Stroll through downtown Chicago, and you’ll eventually find the Metropolitan Correction Center. From its tiny windows, prisoners can see a parking garage rooftop across the street. On top of this garage is a sort of pop-up strip club where loved ones of inmates have been putting on shows for years. | learn more
Though mostly lost to history, the public education system has often been influenced by one of its biggest sponsors - the industrialists. Today, the new industrialists (namely Silicon Valley billionaires) continue to spend money trying to alter the way children learn. Opinions and results are mixed. |learn more
“The takeaway: when you are on an exponential curve the trajectory looking forward is the same at any point on the curve.” | learn more
“When we attempt to multitask, we don’t actually do more than one activity at once, but quickly switch between them. And this switching is exhausting. It uses up oxygenated glucose in the brain, running down the same fuel that’s needed to focus on a task.” | learn more
“‘We used to think that there was a cradle of mankind 200,000 years ago in east Africa, but our new data reveal that Homo sapiens spread across the entire African continent around 300,000 years ago,’ palaeoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology said in a statement.” | learn more
13 examples of smart people getting it wrong on new tech. | link (hat tip to Scott O)
Benedict Evans explains why many of the dismissals of technology (i.e. “that’s a toy!”) aren’t wrong, but are also not helpful. | learn more
A climb without any rope or safety gear is called a free solo. Alex Honnold has become the first person to do this on Yosemite’s El Capitan wall. It’s being called the most dangerous rope-free climb ever. There’s a video. | learn more
I make it a point to stay away from politics here - I’m sure you get plenty of that elsewhere. But, I couldn’t resist this comical news that the U.S. government has finally been ordered to stop work on dealing with the Y2K bug. | learn more
A bit dated, but Tim Ferris published complete instructions for David Blaine’s method of holding your breath. I haven’t tried it yet, but it’s on my to-do list. | learn more