Here's a video of an octopus changing color while it's asleep. Are the patterns in response to a dream? Possibly, suspects the Alaska Pacific University professor David Scheel. That video… Read the rest of the article: Octopus changes color while asleep, possibly dreaming

A new analysis of whales suggests that each one is worth about $2 million in carbon sequestration — and the global population is thus worth about $1 trillion. How do… Read the rest of the article: Whales worth about $1 trillion in carbon sequestration, analysis finds

The folks at JSTOR Daily have unearthed the proceedings of a 1953 colloquium that pondered a great question: Did early humanity first cultivate grain not for the purpose of making… Read the rest of the article: A 1953 colloquium pondered the question "Did Man Once Live By Beer Alone?"

Christopher Herwig is a photographer who previously did a fantastic series of photos of Soviet-era bus stops. Now he's back with a book of photos of Soviet subway stops —… Read the rest of the article: Gorgeous photos of Soviet subway stations

Maybe you've seen the video that's gone viral on Twitter of a helicopter trimming the trees in a forest by dangling a massive chainsaw that's composed of ten spinning blades?… Read the rest of the article: What it's like to fly a helicopter equipped with a massive dangling chainsaw

Over at Hackaday, the user sjm4306 has posted some pretty cool projects in the past, including a Nixie-tube clock and a tiny IV-21 VFD clock. Now he's created something else… Read the rest of the article: A tiny word clock

Maybe you've heard the famous story of the Inuit elder who, when his family takes away his tools to keep him from living out on the ice, makes a knife… Read the rest of the article: Knives made of human feces don't actually work, experiment finds

Recently a team of marine scientists were piloting a submersible when they had a super-rare encounter with a Deepstaria jellyfish. It starts off looking like a ghost and then turns… Read the rest of the article: A rare encounter with the freaky Deepstaria jellyfish

Daniel Colin James thinks it's time to get rid of the CAPS LOCK key on physical keyboards. Why? Partly because it's a relic of history, created in the 60s by… Read the rest of the article: AN ARGUMENT FOR GETTING RID OF THE PHYSICAL "CAPS LOCK" KEY

University of Cambridge lecturer Jason Scott-Warren was looking at an original 1623 folio copy of Shakespeare's plays, when thought he recognized the handwriting in the margins: John Milton. Was it… Read the rest of the article: Scholar finds John Milton's copy of Shakespeare, marked up with corrections and improvements

First it was vinyl, then it was cassette tapes — now the latest old media that's being praised for offering warmer, richer, higher-quality experiences?

Back in 1970, Max Peintner drew a picture — "The Unending Attraction of Nature" — showing a stadium full of people all watching a forest of trees down on the… Read the rest of the article: Right wing freaks out over eco-art in Austria: "Go away and take your shitty forest!"

Earlier this summer I stopped by the office of Joel Spolsky, CEO of Stack Overflow, the mammoth forum for software developers, to talk about my new book Coders, which is… Read the rest of the article: I talk about punch cards, AI and "CODERS" with Joel Spolsky

In 2012, James Cameron went in a submarine down to the floor of the Mariana Trench, one of the deepest parts of the world's oceans. He says he dove down… Read the rest of the article: Why it's hard to measure who dove deeper into the Mariana Trench

TIL that the physical rigors of competitive chess are so hard that grandmasters have begun to train like soccer players. The exertions of chess are intense. The mental effort burns… Read the rest of the article: Why chess wrecks the bodies of grandmasters

Aren't we all, really, involved in a search party that's desperately hunting to locate ourselves? I've seen this one making the rounds on Twitter, but The Poke transcribed the news… Read the rest of the article: "Missing" woman joins in search party looking for … herself

BMC Toys, a Scranton firm that makes a line of traditional dark-green plastic army men, has decided to make a line of plastic army women. As the owner Jeff Imel… Read the rest of the article: Toymaker to produce line of plastic army women

A town in Iceland has installed some innovative speed bumps — a set of painted bars on the road that create the illusion of floating in the air. As Bored… Read the rest of the article: Painting freaky illusions on the road as virtual speed bumps

A year ago, the city of Dunkirk in France made its bus system entirely free — causing a boom in ridership, as well as a drop in car usage. In… Read the rest of the article: French city makes its buses free, spurring new ridership and decreasing car use

In 1964, a German experiment asked people to randomly tap their fingers — whenever they wanted — while having their brain's electrical activity monitored. The scientists discovered something nifty: The… Read the rest of the article: Debunking the "Bereitschaftspotential", the brain signal that seemed to kill off free will