29-year-old woman born deaf hears herself for the first time

In the small town of Binghamton, New York there spins a 1925 carousel that once inspired Rod Serling and has since become a portal into... the Twilight Zone. READ THE REST

Mur Lafferty is one of the worst-kept secrets in science fiction and fantasy publishing. "Secret" in that her fiction has not been widely published (until now). "Worst-kept" in that she has been such a force of nature — the podcaster's podcaster, author of a huge corpus of excellent self-published work, and a skilled editor currently… READ THE REST

The dirty secret of the Cthulhu mythos is that their originator, HP Lovecraft, wasn't a very good writer. In addition to his unfortunate tendency to embrace his era's backwards ideas about race and gender, Lovecraft was also fond of elaborate, tedious description that obscured the action and dialog. Which is a pity, because Lovecraft did have one of the great dark imaginations of literature, a positive gift for conjuring up the most unspeakable, unnameable (and often unpronounceable) horrors of the genre, so much so that they persist to this day. READ THE REST

Innovation almost always comes when someone, often in a mix of both genius and frustration, decides there's just got to be a better way. Back in 1989, Dutch computer scientist Guido van Rossum felt the same way. The result of his journey was Python, a decidedly lithe, streamlined coding discipline that has emerged to become… READ THE REST

For most of us, buying a PC is a lot like buying a car. We look for something responsible, sensible, efficient, and safe. That usually means we end up buying the computer equivalent of a Toyota or a Hyundai. But if you're a hardcore gamer, you're likely looking at a sports car-equivalent. Sensible is fine, but… READ THE REST

Americans are mostly oblivious to the metric system, so it likely comes as a big surprise that the kilogram is more than just a measurement of weight or even an idea.  Back in 1879, the kilogram became an actual, physical object. Expert craftsmen in Britain literally created the prototype for the modern kilogram, a golf-ball… READ THE REST