The average American “Ethel” is nearly 81 years old. The average “Seymour” is about that, too. But the oldest name right now? That would be “Myrtle,” with 31% well into their 80s. Interesting, fun research—and you can check on your own name, too. erdavis.com/2026/05/29/w...

A counterfeiter seems unlikely to be easily forgiven, let alone earn public support. But a frail, old immigrant in a small NYC apartment did just that, and became a bit of a celebrity, too. www.amusingplanet.com/2026/05/emer...

21st-cen­tu­ry cof­fee afi­ciona­dos may have Zen-like patience for slow pour-overs. But 100 years ago, the goal was a qual­i­ty prod­uct you could enjoy with­out break­ing stride. The Steam Age made espresso possible.

Sun, Moon, Tiw, Woden, Thor, Frigg, and Saturn: the long-lost gods behind our weekday names. But how did the ancients decide their order? With astrology, of course. www.iflscience.com/the-first-ev...

“The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman,” a 19th century prodigy once remarked. “The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life.” Some 150 years later, that sentiment persists among some elite players. “I wish I had chosen something (else),” says one grandmaster.

Love A Rainy Night: The sound of rain shakes some seeds out of a dormant state, making them germinate faster than seeds not exposed to the same sounds. news.mit.edu/2026/plants-...

Multiple senses are in play when we talk with someone. What you hear matters, but so too, what you see. But for a rare few people, the senses in play can be uncommon combinations. They’re synaesthetes, who can often hear color or even taste words. www.sciencealert.com/up-to-4-of-p...

Oddly compelling, a self-described “neurotic collector,” went room by room, drawer by drawer, to photograph, index, and classify her entire house. katalog-barbaraiweins.com#images

Early drones: During World War I, pigeons were outfitted with tiny cameras and released over enemy territory. As the birds flew, the cameras clicked away. Part of an interesting online exhibition at the International Spy Museum. www.spymuseum.org/exhibition-e...

Imagine being trapped between enemies on one side and a swamp thick with crocodiles on the other. Sounds like a horror movie. But it happened in February 1945, and the results were predictably terrifying.

Over time, deep reading trains our brains for concentration and complex thought. What it means for us as a society if we opt out of exercising those skills is up for debate. Science is clear, however, that for individuals, how you get your information matters.

Before cheap, reliable alarm clocks we humans relied on inventive ways to get to work on time, from knocker-uppers, to clever candles that told the time, and more.

A platypus was an oddity 200 years ago. They look like beavers but have duck bills, they’re mammals that lay eggs, and they produce milk without nipples. And modern science is delivering even more surprises about them. nautil.us/platypus-ana...

While many messaging apps are tightening their security belts, Instagram is going the other way, eliminating end-to-end encryption with no explanation why. Once done, Meta will be able to access your messages and analyze private conversations.

From 1905 to 1915, the United States entered a golden age of postcards. That coincided with a time when “tall-tale” art also reached its peak—and one of the most popular genres was agricultural goods of fantastic dimensions.

The same person who can’t get through a novel can watch a 3-hour video essay on the decline of the Ottoman Empire. That’s not inferior cognition. It’s different cognition. And the difference isn’t the screen, but the environment.

Do “impossible” colors like reddish green or yellowish blue exist? They may, but we can’t see them because of the way our eyes work. Still, some hacks may make them visible to us, if only momentarily.

Mosaics, art made from tiny, colored tiles, are alive and well at the Vatican. There, a 12-person studio dating back to the 1500s houses a catalog of 27,000 different varieties of tiles stored in a 9,000-drawer filing cabinet. www.reuters.com/lifestyle/in...

You know that screeching sound tape makes when you peel it away from glass? The source of the sound has baffled physicists—until now. Turns out it’s a sonic “whisper,” and it’s surprisingly technical.

In the days before accurate forecasting, the 1888 Great White Hurricane unexpectedly buried New York in 50 inches of snow. The storm led President Benjamin Harrison to create the Weather Bureau. www.usatoday.com/story/news/w...

It matters not at all whether we are holding our breath for a triumph or bracing for a tragedy. For as long as we are waiting, we are not living. www.themarginalian.org/2026/02/21/h...

Electric eels have long fascinated scientists. Now they’re the inspiration behind flexible batteries that could deliver bursts of power for next-generation soft robotics, implantable biomedical devices, and wearable electronics. connectsci.au/news/news-pa...

For the French and Italians, it’s arts, culture, and food. In Poland it’s heritage. For Australians it’s “mateship.” People of 25 nations of the world say what makes them most proud about their countries. www.pewresearch.org/global/2026/...

Population aging isn’t a forecast, it’s arithmetic. Yet assumptions about business performance haven’t kept pace. While processing speed declines after early adulthood, many capabilities that are key to complex work continue to improve well into midlife, peaking between ages 55 and 60.

The tiny “talking stamps” of Bhutan, issued in 1972, were actual 33⅓ RPM vinyl records with capsule histories of the country, its national anthem, and its history.

Concrete, essential to construction, is made with sand dug from riverbanks. Desert sand, though wildly abundant, is too fine for that. But mix it with wood powder, and a new material can emerge.

Is it ever ethical to lie? For many, it depends.

140+ years of climate anomalies in a remarkable visualization. It starts pretty chill and gets...well, you'll see.

Unsinkable? University researchers come up with a process to make ordinary metal tubes unsinkable. They stay afloat no matter how long they are forced into water or how heavily they are damaged. It could have huge nautical applications.

With Bridget Bardot’s death, Bob Dylan, Chubby Checker, and Bernie Goetz are all that remain of Billy Joel’s “Fire”.

@aeronautapp.com Just downloaded and installed 1.2. Getting “Session Expired” messages every hour or so. Heard you had some issues with this. How can I help you find the issue?

At age 20, Wilson Bentley first discovered under a microscope how each snowflake was a vanishing masterpiece. He didn’t realize then that it would become his life’s work. “I became possessed with a great desire to show people something of this wonderful loveliness.”

Students studying the arts, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences gain skills that machines will never master, such as critical thinking and collaboration. Judgment will likely never be AI’s strength.

After a tough day of decision-making, we say we’re ‘mentally drained’, as if we’ve used up some internal energy or worn out our willpower muscle. But what if that’s wrong? What if willpower doesn’t really deplete at all?

It’s hard to overstate the celebrity (and tragedy) of the Dionne Quints, five identical sisters born during the Great Depression—and then put on exhibit in an exploitative “baby zoo.” “Because of the accident of birth, we were not considered people.”

No one loves their mistakes on display, but these famous musicians left theirs in five timeless classics.

Science finds what riders already knew: Horses are not passive responders to human commands, but social partners who are surprisingly well-tuned to the emotional signals we give off.

Visualizing history linearly, on a timeline, is common today, but it wasn’t always that way. Cyclical and linear conceptions of time thrived side by side for centuries. But in the 19th century, four developments pushed us to change.

70% of French fry lovers spill ketchup when dipping on the go. 80% say they’ve considered skipping condiments altogether. Heinz won’t hear of it. They say they have the answer, coming soon to sports stadiums around the world.

Non-painters might be surprised by how long—and how passionately—the pros and cons of black pigment have been kicked around. Then, Leonardo da Vinci recommended adding black to create the light-dark effect we call chiaroscuro, and all hell broke loose.

The Universe’s normal matter consists of atoms. Every atom’s nucleus contains protons, whose number determines that element’s properties. Over 100 elements, sortable into a periodic table, are presently known. Only eight processes occur to create them all.

Time-saving, premade food is the fastest-growing category in the grocery business. To reduce waste, stores try to sell their oldest stock first, but paradoxically that’s actually counterproductive.

Despite vast differences in human and bee brains, both of us can do math. Might mathematics form the basis for a “universal language,” that one day could be used to help us communicate between the stars?

Coffeehouses aren’t new. They date back to the 16th-century and emerged in North America in Boston in 1676. Unlike taverns, coffeehouses were intellectual hubs and meeting places for dissenters and resistence.

For research or inspiration, hundreds of digitized cocktail books from around the world, some dating back to the 18th century. A free trove of drinking history.

@dharam.bsky.social Funnel Pro user here 👋 Can I use Funnel through the share sheet? I can’t seem to Figure out how to make that work. Appreciate your help.

We’ve all seen or even visited the destruction of the ancient city of Pompeii after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. But not everyone died, and the ones that escaped left with quite a story to tell.

@simonwillison.net Having discovered your blog only recently, I can’t tell you how happy I was to find your chronological “How I use LLMs and ChatGPT” playlist. Very thoughtful to structure it like that. The latest was a sip from the firehouse for me, but now I’m working through from the beginning.

100 years ago, deep thinkers imagined life in 2025. Some theories, like synchronized clocks, skyscrapers, and reading books on tablets, were on the money, but others not so much. And some ideas still seem light years away.

French relies heavily on accents, or more specifically, diacritical marks like the cedilla in “Français.” Ironically, though, it’s the influence of French, albeit an earlier version of the language, that explains why English doesn’t use accents. Fascinating.