French company liable after employee dies during sex on business trip

Google Maps shows sunken car where missing man’s body was found

Human corpses move around significantly as they decompose, according to an Australian researcher who observed a dead body over a 17-month period

Multiple students on campus have offered to pay their classmates to drop out of classes they are waitlisted for

Guizhou ended up with 40 of the world’s 100 tallest bridges. Read that again. I didn’t say China had 40% of the world’s tallest, I said a poor, small province in the interior with only 2.5% of China’s population has 40 of the world’s 100 tallest bridges.

A host of innocent-seeming items are contraband: savoury spreads like Marmite contain yeast and can be used in illicit brewing; chewing gum can be used to make an imprint of a key or lock; baby oil can make an inmate’s arms slippery, rendering them impossible to restrain. Cash is treated as top-level contraband. How the prison economy works

What Happens When You Don’t Pay a Hospital Bill The debt typically comes from out-of-network doctors who people thought were in-network, hospital stays, or ambulance rides.

This study reveals large deficits in the supply of potential male spouses

Fat Relocation Research [PDF]

A Famous Argument Against Free Will Has Been Debunked

Racial Disparities in Voting Wait Times: Evidence from Smartphone Data

A space elevator is possible with today’s technology, researchers say (we just need to dangle it off the moon)

Why is movie theater popcorn so outrageously expensive?

Two Mathematicians Just Solved a Decades-Old Math Riddle (how do you solve x^3 + y^3 + z^3 = k, where k equals any whole number from 1 to 100?)

The Death of Alexander the Great: One of History’s Great Unsolved Mysteries

How much data is generated every minute

Alaskan map of the United States

Aging could potentially be reversed using human growth hormone, study suggests

Google Has My Dead Grandpa’s Data And He Never Used The Internet (Why is it okay that the internet is designed to be a surveillance machine?)

You gave them your data in exchange for a driver’s license. DMVs are making tens of millions of dollars selling it .

Feds served Google with a search warrant, asking for data that would identify any Google user who had been within 100 feet of the bank during a half-hour block of time around the robbery.

Alibaba designers used AI to shape New York Fashion Week looks

Artificial Intelligence, Human Capital, and Innovation [PDF]

“John Levee” updates the nonexistent weather every day to add realistic structure to the community-wide bit

How Apple’s Apps Topped Rivals in the App Store It Controls [NY Times]

Between 2010 and 2016 staff at the Shark Spotting Programme, established to warn swimmers when the three-ton predators approached beaches, reported an average of 205 sightings of the fish off the beaches of False Bay. In 2018 that fell to 50 and this year not one has been seen.

Jakarta has sunk by up to 4 meters, forcing Indonesia to build a new capital

Until 100 years ago, sturgeon were plentiful in the rivers and lakes throughout Europe and America, and caviar was an ordinary food for those who lived near these sturgeon-filled waterways — in some areas it was so common it was served as a free bar snack

How to Build a Pyramid

Leonardo da Vinci may have painted another ‘Mona Lisa.’ Now, there’s a legal battle over who owns it.

Aphex Twin on the Rephlex years

The Dinner Party is an installation artwork by feminist artist Judy Chicago [Thanks Tim]

this “surprise” engagement was nothing of the sort; rather it was a staged marketing stunt + fashionambitionist proposal [Thanks Tim]

Asymmetric Skinny & Wide-Leg Jeans, $462.00

Nasa said to be investigating first allegation of a crime committed in space (an astronaut accessed the bank account of her estranged spouse from the International Space Station)

Why is there a Braille message on my e-scooter? It’s not “how-to-ride” instructions. Blind people need to know whom to contact if they trip over them. [Washington Post]

Chinese murder suspect ‘caught by AI software that spotted dead person’s face’

YouTube removes videos of robots fighting for “animal cruelty”

Scientists Have Created a Vaccine for Cat Allergies, but You Can’t Have It Yet

The neurologist who hacked his brain — and almost lost his mind [Thanks Tim]

When the forum post author used an enthusiastic language style, he was perceived as more manipulative, less knowledgeable, and his information was perceived as less credible.

Are there systematic trends around the world in levels of creativity, aggressiveness, life satisfaction, individualism, trust, and suicidality?

We show that, according to numerous measures, those with tattoos, especially visible ones, are more short-sighted and impulsive than the non-tattooed

Life on alien worlds could be more diverse than on Earth

‘Plastic recycling is a myth’: what really happens to your rubbish?

She asked the doctor to locate a sperm donor. Scores of children born through artificial insemination have learned from DNA tests that their biological fathers were the doctors who performed the procedure.

US Escape Room Industry Report More: For around $30, you and a handful of friends/colleagues/strangers are “trapped” in some kind of space together and must collaboratively puzzle through a series of challenges to win your freedom.

A rash of marijuana thefts has Seattle growers wondering: Is the government leading the thieves right to them?

Companies are increasingly insisting their ads do not appear near articles or videos that contain any of a long list of words. Top 15 Forbidden Words: Dead, Shooting, Murder, Gun, Rape, Bomb, Died, Attack, Killed, Suicide, Trump, Crash, Crime, Explosion, Accident.

JPEG XL includes several features that help transition from the legacy JPEG format

I left my body in a Pizza Hut bathroom [Thanks Tim]

Man Hospitalized for 10+ Day Erection

Florida man reports handgun stolen during orgy at his home

Computers start to take over leadership functions once performed by human leaders, e.g., assigning tasks to human workers.

should we eat our research subjects? – it seems that Animal Studies scholars are divided on that issue; some do, some don’t

study found a strong correlation between adultery and workplace misconduct by corporate executives and financial advisers

91.4% of worries did not come true for those with generalized anxiety disorder

Jeff Bezos has done something that even the nonprofits receiving his millions remark is highly unusual: He has given them life-changing money with virtually no restrictions, formal vetting, or oversight

Self-Checkout Thievery“Anyone who pays for more than half of their stuff in self checkout is a total moron.”

Do We Create Shoplifters?

Scientists develop ‘artificial tongue’ to detect fake whiskies. The technology can also be used to identify poisons as well as to monitor rivers.

A research team is working on training mice to understand irregularities within speech, a task the animals can do with remarkable accuracy

When you go to a website and load a page, in the milliseconds that it takes for that page to load, there are real-time auctions running in the background that determine which ads to load on your page. Almost all online ads are delivered in this way. How Digital Advertising Markets Really Work

Hackers working for the Russian government have been using printers, video decoders, and other so-called Internet-of-things devices as a beachhead to penetrate targeted computer networks

Human life is fragile but tardigrades and other extremophiles show that life itself is in little danger of disappearing

Dark matter may be older than the Big Bang

When our cherished ideas are contradicted by the facts, we must avoid the human tendency to double down on those ideas

Dynamic Information Design with Diminishing Sensitivity Over News

Having mastered Space Invaders, chess, and Go, AI tackles video soccer

Most American books published before 1964 never extended their copyright, meaning they’re in the public domain today. Where to download these free Public domain eBooks

A team of scientists have unveiled a vodka which has been produced using grains and water from the Chernobyl exclusion zone, which they claim is completely safe to drin

Michel Foucault’s LSD Trip in the Valley of Death

Fart-proof underwear

Scientists are making human-monkey hybrids in China

Scientists create contact lenses that zoom when you blink twice

Facebook gets closer to letting you type with your mind

Apple has said that it will temporarily suspend its practice of using human contractors to grade snippets of Siri voice recordings for accuracy. Contractors “regularly hear confidential medical information, drug deals, and recordings of couples having sex” as part of their job.

women’s voices are becoming deeper in some countries

Employee happiness and business success are linked, study

Living Near Trees, Not Just Green Space, Improves Wellbeing

More than 1 in 4 delivery drivers are eating orders and Delivery drivers involved in Amazon theft ring

A two-track algorithm to detect deepfake images — can spot image manipulation at the level of single-pixels

How You Move Your Phone Can Reveal Insights Into Your Personality

Computers can’t tell if you’re happy when you smile. Emotion recognition is a $20 billion industry, but a new study says the most popular method is deeply flawed.

Emotional Expressions Reconsidered: Challenges to Inferring Emotion From Human Facial Movements

Joseph D’Alesandro, 20, made nearly $2,000 a month from phone farming back in 2017. Other phone farmers said they’ve made hundreds of dollars a month from passively running apps on their phones.

The project, which launched in July 2016, now hosts 82 tools that can be used to decrypt 109 different types of ransomware.

How Over 25 People Got Scammed Into Working At A Nonexistent Game Company

evidence suggests it is possible for the vast majority of Americans to eat healthily and affordably

Bernie Madoff asks Trump to reduce his prison sentence

the method for taking a shit as an Apollo astronaut was horrifyingly simple

BrandoMOtv [Thanks Tim]

About 25% of American couples that eventually move in together do so after four months of dating, and 50% after a year. By two years, over 70% had moved in.

New study uses camera footage to track the frequency of bystander intervention in heated incidents

this study finds that brighter nights, those with a full moon and no clouds, have significantly more crime than nights without any moonlight

Never Commit a Crime When Your Phone Is Connected to a Wi-Fi Network

A Few Thoughts about Deep Fakes

Sand and gravel are being extracted faster than they can be replaced. Roughly 32 billion to 50 billion tonnes are used globally each year, mainly for making concrete, glass and electronics.

History’s Greatest Horse Racing Cheat and His Incredible Painting Trick

Why everything you know about nutrition is wrong

In 2019, blockchain has been piercing the food industry at an accelerated pace. According to recent research, 20% of the top-10 global grocers will use blockchain by 2025

An 1851 manual on making ice cream [via Austerity Kitchen]

I spent a day eating food cooked by robots in America’s tech capital [more Austerity Kitchen]

More than 400,000 people have joined a Facebook event page calling for storming Area 51

Facebook’s stock went up after news of a record-breaking $5 billion FTC fine

Google takes another run at social networking with Shoelace

To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

In a Constantly Changing San Francisco, Change is Constant — by A.I. Algorithm [Thanks Tim]

I’LL WASH YOUR PET

The Pentagon has a laser that can identify people from a distance—by their heartbeat

People keep spotting Teslas with snoozing drivers on the freeway

people judged that altering some moral facts was impossible—not even God could turn morally wrong acts into morally right acts. Strikingly, people thought that God could make physically impossible and logically impossible events occur.

In a technical tour de force, Japanese researchers created eggs and sperm in the laboratory. Now, scientists have to determine how to use those cells safely — and ethically.

An interoceptive illusion of effort induced by false heart-rate feedback

Cockroaches may soon be unstoppable—thanks to fast-evolving insecticide resistance

In recent weeks, hackers believed to be working for the Iranian government have targeted U.S. government agencies, as well as sectors of the economy, including oil and gas, sending waves of spear-phishing emails

China Snares Tourists’ Phones in Surveillance Dragnet by Adding Secret App — Border authorities routinely install the app on the phones of people entering the Xinjiang region by land from Central Asia, gathering personal data and scanning for material considered objectionable. [NY Times | Vice]

China may soon be home to half of the world’s most powerful supercomputing systems.

China’s Social Credit System Is More Kafka Than Orwell

Gutenberg Didn’t Actually Invent the Printing Press

James Joyce and the Writing of Odor 

Cincinnati Built a Subway System 100 Years Ago–But Never Used It

In 1999 Sweden banned the purchase—but not the sale—of sex. The idea of criminalising prostitutes’ clients is spreading

Deepfake revenge porn distribution now a crime in Virginia

Why pilots are seeing UFOs

The United States Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron “Thunderbirds” will fly over Hollywood in celebration of the upcoming film Captain Marvel during the afternoon of March 4, 2019. + U.S. Air Force’s Thunderbirds stunt team flying over Hollywood Blvd [Thanks Tim]

Popular Soccer App Spied on Fans Through Phone Microphone to Catch Bars Pirating Game Streams

How long does it take a man to collect his semen specimen in a busy infertility clinic? Patients accompanied by their female partners required significantly longer time to collect their sample.

Why a woman started lactating from her vulva: rare case study

In every single country, the average estimate of happiness is far lower than actual reported happiness

Recent research suggests that rates of extreme poverty, commonly defined as living on less than $2/person/day, are high and rising in the United States

Facebook’s AI researchers have developed a speech synthesizer capable of copying anybody’s voice with uncanny accuracy.

Smart devices are ripe for exploitation in domestic abuse scenarios because often one person, usually a man, controls the information technology (IT) for the house.

Student Used Snapchat Filter to Pose as Teen Girl, Ended up Busting Pedophile Cop

Men Are More Satisfied By ‘Bromances’ Than Their Romantic Relationships, Study Says [thanks GG]

Cocaine contamination in pubic hair

Woman banned from pooing in public has breached court order 20 times in two years

The Puzzle of Open Defecation in Rural India

The zero rupee note

Life expectancy in Canada has stopped increasing for the first time in more than four decades, due largely to soaring overdose deaths

US homicide rates fell sharply in the early 1990s, a decade that also saw the mainstreaming of cell phones – a concurrence that may be more than a coincidence, we propose.

Dead Duck Day also commemorates the billions of other birds that die(d) from colliding with glass buildings

Telegram blames China for cyberattack coinciding with Hong Kong protests + Telegram’s description of DDoS attack is the best

The Economic Effects of the 2017 Tax Revision: Preliminary Observations

How Much Do Museum Employees Actually Make? A Tell-All Google Spreadsheet Is Now Making the Rounds

This paper explores the law and economics of “literary fan art,” i.e. unauthorized derivative works by third parties that are based on someone else’s literary work product. What is the legal status of such fan art?

Dora Maar was one of the most important Surrealist photographers and the only artist to exhibit in all six of the group’s international exhibitions.

A digital ‘dress’ sold for $9,500

Using techniques coming from ultra intense laser science, we show that for high enough laser intensities, two lightsaber blades can `feel’ solid to each other.

A Visit to Chernobyl as It Transforms Into a Solar Farm

Instagram influencers are flocking to Chernobyl

It costs three times more to build a subway station in New York than in London or Paris.

Notable Women is an AR Experiment that lets anyone see 100 historic American women where they’ve historically been left out: U.S. currency. [Thanks Tim]

This Vancouver market is handing out embarrassing plastic bags to customers

Facebook Removed 2.2 Billion Fake Accounts This Year

Nine experiments show that slower responses are considered less sincere

These results partially replicate previous studies showing that larger glasses increase wine sales

A Laptop Infected With Six of the World’s Most Dangerous Computer Viruses Is Up for Auction. The Bid Is Now More Than $1.2 Million [artwork website]

Fortnite is the future, but probably not for the reasons you think

Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority voted to grant a $48,675,000 contract to the Boring Company to build a 0.83-mile, three-station version of the company’s Loop mass-transit system inside of Vegas’ sprawling, revamped convention center, which is currently under construction. The company would receive just over half of its payment after construction is completed, 70 percent after testing and commissioning, and the full payment only after it demonstrates it can daily move at least 4,400 people each hour.

The professor who beat roulette How a renowned researcher beat the odds, stumped casino owners around the world, and walked away with a fortune

When The Boys arrived, they found black suitcases waiting for each other [Thanks Tim]

Parents forget newborn baby in taxi on way home from hospital

Washington is first state to allow composting of human bodies

Florida politicians may expunge an old law that gives Disney World the right to build its own nuclear plant

Driverless electric truck starts deliveries on Swedish public road

Alphabet’s Wing drone deliveries are coming to Finland next month

Electric ‘flying taxi’ prototype unveiled by German start-up

At the moment, only one in 250 cars on the road is electric. Researchers have no idea when electric cars are going to take over

China says it’s created a facial recognition app for pandas

Baltimore ransomware nightmare could last weeks more, with big consequences. Houses can’t be sold, bills can’t be paid while city networks are shuttered.

boring speakers really talk for longer

acne is strongly positively associated with overall grade point average in high school, grades in high school English, history, math, and science, and the completion of a college degree. We also find evidence that acne is associated with higher personal labor market earnings for women.

We find a positive relationship between intelligence scores and fertility

Fetal facial expression in response to intravaginal music emission

our results suggest bilingualism may not enhance cognitive ability at 9.5 months

How a Harrowing Photo of One Woman’s Death Became an Iconic Pro-Choice Symbol

Uncontrolled bleeding during surgery can cause death. What if, instead of slow surgical stitching, you could rapidly glue a wound together? A new “bio-glue” — an experimental adhesive gel that is activated by a flash of light — has been proven to stop high pressure bleeding in the hearts of pigs.

Acid-free paper can last 500 years; stone inscriptions even longer. But magnetic media like hard drives have a much shorter life, lasting only three to five years.

No, someone hasn’t cracked the code of the mysterious Voynich manuscript

Ranking celebrity chef cookbooks by how many animals their recipes kill

A woman took a picture of three Irish men in Times Square. It took Twitter only an hour to track them down.

Pentagram’s new design for parking signs throughout New York City

Down with the sickness

Electric vehicles emit more CO2 than diesel ones, German study shows

French man arrives in Caribbean after crossing Atlantic in giant barrel

A “cyber event” interrupted grid operations in parts of the western United States last month, according to a cryptic report posted by the Department of Energy. If remote hackers interfered with grid networks in California, Utah and Wyoming, as the DOE filing suggests, the event would be unprecedented.

Teenager sues Apple over ‘facial recognition error’ that led to his arrest

Millions of people uploaded photos to the Ever app. Then the company used them to develop facial recognition tools.

Why do many people come to believe that they and others have a true self?

On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit [PDF]

San Francisco approves ban on cashless stores, follows similar moves in Philadelphia, New Jersey

New (australian) $50 note contains typo in word, discovered months after 46 million notes distributed

Reducing Crime Through Environmental Design: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment of Street Lighting in New York City

Metal fraud cost NASA two satellites worth $700 million

Several years ago, there were rumors that metals might have an awkward cousin

Three Mile Island will shut down by September 30th

Burger King’s new Whopper is 0% beef

choice overload only appears in the absence of brand names, but disappears when all options contain brand names—either familiar or unfamiliar

out of 8.9 million dogs in the UK, 2.1 million were left alone in their owner’s home for quite considerable lengths of time. This is not always progressive towards a dog’s social welfare, which without being able to socialize may be inclined towards more negative and problem behaviors. Perhaps if they (i.e. dogs) could contact each other via the internet, their situation might improve?

All perching birds – the majority of the world’s bird population – originated in Australia, researchers report

research team developed a new concept of fire extinguisher optimized for space-use

The Big Kitchen at the World Trade Center, 1981

3M jacket makes automated sinks go bonkers [Thanks Tim]

Vagina Musuem

I just boarded an international @JetBlue flight. Instead of scanning my boarding pass or handing over my passport, I looked into a camera before being allowed down the jet bridge. Did facial recognition replace boarding passes, unbeknownst to me? Did I consent to this? You’re able to opt out of this procedure, MacKenzie. Sorry if this made you feel uncomfortable.

Hair detection in images is useful for many applications, such as face and gender recognition, video surveillance, and hair modelling

The French government has developed its own end-to-end encrypted instant messenger (IM) app to replace government employee use of Telegram, WhatsApp, and other third-party IM clients.

TikTok, the video-sharing app by the Chinese-owned Bytedance (the world’s most valuable startup), has a younger audience than Facebook, an algorithm that learns you, and different ideas about free speech

West Virginia Will Use Blockchain Voting in the 2020 Presidential Election

An Argument that Cybersecurity Is Basically Okay

Dozens of medical professionals in seven states were charged Wednesday with participating in the illegal prescribing of more than 32 million pain pills, including doctors who prosecutors said traded sex for prescriptions and a dentist who unnecessarily pulled teeth from patients to justify giving them opioids. [Washington Post]

dentistry’s struggle to embrace scientific inquiry has left dentists with considerable latitude to advise unnecessary procedures—whether intentionally or not

women with unexplained recurrent miscarriage had less oral sex

subjects, who despite their inability to use smell in daily life, consider themselves healthy

How superstitions spread

Cultural evolution of emotional expression in 50 years of song lyrics

Botanically, hemp and marijuana are from the same species of plant, Cannabis sativa,1 but from different varieties or cultivars. Defining Hemp: A Fact Sheet (CRS report Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress)

“Her overall scheme has been to claim to be a wealthy German heiress with approximately $60 million in funds being held abroad”

Shakespeare home in London, where he wrote ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ found by historian

no one can be creative or productive all the time. (Even Beethoven had a 10-year gap between his eighth and ninth symphonies.)

If You Score Above 30 on This Test, You Might Be a Psychopath

Exciting New App Allows Users To Be Pawns In 26-Year-Old CEO’s Little Game [Thanks Tim]

Shoes made for someone with three feet by a master shoemaker in Berlin

“”"”"”"”"”"”"”"”-w”"”"”"”"”"”"”"”"

According to a recent scientific study, the way to avoid mosquito bites is to listen to electronic music - specifically dubstep, specifically by US artist Skrillex [study]

Physicists Reverse Time for Tiny Particles Inside a Quantum Computer

A major Greenland glacier that was one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again

Growing Corn Is A Major Contributor To Air Pollution, Study Finds

a cotton tote or a paper bag may be worse for the environment than a plastic one + organic cotton is worse than conventional cotton when it comes to overall environmental impact

More than 99.9999 per cent of all living organisms on Earth died. The Day the Dinosaurs Died

A doomsday fungus known as Bd has condemned more species to extinction than any other pathogen.

One wrong mutation and your beautiful daisy transforms into an eldrich horror

Here’s how many avocados it would take to kill you (also watermelon, coffee, dark chocolate…)

Man was mistakenly circumcised in mix-up at Leicester (England) hospital

Eleven experiments provide evidence that people have a tendency to ‘shoot the messenger,’ deeming innocent bearers of bad news unlikeable [PDF]

Peak velocity of elbow joint during hair combing activity for normal subject

A slowdown in image processing speeds up our perception of time passing as we age

For those who get the least amount of physical activity, replacing a half hour of sitting time with physical activity was associated with up to a nearly 50 percent reduction in mortality

Using stolen processing power to mine cryptocurrencies is a profitable criminal enterprise. But nobody realized the scale of the activity until now

The operatives utilized an arsenal of cyber tools, including a cutting-edge espionage platform known as Karma, in which Raven operatives say they hacked into the iPhones of hundreds of activists, political leaders and suspected terrorists.

New beer hitting the market can be used to develop Super 8 movie film. Kodak helped by testing it.

If intense warfare broke out tomorrow, India could supply its troops with only 10 days of ammunition, according to government estimates. And 68 percent of the army’s equipment is so old, it is officially considered “vintage.” [NY Times]

Since the 1950s, hundreds of dogs have jumped off this gothic stone bridge in a town near Glasgow. Many have ended up dead in the valley below. Researchers say there is a rational explanation, but in a land of superstition and mystery, others are not so sure. [NY Times]

not a phone in sight, everyone is just living in the moment, wish we could go back

denim “diaper”

Plane forced to turn back after mother forgets her newborn at airport

a $380K ‘flying motorcycle’

Q, the world’s first genderless voice

The Boombox Incident (The process for removing bald people from photos)

Quantum computing for the very curious

Seat Choice in a Crowded Café: Effects of Eye Contact, Distance, and Anchoring

The relation between shyness and creativity … shyness was negatively associated with creative imagination, but positively associated with aesthetic sensitivity.

Extremely precise visual long-term memories for frequently encountered objects

Nail Scissor as a Rare Foreign Body in the Urethra

Despite anecdotal evidence seen on television and in movies, there is zero actual research to support penetrating traumatic brain injury (TBI) as an intervention to kill zombies

MIT Historian alleges that scientists and officials representing the United Nations, the Red Cross, and the World Health Organization covered up evidence that hundreds of thousands of people died from radiation from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. The scientific consensus was that the Chernobyl accident will, at most, result in the deaths of just 200 people over an 80-year life span. Previously: Thirty years after the Chernobyl disaster, it has become clear that radioactivity might be less harmful than originally thought.

$100,000-a-night Damien-Hirst-designed Las Vegas hotel room is the most expensive in America

Easy trick to stay positive

the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and French Ground Army maintain small pigeon forces in the event that electronic warfare should disrupt or disable military communications.

This hypnotist charges half a bitcoin for helping you remember your lost cryptocurrency password

The Shutdown Problem: How Does a Blockchain System End?

Robots Built House That Generates More Energy Than it Needs

What Happened When I Bought a House With Solar Panels Third-party ownership and decades-long contracts can create real headaches.

From 1979 to 2017, productivity grew 70.3 percent, while hourly compensation of production and nonsupervisory workers grew just 11.1 percent. Where did the “excess” productivity go? Rich People Have Been Taking Your Money For 40 Years And They Still Are

a short story about what happened to the U.S. economy since the end of World War II

Oil will remain the world’s single largest source of energy for the foreseeable future, and the balance between global supply and demand remains perilously narrow.

why deepfakes haven’t taken off as a propaganda technique… they’re too easy to track

Home Control With a Posture-Sensing Couch (Users can then, e.g., switch their TV to a fireplace scene when assuming a relaxed posture) [PDF]

The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same

Around three-quarters of patrons of nightclubs and live music venues would prefer lower sound levels

Consuming From a Shared Plate Promotes Cooperation

Orgasms with a partner were associated with the perception of favorable sleep outcomes, however, orgasms achieved through masturbation (self-stimulation) were associated with the perception of better sleep quality and latency.

how dress codes sexualize students by analyzing the rules and their framing in 481 public high schools across the US

The habitable zone around other stars has been defined as the region where liquid water can exist on a planet’s surface, but it takes more than water to support complex life. Life probably can’t exist on quite as many planets as we once thought

It may be categorically unpleasant to visit cemeteries, crash sites, and death camps, but tourists queue up to see such places. The history of dark tourism

When Kodak Accidentally Discovered A-Bomb Testing

Adults living in the state where they were born

Jareth Nebula never felt completely human

Lawyer invents fake DUI trial to propose to attorney girlfriend

We found that happiness increases with individual income until a threshold of 27,913 Euro per year (rounded to 35,000 USD) in European countries.

We demonstrated, for the first time, that self-disgust plays an important role in the association between loneliness and depressive symptoms

this longitudinal study explores the neural basis for paternal protective behavior in fathers prenatally and early postnatally

Amazon Will Pay $0 in Federal Taxes on $11.2 Billion Profits This tax-free break comes even though Amazon almost doubled its U.S. profits from $5.6 billion to $11.2 billion between 2017 and 2018.

Facebook lets you search for photos of your female friends, but not male mates

Why Tech Companies Hire So Many Economists

Should You Listen To Music While Doing Intellectual Work? It Depends On The Music, The Task, And Your Personality

What happens to the natural world if all the insects disappear?

Emoji license plates will soon be available in Australia

Polyamorous couple who identify as VAMPIRES demonstrate how they drink their ‘donor’ girlfriend’s blood

Happiness research: Long-term effects of life events are overestimated [PDF]

Women who take oral contraceptives have a harder time recognizing emotions like pride or contempt in other people’s faces in comparison to women who aren’t on birth control, new study shows

Scene categorization in the presence of a distractor (we presented composite images with a scene in the center and another scene in the periphery. The two channels conveyed different information, and the participants were asked to focus on one channel while ignoring the other.)

Silent Neurons: The Dark Matter of the Brain?

What 100 Years of Typing Research Can Tell Us

Starting this week, Amazon is testing autonomous package delivery with little robot vehicles in a northern Seattle suburb.

The alarm has been raised on so-called ‘driverless dilemmas’, in which autonomous vehicles will need to make ethical decisions on the road. We argue that these ideas are too contrived to be of practical use, represent an incorrect model of proper safe decision making, and should not be used to inform policy.

Forecasting the Impact of Connected and Automated Vehicles on Energy Use

If technology is everywhere, the tech sector no longer exists. If the tech sector no longer exists, its premium is no longer justified.

Fortnite Is the Future, but Probably Not for the Reasons You Think

As HuffPost and BuzzFeed shed staff, has the digital content bubble burst?

In the case of Picasso’s paintings, our econometric analysis shows that some colors are associated with high prices

The moral of this story is that going to the pub raises many interesting philosophical issues

Misophonia is when an everyday sound causes a strong emotional reaction, usually anger, anxiety or disgust [Thanks GG]

How 10,000 maggots eat a pizza in 2 hours

Increased Coldheartedness related to more pleasure and less guilt after bug grinding.

Detecting a Decline in Serial Homicide

Janice Guy at Higher Pictures, until March 9, 2019

#RecursionFTW

The Neon Fruit Illusion (Observers will typically ascribe this colour change not to the lighting but to the objects themselves)

100 Years is an upcoming science fiction film written by John Malkovich and directed by Robert Rodriguez, due to be released on November 18, 2115

China germinates first seed on moon and Russian startup wants to put billboards in space

A robot dog has learned to run faster with machine learning

Giving algorithms a sense of uncertainty could make them more ethical

Consumption of sushi is a good predictor of insect acceptance.

researchers discover the brain cells that make pain unpleasant

Wipe your nose with the sullied tissue, and you’ll “get sick on your own terms.” A Mysterious Company Claims to Sell Sneeze-Filled Tissues for $80

Creative Ideas of Physicists and Writers Routinely Occur During Mind Wandering

We use a unique data set to show that financial market experts — institutional investors with portfolios averaging $573 million — exhibit costly, systematic biases. A striking finding emerges: while investors display clear skill in buying, their selling decisions underperform substantially.

Striped bodypainting protects against horseflies

What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper? (instead of reaching for a roll of toilet paper, an ancient Roman would often grab a tersorium — or, in my technical terms, a “toilet brush for your butt.”

Easter Island statues: mystery behind their location revealed

Mars — if it still had a magnetic field, atmosphere and water

toki- Process & WALK_short ver [Thanks Tim]

4 Copy Editors Killed In Ongoing AP Style, Chicago Manual Gang Violence

Spiders Can Fly Hundreds of Miles Using Electricity

Swiss hotel chain offers a ‘social media sitter’ to handle your Instagram while you relax

How and when taking pictures undermines the enjoyment of experiences [Related: How the Intention to Share Can Undermine Enjoyment | PDF and How Taking Photos Increases Enjoyment of Experiences | PDF]

Delivery robot spontaneously bursts into flames

Do you believe that people’s eyes emit an invisible beam of force? According to a rather fun paper in PNAS, you probably do.

Person evaluation is strongly influenced by untrustworthy gossip

picking the ‘wrong’ name can make a huge difference to your sales figures (drug-naming study)

Forgetting in order to Remember Better (we find that the interference of informations limits the capacity of human memory, which is the “magic number seven”.)

Physics explains why time passes faster as you age

A musician had an operation in South Africa to remove most of a brain tumor—and played the guitar while it was happening.

There is now a mental health clinic inside a Walmart Supercenter

Executing Someone Who Does Not Remember the Crime [Argument Session, US Supreme Court | audio]

Can a Corpse Give Birth? Why a dead woman was kept on life support against her wishes. [NY Times]

American suicides are now at their highest point in 50 years. It’s the second-leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 35.

A teenage girl is more at risk of developing mental health problems if her father has experienced post-natal depression, according to research

Google Has a Plan to Eliminate Mosquitoes Worldwide

Self-exciting Risk Modeling for Predicting Next Locations of Serial Crimes

A 30-Year Plan to Transform the Courts [audio] More: The Federalist Society has reached an unprecedented peak of power and influence. Having allies on the highest court of the land is just the top layer of the Federalist Society’s expanding sway. The next most important segment of the judiciary — the federal appeals courts — is also filling up with Federalist Society members: Twenty-five of the 30 appeals court judges Trump has appointed are or were members of the society. [Washington Post]

The choice of information structures must be subject to some limits, otherwise, of course, each agent would simply observe the entire state of the world. The Cost of Information

“Financial markets have significantly evolved over the past decade, driven by new technologies, and the market itself is becoming more difficult to anticipate as traditional participants are imperceptibly replaced by computerised models.” Hedge Funds Have Lost Their Rhythm

The Economic Limits of Bitcoin and the Blockchain

The bar graph was first invented in 1786 and little has changed in its format. Here, a replacement for the bar graph, called a hat graph, is proposed.

Clarence King—who was a renowned explorer, the first director of the United States Geological Survey, and one of the most famous Americans of the nineteenth century—conducted a secret double life in which he passed for black. [The Best Facts I Learned from Books in 2018 ]

The artist targeted five prominent New York museums that have rejected his work—the Metropolitan, Guggenheim, Museum of Modern art, New Museum, and Whitney—arguing that they are part of a cabal to eliminate competition in the art market.

Factory robot impales worker with 10 foot-long steel spikes after malfunction

Parrot uses owner’s Amazon Alexa to order shopping, play music

When faking your own death to get out of catering a wedding is not fraud

Child sex dolls seized by Canadian border agents

Boys experience their first ejaculation (thorarche) during adolescence + Thelarche is the onset of secondary (postnatal) breast development, usually occurring at the beginning of puberty in girls + Menarche

Breastfeeding Greater Than 6 Months Is Associated with Smaller Maternal Waist Circumference Up to One Decade After Delivery

Can Humans Really Discriminate 1 Trillion Odors? (The paper’s extravagant claims are based on errors of mathematical logic.)

Physical activity in the evening does not cause sleep problems

Sleep selectively stabilizes contextual aspects of negative memories

The human brain needs to suppress obvious ideas in order to reach the most creative ones. A new study shows that brainwaves play a crucial role in inhibiting habitual thinking modes to pave the way to access more remote ideas.

Research shows that when a nonprofit receives a donation, its views on rules and legislation magically line up with the donor’s. 

The project consisted of Warhol vacuuming the gallery rug and then displaying the vacuum and its signed dust bag in the gallery that he’d cleaned

The Business of Selling Your Location More: Facebook Filed A Patent To Calculate Your Future Location

These Portraits Were Made by AI: None of These People Exist

Advertisers place a single brown pixel on a bright background in a mobile ad. It looks like dust, so users try to wipe it off. That registers as a click, and the user is taken to the homepage. [52 things I learned in 2018]

Should I buy bitcoin (Nevada, New Hampshire, Rhode Island). Should I delete facebook (Washington). Should I cut my hair (Arizona, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio). The Most-Googled “Should I” Question State by State

There Are Now More Shows Streaming Than There Are on Broadcast or Cable

Marriott, like the other big hotel companies, owns very few of its own hotels these days. Marriott is actually a family of 30 hotel brands, many of them virtually indistinguishable. What’s the business logic?

NASA Research Reveals Saturn is Losing Its Rings at “Worst-Case-Scenario” Rate

New results suggest there is no methane on Mars, living organisms thus less likely

Planets with oxygen don’t necessarily have life

The Enfer (French for “Hell”) is a special department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. It is a special collection of books and manuscripts of an erotic or pornographic character which, because of their rarity and value, may be seen only with authorization.

Polybius is an almost-certainly fictional arcade game. The original game allegedly was part of a government-run psychology experiment. [Thanks Darren!]

1-900-Hot-Jedi

Presenting Oscar, The Modular Body