In May 1950, Whisper magazine warned its readers of humanity's impending doom — not from communism or atomic bombs, but from giant mutant fruit flies created in a Nobel Prize… Read the rest of the article: Mutant fruit flies created by radiation, would take over Earth within months
A 2,500-year-old Chinese sword discovered in 1965 remains razor-sharp and pristine today, seemingly defying the natural laws of decay that typically ravage ancient bronze weapons. The Sword of Goujian, named… Read the rest of the article: This 2,500-year-old Chinese sword looks like "something from the J.R.R. Tolkien universe that has entered the actual historical record"
Zach Brown, creator of software licensing platform Keygen, found that eliminating sales calls actually helped him land bigger clients — including a Fortune 1000 company. "Being an introvert, I absolutely… Read the rest of the article: Keygen CEO eliminated sales calls and saw sales increase
Sweden has broken ground on its ambitious $11 billion nuclear waste repository, where highly radioactive material will rest in an underground maze of tunnels stretching 60 kilometers — longer than… Read the rest of the article: Sweden begins construction of massive underground nuclear vault that will last 100,000 years
China's plan to build a massive solar power station in space could generate more energy in one year than all of Earth's remaining oil reserves. The proposed 0.6-mile-wide solar array,… Read the rest of the article: China's space solar station could generate more energy in one year than all Earth's remaining oil
Nature's carbon-capturing machines are working overtime. Plants worldwide are absorbing about 31% more carbon dioxide than scientists previously estimated, according to research published in Nature. This discovery changes our understanding… Read the rest of the article: New research shows plants absorb 31% more carbon dioxide than previously thought
When Mike Goldman offered $5,000 to anyone who could compress a randomly-generated file of their chosen size in early 2001, he thought his money was perfectly safe. After all, it's… Read the rest of the article: Coding challenge goes wrong: creator refuses to pay $5000 prize money
In today's computers, when we switch a transistor from 0 to 1, we charge it up (requiring energy), and when we're done, we discharge it, losing all that energy as… Read the rest of the article: Breakthrough in reversible computing technology promises to solve the computing industry's energy crisis
Graduate student Pavlos Sakellaridis has developed and tested an LLM-powered agent capable of running Dungeons & Dragons sessions, training it on transcripts from the popular streaming show Critical Role. His… Read the rest of the article: AI might be your next Dungeon Master
Deep in our evolutionary past, the constant threat of becoming prey shaped not just how our ancestors survived — but potentially how we make every moral judgment today. That's the… Read the rest of the article: Survival fear from prehistoric times drives today's moral outrage
An investigation reveals that major hotel booking sites are quietly charging San Francisco residents up to $500 more per night for the exact same hotel rooms compared to travelers from… Read the rest of the article: San Franciscans pay hundreds more for hotel rooms due to location-based price discrimination
Netflix's global phenomenon Squid Game owes a debt to a Japanese movie made a quarter-century earlier, as revealed by Cezary Jan Strusiewicz for Tokyo Weekender. Squid Game's creator Hwang Dong-hyuk… Read the rest of the article: "Adults cannot be trusted": The brutal 1999 Japanese movie that influenced "Squid Game"
Stanford University houses what may be the world's largest online collection of tobacco advertisements — over 62,000 scans spanning three centuries that tell a fascinating story of how the industry… Read the rest of the article: Stanford's massive tobacco ad archive reveals a century of psychological manipulation
Federal prosecutors have indicted three executives of PageTurner Press and Media in what authorities describe as a sophisticated fraud scheme that fleeced authors out of millions between 2017 and 2024.… Read the rest of the article: FBI busts $44M publishing scam that preyed on aspiring authors
The British Museum has cracked a 4,000-year-old murder plot: Babylonian kings routinely sacrificed royal stand-ins to avoid eclipse prophecies. From the museum's collection of 130,000 Mesopotamian clay tablets, four texts… Read the rest of the article: Babylonian tablets reveal kings installed royal doubles during eclipses, then executed them
Smug fraudster and MoviePass mastermind Ted Farnsworth finally faces justice after years of exploiting investors' dreams – but his potential 25-year sentence feels light for someone who made a career… Read the rest of the article: MoviePass CEO faces prison after defrauding investors
Is Collins' Pocket Interpreters: France (1937 edition) the most pessimistic phrasebook ever published? What was meant as a practical tool for British tourists instead became an accidental masterpiece of travel… Read the rest of the article: Vintage travel guide accidentally becomes masterpiece of tourist horror fiction
When John Mills got caught in the path of California's Wallbridge Fire in 2020, the off-the-grid tech entrepreneur realized the chaos of trying to gather critical wildfire information could be… Read the rest of the article: Watch Duty: the free wildfire alert app saving lives in California
Scientists have discovered a crucial mechanism behind one of sleep's most vital functions — cleaning toxins from the brain. The process relies on a rhythmic cycle of vessel squeezing and… Read the rest of the article: Your sleeping brain pulses like a pump to flush out toxins
Despite growing concerns about avian influenza, Bird Flu Risk, a new data-driven risk assessment suggests the chances of bird flu becoming as devastating as COVID-19 are remarkably low – just… Read the rest of the article: Prediction markets bet against bird flu becoming the next COVID-19
