Beginning with "Coronasweeper" this week, I am on a tear of bringing you the finest-quality reskinnings of Minesweeper available on the intertubes. I am losing sleep over this, people. Now:… Read the rest of the article: Minesweeper, with hexagons

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the most crammed-with-digital-tech fighter jet in history, the product of a multi-decade, trillion-dollar design process that has been famously messy. But the jet is… Read the rest of the article: The problems of touchscreens in the Joint Strike Fighter

Today I learned that a) the poop of wombats is shaped like a cube, and b) scientists have figured out how they poop like that. These are both excellent things!… Read the rest of the article: Why wombat poop is shaped like a cube

Brownies have a glossy top surface. What exactly is up with that? Why … glossy? Adam Ragusea wondered, so he dialed up Pia Sörensen, a Harvard professor who teaches a… Read the rest of the article: What causes the glossy skin on top of brownies? Some kitchen science tries to figure that out

My old friend the lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower has launched an incredibly cool project: the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, which tracks down how sci-fi terms were first used, and then… Read the rest of the article: The "Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction" launches

This is super fun: In a 1773 book, Johann Steingruber designed an alphabet made of architectural floorplans. Present & Correct tweeted about this yesterday, whereupon followers demonstrated that you can… Read the rest of the article: An alphabet made of architectural plans, from 1773

Software developer Sofia Levin created "Coronasweeper", a clone of Minesweeper with a theme suited to our grim pandemic: When you narrow down the location of an outbreak, you set a… Read the rest of the article: Play "Coronasweeper", a Minesweeper clone for the age of COVID-19

In 1802, chemists discovered that you could commercially manufacture a great blue pigment using cobalt. For the last 200 years, that was basically it. Then in 2009, researchers at Oregon… Read the rest of the article: First new pigment of blue in 200 years finally goes on sale

Olof Hoverfält wanted to figure out which pieces of his clothing were truly worth owning, so he tracked everything he wore — for three years — in a sprawling spreadsheet.… Read the rest of the article: Man does data-analysis on every piece of clothing he's worn for three years

The railway depot in the city of Dalian, China, was thrown into chaos on Jan. 12 when Adobe triggered a kill-switch to end its support of Flash. It turns out… Read the rest of the article: Chinese railway station knocked offline when Flash stops being supported

It's really quite satisfying to behold. (via Digg)

Indy Mellink, a Dutch woman who loves card games, always found the gendered ranking of the face cards kind of weird — the king above the queen, the queen above… Read the rest of the article: Gender-neutral playing cards

To a butterfly, getting hit by a raindrop is roughly analogous to a human getting hit by a bowling ball made of water, as the scientist Sunghwan Jung notes in… Read the rest of the article: Study discovers how butterfly wings repel the brutal impact of raindrops

Back in 2019, Space Cargo Unlimited sent a case of red Bordeaux wine up to the International Space Station—not so the astronauts could tipple (that's generally against regulations), but to… Read the rest of the article: Studying wine that was aged for a year on the space station

Given the mayfly-brief half-life of memes, by the time you read this post, the sea-shanty trend on TikTok (previously and previously) may already be fading. But over at Jstor Daily,… Read the rest of the article: A lot of sea shanties on TikTok may not actually be sea shanties, according to old scholarship

Here's paint.wtf, a game that gives players a weird prompt, asks them to draw it, and then uses AI to judge which submission is the best. Recent prompts: "draw the… Read the rest of the article: A drawing game where AI is the judge

A few years ago, the scientific news broke of a group of long-tailed macaque monkeys in Bali, Indonesia who would steal stuff from people and hold it ransom for food.… Read the rest of the article: Long-tailed macaques of Bali have learned to steal high-value goods from tourists

Here's the "Asterisk of Shame", a Chrome extension which "adds a red asterisk following the names of the 147 Senators and Representatives who voted to overturn the 2020 election results."… Read the rest of the article: "Asterisk of shame" Chrome extension identifies the congressfolk who voted to overturn the election

While procrastinating from work this afternoon, I started a twitter thread asking people to post photos of "books of unusual dimensions" …. People posted photos and links to wonderful stuff,… Read the rest of the article: Behold a triangular book of alchemy from the 18th century

Behold "Presence in Hormuz", a collection of colorful domed building made of rammed earth, designed by the Iranian architecture firm Zav Architects. It's a really mesmerizing project; some of my… Read the rest of the article: Architecture firm creates colorful domed buildings in Hormuz