8/31/16

8/31/16

News

• Insulin price spike leaves diabetes patients in crisis
• Dropbox hack leads to dumping of 68m user passwords on the internet
• Cocaine with a street value of up to 50 million euros (£42m) has been discovered at a Coca-Cola plant in France.

Science

• CGP Grey: The Simple Solution to Traffic
• Costa Rica celebrates 113 days of 100-percent renewable energy (and counting)
• IBM's Watson just helped create a movie trailer for a movie titled "Morgan" - A horror/thriller about artifical intelligence. What does this mean for film and art of the future?

Showerthoughts

• TVs went from curving outwards, to flatscreen, to curving inwards.
• Not once in my life have I stepped into somebody's house and thought, "I sure hope I get an apology for 'the mess'."
• If cops yelled "Run!" instead of "Freeze!" it would probably confuse the perp enough to give the cop a few seconds to catch up.

Cool Images

• Static discharge example
• Heavy rain over Columbis, Ohio
• Chain fountain

8/30/16

8/30/16

News

• Thousands to receive basic income in Finland: a trial that could lead to the greatest societal transformation of our time
• Nearly 10,000 workers sue Chipotle for unpaid wages
• Costa Rica celebrates 113 days of 100-percent renewable energy (and counting)

Science

• Not a Drill: SETI Is Investigating a Possible Extraterrestrial Signal From Deep Space
• New Published Results on the 'Impossible' EmDrive Propulsion Expected Soon
• Pentagon Scientists Worry the US Is Losing the Artificial Intelligence Arms Race

Showerthoughts

• If an egg is broken by an outside force, life ends. If an egg is broken by an inside force, life begins.
• Amazon has ruined my expectations on how quickly an item should be shipped and handled.
• There should be a reverse version of Kickstarter, where people throw money at an idea, and the person/people that accomplishes it gets to claim the prize.

Cool Images

• How they transport wind turbine blades in difficult terrain
• Highly trained knife attack prevention dog
• Flying car

8/29/16

8/29/16

News

• Gene Wilder dead at 83
• Anthony Weiner caught sexting yet again, report says
• A decade on, vaccine has halved cervical cancer rate

Science

• This Week in Science
• "Technology has gotten so cheap that it is now more economically viable to buy robots than it is to pay people $5 a day"
• The U.S. plans to build the most advanced fusion reactor ever

Showerthoughts

• I bet people who work at the Patent Office spend a lot of time wishing they thought of that.
• As a Disney land worker, I wonder how many pictures of me in my costume are in random people's houses.
• The vast majority of toilet paper is either used to wipe the part of your body that smells or the part of your body that smells.

Cool Images

• This dog learned a cool trick
• Tree trunk carving
• Augmented reality card games

8/28/16

8/28/16

News

• A clown appears to be trying to lure kids into woods in South Carolina
• 'I should have used both hands': German minister defends giving neo-Nazi protesters the finger
• Millions at risk as deadly fungal infections acquire drug resistance

Science

• This Week in Science
• Menopause reversed as scientists successfully 'rejuvenate women's ovaries' Lifestyle
• A new book by historian Yuval Harari claims that artificial intelligence and genetic enhancements will usher in a world of inequality and powerful elites

Showerthoughts

• Why does my brain assume that new gadgets are delicate but as they get older they become stronger.
• Anti-piracy ads always insisted that "you wouldn't download a car", except I would absolutely download a car.
• In 30 years, a song that hasn't been written yet will come on and make me nostalgic about something that hasn't happened yet.

Cool Images

• Tetrahedral racks
• Embers from a wildfire smolder along Lytle Creek Road near Keenbrook, California
• Yosemite National Park under the Moonlight

8/22/16

8/22/16

News

• Nestle continues to extract water from town despite severe drought
• The richest 10% hold 76% of the wealth
• Speedo USA Drops Sponsorship of Ryan Lochte Amid Scandal, donates Lochte's $50k fee to children in Brazil

Science

• This Week in Science
• The virtual and augmented reality market will reach $162 billion by 2020
• German industrial automation company Festo has developed a range of robotic animals

Showerthoughts

• If fish keep declining, future generations will think “plenty of fish in the sea” is a sarcastic quip meaning they will never find anyone.
• Someone should start an uber-like service just with pick up trucks to help move beds or pick up big packages.
• Wouldn't it be nice if people who were going to commit suicide could trade the rest of their life with people who are dying of cancer.

Cool Images

• Trying to cut wood with paper
• Color-changing shoes
• Art vision clock

8/21/16

8/21/16

News

• Nestle continues to extract water from town despite severe drought
• Texas man serving life sentence innocent of double murder, judge says
• Britain has gone “further than any other Western democracy” in its expansion of surveillance powers and its ability to collect bulk data without justifiable reason, a British MP has said. IP Bill will allow UK intelligence agencies to collect, store and access information about internet users

Science

• This Week in Science
• Breakthrough MIT discovery doubles lithium-ion battery capacity
• LEGO architecture: Colombian company has developed recycled plastic blocks that can build homes for just $5,000

Showerthoughts

• Big supermarkets should have baskets placed around the store for that moment when I realize I can't carry another thing and should have got a basket.
• Diabetes is one disease where a sugar pill isn't a placebo.
• Saying "I lost the stylus for my tablet" would've still made sense over 2000 years ago.

Cool Images

• Sports kite
• Powerful flamethrower
• Lotus candle

8/20/16

8/20/16

News

• Australia has the most expensive internet in the world because big players Telstra and Optus are so powerful they can charge huge rates, an internet security company claims
• US fighter jets scrambled to stop Syrian planes bombing special forces and allies in Hasakah. US special forces have been training Kurdish groups regarded as 'terrorists' by the regime
• Police killings of favela residents continue as Games go on in Rio

Science

• Mercedes-Maybach concept is a look at the future of luxury cars
• Scientists are currently perfecting a new type of ceramic that can withstand extreme temperatures up to 3,000 degrees Celsius. The material could prove useful in space aeronautics and the construction of rocket engines.
• Automatic video colorization using deep learning for Lukas Graham's 7 years

Showerthoughts

• I'll bet that spider's just as pissed as I am that I walked through its web.
• It's crazy that's there's this giant thing in the sky all the time that we're not supposed to look at.
• What if the IOC bought a Greek Island to save Greece's economy and host the Olympics permanently, so we couldn't cripple other economies that host the Olympics?

Cool Images

• Ted Kierscey's amazing Firebird animation from Fantasia 2000
• Truck vs. Bollard
• Rolling Mechanism

8/19/16

8/19/16

News

• Louisiana floods destroy home of Christian leader who says God sends natural disasters to punish gay people
• Putin's new right-hand man claims to have invented a device called a "nooscope" which can tap into global consciousness and "detect and register changes in the biosphere and in human activity"
• US Olympic Committee apologizes to city of Rio for swimmers' actions on night of alleged robbery

Science

• 'We're just rentals': Uber drivers ask where they fit in a self-driving future
• The US will soon no longer control the internet’s domain name system
• Uber'€™s first self-driving cars will start picking up passengers this month

Showerthoughts

• Taxes are like a subscription to your country that you can't cancel, no matter how bad the service gets.
• I hate any shampoo company that shapes their bottles in a way that makes it impossible to put them down upside down.
• I wonder how often people who work at the patent office say to themselves, "I should have thought of that."

Cool Images

• SU-35 Jet slows down by thrust vectoring
• Negative trick
• Great welding is like an art form

8/18/16

8/18/16

News

• Justice Department says it will end use of private prisons
• Gawker.com to end operations next week after nearly 14 years of operation
• Russia stripped of Beijing Olympic relay gold for doping

Science

• Elon Musk's next project involves creating solar shingles – roofs completely made of solar panels.
• Crystal mimics brain cell to sift through giant piles of data
• Uber'€™s first self-driving cars will start picking up passengers this month

Showerthoughts

• The funniest guy in the room is usually smart, but the smartest guy in the room usually isn't very funny.
• The tallest person alive has been the same height as every single person in the world at one point.
• I own a human skeleton.

Cool Images

• Pingpong balls on mousetraps
• The nuclear test Operation Teapot's effects on houses
• A very well polished knife blade

8/17/16

8/17/16

News

• No one volunteered, so Boston will assign bodycams to police
• Cost of EpiPen continues to rise putting burden on people with allergies
• France’s Prime Minister has backed the banning of burkini swimsuits, saying they are not compatible with French values and are based on the “enslavement of women”

Science

• CRISPR-Cas9 breaks genes better if you disrupt DNA repair
• ‘Smoke waves’ will affect millions in coming decades
• Helsinki rolls out driverless bus pilot

Showerthoughts

• It's unacceptable to use drugs to enhance your Olympic performance, but perfectly acceptable to use autotune to win a Grammy.
• If you live past 112, you get to be a teenager again.
• If you die in the same hospital you were born in, your total displacement will be 0.

Cool Images

• Googly-eyed Squid found off the coast of California
• Synchronized jump
• While you're asleep

8/16/16

8/16/16

News

• FCC complaint: Baltimore Police breaking law with use of stingray phone trackers
• Iraq to hang 36 ISIS fighters for massacre of 1,700 captives who were told they were going home
• NASA: Last Month Was Earth's Hottest in Recorded History

Science

• We don't understand AI because we don't understand intelligence
• Drying clothes with ultrasound, dryers that are 70 percent more energy-efficient than they are now
• All cars on Australian roads will be driverless by 2030: Telstra exec

Showerthoughts

• Is a bath relaxing for Michael Phelps, or does he just feel like he is at work?
• If Apple Pay came before credit/debit cards, the invention of a battery-free payment tool that fits in your wallet might be seen as an improvement.
• The difference between being a high school state champion for the 100 meter dash and being the fastest man on Earth is 1 second.

Cool Images

• Phosphorescent glowing boomerang
• Longboard Hand Stand
• Newton gravity timer

8/15/16

8/15/16

News

• Michael Phelps announces retirement on TODAY: 'This time I mean it'
• More than 30,000 Muslims from across the world meet in the UK to reject Isis and Islamic extremism
• Top Indian hospitals are buying kidneys from poor villagers to sell to rich patients

Science

• Earth-Like Planet Around Proxima Centauri Discovered
• Cornea cells 'successfully' grown and implanted to cure blindness
• ‘Wireless fiber’ could give us gigabit Internet speeds with no cables at all

Showerthoughts

• We have two universal languages: mathematics, and music. One to describe the universe, and one to describe how we feel about it.
• A person doesn’t become homeless just because they lose all their money, but also because they lost all their friends.
• If I brush my teeth everyday at 11:59 PM for two minutes, then I'm brushing my teeth twice a day.

Cool Images

• A truck drives into the floodwaters of Louisiana
• Fierljeppen (far-leaping) winner of 2016
• Go Pro attached to a Hot Wheels Car (video)

8/14/16

8/14/16

News

• Hacker demonstrates how voting machines can be compromised
• Women burn burqas, men cut beards as Syrian town celebrates IS ouster
• Olympic gold medallist Ryan Lochte 'held up at gunpoint'

Science

• This Week in Science
• Space X lands successfully on droneship - again
• Elon Musk: SolarCity Will Be Offering Entire Solar Roofs By The End Of 2016

Showerthoughts

• Freshmen starting high school this year will be learning about 9/11 as a historical event that took place before they were born.
• Humans have developed so far that avoiding calories is now our main goal, as apposed to finding more.
• The moral of "The Tortoise and the Hare" folktale is "slow and steady wins the race," but it should really just be "don't be cocky."

Cool Images

• Robot scores a hole-in-one
• Great Arch of Getu in China
• Don't drop your iPhone into lava

8/13/16

8/13/16

News

• US Olympians have to pay tax on the value of the medals they receive
• Thieves make off with 20,000 litres of maple syrup from Montreal storage depot
• Officials: 1 in 4 people in Puerto Rico will have Zika by year's end

Science

• This Week in Science
• Cable TV Revenue to Drop by $2.7 Billion in Next 10 Years
• "The Venus Project proposes an alternative vision of what the future can be if we apply what we already know in order to achieve a sustainable new world civilization." A movement that propose using resourced based economy to create abundance on earth

Showerthoughts

• Michael Phelps is actually pretty slow for an aquatic mammal.
• If you're reading a book in public you're sophisticated, if you're reading the newspaper it's still socially acceptable, but if you're reading an article on your phone you're just another person glued to your phone.
• Star Wars takes place a long time ago because we're watching a Galaxy far, far away and the light from that Galaxy is taking a long time to reach us.

Cool Images

• Incredible camera pan of the Olympic swimming
• Chameleon turning blue
• Mount Fuji from the International Space Station

8/12/16

8/12/16

News

• Franklin boy tries to sell teddy bear for food; police go beyond call of duty; Boy’s parents face 10 counts of child endangerment
• Bill To Scrap Daylight Saving Time In California Passes Another Hurdle
• "After 16 appearances in the Olympics, the tiny nation of Fiji has its first medal. And it is gold."

Science

• New “Bionic” Leaf Is Roughly 10 Times More Efficient Than Natural Photosynthesis
• Wind power fiercer than expected, study finds
• Ray Kurzweil: The Future Offers Meaningful Work, Not Meaningless Jobs

Showerthoughts

• When I play a video game, I go out of my way to talk to every person I see. In real life, I go out of my way to avoid talking to every person I see.
• The numbers, in alphabetical order, go 8549176320.
• The Milky Way could very well be the galaxy with the most milk in it.

Cool Images

• Timescape
• A little water makes these tooth picks seem to come to life
• Aly Raisman's tumble pass

8/11/16

8/11/16

News

• Marijuana to remain illegal under federal law, DEA says
• DEA says marijuana has no medical value, will remain in same category as heroin and LSD
• Scotland just produced enough wind energy to power it for an entire day: Strong winds combined with low demand on a sunny summer Sunday help Scotland reach ‘significant milestone’ on path towards ditching fossil fuels entirely

Science

• Audi's new suspension system generates electricity from absorbing shocks
• Genetic Engineering Will Change Everything Forever – CRISPR (video)
• NASA awards companies $65 million to develop habitats for deep space

Showerthoughts

• I recently came to the startling conclusion I will probably never ride a giraffe in my lifetime.
• 16 year olds are competing in the Olympics and I still look at my Mum when the Doctor asks what's wrong
• Having a favorite color turned out to be less important than I expected as a child.

Cool Images

• The most alien-looking place on earth
• What the pilot sees
• 2,000,000 gallon aquarium tank

8/10/16

8/10/16

News

• Speeders want $3M back from New Miami's traffic cameras; 40 percent of money collected went to traffic company
• The water in one of the Olympic swimming pools in Rio has turned green and officials are unsure why
• Vietnam has discreetly fortified several of its islands in the disputed South China Sea with new mobile rocket launchers capable of striking China's runways and military installations across the vital trade route

Science

• Cyborg stingray swims toward light, breaks new ground
• Genetic Engineering Will Change Everything Forever – CRISPR (video)
• Scientists Develop a 'Bed-of-Nails’ Surface that Physically Rips Bacteria Apart While Leaving Human Cells Alone

Showerthoughts

• I definitely used way more glue in the first five years of my life than I have in all the time since then.
• Let's take a moment to appreciate that mother nature not only pre-sliced but also pre-wrapped oranges.
• The Olympics would be so much better if YouTube or Netflix had the rights to stream them.

Cool Images

• Lightning captured at 7200 Frames Per Second
• Stop motion run cycle
• Riptide

8/9/16

8/9/16

News

• Ann Arbor is first city in Michigan to raise tobacco purchase age to 21
• Humpback whales around the globe are mysteriously rescuing animals from orcas
• Man who killed shopkeeper for ‘disrespecting Islam’ jailed for minimum of 27 years: Tanveer Ahmed said he had been offended by clips the shopkeeper had uploaded online

Science

• UK copyright extension on designed objects is “direct assault” on 3D printing
• Electric cars will be the cheaper option in just 6 years
• Next Big Future: Startup Nervana making Deep Learning optimized chip that trains 10X faster

Showerthoughts

• I may not be 2016 healthy, but I’m 1816 healthy.
• We put clocks in our mobile phones, so we didn't need to look at watches. Now we put mobile phones in our watches so we don't need to look at our mobile phones.
• When you lay awake at night, your brain is that one guy at the sleepover that all the other organs wish would shut up and go to sleep.

Cool Images

• Strobe Light Wood Turning
• Footage from a camera dropped out of a plane
• Wood Carving at Fo Guan Shan Temple

8/8/16

8/8/16

News

• Tesla car drives owner to hospital after he suffers pulmonary embolism
• Man awarded $150000 after Facebook post ruined his life
• Ethiopian government switched off the Internet and mobile phone connectivity over the weekend as dozens are killed during widespread political protests

Science

• How to Feed Ten Billion: Lab-Made 'Clean Meat' Burgers are Future of Food
• Jill Stein on CNN: ''Minimum Basic Income a Long Term Goal''
• So Long, Middle Class: Middle-Income Jobs Are Disappearing the Fastest

Showerthoughts

• The Olympics should give out Platinum medals if you manage to take first place AND break a world record doing so.
• When horses win races we credit their lineage. When humans win races we credit their training.
• If a movie bombs at the box office they should release all the footage to see if someone could edit together a better movie.

Cool Images

• Flying over Iran's fires
• Kirkjufell, Iceland
• Into the abyss

8/6/16

8/6/16

News

• NBC Olympics Faces Criticism for Tape Delay, Frequent Commercial Breaks
• Research suggests being lazy is a sign of high intelligence
• Anger Grows as Taiwan Forced to Compete in Olympics as "Chinese Taipei"

Science

• Engineers Create The First Dust-Sized Wireless Sensors That Can Be Implanted Into The Human Body
• UPS to fully automate 30 largest U.S. hubs
• The Washington Post is Using AI to Write Stories During the Rio Olympics

Showerthoughts

• One of the most tragic aspects of a plane crash is that, presumably, most of the passengers had airline food as their last meal.
• You don't actually bite down on anything. You bite up.
• If Microsoft let you play Minesweeper or Solitaire while Windows updated we'd hate Windows updates a lot less.

Cool Images

• C-130 "Fat Albert" Jet Assisted Take Off
• Rio olympics 'Sun' cauldron
• Lighting the torch at the 1992 Olympic games

8/5/16

8/5/16

News

• Group of Chicago Police officers known as the "Skullcap Crew" has been named in over 20 federal lawsuits and over 60 different misconduct complaints - Largest punishment being only 5 day suspension and have received 180 commendations
• Woman 'fired for wearing hijab' as boss tells her to 'keep religion out of the office'
• Bus full of Chinese basketball reporters caught in roadside gunfight on the way to Olympic Village in Rio

Science

• (Japanese article) Watson saves Japanese woman's life by correctly identifying her disease after treatment failed. Her genome was analyzed and the correct diagnosis was returned in ten minutes. Apparently first ever case of a life directly being saved by an AI in Japan
• The Pill Robot Is Coming: "The idea that you could repair a human body by swallowing something, instead of making cuts, is amazing," says innovator Daniela Rus.
• A man suffered a pulmonary embolism at the wheel—and his Tesla drove him to the hospital

Showerthoughts

• If you grab any rock and split it in half, the inside you now have revealed has probably not seen daylight in millions if not billions of years.
• If you break the laws of man,you go to jail. If you break the laws of God,you go to hell. If you break the laws of physics,you go to Sweden and get the Nobel prize.
• Glass half full and Glass half empty doesn't depend on your philosophical bend as much as it depends on whether it was poured half way up or drank half way down.

Cool Images

• Ping pong trick shot
• Owl landing
• Fish live under water, we live under air

8/4/16

8/4/16

News

• George Zimmerman punched in face for allegedly bragging about killing Trayvon Martin
• Italy passes law to encourage all supermarkets to give unsold food to needy: 'The food currently wasted in Europe could feed 200 million people,' says the UN Food and Agricultural
• Skateboarding got voted in as an Olympic sport today

Science

• "The terminally ill man who is set to become the world's first head transplant recipient says more details about his extraordinary surgery will be revealed next month [September 2016]. Valery Spiridonov, a computer scientist from Russia, is set to undergo the risky procedure next year [2017]"
• Free Ivy League Education: Access Over 2,000 Classes From MIT For Nothing. Begs The Question "Why Even Attend College?"
• We live in the future AT&T imagined in 1994

Showerthoughts

• People are way more concerned about athletes having to deal with Brazil being unsafe than the millions of people who live there.
• According to the general media it seems like absolutely everyone has Twitter, yet I don't know a single person who uses Twitter.
• Today's date is 100/1000/10000 in binary.

Cool Images

• UFO
• Sleight of hand
• Hiding a TV in a sliding door