A pair of New York's finest posed with 100 tiny bags of pot, tweeting, "One less marijuana dealer on our streets thanks to Officers Sardone and Winter." The twittersphere was not impressed.
— Read the restThe weed is the only thing in this picture that won't kill you.
At a pottery fair in Pittsburgh, I ran into Kimberlyn Bloise, who makes handsome musical instruments that are also mugs, vases and pendants. They sound and look wonderful, and have the strange quality of something both charming and haunting, like remnants of a vanished culture. — Read the rest
People snore because they've lost throat muscle tone, says Dr. Mike Dilkes, an ear, nose and throat surgeon in London. In an interview with CBC, he offers an exercise to rebuild your throat muscles:
— Read the restMD: There's a quick [exercise] you can do: Opening your mouth as wide as you can.
Three million Americans have Type-1 diabetes. If they don't get insulin every day, they will slip into a coma and die. The price of rapid-acting insulin, needed by diabetics who can't take slower-acting insulin, has increased 1,123 percent since 1996. Many insurance companies won't cover the costs, forcing desperate parents to look for insulin on the black market. — Read the rest
All airlines have their share of customer service problems, and Southwest is no exception. But they seem to be better than most (two free checked on bags, no charge for changing flights), and they just announced that they will no longer overbook its flights, bucking a widespread airline practice. — Read the rest
On the heels of the Daily Grail's new essay anthology Spirits of Place — featuring Alan Moore, Maria J. Warren Ellis, Gazelle Amber Valentine, and many more writers and thinkers — the Grail's Greg Taylor conducted a deep interview with Moore about populism, time, language, science, and other heady topics. — Read the rest
Lego just announced its new NASA Apollo Saturn V model rocket set. It's based on a Lego Ideas submission by a builder named saabfun, it's a 1:110 scale model of the real thing. Of course the Saturn V was the workhorse rocket that took astronauts to the moon beginning in 1969 and delivered Skylab to orbit in 1973. — Read the rest
Yesterday Elon Musk took delivery of his second-hand boring machine for his Boring Company. It's in a parking lot next to the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Musk says he's going to take it apart, figure out how to improve the design of boring machines, and start testing by coring out an underground pedestrian tunnel from his offices across (or rather under) the street to the parking lot. — Read the rest
Fyre Festival was advertised as a luxury music festival on a private island in the Bahamas. But promises of a private chartered flight to the island, gourmet meals, private glamping tents, yacht cruises, gourmet catering, and an all-star concert performance line-up "quickly turned into a terrifying B-movie, with flocks of Instagram models forced to seek shelter in an airport after arriving to discover a lack of food, violent locals, appalling accommodation and feral dogs roaming the grounds," reports The Telegraph. — Read the rest
Pearl Fryar of Bishopville, South Carolina created this incredible garden mostly from plants he saved from a local nursery's compost dump.
Ironically, according to Great Big Story, "When he first moved to the small town in the 1980s, he was almost unable to build his house because neighbors feared that as an African American, he wouldn't keep up his yard." — Read the rest
Teller, the silent half of the Penn & Teller magic act, explains seven cognitive biases that magicians exploit in order to "alter the perceptions" of their audiences and achieve impossible-seeming feats.
In a federal complaint against Fox News, former Outnumbered host Andrea Tantaros claims that after she filed a sexual harassment claim against the former CEO Roger Ailes, Fox News contracted with a psyops team to set up a "black room" to run a hate campaign that targeted her by cyberstalking her, implanting malware on her computer, and libeling her on "fake news" sites.
Tim Wu, the Colombia University law professor and anti-trust/competition expert who coined the term "Net Neutrality," has published an open letter to Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Chester (or Shasta?), a Red Labrador, has figured out a way to deal with the Roomba that's more efficient than barking at it or biting it: turning it off. [Thanks, Heather!]
Bamboo has lots of uses beyond just being panda food. Things like bikes, roads, scaffolding, and musical instruments are made from the fast-growing grass. But unless you are participating in a tropical-themed LARP, you probably wouldn't want a shirt made from bamboo stalks. — Read the rest
Earlier this month, landslides in Manizales, Colombia killed 17 people and devastated the city. As emergency workers and citizens responded to the tragedy, some people reportedly noticed the clouds part and a beam of sunlight form into the figure of Jesus. — Read the rest
Flashlight fish, also called lanterneye fish and scientifically photoblepharon (light-eye), are strange and wondrous creatures best viewed during a night dive in the Pacific.
Nuno Dias shot this absolutely insane surfing footage that looks more like a snowboarder out in front of an avalanche than a surfer on a wave.
In this video for Mental Floss, linguist Arika Okrent and illustrator Sean O'Neill share the keys to understanding commonalities between languages.
TED-Ed host Kenny Coogan and animator Anton Bogaty offer a crash course on sloth evolution. Interestingly, it turns out we might not have avocados without them.
