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Tides are weirder than you think
Our world relies on the sea more than ever: 80% of goods traded worldwide move by ship. Today’s mariners take it for granted that they can get an accurate chart of the tides for any location on Earth. This would not have been possible without the work of countless scientists through history.
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Review: The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel, by Maciej Cegłowski
The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel is an engineering marvel that stretches underneath the US from coast to coast, whisking San Francisco mission burritos to hungry New Yorkers. Originally built as a pneumatic mail tube in 1933, the tunnel fell out of use with the advent of air travel before being repurposed to carry burritos in 1979.…
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8 forgotten facts about the Olympics
Like any 130-year-old huge international event, the Olympic games have acquired some quirks over the decades. There are scandals that make the news – corruption, doping, politics, etc. – but there’s also plenty that’s just bizarre. Here are a few of the weird or obscure facts about the Olympics that I’ve come across:
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You can just do experiments
We all do science, at a basic level. To test if it’s raining, you go outside your house and see if water droplets are falling on you. To test if the oven is on, you open it and see if you feel heat. There are lots of facts about reality which we might like to…
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Were the Space Shuttle’s boosters really the size of two horse butts?
I’m a Space Shuttle-horse butt truther. A copypasta/chain letter type post that dates back to at least 2001 argues the space shuttle boosters are the size of two horse butts…
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Some ballad meter poetry, to just amuse myself
I want to post some poetry, so that’s what I will do // And even though it’s not my thing, we’ll somehow suffer through…
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The metal that remade time
Elon Musk says “The best part is no part”. Elon Musk says a lot of things, but there are definitely times in history when this principle shines. The best example I’ve heard is the story of Charles-Édouard Guillaume, winner of the 1920 Nobel Prize for inventing the alloy Invar…
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Factorio is a zombie shooter for nerds
Left 4 Dead 2 is a 2009 game where you shoot zombies. It’s very popular, owned by maybe 60 million people. It’s also…
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When the heck did Hammurabi actually rule?
Hammurabi was the king of Babylon. He reigned about 3800 years ago in Mesopotamia, in what’s now Iraq. You may have heard of his code of laws. I say “about” 3800 years ago because there are several possibilities for exactly when he reigned. Right now, the leading…
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I ate bear fat, to prove a point
Eliezer Yudkowsky did not exactly suggest that you should eat bear fat covered with honey and sprinkled with salt flakes. What he actually said was that an alien, looking from the outside at evolution, would predict that you would…
Signore Galilei
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