO rarely knows who the jerks are, though it’s no great mystery among the secretaries.



Here’s More Evidence That Galactic Super-Civilizations Don’t Exist. Or at least don’t exist to our observational methods.



September 22, 2015

US puts twice as much trash in landfills than thought.



CEO who raised price of old pill more than $700 calls journalist a ‘moron’ for asking why.



Fukushima.



Does France Control What American Internet Users Are Allowed to See?



More than 20 percent of female undergraduates at an array of prominent universities said this year that they were victims of sexual assault and misconduct, echoing findings elsewhere, according to one of the largest studies ever of college sexual violence.



The average Republican thinks Trump is a business mogul or Fiorina is some badass CEO star because they act like a really rich corporate titan acts in movies aimed at morons.



As Fires Grow, a New Landscape Appears in the West.



September 21, 2015

In the 1st half of 2015, the healthcare industry had 34 percent of its total records breached, amounting to 84 million data records compromised, the highest rate of any industry. Government accounted for the second highest rate of breaches at 77.2 million records lost, or 31.4 percent.



Japan’s government just ordered all of the country’s public universities to end education in the social sciences, the humanities and law. Non-binding, but…this will happen in the US too, guaranteed.



Big Tech Has Become Way Too Powerful.



Company hikes price 5,000% for drug that fights complication of AIDS, cancer.



The structural memory of water persists on a picosecond timescale.



There Is No Theory of Everything.



Internal Shell documents assume catastrophic climate change.



September 20, 2015

Racist white people seem to think cell phones cost $5 million dollars and nobody but tech billionaires and other whites should own them. Anyone who is shocked that refugees have cell phones is a goddamn moron.



Secretary Of Labor Assures Nation There Still Plenty Of Jobs For Americans Willing To Outwork Robots.



Margaret Atwood: we are double-plus unfree.



VW’s car DRM let it get away with cheating on its diesel emissions testing.



Why is light so fast?



A Toxic Work World. The people who can compete and succeed in this culture are an ever-narrower slice of American society: largely young people who are healthy, and wealthy enough not to have to care for family members.



Twenty cognitive biases.



The Surprising Benefits of Sadness. Both conservatives and liberals will be chagrined to learn that humans evolved above the neck.



September 19, 2015

On violating agency.



Deceptive Woodpecker Uses Mimicry to Avoid Competition.



Technology Colonialism.



Income inequality: Rich Democrats don’t care about the problem any more than rich Republicans do. Why nothing will be done.



In Defense of Hufflepuff.



September 18, 2015

Neighborhood Map of U.S. Obesity.



Wasps have injected new genes into butterflies.



I’ve faced sexual assault, harassment and discrimination as a female scientist. My complaints were dismissed.



AdBlock Plus accused of paying off other ad blockers to let some ads through.



Guy Spends 6 Months, $1,500 To Make A Sandwich Entirely From Scratch. Demonstrates (despite its flaws) the incredible efficiency of industrial capitalism.



Several new studies suggest that the effect of even a single sprained ankle could be more substantial and lingering than we have supposed.



The lack of political diversity in social psychology.



Black holes and academic walls.



Mannequins trop maigres : pour le Sénat, l’IMC ne compte pas.



Why Can’t We Get Rid of the 7-Day Week? No metric weeks for me, please.



September 17, 2015

This chart shows America badly needs some raises.



Triclosan Antibacterial Soap No Better at Killing Germs Than Regular Soap.