“Incognito bandits” now cognito and under arrest

Wal-Mart Experimenting With Robotic Shopping Cart for Stores

Map of teenage brain provides evidence of link between antisocial behavior and brain development

Study of brain activity finds psychopaths are not as fearless as thought

Fingerprint matching is biased by the assessor’s prejudices

Women cry on average 5.3 times a month, men only 1.3 times a month. Why do we cry? And why might there be differences between men and women?

Did you know links sent privately through Facebook messenger can be read by anyone?

Apple Is Fighting A Secret War To Keep You From Repairing Your Phone

How To Wrangle A Rattlesnake

You Can Soon Buy a Melon With Hello Kitty’s Face Grown Onto The Surface. They don’t come cheap, though.

Van Gogh’s Starry Night painted on dark water, by Garip Ay

The penile plethysmograph is a machine for measuring changes in the circumference of the penis [Thanks Tim]

Families sue US sperm bank after ‘genius’ donor turns out to be felon with mental health issues.

How the sense of an ending shapes memory Composers, novelists and film directors try to end on a high. Restaurants keen to manipulate their online reviews have found a similar trick.

Memories of unethical actions become obfuscated over time

Visceral states like thirst, hunger, and fatigue can alter motivations, predictions, and even memory. It can also shift moral standards and increase dishonest behavior.

Fish can recognize human faces [study]

Ticket bots  have years of experience beating you to the punch for premium seats. A fan’s guide to why you’re totally screwed.

Trump University and the art of the get-rich seminar

What Happens to the Coins People Toss Into Fountains?

Fortune cookies are often served as a dessert in Chinese restaurants in the United States and some other countries, but are absent in China

The best day and time to hold a meeting: Tuesday, 2:30pm, according to a study

Jimmy Carter actually saw a UFO (he even filed the paperwork)

We study 1) how the urban smellscape changes in time and space; 2) which emotions people share at places with specific smells; and 3) what is the color of a smell, if it exists

World’s Biggest Indoor Vertical Farm Near NYC to Use 95% Less Water

Grandfather “very sorry” after accidentally picking up wrong grandchild at school

The authors describe a 50 year old Italian man who turned into a ‘caricature’ of a Frenchman after a brain injury. [more]

How do we choose a partner?

Individuals in the early stage of intense romantic love show many symptoms of substance and non-substance or behavioral addictions.

Only women’s clothing is described as sexually provocative

Scientists have developed a new method to rapidly detect a single virus in urine

We are only beginning to understand the recent, mysterious honey bee die offs. And: New study shows bumblebees can sense electric fields generated by flowers, and use that feeling to tell the difference between flowers.

Why Are There Violent Rabbits In The Margins Of Medieval Manuscripts?

Glasses on the Floor Mistaken for Art Installation at San Francisco MoMA

20,000 bees chase car for TWO DAYS after queen bee gets trapped in trunk

Children with no shoes on ‘do better in classroom’, major study finds

The more inept you are, the smarter you think you are, study

When we act unethically, we’re more likely to remember these actions less clearly. Researchers coined the term “unethical amnesia” to describe this phenomenon.

How do trees go to sleep?

Why Your Laundry Stinks, and How to Stop It

Niobium — the commodity that no one knows about but everybody wants to buy

Characteristics of the built environment and the presence of the Norway rat in New York City: results from a neighborhood rat surveillance program, 2008-2010

Donald Duck used in odd sting operation

China bans ‘erotic’ banana-eating live streams [video]

Terence Koh, Self-Proclaimed ‘Naomi Campbell of the Art World,’ Un-Quits Art [map of his social relations | PDF]

Google patents adhesive coating that glues pedestrians to the hood in self-driving car accidents

Businessman raising £1m to recreate 9/11 to prove conspiracy theories true or false ‘once and for all’

The average age for the onset of depression has dropped from late forties or early fifties, where it was 30 years ago, to mid twenties, and it’s expected to drop further.

The most common types of coincidences

Computer scientists have created a way of letting law enforcement tap any camera that isn’t password protected so they can determine where to send help or how to respond to a crime

A group of ex-Google engineers have launched Otto, a self-driving truck startup

How fast is your Internet connection

So why do we use all caps instead of bold or italic or even highlighted? Because back when lawyers used typewriters, the only simple way to emphasize anything was to use ALL CAPS. But let’s look beyond all caps, to perhaps the most famous place where typeface choices might save lives: on the road.

One of the park’s main attractions is the “Flight of the Peacocks”, a seven-times-a-day show in which three hundred trained peacocks fly down from a small hill. Some just couldn’t figure out the flying thing. On the other hand, the park also had a restaurant.

Two Buildings on Canal Street Are Waging a Post-it War in Their Windows and Agency Post-it Wars Are Spreading

Service available to US phone numbers only

When you making a playdoh snake

Polar Bears in Canada Are Pooping Glitter

Oxytocin is made by the hypothalamus and acts on the brain, playing a role in bonding, sex and pregnancy. But findings that a sniff of the hormone is enough to make people trust each other more are being called into question after a string of studies failed to replicate classic experiments.

A 10% relative drop in smoking in every state is predicted to be followed by an expected $63 billion reduction (in 2012 US dollars) in healthcare expenditure the next year.

The great strange fact of human history is how it came to be that a good chunk of our species, after more than 100,000 years of scraping by, suddenly got rather wildly rich

Imagine standing at a bus stop, talking to your friend and having your conversation recorded without you knowing. Hidden microphones that are part of a clandestine government surveillance program that has been operating around the Bay Area has been exposed.

Friday the 13th: The Empirics of Bad Luck [PDF]

Scientists made see-through wood that’s stronger than glass

Origami robot unfolds from ingestible capsule, removes button battery stuck to wall of simulated stomach

I made an app that orders delivery to a random location, and ubers you there…

Poultry Workers Forced to Wear Diapers to Increase Efficiency [Thanks GG]

NRA Convention sells “ex-girlfriend” target that bleeds when you shot at it

There is indeed evidence that all cities are starting to look the same. Boring architecture may take an emotional toll on the people forced to live in and around it.

Will destruction of any planet in the solar system have an impact on earth?

How women can go the full nine months without knowing they’re pregnant

Sextortion: Cybersecurity, teenagers, and remote sexual assault

Fred Trump could be seen during construction patrolling the work site, pouring water into paint buckets to save money

Moore’s Law Is Dead

Running app Runkeeper is secretly tracking you around the clock and sending your data to advertisers

New app makes your iPhone photos searchable

Sign language translation gloves

Sweaty Guy at Show Uses You as Personal Towel

Indian restaurant owner accused of killing customer with curry

KFC Is Making a Nail Polish That Tastes Like Chicken [thanks GG]

‘Second skin” could reduce appearance of wrinkles and be used to cover birthmarks or treat conditions such as eczema [study] [Thanks Tim]

First baby drop-off box for unwanted newborns installed in Indiana

Imposter becomes guest editor of scientific journal, using a fake email address

The art of skywriting

Where Does The U.S. Get Its Oil?

When I signed up for Apple Music, iTunes evaluated my collection of Mp3s and WAV files, scanned Apple’s database for what it considered matches, then removed the original files from my internal hard drive.

Every top 5 song, from 1958 - 2016

A Canadian Ph.D. student has invented a topical cream that he says can cheaply and easily remove unwanted tattoos [Thanks Tim]

Erase™ and Replace™

meanwhile, in bushwick

‘Incompetent’ Robot Waiters Force Restaurants In China To Shut Down

Due to an unusual illness, Matthew creates false memories that seem as vivid as the real thing. He’s had to learn to live with a past that is as uncertain as the future.

We’re convinced that free will exists, but new research suggests it might be nothing more than a trick the brain plays on itself

The author draws a parallel between an analyst listening to a patient and a member of an audience watching a play. In both situations, it is important to be able to adopt a dual identity in order to participate in the action through identification and then to withdraw from the identification to adopt the position of an observer.

Researchers have located the genes that could explain the differences in how humans experience happiness.

Your Brain Limits You to Just Five BFFs

According to a recent study, just seven procedures make up 80% of these emergency procedures. These seven procedures also accounted for 79% of all complications, 80% of all inpatient costs from emergency general surgery—and 80% of deaths.

What Caused the Great Crime Decline in the U.S.?

What happened to Google Maps? While the number of cities shown on the maps has decreased, the number of roads shown has actually increased.

Most of what I try fails, but these failures are often invisible. This CV of Failures is an attempt to balance the record. If it’s shorter than yours, it’s likely because you have better memory.

Be different

12-year-old girl runs NY half-marathon by mistake

Scientists discover fourth state for water molecules

This paper explores the psychoanalyst’s dilemmas in treating a man who came for analysis as a self-identified compulsive liar.

Although most people agree that there is such a phenomenon as intuition, involving emotionally charged, rapid, unconscious processes, little compelling evidence supports this notion. Findings support the notion that nonconscious emotions can bias concurrent nonemotional behavior — a process of intuition

Language and thought are not the same thing

The big man has a big mouth: Mouth width correlates with perceived leadership ability and actual leadership performance

Can’t sleep in an unfamiliar bed? Half your brain is still awake watching for threats

Researchers analysed 124 published trials of mindfulness as a mental-health treatment, and found that scientists reported positive findings 60% more often than is statistically likely.

One in 25 papers contains inappropriately duplicated images, screen finds

Predicting Stock Market Reactions to FOMC Meetings via Twitter Feeds [PDF]

Computer generates all possible ideas to beat patent trolls [Thanks Tim]

The QWERTY effect postulates that the keyboard layout influences word meanings by linking positivity to the use of the right hand and negativity to the use of the left hand [PDF]

A complete guide to the new ‘Crypto Wars’

Venture capitalists are sitting atop “amazing paper-based gains”

Bad drivers are a good indicator of a corrupt government

How these island rats survived 75 metric tons of poison [study]

Random couscous snaps into beautiful patterns

German artist Maria Eichhorn has closed a London gallery and sent all its staff home

Scientists have developed a new system that can identify people using their brain waves with 100 per cent accuracy

Your phone number is all a hacker needs to read texts, listen to calls and track you

Apple recovered $40 million in gold from used phones and computers last year

There’s been a big decline in the black incarceration rate, and almost nobody’s paying attention

How well can we detect each other’s loneliness?

The 6 elements of an effective apology, according to science

What every dictator knows: young men are natural fanatics

Does Couples’ Communication Predict Marital Satisfaction, or Does Marital Satisfaction Predict Communication?

Previous research has demonstrated that sexual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction are distinct but correlated constructs, but relatively few studies have examined how they are related over time. [PDF]

Replacing butter with vegetable oils does not decrease risk of heart disease

A new view of the tree of life

Airbnb has a far more extensive web of subsidiaries than it has publicly acknowledged—more than 40 in all. The Sharing Economy Doesn’t Share the Wealth

As most news junkies have heard by now, seven of Andy Warhol’s “iconic” “paintings” of Campbell’s soup cans were recently stolen from the Springfield Art Museum in Missouri

London toilet for rent at £3,000 per month

New York Democrats claim Republican-controlled Senate won’t give them enough toilet paper

The states with the highest life expectancies for individuals in the bottom income quartile (>80.6 years) were California, New York, and Vermont. The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001-2014

What The Hell Happened In East New York?

We study the effect of the illicit drug business on terrorism for a sample of 58 countries for the 1984–2007 period. We find that in the long run, higher drug prices are associated with more terrorism

The average has triumphed as the primary statistic of our time. We explore how the average came to dominate how we talk about data, and whether we would be better off using the median.

Chess instruction is no more effective in enhancing children’s cognitive and academic skills than many (at least more than 50%) other possible educational interventions

Homo erectus differs from earlier hominins in having relatively smaller teeth, reduced chewing muscles, weaker maximum bite force capabilities, and a relatively smaller gut. This paradoxical combination of increased energy demands along with decreased masticatory and digestive capacities is hypothesized to have been made possible by adding meat to the diet.

The Exotic Animal Traffickers of Ancient Rome

How Scams Worked In The 1800s

Andrés Sepúlveda rigged elections throughout Latin America for almost a decade. He tells his story for the first time.

My terrifying – and valuable – time in a psychiatric ward

Louis C.K. Meets the Unconscious

The trouble with emoji: Misinterpreted emotions

Scientists To Open Mass-Cloning Factory in China This Year To Clone Cows, Pets, Humans The ambitious and futuristic facility hopes to be mass-producing one million cows every 12 months by 2020.

Renter says security camera inside apartment is an invasion of privacy

New York taxi drivers to be banned from flirting with or ejaculating on passengers

In Delaware, the state eliminated the not guilty by reason of insanity defense within days of the Hinckley verdict, creating instead the option of “guilty but mentally ill.”

Inside the company that provides fake paparazzi, pretend campaign supporters, and counterfeit protesters

How do people or companies with vested interests spread ignorance and obfuscate knowledge. There is a term studying this phenomenon.

Coffee consumption linked to lower risk of colorectal cancer

Touching a robot can elicit physiological arousal in humans

TSA paid $1.4 million for Randomizer app that chooses left or right

Interactive shop in virtual reality for futuristic clothing

A tampon alternative you can wear during sex

Hunter S. Thompson, The Art of Journalism No. 1

Secret Rooms Installed Inside Abandoned Manhole Covers on the Streets of Milan

Street Artist and City Worker Have Year Long Exchange on a Red Wall in London

Scientists figured out how to steal any 3D printed product just from the sounds the printer make

Demolition company knocks down wrong house, blames Google Maps

Unfamiliar with irony, Swiss bankers are complaining of a “lack of transparency”

Exposed to a deluge of digital photos, we’re feeling the psychological effects of image overload.

The paradox of fiction: Emotional response toward fiction and the modulatory role of self-relevance.

What Engineers Can Learn From the Design of the Penis

Testosterone beyond Sex

This Negative Facial Expression Is ‘Universal’

Corporations are increasingly relying on algorithms to make business decisions and that raises new legal questions.

How many decimals of pi do we actually need?

Poker Theory and Analytics is a graduate-level MIT course taught by Kevin Desmond, a former pro player and Morgan Stanley analyst. The school offers the course online, meaning video lectures, assignments, and class notes are available to anyone for free.

The secret life of a tattooist: my art has become part of narcissistic, selfie-obsessed modern culture

Welcome to the Hotel Antartica

Japan invents electric ’salt-flavoured fork’

Scientists Slowly Reintroducing Small Group Of Normal, Well-Adjusted Humans Into Society

A day after Microsoft introduced an innocent Artificial Intelligence chat robot to Twitter it has had to delete it after it transformed into an evil Hitler-loving, incestual sex-promoting, ‘Bush did 9/11′-proclaiming robot. 

Hackers Modify Water Treatment Parameters by Accident

Maserati Recalls 28,000 Cars For Stuck Accelerators

No more washing: Nano-enhanced textiles clean themselves with light

Male preference for female pubic hair: an evolutionary view

Most Popular Theories of Consciousness Are Worse Than Wrong

What do we mean when we say that our behaviors are influenced by genetic factors? And how do we know?

How does genetics explain non-identical identical twins?

The psychology of shoppers and return policies: More leniency on time limits is associated with a reduction — not an increase — in returns. [Washington Post]

Banned From Amazon for Returning 37 Things

Wikimedia and Facebook have given Angolans free access to their websites, but not to the rest of the internet. So, naturally, Angolans have started hiding pirated movies and music in Wikipedia articles and linking to them on closed Facebook groups.

Some security experts say that you should block online ads just to stay safe

Researchers uncover the origins of fairy tales through evolutionary biology’s methods

How Gender Neutral Is Guys, Really?

Researchers found complex ‘fractal’ patterning of sentences in literature, particularly in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

AI-written novel passes literary prize screening

Skateboarding is, among other things, a marriage of chaos and discernment. Tricks—whether a Slappy, No Comply, or Caballerial, a backside Smith grind, switch Tre flip, Madonna, Indy Nosebone, or McTwist—are exactly defined, and there’s a shared world of aesthetics, but tastes vary widely, and it’s understood that the most interesting skaters will always find ways to undo expectations.

Madonna busted for posting fake signs to hoard NYC parking spaces

Drone Gives 360 Degree View of Rainbow [Thanks Tim]

Percentage of scientific paper titles containing “observations” or “data” in the past century

Baltimore woman sues after being ‘literally covered in feces’ by toilet explosion

We feel more authentic when we’re with other people and behave as they expect us to

People who weigh more than others see distances as farther away

How often does psychotherapy make people feel worse?

A few people develop a compulsive urge to crack jokes 24 hours a day, with a medical condition called Witzelsucht

Linguist analyzes Trump attack haiku

The academic publishing market that Elsevier leads has an annual revenue of $25.2 billion. According to its 2013 financials Elsevier had a higher percentage of profit than Apple, Inc.

The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower, Twice

Are You Orgasming Without Even Knowing It? I was, until I masturbated for science.

“Song Wig”

The MacBook Selfie Stick

Scuba diver survives being sucked into Florida nuclear power plant

Monkeys Drive Wheelchairs Using Only Their Thoughts

Engineers develop flexible skin that traps radar waves, cloaks objects

According to a spectacularly misleading article in the Telegraph: Scientists discover how to ‘upload knowledge to your brain.’ That’s science fiction. Or rather, journalistic fiction.

High daily coffee consumption may lower Multiple Sclerosis risk

Why women’s education doesn’t always improve women’s equality

Smartwatches that allow pupils to ‘cheat’ in exams for sale on Amazon

Chinese hackers stole $100 million from the Bangladesh Central Bank’s account at the New York Fed and then laundered it through Philippine casinos.

Using geographic profiling to investigate Banksy

Nonlinear Effects of Superstar Collaboration: Why the Beatles Succeeded but Broke Up

A Physicist Is Building a Time Machine to Reconnect With His Dead Father [Thanks Tim]

How to build a time machine, from a university math professor

Mobile Robotic Fabrication System for Filament Structures

It’s a wearable LCD ‘mirror’ with facial recognition. and Behold, my new alarm clock hack. 1 shot of espresso every half hour until I wake up.

People Just Won’t Stop Stealing ‘Katie Crotch Road’ Signs. The thefts are costing a town hundreds of dollars each year.

Psychiatric facilities across the United States are at breaking point after the number of people claiming to be sent from the future to stop Donald Trump reached epidemic proportions.

Edible underwear was never meant to be eaten

Test subjects followed instructions from an “Emergency Guide Robot” even after the machine had proven itself unreliable — and after some participants were told that robot had broken down

Autistic ‘Prison Houdini’ who memorized guards’ keys and carved exact replicas for 13 escape attempts in 36 years is denied parole

On average, CEOs earn $176,840 annually. College presidents, $377,261.

Disney U.S. parks will charge visitors different prices based on anticipated demand, with weekdays during the school year much cheaper than holidays. Previously, the parks charged the same price for a one-day pass any time of year.

Hijab and “Hitchhiking”: A Field Study

“Social media is 95 percent of what happens in all relationships now”

New model explains how things go viral online

New research shows that you only need handful of influencers to give the impression that everyone is talking about your brand. [Thanks Tim]

Giraffe neck is longer than thought

Trouble with cats on your counters, table tops, furniture, curtains, floor areas – or maybe “hanging out at your entry door”? (new patent)

World’s first electronics transistor, assembled by hand, 1947 and and the suburb of agbogbloshie

Shazam for Plants and for birds

Samuel Beckett, Aphasic Speech Automatisms, and Psychosomatic Language

The Ross Sisters

Norman Reedus (Daryl) practicing his crossbow

Ass eating restaurant in Japan [Thanks GG]

Selling phone

A Canadian man who disappeared 30 years ago is set to be reunited with his family after remembering his identity

A woman in Brazil who had cosmetic surgery ended up with not only a flatter stomach and larger breasts, she also developed kleptomania for a few weeks, a new case report reveals.

Drinking more coffee may help prevent alcohol-related cirrhosis

A little-known effort to conduct biological warfare occurred during the 17th century

Why tipping is wrong

They found a 9% earnings premium for lesbians over heterosexual women, compared with a penalty of 11% for gay men relative to straight men. Lesbians receive no wage premium in the public sector.

Headphones that get you high on dopamine are tipped to go on sale next month

When is a Transport Map Too Complex for Your Brain?

How a dead millionaire convinced dozens of women to have as many babies as possible

Captured : People in prison drawing people who should be

A Naked Therapy session takes place via webcam

Smell Dating, the first mail odor dating service

Man kicked out of all-you-can-eat buffet after eating more than 50 lbs of food, sues for $2-million

The Parmesan cheese you sprinkle on your penne could be wood. Some brands promising 100 percent purity contained no Parmesan at all.

People took the fewest calories when presented with smaller versus regular-sized pizza slices placed on a larger table

False confessions are surprisingly easy to extract from people simply by keeping them awake, according to a new study

Procrastination as a Fast Life History Strategy

You can train your body into thinking it’s had medicine

Parkinson’s patients trained to respond to placebos

Half the world to be short-sighted by 2050

Period pain can be “as bad as a heart attack.” So why aren’t we researching how to treat it?

“Your first experience of something is going to be well remembered, more than later experiences”Why we never really get over that first love

A quarter of men over 85 had sex in the last year

Postmodernism’s Self-Nullifying Reading of Nietzsche

How Voltaire made a fortune rigging the lottery

Son of a carpenter, he claimed income of $100 million per year and assets of $1 billion, owned a palatial Tokyo home and retained a private chef who cooked him marinated monkey meat.

-0.5% Interest rate: Why people are paying to save. Negative interest rates, once a theoretical curiosity, are now the stated policy of some powerful central banks. [NY Times]

People typically overestimate how much others are prepared to pay for consumer goods and services. [PDF]

What if we could record and rewind our thoughts?

A cocktail party in a dish: How neurons filter the chatter

Samsung warns customers not to discuss personal information in front of smart TVs

Americans spend an average of five and a half hours a day with digital media, more than half of that time on mobile devices

A court of appeals in Paris has ruled against an appeal filed by Facebook, after a 2015 ruling regarding suspension of an account for posting Gustave Courbet’s The Origin of the World.

You Can Now Download and 3D Print Your Dream Closet

3D-printed ear, bone and muscle structures come to life after implantation in mice

Cotton candy machines may hold key for making artificial organs

Computer programs used by John Cage

Automated office chairs

Things researchers do with ping-pong balls

Leo’s Red Carpet Rampage