fun facts

3 hearts, 9 brains, 8 arms — the octopus.

“The octopus is a creature of complexity and mystery, that serves as a symbol of creativity, expansion and unpredictability. … These artists have studied the form and symbolism of these amazing sea creatures in depth — here are their individual […]

fun facts

Crooks’ mistaken bet on encrypted phones.

“Hardened phones were ingenious, but these networks had some inherent security flaws: the clustering of a criminal clientele made them a tempting target for police officers in many countries. It was as if all the villains had holed up in […]

fun facts

When civilization collapsed.

A video: “In the 12th century BCE the great Bronze Age civilizations of the Mediterranean—all of them—suddenly fell apart. Their empires evaporated, their cities emptied out, their technologies disappeared, and famine ruled. Mycenae, Minos, Assyria, Hittites, Canaan, Cyprus—all gone. Even […]

fun facts

New study suggests humans didn’t all come from one place.

“By analyzing the genomes of 290 living people, researchers concluded that modern humans descended from at least two populations that coexisted in Africa for a million years before merging in several independent events across the continent. The findings were published […]

fun facts

What is disc golf in South Florida like?

I’ve been playing with friends in Austin and our hazards are nothing like this. From the comments: “Those little ones are the worst. They got something to prove and are so much more confrontational.” ~ watch the video

fun facts

For 20 years the nuclear launch code was 00000000.

There’s an interesting tension between top-down control over our nuclear arsenal and decentralized ability to launch even if communication lines were wiped out. “Oh, and in case you actually did forget the code, it was handily written down on a […]

fun facts

Whalefall.

An incredible example of the food web in action. “When a whale dies and sinks to the ocean floor, it creates a new ecosystem that changes the local food web for up to a century afterwards. They only occur in […]

fun facts

Catching spies is a lose-lose proposition.

“[If] counterintelligence officers aren’t finding those spies, they have failed. … [W]hen they do catch them, the public perception is that they’ve failed again, by not detecting them for years on end. Spy-catchers are thus damned if they do and […]