“Is the popular “Shopping Cart Litmus Test” a measure of a person’s worth?” – Greg, US This question made me feel like a bad philosopher. I had to Google the shopping cart litmus test, and when I did so, I discovered it’s all over the philosophy-leaning internet. It’s a modern mo … | Continue reading
"This is the important part, let it sit for 15 to 30 minutes." Homeowner shares simple way to simplify bathroom cleaning routine: 'It will do most of the work for you' first appeared on The Cool Down. | Continue reading
By now, we have conclusively traced the path of the domesticated horse from the area around the southern Urals and Pontic Steppe through Central Asia to East Asia. It's time to pay more attention to another equid, this one not so glamorous, but still redoubtable in its own formid … | Continue reading
The new technique could enable detailed studies of how brain cells develop and communicate with each other. | Continue reading
A new algorithm learns to squish, bend, or stretch a robot’s entire body to accomplish diverse tasks like avoiding obstacles or retrieving items. | Continue reading
"That's going to be an expensive remediation." New homeowner receives harsh warning after sharing photo of landscaping blunder: 'That won't be that way for long' first appeared on The Cool Down. | Continue reading
"You cannot know what freedom means till you have seen a peregrine loosed into the warm spring sky to roam at will through all the far provinces of light." | Continue reading
Making decisions is part of everyday life. However, not all decisions are created equal. Some are easily reversible and should be made quickly with a bias toward actions while others have a long-lasting effect or are irreversible; those require careful and deliberate planning bef … | Continue reading
Countertop induction cooktops (burners) are a fast and easy way to begin transitioning to electrons for cooking, as they do not require any electrical upgrades because they plug right into a standard outlet, so even renters can take advantage of induction cooking. If you’d like t … | Continue reading
On Tuesday, Apple introduced its new iPad Pros with a video called Crush! that was meant to convey how much the device can do. The trouble was the way the video delivered the message, depicting musical instruments, books, a record player, paints, a TV, and many other creative too … | Continue reading
If a soft-bodied robot uses rigid actuators to move its body, then it isn't really soft now, is it? An experimental new caterpillar-inspired bot gets around that conundrum by using soft, collapsible origami segments to squirm and steer its way into our hearts. Continue Reading Ca … | Continue reading
All the way back in 2011, Rise of the Planet of the Apes seemed like it’d be an unremarkable but potentially solid movie. No one really knew what to make of Fox doing a prequel/reboot of the classic sci-fi series, especially since it’d already tried a decade prior with Tim Burton … | Continue reading
You know what? After a long day in the office, sometimes it's nice to take the long way home. Gotta look after that grey matter. Reply to this post by email | Continue reading
The enormous Dali container ship has been stuck in Baltimore since it hit and destroyed the Francis Scott Key bridge way back in March. The ship lost power and careered into one of the supports for the bridge, bringing it crashing down and killing six workers on the bridge. Now, … | Continue reading
Where’s Gollum? Has anyone seen Gollum? Warner Bros. Discovery was certainly looking for him (or, more precisely, a way to cash in on their The Lord of the Rings’ intellectual property rights). Today, during the corporation’s first-quarter earnings conference call (via The Hollyw … | Continue reading
FiveTaco is the easiest way to find software for solopreneurs, from productivity tools, to the latest AI tech to help run your business. There’s something truly inspiring about immigrants who overcome significant challenges to achieve remarkable success by coming to America. In t … | Continue reading
You've probably seen the tone-deaf ad from Apple about their new super thin iPad. I get the concept they were going for—it's like a thousand devices rolled into one, but the way the ad was shot revels in destruction of beloved things and really | Continue reading
There’s more Bluey on the way in the form of Bluey Minisodes! A new batch of 20 shorts will be released on Disney Jr. and Disney+ this July. Read more... | Continue reading
"Way prettier than grass anyways." Family tired of laborious lawn maintenance decides to transform yard: 'This is the way' first appeared on The Cool Down. | Continue reading
There are so many ways to say hello. People wave, bow, shake hands, hug, kiss, fist bump, say “hi” or any combo of these. But there’s one greeting from nature that we sure hope doesn’t catch on, as a new study finds that elephants often greet chums with a dump. Continue Reading C … | Continue reading
In recent years, many organizations have realized that the journey towards real allyship and lasting societal change is not as simple as hosting one employee celebration and posting about it on social media. It’s a long and complex path, requiring a concerted and sustained effort … | Continue reading
This is my 5,000th blog post on this blog. Wow, that's a lot! Let's look at some milestones along the way. | Continue reading
Paul Cézanne led the way in Aix-en-Provence, followed rapidly by Renoir, Signac, Cross, Luce, van Rysselberghe, and Pierre Bonnard. | Continue reading
The MSM is starting to catch up (with Jeph Jacques, and the movement discussed in "Yay Newfriend", 3/20/2024, and "Yay Newfriend again", 3/.22/2024). Kevin Roose, "Meet my A.I. friends", NYT 5/9/2024: What if the tech companies are all wrong, and the way artificial intelligence i … | Continue reading
COVID-19 vaccine development paves way to a new class of cancer immunotherapy. | Continue reading
Addressing climate change means getting fossil fuels out of about 115 million U.S. homes — ASAP. But right now, that shift is happening at a snail’s pace; by one expert’s estimate , it would take about 200 years to electrify all homes at the current rate. Entrepreneur Grant Gunni … | Continue reading
David Bushell: I loathe what WordPress development has become. If you haven’t kept up with Gutenberg and full-site editing (FSE) you may be surprised at how radically different modern WordPress themes are — and not in a good way. Modern WordPress theme development is a series of … | Continue reading
"Food was a big part of our family, but not in the way of this romanticized view of food." James Beard–nominated chef shares how his culture influenced cuisine based on invasive species: 'Our people have been doing that in the mountains for thousands of years' first appeared on T … | Continue reading
TL;DR: There's special behaviour if you use the each parameter name when defining an after handler, but the way this works and the way you should invoke it has changed. Adding custom logic to your CAP services is easy, and you can register event handlers with the before, on and a … | Continue reading
The post below was written by me, originally featured on the Plinky blog. There are few words I've ever said more excitedly than these: I want to tell you about my latest app, Plinky. Plinky makes it incredibly easy to do something we do every day, save links for later. You may a … | Continue reading
Experts have determined the Defynnog Yew to be more than 5,000 years old, making it one of the United Kingdom's oldest yew trees. Some have disputed this estimate, instead calculating the tree to be only around 1,500 years old. Either way, the yew is one of Britain’s oldest trees … | Continue reading
Android’s best new feature in years is Circle to Search. So it’s no wonder iPhone users are happy to learn there’s a way to replicate it. Read more... | Continue reading
Sometimes you have to listen to the messages life sends your way. And today that message is that I have to write something about guestbooks. In less than 2 hours, two emails landed in my inbox—I love emails, if you want to get in touch please do send one—both on the topic of gues … | Continue reading
I saw this tweet yesterday from @deepfates, and I am very on board with this: Watching in real time as "slop" becomes a term of art. the way that "spam" became the term for unwanted emails, "slop" is going in the dictionary as the term for unwanted AI generated content I'm a big … | Continue reading
Bricks made partially of discarded glass and recycling-waste ash have been shown to insulate better than regular bricks, while also requiring less energy to produce. And of course, they additionally use materials which would otherwise end up in landfills. Continue Reading Categor … | Continue reading
By nudging a thorium-229 nucleus into a higher energy state, physicists have made it possible to develop a nuclear clock that could probe the most fundamental forces in physics. However, there is still a long way to go. | Continue reading
Loved by Malaysians the world over, “masak lemak” is one of the most popular styles of cooking in Peninsular Malaysia and refers to cooking in coconut milk. You can prepare almost any ingredient in this style—and I especially love cooking spring vegetables like fiddleheads and fr … | Continue reading
What’s the point, one may ask, of reporting on EV road trips today when they have become so common? Even the top Polish energy and EV journalist, Bartłomiej Derski, recently tweeted that same remark after doing a Poland–Croatia trip twice in two different EVs (750 miles each way) … | Continue reading
Tagged Pointer Strings (2015) Mike Ash digs into a fascinating implementation detail of macOS. Tagged pointers provide a way to embed a literal value in a pointer reference. Objective-C pointers on macOS are 64 bit, providing plenty of space for representing entire values. If the … | Continue reading
WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2024 In one key respect, we aren't: At the start of this week, we raised a pair of award-winning questions concerning those of us who live in present-day Blue America. Regarding November's election, we raised this awkward question: Have we possibly "earned our w … | Continue reading
In gradually becoming a better RPG gamemaster, the toughest lesson for me has been how to surrender control to my players. Here's the story of the importance of that lesson, and some of the mistakes I've made along the way. | Continue reading
Did you know that a Suffragette invented the UK's electrical plug? Dame Caroline Haslett was an electrical engineer who foresaw the way that electricity could be used to remove domestic drudgery from women's lives. There is a slim biography of her, written by her sister, which is … | Continue reading
Can chimpanzees wage war? In this excerpt from "The Beast Within: Human as Animals," scientific researcher Jessica Serra looks at the dark side of our cousins' behavior. | Continue reading
Something I think about often: how does Anh Do write so many books in such a short span of time? Some context for overseas readers: Anh Do is an Australian artist who started out his media career as a comedian, but has also had another career as a children’s books writer. He also … | Continue reading
"By embracing clean, electric power, we're paving the way for a healthier environment." Officials celebrate opening of fully electric bus fleet: 'Progress continues to be at the forefront of this city' first appeared on The Cool Down. | Continue reading
I gave a talk on Tropical.rb and, while writing it, I had a goal of not using bullet points in my slides. That made me create a lot more slides, and many of them contained images. I used AI to generate the illustrations for my presentation, but it required some work to get them t … | Continue reading
As Tales of the Empire digs its way through the story of Barriss Offee—and her quest to survive the rise of the Empire, at any cost—there comes a moment that climaxes a decade-plus wait for fans who’ve wanted to see what happened to the former Jedi Padawan after the shocking conc … | Continue reading
Many runners don't like the way hydration packs bounce and sway with every step, nor do they like holding onto water bottles. Vessel Athletics' Hydroshirt offers what might be a better alternative to both, in that it incorporates its own snugged-down water bladder. Continue Readi … | Continue reading