Drink Cheap Wine

I mean, really cheap.
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Learning to Chill

What would intelligent life look like in the frigid, final era of the Universe?
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'A Little Life': The Great Gay Novel Might Be Here

Hanya Yanagihara’s novel is an astonishing and ambitious chronicle of queer life in America.
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Europeans are so sick of being unemployed that they're working fake jobs at fake companies

While Europe battles long-term unemployment, some people have grown so restless that they've started working fake jobs at fake companies all around the continent. The New York Times' Liz Alderman reports that thousands of fake companies across Europe hire fake employees to sell fake products to fake customers. Products like perfume, porcelain, and exotic pets.
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Woman misses out on £130,000 after leaving early Apple computer at recycling centre

Owner of the Californian recycling centre now seeking the woman to give her half the sale proceeds
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When Palmyra Rivaled the Roman Empire

The history of Palmyra stretches back to the dawn of human civilization, but it was not until the Roman era that Palmyra reached the level of prosperity needed to build the magnificent ruins now under threat from Islamic State.
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Here's the hourly wage you'd need to afford a 2-bedroom rental in every state.

Poverty, inflation, and gov't benefits are calculated as if renters spend 30% of their income on housing. Increasingly, that number is a fantasy. Here's the hourly wage a full-time worker would need t
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There Will Be Spice

It doesn’t matter how many times you tell the cook to go easy on the hot peppers, anything you order in Chongqing is going to be mouth numbing and spicier than you’ve ever tasted before. It will be good, but it will be hot. The food of Chongqing is a subset of Sichuan cuisine, though there are probably a few places where saying that would be an invitation to a fight, or at least a lengthy debate.
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The Wrath of Grapes

A band of upstart winemakers is trying to redefine what California wine should taste like — and enraging America’s most famous oenophile in the process.
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Ramy Essam Needs To Stay Famous So He Doesn't Get Killed

It’s a cold, damp March night in Malmö, Sweden, but Ramy Essam props open the balcony door to his third-floor apartment to let a little of the outside in. “I like to hear the street,” he says. Truth be told, there’s not much to hear on this Wednesday evening: car tires rolling over the slick road, the click-clack of pedestrians’ heels on the sidewalk, the odd squawk from one of the rather large pigeons that live precariously balanced on the bare branches of the trees that abut the building.
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Ginsburg urges young women to wage inspiring fights

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Friday advised young women to fight for things they care about, but to do so in a way that inspires others to join their cause.
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California’s Homeless Find a Quiet Place

Photographer Fritz Hoffmann writes: "On a recent visit to the Sacramento library, the high number of homeless patrons I saw there surprised me. Seeing them in that quiet space, consumed by traditional media, I was struck by the difference between them and most of society with its 24/7 connection to streaming digital media. I began this project to take myself out of my own patterns and habits, to change my perspective, to observe, to listen, to understand, and to share this place of quiet."
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Porn stars will have to wear protection. Eye protection that is

A handsome delivery man arrives offering more than just a pizza. A pretty young woman opens the door. Flirtation ensues. Clothes are cast off. Then out come the goggles. Goggles? Porn stars could soon be forced to don far more protection than just condoms in California. New rules proposed last week by the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health Standards (OSHA) would require adult film actors to wear eye gear for many scenes.
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Uber updates privacy policy, but can still track users

The ride-hailing service revises its privacy policies to be "easier to understand," but it also mentions it can access passengers' location data even when they're not actively using the app.
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Japan Earthquake: Magnitude 8.5 Quake Strikes off East Coast

A magnitude 8.5 earthquake struck off the east coast of Japan on Saturday, shaking buildings in Tokyo, but there was no danger of a tsunami and no immediate reports of damage since the quake was extremely deep.
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The Voyager Golden Records

The Voyager Golden Records are phonograph records which were included aboard both Voyager spacecraft, which were launched in 1977.
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These Stunning Photos of New Zealand's Largest Gang Will Give You Sleepless Nights

In the 1960s, a gang of variously disaffected youth sprang up in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand. They didn't ride bikes, but they quickly developed all the trimmings of an outlaw motorcycle club: patches, club colors, and a fiercely violent process of initiation. They came to be known as the Mighty Mongrel Mob and today they're the largest gang in the country, with around 30 chapters across both islands.
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‘Nabokov in America’ looks at how U.S. shaped novelist

Robert Roper’s new book focuses on Vladimir Nabokov’s time in the United States and how it influenced his work.
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Learning How To Learn: Why You Need To Face Difficulty

The way we learn is outdated. Schools don’t get it right, and we’re starting to see why.
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Lighting Indoor Plants

Houseplants are popular indoor decorations. Attractive and constantly changing, they add a softness of line and provide a bit of nature indoors. However, the ideal location of a plant for decoration may not be the ideal spot for plant growth. Lack of adequate light is the most common factor limiting the growth of plants in many areas of the home.
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Boulder Cops Declare ‘Rock Stacking’ a Jailable Offense to Stop Local Artist Who Spent 7 Years Creating Sculptures

Cops in Colorado seem to be cracking down on art.
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World hunger drops below 800 million for the first time in 25 years

In promising news, a new report has revealed that there are now less then 800 million hungry people around the world, despite significant population growth - the lowest number since the United Nations (UN) first started counting back in 1990. Obviously we can't celebrate the fact that there are still 795 million people worldwide who don't have sufficient access to food, but that's 216 million fewer than in 1990-92, and the UN believes it's on track to...
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The Visual Tricks That Make a Poster Give You Pause

Some posters pause you mid-stride, others disappear into the background like so much white noise.
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Germany passes Japan to have world's lowest birth rate

A study says Germany's birth rate has slumped to the lowest in the world, prompting fears labour market shortages will damage the economy. Germany has dropped below Japan to have not just the lowest birth rate across Europe but also globally, according to the report by Germany-based analysts. Its authors warned of the effects of a shrinking working-age population. They said women's participation in the workforce would be key to the country's economic future.
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Google is not the answer: How the digital age imperils history

From floppy disks to thumb drives, we get better at storing things -- while trapping history in obsolete formats
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Mary Ellen Mark And The Caged Prostitutes Of Mumbai

The photographer, who died this week, turned her lens on the marginal people of the world. One of her most acclaimed projects was her series of photos taken in the brothels of Mumbai.
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Reality Checks in Debate Over Surveillance Laws

There is little evidence in the history of the expiring Patriot Act powers to bolster the arguments that either supporters or opponents are making. By Charlie Savage.
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A Short History of Unnecessarily Terrifying Toy Patents

Google does a lot. Search, email, translation, browsers, phones, chat, docs and much, much more. And if its most recently published patent application is any indication, it’s thinking about getting in on the high-tech, creepy toy game. Said patent is for a connected “anthropomorphic device” that will respond to “social cues” to control media devices in the home, likely with the intention of becoming an integral part of the Internet of Things.
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Edith Wharton Reviews the Starbucks Located at Her Childhood Home

It's exactly what it sounds like.
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Award-Winning Teacher Fired for Reading an Allen Ginsberg Poem

Defenders of Connecticut teacher David Olio say one mistake shouldn’t have cost him his job. But why is the work of a towering figure of 20th-century American poetry out of bounds?
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Insect Men

The Art of Pochoir and the two Messieurs Séguys
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Birds of a feather: Elegant Close Ups Amplify the Beauty of Bird Plumes

A fashion photographer spreads his wings from photographing models to looking intimately at the elegance of bird feathers.
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O Martyr My Martyr!

In most communities, teachers are compensated so poorly and afforded so little respect that in many cases the primary compensation is martyrdom.
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In the Bay Area, Adjuncts and Artists Unite to Unionize

It is no longer a stretch to draw connections between adjunct professors and other workers in the service economy. The corporate university model is deeply invested in the notion that treating all of its employees as disposable labor (while at the same time raising student tuitions at an unbelievable rate) can maximize profits.
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How, and why, a journalist tricked news outlets into thinking chocolate makes you thin

This spring, the journal International Archives of Medicine published a delicious new study: According to researchers at Germany’s Institute of Diet and Health, people who ate dark chocolate while dieting lost more weight. The media coverage was instantaneous and jubilant: “Scientists say eating chocolate can help you lose weight,” read a headline in the Irish Examiner. “Excellent News: Chocolate Can Help You Lose Weight!” Huffington Post India boasted.
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Zuck-Up as Facebook Messenger app tracks you everywhere forever

The ZuckerBorg collects so much data on its users that even visiting the site tags your ineffable soul for eternal tracking. But now a Harvard student's browser extension can now exploit the default location sharing setting to literally plot Facebook Messenger app users' movements on a map. Aran Khanna, a CompSci student at Harvard, noted the location data leakage and wrote the Chrome extension Marauders Map to plot where his friends have been contacting him from.
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Louise Gluck, “Cousins”

When I consider my friends I’m overcome with pride. They are accomplished, interesting women who are also funny, empathetic, and inspiring. And yet among those who gravitate towards men, few have partners. This is both by choice—we’re all reaching an age at which we’re unwilling to compromise—and by circumstantial compulsion. Why aren’t there more men...
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Restaurants Really Need to Stop Serving Food on Wooden Boards

Steak presented on wooden boards, bread arranged in hats and chips in plant pots. Will our obsession with food served on things that aren’t plates ever end?
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Pilgrimage to the Mountains

Photographer Timothy Allen climbs high into the Peruvian Andes for Qoyllur Rit'i - the Snow Star Festival.
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'in this story...' by Lisa Marie Basile

in this story, there is the me but not me
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Mystery of holes in Swiss cheese finally solved

The mystery of Swiss cheese and its disappearing holes has finally been solved.
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Is This Planned Ghost Town the City of the Future?

At the end of a six-mile road in a dry valley in southern New Mexico, researchers are building a first-of-its-kind testing ground for the future. Here among the cottonwoods and coyotes, they are creating a city designed to serve as a living laboratory for the latest in cutting-edge technology, such as goods-delivering drones and roads filled with driverless cars. It’ll be identical to any other city except for one thing: No one will live there.
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The Wikipedia Wars

Does it matter if our biggest source of knowledge is written by men? Wikipedia is the world’s most popular encyclopaedia, a collaborative utopia. But only one in every ten of its editors is a woman.
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A Slender Geothermal Cottage in London

On an eight-foot-wide site in London, architect Luke Tozer cleverly squeezed in a four-story home equipped with rain-water-harvesting and geothermal systems.  
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Portable, solar-powered ecocapsules mean you can live rent- and electric-bill free, globally

If you’ve just had it with taking the subway, or sitting in an office, or just generally being around other people, you may be in luck. Slovakian firm Nice Architects has built an egg-shaped “Ecocapsule” that runs entirely on solar and wind energy, allowing its dweller(s) to live both literally, and figuratively, off the grid. The completely self-sustaining portable home contains a 9,744 watt-hour battery, a 750 watt wind turbine, and high-efficiency solar cells that can support...
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Gorgeous 19th-Century Illustrations of Owls and Ospreys

Nowhere does the transcendent magnificence of birds of prey come more fully alive than in the fourth volume the the six-volume masterwork "The Royal Natural History" by English naturalist, geologist, and writer Richard Lydekker, originally published in 1893.
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Student from Yeovil spends 375 hours knitting for art project three-quarters of a mile long

A student from Yeovil has created a piece of art by knitting solidly for the equivalent of more than two weeks day and night. Student Sandra Charles, 22, who now attends Nottingham Trent University's School of Art & Design, spent 375 hours knitting together recycled material for her final year degree show this week.
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Lockheed Martin says NSA testing smartphones that can identify you from finger swipes

The US National Security Agency (NSA) has been testing out a new technology that can identify a user by the shape and swiftness of their finger swipe strokes on a smartphone screen, according to Lockheed Martin. The technology, known as Mandrake, is similar to Dynamic Signature – a motion-recognition technology originally invented by the US Air Force in 1978 for the Pentagon that makes use of the behavioural biometrics of a handwritten signature.
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How Penn Station saved New York's architectural history

In May, New York City's landmarks preservation agency blocked renovation changes to the Four Seasons restaurant in the modernist Seagram building. Nick Bryant looks at the architectural upheaval that made a powerful city landmarks law.
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The Cave in Pilares by Greenfield

This amazing contemporary stone residence situated in Coahuila, Mexico, was designed by Greenfield.
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