Digging through the web this week, I uncovered all this geeky goodness. You can find the thousands of links from previous weeks here.
I have marked my favorite links with a ∞. Enjoy.
Science to Read, Watch
∞ Summer Science PSA: Margaritas can give you terrible sunburn, because chemistry
NASA’s Flying Saucer Finally Flies
How “Frozen” took over the world
We’ve never seen a bird egg with pitting, let alone a pitted egg that gets painted with bacteria
∞ The harp sponge is like SpongeBob SquarePants, only without the pants and with way more murder.
Google Earth, except covered with visualized wind currents
Basketball players’ “hot hand” streaks are biased illusions, but that’s just how we evolved
Evolution gave some fish electric powers independent of each other
∞ Life isn’t a stream; it’s a movie running at about 60 frames per second. That’s why these illusions look so weird
“ARM”: The part of sea star wasting disease where the arms crawl outwards until they rip off
Researchers study wind turbine turbulence by watching one in the snowy dark
“You never see a crocodile outright bite something in half or at least fatally crush it. Why is that?”
Neonicotinoid pesticides are bad news for everything
∞ Do you know what “flux-pinning” is? It’s the secret to hoverboards, and I have the GIFs to prove it
Maybe lionfish get obese because they can signal each other to hunt more effectively
Should We All Be Eating Insects?
∞ The next stage in scary antibiotic ineffectiveness could be microbes that sleep through our attacks
It’s incredibly difficult to separate microbes into different species. “Oligotyping” could help
More nuance on vitamin supplements than you’ll ever get from Dr. Oz: Vitamins on trial
How Your Bee-Friendly Garden May Actually Be Killing Bees
∞ My conversation with Ann Druyan, co-writer and creator of COSMOS
A measured, important piece: Five myths about organic food
“Carbon X” is pretty dang impressive as it repels molten metal
Nice selfie for Curiosity’s first Martian birthday
∞ Astronauts would be OK if the Earth stopping spinning, but there wouldn’t be anyone to come home to
New meta-material totally beats whatever Harry Potter had: Elasto-mechanical unfeelability cloak
6-hours of giant squid dissection! Yay!
That time we sterilized a whole population of insects because they were annoying
∞ Strap a Go-Pro to a polar bear and you get stunning footage
The infinite moments in your life are exactly equal to the moments in a life twice as long
How would I go about pinning my own insects?
Another study suggests pesticide exposure plays some role in autism incidence
The odd math behind missing planes and maximizing your time at the airport
This ant is spreading around the world, and it can use its jaws to rocket-jump
∞ A touching conversation with a scientist who witnessed Steve Irwin’s death
Hairless man gets all his hair back with help from an arthritis drug
Extreme Nerdery
∞ Math: Doc Brown and Optimus Prime could make a time-traveling Transformer
Writing one full novel would provide enough energy to run a laptop for a total of about 15 seconds
Heh. Awesome. Han Solo Pet Detective
The chemistry behind everything that helps your sexytimes
“Tractor beam” was coined way before Star Trek (in 1931!) and other things I learned from this list
“A friend of mine made this 1:1 prop replica Fallout 3 Laser Rifle.”
∞ Why didn’t I check!?
Sciencey GIFs and Images
Fluorescent oil lets NASA engineers see flow patterns over an experimental aircraft
I think we all want this machine during Christmas time
∞ A thunderstorm over Texas seen from the ISS
Shockwaves are rated triple cray by physics
Mobula rays are so majest…bellyflop
Wow watching a nuclear reactor start up
∞ “Neil ‘Your ass is’ DeGrasse Tyson”
The skies over the North Atlantic every day
No, it’s not the coffee making that happen, it’s your brain
This is the average color of the universe
A water droplet orbiting a charged knitting needle that is orbiting the Earth
Favorite image of a tardigrade is looking at it like something lost during a WWI weapons test
Of course some of the trippiest GIFs come from a physics major
Watch the mean center of the US population move across the country over the last 200 years
Can we launch all our rockets this way just for the visuals?
Pop Culture Happenings
How Did “Mana,” An Austronesian Religious Idea, Become a Gaming Staple?
Greenman doesn’t just help in hair commercials
Bill Bailey moonwalking in 1955, decades before Michael Jackson
Spongebob Squarepants theme song slowed down 800% is what you’d hear on the escalator down to Hell
This 80s version of the Game of Thrones theme is literally rad. You’ll get it.
∞ Game of Thrones VHS intro with that rad 80s theme is incredibly watchable
Make your own animated pixel sprites!
Yesssssss Pacific Rim 2
Fantastic Mortal Kombat flipbook
Popular internet term ‘Feels’ dates way back to 1782
Women as insects by Laurent Seroussi
Vitamin and weight loss supplements don’t work, and John Oliver absolutely nailed Dr. Oz on it
∞ No, people aren’t stupid.
19 Real Reasons Not To Go To The Beach This Summer
Why Dr. Oz can say anything and keep his medical license
Using a drone to film fireworks from the inside was an awesome idea
The atrocious Seralini GMO study has been republished in another journal
∞ Who you won’t see at Wimbledon: Rufus the hawk, the raptor who scares off pigeons from matches
“…So much journalism talks about the horrors of overmedication, rather than the horrors of undermedication.”
Federal judge upholds New York City policy: “Religious objectors are not constitutionally exempt from vaccinations.â€
Illinois has become the first US state to ban the manufacture and sale of cosmetics that contain plastic microbeads
Holy wow soccer players run some serious distances during gamesÂ
The words are fabricated, but the feelings are not: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
—
