[Tomatoes are also known as “love apples”. Happy Valentine’s Day!] After decades of work, scientists have created a distinctly purple tomato: That’s weird as hell, but I’d try ’em.Link: https://www.wbur.org/npr/1228868005/purple-tomato-gmo-gardeners | Continue reading
[This is much sadder news for the marathon world.] Yesterday’s post was about the triumph of the human spirit. Sadly, sometimes, that spirit is snuffed out too soon. Such is the case with men’s marathon world record holder Kelvin Kiptum, who died this past weekend in a car crash. … | Continue reading
[One must imagine Neistat happy.] Casey Neistat tried to reach his impossible dream for 17 years. Try, fail. Try, fail. Try, fail. Give up? Oh, FUCK that. I’ve watched this video multiple times since it was posted, and it’s well worth your time. Simply tremendous.Link: https://w … | Continue reading
[I’m sorry, I don’t have room for this on my list of concerns.] It’s not enough that we need to worry about climate change making the Earth inhospitable to human life. Apparently, now, scientists are starting to worry about the moon shrinking. The moon’s shrinking has been measur … | Continue reading
[They’ve already occurred, they just haven’t been properly labeled.] Hurricanes are classified via the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale, which organizes based on wind speed. A category 1 storm has maximum sustained wind speeds of 74 to 95 miles per hour, a category 2 storm hit … | Continue reading
[All burritos, all the time] Recently, I received an odd email: I came across your website and just wanted to say how much I love the pictures of your burritos. My name is Ara and I work at Wishpond, a lead generation company that specializes in helping fast food restaurant chai … | Continue reading
[You must be a fake, or you wouldn’t have come here.] Purportedly, a firm in Hong Kong recently fell victim to a massive fraud, losing more than 25 million US dollars. How did it happen? The elaborate scam saw the worker duped into attending a video call with what he thought were … | Continue reading
[Hashtag #EmotionalWellBeing] Chinese New Year isn’t for another 8 days, but it seems that 2024 is the Year of the Elmo. On Monday, the furry red seal (?) posted a tweet asking how folks are doing: This was, perhaps, a mistake. The internet responded vociferously, and the answer … | Continue reading
[I don’t unicycle. That’s where I draw the line.] I use the roads around Boston just about every way imaginable. I walk, run, bike, ride a motorcycle, and drive a (fairly small) car. In recent years, I’ve been alarmed to notice the size of the average automobile growing larger an … | Continue reading
[I don’t quite understand the “fear” of this.] new Hampshire’s state motto is “Live Free or Die”, but this is apparently beyond the pale. Previously in endeavoring to let people enjoy things: Introducing QuadballLink: https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2024/01/30/diaper-spa-r … | Continue reading
[Please tell me they didn’t use a pizza wheel.] I would love to know the exact steps that led to the creation of this sign: Was it an autocorrupt in a text message? Whatever the truth, the result is incredible.Link: https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2024/01/pizza-hut-ontario-vira … | Continue reading
[Hold on to your butts, people.] Apparently, Chipotle has a busy season: Burrito season, according to Chipotle, runs from March to May and is the busiest time of year for the fast-casual restaurant chain. The chain is looking to hire 19,000 new workers to cope with the spring rus … | Continue reading
[Also, no trampling on the flowers.] Remember “Uncle Chen”, the Chinese marathoner who ran a dishearteningly impressive time while chain-smoking cigarettes? Well, he was just disqualified from the Xiamen Marathon, because now there is a rule against that.Link: https://torontosun. … | Continue reading
[Thousands of companies is a lot of companies.] Modern ad tracking is really horrible. Consumer Reports looked at the state of things when it comes to Facebook, and determined that each user is monitored by thousands of companies. Gross. I use Facebook approximately never, but I … | Continue reading
[Is the plural “bigfoots” or “bigfeet”?] In a paper entitled “Bigfoot: If it’s there, could it be a bear?”, researcher Floe Foxon has found that as an increase in black bear population correlates to an increase in sightings of Bigfoot.Link: https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/01 … | Continue reading
[AI assistants are often bad, but this is something more. Or less.] When Ashley Beauchamp found himself stuck chatting with a useless AI assistant, he had some fun with it. 7-6-6? I particularly liked this caption from the BBC article: A haiku has 17 syllables divided between thr … | Continue reading
[Seriously, the term “Stanley Cup” is taken.] It’s been quite awhile since I last did a headline review, but recently I’ve seen quite a good collection. Let’s have a look, starting with Florida: These Florida monkeys could give you herpes. Here’s where they’ve been found This rea … | Continue reading
[This guy could’ve already made it to the NFL, played multiple years, and retired.] Years back, I joked about still having my eligibility to play college ball. Apparently, I underestimated greatly.Link: https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/39337111/miami-te-cam-mccorm … | Continue reading
[“Welcome to the Jesus 5K!”] In a recent survey, I was asked about my preferred running surface: I was a bit surprised by one of the options provided: “Road”, “Trail”, and “Track” were standard enough answers, and while “Mountain” is not exactly a surface, I understood what it … | Continue reading
[Perhaps I should be a business efficiency consultant.] A few years back, I discovered miniature greeting cards. At just 3.25 inches small, their diminutive size tickles me. Just look at that: An adorable miniature greeting card I recently needed to convey some birthday well-wish … | Continue reading
[Stalking and harassment on behalf of your employer is a bad move.] Back in mid-2020, a rather horrifying terror campaign by executives at eBay became news here in Boston. Husband and wife David and Ina Steiner run a site called EcommerceBytes, and apparently, some folks at eBay … | Continue reading
[OpenAI sure is sorry it can’t assist.] Amazon is one of the world’s biggest marketplaces, and that makes it a target for scammers of all sorts. The latest nonsense is products named and described, indirectly, by AI. It appears that Amazon has now cleared up these products, so if … | Continue reading
[Stop and think about what the future may hold.] Out in the Arizona desert near Tucson, a fascinating camera will spend the next 1,000 years capturing a single image. Maybe, anyhow. Thought it seems unlikely that this camera will still be standing in 3024, the end result is reall … | Continue reading
[I think Carlin would have hated this. I know I despise it.] Apparently, there’s an AI-generated George Carlin, that has “dropped a comedy special”. I listened to a minute or so of it before I turned it off, and I can say that it’s in the vein of dropping the kids off at the pool … | Continue reading
[This argument must be swiftly rejected.] When Donald Trump was impeached for the second time, his lawyers argued that because he would soon no longer be president, the correct venue for trying him was in a criminal court. More recently, his defense team has cited the very same s … | Continue reading
[I’m sure this negotiator feels a sense of accomplishment.] The Los Angeles Dodgers are spending incredible sums of both current and future money in their pursuit of a World Series championship. You should check your mail, because it’s very possible they’ve signed you to a multi- … | Continue reading
[Cuong Tran, you should turn auto-lock back on.] By now you’ve likely heard about the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, which lost an emergency exit door panel shortly after takeoff. It quickly returned to the airport, and investigations are ongoing. Thankfully, no one was badly hurt … | Continue reading
[Whale-SETI doesn’t quite make sense as a name, unless they’re searching for space whales.] Scientists recently had something of a conversation with a humpback whale. Fascinating, though I was disappointed to learn that the whale did not actually offer that his name was Twain.Lin … | Continue reading
[That’s just a real bad look.] Last month, genetic testing company 23andMe announced that data from almost 7 million of its users had been stolen. Now, the company is trying to pin the blame on a small number of users whose accounts were compromised.Link: https://techcrunch.com/2 … | Continue reading
[Where in this case, a dragon is a water-spewing robot.] A dragon is a mythical flying beast with the ability to breathe flames. As such, it’s an odd inspiration for a firefighting robot, but here we are: The Dragon Firefighter’s firehose is propelled upward (flying at two meter … | Continue reading
[This is a delightful use of machine learning.] Using satellites to spying on beavers from space then training artificial intelligence to analyze the resulting imagery is an incredibly complicated way to deal with effects from climate change. It also just might work.Link: https:/ … | Continue reading
[It’s lasers all the way down.] When NASA needed to test a laser-based deep space transmission earlier this month, they had a little fun with the video. The contents of the video didn’t matter for the experiment, so the team decided to have a little fun, using a cat video featuri … | Continue reading
[Lighthouses from our heart space] Last month, I wrote about Sally Snowman, the last official lighthouse keeper in the US. On the eve of her retirement, she spoke with WBUR. That conversation included this amazing quote: I believe we are all beacons of light. We are all lighthous … | Continue reading
[This seems terribly foolish.] When I saw that former James Bond Pierce Brosnan had been accused of trespassing in Yellowstone National Park, I was intrigued. I wondered where he might have gone to get in such trouble. It turns out, he went off trail near Mammoth Hot Springs, whi … | Continue reading
[They’re picking up good vibrations.] Billions of dollars are donated each year trying to cure cancer, and competition for those funds is surely fierce. Having a technique that can reasonably be called a “molecular jackhammer” seems likely to be good for getting funding.Link: htt … | Continue reading
[Today in reasons to not take a cruise.] I live in Boston. I like it here. But if I went on a December cruise to the Caribbean, and I instead wound up in New England and Canada, I would not be happy. Nor would I, or anyone who didn’t get the heads-up, be properly packed.Link: htt … | Continue reading
[I’m curious why the child’s relevant adult didn’t get a gate pass and take them to the correct plane.] Did you know children as young as five can fly as unaccompanied minors on most airlines in America? Even if they don’t get misplaced by Spirit Airlines, that seems very young.L … | Continue reading
[“Plus, mice can be difficult to trick.”] You won’t be able to get your grubby little mitts on Apple’s Vision Pro until “early next year”, whenever that is. In a Northwestern University lab, however, mice are running on mini treadmills while wearing virtual reality goggles, all i … | Continue reading
[At least you made it, Ricardo.] A week ago today, a loose steer on the tracks disrupted train travel in New Jersey. The then-unnamed steer [Photo credit: NJ Transit] It was quite a sight to behold, and though trains were delayed, the internet was briefly in love with the escape … | Continue reading
[That flag looks real good now. You betcha.] Those lucky folks in Minnesota are getting a new state flag. Last week, the State Emblems Redesign Commission had narrowed things down to this: Any one of these would be a substantial improvement over the current flag, but the third d … | Continue reading
[I’m not sure what the minimum amount is to qualify as “funds”, but it’s got to be higher than $4.99.] On December 7, I ordered a small gift on eBay. I needed it by December 19, and the listing indicated it should arrive to me between December 11 and December 15. Perfect. However … | Continue reading
[It‘s impressive just how far this got.] In the mid-’90s, Melrose Place was one of the biggest shows on TV. Apparently, it was also the secret host for a culture-jamming art project. While contemplating an unwanted pregnancy, a character used a quilt depicting the molecular model … | Continue reading
[I will give them credit for making something different. Awful, yes, but at least not awful and boring.] Tesla’s Cybertruck is now out in the real world, with a small number of purchasers taking possession last month. Just as it was at its unveiling back in 2019, the released Cyb … | Continue reading
[If you don’t, why the hell should anyone else?] I have been frustrated by this story, and now you get to be too! Last month, Ryan Roth won a seat on the Rainier City Council by exactly one vote, 247-246. Roth voted for himself, while his opponent Damion Green opted not to vote a … | Continue reading
[Also, what the hell kind of a name is “Xhamster”?] Recently, my pal John Gruber posted about Verizon providing customer data to a man who was falsely posing as a cop. The story is terrible, of course, and Verizon really blew it here. Still, I don’t find that too surprising. Comp … | Continue reading
[An eternity of Kiss is too much Kiss.] The human members of Kiss have retired from touring, but apparently, the show will go on. That’s thanks to digital avatars that have promised “a new Kiss Era”. Per Sundin, CEO of Pophouse Entertainment, says this new technology allows Kiss … | Continue reading
[What’s in the box? What’s in the box?!] Recently, friend-of-the-site Alex S. sent me the following image: Alex had recently purchased a desk, and it had arrived in this rather confusing box. He quipped that the whole thing deserved a David Attenborough voiceover “Here we see ho … | Continue reading
[Running Twitter has always seemed like a miserable job, particularly for one of the richest people in the world.] Back in November of 2022, when X Formerly Twitter was known by the simpler name “Twitter”, I theorized the Elon Musk was trying to destroy the company he’d just purc … | Continue reading