fun facts

Visual acuity literally off the charts

Louis J. Rosenbaum was an ophthalmologist who worked with sports teams. “The trouble was that Rosenbaum used commercially available Landolt ring charts, which tested visual acuity down to 20/15. Nearly every player maxed out the test.” | learn more

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Falsehoods programmers believe about names

“I have never seen a computer system which handles names properly and doubt one exists, anywhere. So, as a public service, I’m going to list assumptions your systems probably make about names. All of these assumptions are wrong.” | learn more

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Throwing a rave in Chernobyl’s exclusion zone

“The village of Hubyn was never officially evacuated—but over the last 30 years so many people have left that the effect is the same. Of a few dozen houses, most stand empty. A single multipurpose shop caters to an aging […]

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Applying for a job with a ransomware gang

“Back in June 2020, while gathering intelligence on a popular hacker forum, we stumbled upon a peculiar recruitment ad seemingly posted by a ransomware group. To glean valuable insights into the ransomware operators’ perspective, we decided to pose as a […]

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Feel good charts

This list of ~60 facts and charts reminds me of the late Hans Rosling and vast quality of life improvements happening throughout the world right now. | learn more

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How magicians can control your decisions

“In magic, choices are rarely what they seem. Magicians know how to manipulate us into a false sense of free will while really holding the puppet strings. Here’s a simple but clever example of a false choice used in magic.” | learn […]

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Car design history

“A data visualization celebrating the work of the great Italian design studios.” | learn more

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Invasion stripes

Aircraft in WW2 used a “Identification, friend or foe (IFF)” system to avoid friendly fire. Before the D-Day invasion the Allies realized that the system wouldn’t scale to handle the thousands of aircraft involved in the invasion. So, they moved […]

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A guitar hero robot

“I wanted to be great at Guitar Hero. So I might have enlisted the help of robots and artificial intelligence…” Follow the link for an awesome video of the robot in action. | learn more