Mark Zuckerberg built a voice-controlled thermostat that doesn’t listen to his wife’s voice

A 25-year-old with no Trump ties raises $1 million by dangling ‘dinner’ with the GOP nominee

20% of scientific papers on genes contain gene name conversion errors caused by Excel

Substituting multiple imputation for listwise deletion in political science […] in almost half of the studies, key results “disappear” (by conventional statistical standards) when reanalyzed.” [PDF]

How Rigged Are Stock Markets?: Evidence From Microsecond Timestamps

Is divorce seasonal? Study shows biannual spike in divorce filings

Immediately after we’ve been shunned, our brains engage a subtle mechanism that alters our sense of whether other people are making eye contact with us, so that we think it more likely that they are looking our way.

Trust Your Gut or Think Carefully? Examining Whether an Intuitive, Versus a Systematic, Mode of Thought Produces Greater Empathic Accuracy

More than one out of six people would prefer to die younger than age 80

“We run physics simulations all the time to prepare us for when we need to act in the world” Researchers find brain’s ‘physics engine’ predicts how world behaves

Scientists just discovered a new type of eye movement we do every day

Study strengthens evidence that cognitive activity can reduce dementia risk

Too much activity in certain areas of the brain is bad for memory and attention

What If We’re Wrong? History Suggests Everything Will Be Disproved

We now know how Lucy died some 3.18 million years ago

The longitudinal relationship between everyday sadism and the amount of violent video game play

Placebo Buttons [more]

Why don’t hotels give you toothpaste?

Just how dangerous is it to travel at 20% the speed of light?

The 9 Deep Learning Papers You Need To Know About

Philippines drugs war: The woman who kills dealers for a living

Bioluminescent Shrimp Turn Rocks on Japanese Beach Into “Weeping Stones”

There are no particles, there are only fields

Invisible Art

Nailbot prints custom nail art

Distressed Superstar Sneakers [more] [Thanks Tim]

A Man Who Says God Punishes Gays with Natural Disasters Had His Home Destroyed in the Flood

Toilet Seat Scale Tells You How Much Weight Is Lost After You Take A Dump

Study Shows Mediums Are Wrong 46.2% of the Time

how long will you need to play to catch every Pokémon?

100+ Exceptional Works of Journalism

The Art of Fiction: Interview with Aldous Huxley [Thanks Tim]

When James Joyce & Marcel Proust Met in 1922, and Totally Bored Each Other

Wikiverse sources thousands of articles from Wikipedia and then generates a map where it showcases the countless connections and overlaps of information between each entry

Password strength meters promote piss-poor paswords

The first contemporary art exhibition for dogs

Amy Schumer commandeers a VF staffer’s Tinder account

The Poison Garden

French town flooded with wine after protesters crack open vats

A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe [Thanks Tim]

Swedish church to use drones to drop thousands of Bibles in ISIS-controlled Iraq

Texas police arrest two men accused of stealing about 30 Jeep and Dodge vehicles using a laptop computer

More than 30 states offer online voting, but experts warn it isn’t secure. More: A ragtag group of obsessive tech experts is warning that stealing the ultimate prize—victory on Nov. 8—would be child’s play

Meet the husbands who fly first class – while their wives travel in economy

This Company Has Built a Profile on Every American Adult

The super-recognisers of Scotland Yard. How an elite police unit is catching some of London’s most prolific criminals.

Research suggests being lazy is a sign of high intelligence

Are those who speak only one language missing out?

Why you’re stiff in the morning: Your body suppresses inflammation when you sleep at night

Scientists Discover Light Could Exist in a Previously Unknown Form

A self-portrait of Warhol that is not by him

The crusade against serving food on bits of wood and roof slates, jam-jar drinks and chips in mugs

A festival created a miniature mock-up of Berlin’s famed Berghain with the sole purpose of denying people at the door

A story about Coleman Sweeney

I trained rats to trade on Wall Street. Their performance was comparable to that of the world’s best fund managers.

A new reason we haven’t found alien life in the universe: We are still waiting for them to be born.

Three healthy men (32±3.6 years) donated the first semen samples after 3-4 days of sexual abstinence followed by three subsequent samples on the same day at two-hour interval each.

Women who have had their appendix or tonsils removed appear to be more fertile, a 15-year study suggests

78% of the children in our sample who had ADHD as a child, no longer had the disorder when they were 18. Their ADHD had resolved over time.

New Study Shows Avoiding Sun Exposure Is As Dangerous As Smoking

Mosquitoes didn’t bite chickens. They appeared to avoid them as well.

Fast-Swimming Swordfish Automatically Lubricate Themselves

Medical benefits of dental floss unproven [Thanks Tim]

Patient Preference for Waxed or Unwaxed Dental Floss

Contrary to what you’ve been told, frequent password changes can be counterproductive

Researchers have built an artificial neuron

The HR Person at Your Next Job May Actually Be a Bot

Delphi to Begin Testing On-Demand Robot Taxis in Singapore

Exclusive rights of Vantablack for artistic use have recently been given to the artist Anish Kapoor

How Silicon Valley helps spread the same sterile aesthetic across the world

Google Cardboard Plastic

‘Sister Clones’ Of Dolly The Sheep Are Alive [Healthy ageing of cloned sheep]

If you’re over 40, working more than 25 hours a week could be affecting your intelligence, new research suggests.

Is empathy the result of gut intuition or careful reasoning? Research suggests that, contrary to popular belief, the latter may be more the case.

Biggest factor in divorce is the husband’s employment status, study

Airborne chemicals in cinema air varied distinctively and reproducibly with time for a particular film, even in different screenings to different audiences.

Genes influence academic ability across all subjects, latest study shows

study identifies brain areas altered during hypnotic trances

Thousands of fMRI brain studies in doubt due to software flaws which routinely produced false positives, resulting in errors 50 per cent of the time or more.

Biology textbooks tell us that lichens are alliances between two organisms—a fungus and an alga. They are wrong.

7-Eleven Inc. and a tech startup called Flirtey have beaten Amazon to the punch in making the first drone delivery to a customer’s home in the U.S.

Norway is building the world’s first ‘floating’ underwater tunnels

3D-printed guns that evade metal detectors, lack serial numbers, are untraceable. Moreover, 3-D firearms makers would avoid background checking.

The big hack (A scenario that could happen based on what already has)

Photographer Files $1 Billion Suit Against Getty for Licensing Her Public Domain Images

New online literary magazine dedicated to poems and prose written by AI

The bloom of our Amorphophallus titanum, known to many as the corpse flower, is a horticultural jewel 10 years in the making. Corpse Flower Cam at NYBG

The Longest Word in the World (189,819 letters) [disputed whether it is a word]

Law Enforcement Guide To Satanic Cults, 1994 [video]

A designer will grow Alexander McQueen’s skin in a lab to use for leather bags and jackets

Chinese restaurant makes customers solve a mathematical equation to work out how much dishes cost

Singapore restaurant offers $2 million meal that comes with a 2 carat diamond at the end

Facial expressions of intense joy and pain are indistinguishable

Why are paranoia and schizophrenia more common in cities?

Why Are There Gay Women?

People who talk for more than roughly half minute at a time are boring and often perceived as too chatty

Cold Does Not Increase Odds of Catching Cold [NY Times]

People who made detailed predictions about sporting events (e.g., how many hits each baseball team would get) made worse predictions about more general outcomes (e.g., which team would win)

People have a general preference for reductive information, even when it is irrelevant to the logic of an explanation

The present study shows that implanting an unlikely and unfamiliar idea in the mind can prevent participants from finding a more obvious one.

Pricing Color Intensity and Lightness in Contemporary Art Auctions

The funeral home has been offering “muerto parados,” or standing dead services

Tragedy Quilts 2016 Calendar

Dog’s butt hole is the spitting image of the IKEA monkey

American man fighting Isis captures Pokémon on the frontline

Friends are as genetically similar as fourth cousins

An obscure virus spread through saliva - i.e. kissing - has been linked to unexplained infertility in women.

Experiments teaching robots to track and ‘hunt’ other robots

The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots

Nanotech ‘tattoo’ can map emotions and monitor muscle activity

Doctors Examine Vincent Van Gogh

I Tried Anal Weed Lube so You Don’t Have To

“Vaginoplasty”, Peaches new video

List of selfie-related injuries and deaths [Thanks GG]

North Korea GIF

Pennsylvania woman pleads guilty in loud sex case, sentenced to jail

Hackers Can Use Smart Watch Movements To Reveal A Wearer’s ATM PIN More: Your Wearable Devices Reveal Your Personal PIN

Apple patent outlines a system which would allow venues to use an infrared emitter to remotely disable the camera function on smartphones.

Deutsche Bank is now worth just 17 billion euros ($18 billion). When the biggest bank in Europe’s biggest economy, with annual revenue of about 37 billion euros, is worth about the same as Snapchat — a messaging app that generated just $59 million of revenue last year — you know something’s wrong.

Psychologists have identified the length of eye contact that people find most comfortable (just over three seconds)

Benefits of drinking coffee outweigh risks, review suggests

Marketing Vegetables in Elementary School Cafeterias to Increase Uptake 90.5% more students took vegetables from the salad bar when exposed to the vinyl banner only, and 239.2% more students visited the salad bar when exposed to both the television segments and vinyl banners.

When the robot approached lone individuals, they helped it enter the building in 19 percent of trials. When approached by the cookie-delivery robot, 76 percent of the time.

The edible-insect industry has grown big enough to start lobbying Washington

Lionfish invading the Mediterranean Sea [ previously]

6.6 percent. That’s the amount the rent in San Francisco has gone up every year, on average, since 1956. It was true before rent control; it was true after rent control.

The 10,000-Hour Rule Was Wrong, According to the People Who Wrote the Original Study

Cattle Auctioneer

Artificially intelligent Russian robot escapes from research lab… again

‘Fellatio cafe’ where customers receive oral sex while they drink their (£40) coffee to be opened in Geneva

There are three kinds of pedestrian – which are you?

‘Undead’ genes come alive days after life ends

Experiments suggests that humans are able to sense magnetic fields as a kind of sixth sens

Why are some people able to become happy, well-adjusted adults even after growing up with violence or neglect?

researchers found that the greater a person’s tolerance to pain (as measured by the wall-sit test), the greater the size of his or her “outer network”

New evidence that sperm whales form clans with diverse cultures, languages

Can Giraffe Swim?

On the psychological function of flags and logos: Group identity symbols increase perceived entitativity.

Cartography Comparison: Google Maps and Apple Maps

Netflix to Soon Let Users Download Videos

Finding an ATM Skimmer [related: ATM skimming team at work]

Scientists squeeze last drops of shampoo out of bottle with bio-inspired surface

Performance Artist Arrested for Letting Strangers Fondle Her Private Parts

LG Electronics sells mosquito-repelling TV in India. The same technology, which was certified as effective by an independent laboratory near Chennai, India, has been used by LG in air conditioners and washing machines, the company said.

Researchers report that nepetalactone, the essential oil in catnip that gives the plant its characteristic odor, is about ten times more effective at repelling mosquitoes than DEET — the compound used in most commercial insect repellents.

Firm pays $950,000 penalty for using Wi-Fi signals to secretly track phone users

We clearly show that human communication has not reached a number of stars and planets adequate to expect an answer. These analyses both conclude that the Fermi paradox is not, in fact, unexpected.

Most insurance firms will probably argue as long as they can that there’s insufficient evidence that automated driving systems reduce accidents

The writer started watching movies and television in fast forward to make his life more efficient. But acceleration — the latest twist in the millennia-old tradition of technology changing storytelling — also made viewing more pleasurable. Now there is no turning back.

Story, a concept shop that completely changes theme every few months

Man creates smoothie made of McDonald’s burgers

“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