Skylar Tibbits is the founder of the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT. His team’s work is incredible, and his TED talk is the coolest I’ve seen in a long time. He showcases how they created a system of underwater structures that […]
“In 2018, our solar system ran into an object lost in interstellar space. The object, dubbed ‘Oumuamua, seemed to be long and thin—cigar-shaped—and tumbling end over end. Then, close observations showed it was accelerating, as if something were pushing on […]
In my teens and 20s I played a lot of minesweeper (the old school Windows game). I’d use it to occupy my “System 1” brain while I did some of my best thinking. “A common situation is that you get […]
“The owner of Las Vegas’ Bellagio and ARIA resorts is offering big discounts and more services to draw in guests who need a break from home.” | learn more
One engineer was determined to find out. “I ran various experiments with the freezer empty and full, logging internal temperature, external wall temperature and power consumption every 30 seconds.” | learn more
“Tutorial for C.I.A. Lacing shoes, in which straight segments are interpersed with one or more visible crossovers at different positions as a form of covert signalling.” Thanks to this, I’m now walking around side-eyeing everyone’s allbirds. | learn more
“The 40 rap elder statespeople we’ve selected and ranked — whittled down from a pool of 100 candidates — represent every corner of the culture, from the forever-respected lyrical technicians to those currently running up streaming numbers.” | learn more
The world’s favorite banana until the 1960s, the Gros Michel, was quite different from our bananas today. It lost its dominance due to a fungus. That blew my mind. Now our Cavendish banana is under a similar threat. | learn more
“Here’s a question: how many times do you have to riffle a deck of cards before it is completely shuffled?” | learn more
Hello, Caribbean islands! “Super-rich families are buying multiple citizenships to prepare for the next lockdown. Here’s how citizenship-by-investment programs (CIPs) work and why they’re getting more popular.” | learn more