What's the difference between a tulip auction, an English auction, a sealed bid auction, and a Vickrey second-bid auction? Preston McAfee, Chief Economist at Microsoft explains auction types.

Bonus video: America's contribution to the English auction:

• The Ideal Auction (YouTube / Numberphile) Read the rest

Adult tube site xHamster released its first comprehensive survey of porn viewership in 2016. According to them the most visited category moved from MILFs to Matures (women in their 40s and 50s). They also found that searches for "Melania" beat out "Donald Trump" and "Hillary Clinton" combined. Read the rest

Compared to 75 years ago, Americans spend less on reading, alcohol, tobacco, clothing, and food. They spend more on education, entertainment, and transportation, but the real bank-breaker is how much more Americans spend on housing, even adjusted for inflation. Read the rest

Pyrex is supposed to be tough stuff, capable of withstanding extreme temperature changes, like a trip from the freezer to the oven. And that was true with old Pyrex, made from thermal-stress resistant borosilicate glass. But starting in 1994, Corning began licensing the name Pyrex to other manufacturers, which, today, make Pyrex brand cookware with a different chemical formulation—soda lime silicate glass. A report in the Bulletin of the American Ceramic Society says the new glass doesn't have the heat-protection powers of the old stuff. So why use it? Apparently, the manufacturers say soda lime silicate glass provides better protection against breaking when dropped. The report didn't test that, but this could just be an example of chemical trade-offs. Listen to Scientific American's podcast about this news. Or read the full report. (Via Christopher Mims) Read the rest