Pebble Beach Car Week is the worst. Crowds, traffic, rich old dudes showing off their expensive toys—it’s an altar to fossil fuel-powered excess. Like other sane people, I knew to steer clear of the Monterey Bay for Car Week. Until I read about Concours D’Lemons.Held at a location affectionately called “the oil stain,” D’Lemons is…
Everybody loves bubbles, regardless of age—the bigger the better. But to blow really big, world-record-scale bubbles requires a very precise bubble mixture. Physicists have determined that a key ingredient is mixing in polymers of varying strand lengths, according to a new paper in Physical Review Fluids. That produces a soap film able to stretch sufficiently…
For a while there, the federal government was very hands off with autonomous vehicles. But this week, the Department of Transportation made some tweaks to its vehicle design rules when it said it would allow the robotic delivery vehicle company Nuro to operate up to 5,000 mini-cars that don’t quite fit conventional guidelines. You see,…
This last week, like many before it, was jam-packed with news. The coronavirus continued to spread; President Trump restricted New York residents from entering into trusted traveler programs; actor Kirk Douglas died; Jameela Jamil came out as queer. Also, Christina Koch returned to Earth after almost a year in space, and likely wants to go…
Picture a calm river. Now picture a torrent of white water. What is the difference between the two? To mathematicians and physicists it’s this: The smooth river flows in one direction, while the torrent flows in many different directions at once.Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons…
When I first moved to Portland, Oregon, I worried about how I’d survive the endless, gray, rainy winters. A friend advised me to find a way to get warm—really warm—at least once a day. I don’t have regular access to a sauna or a hot tub, so I take a hot shower every morning to…
If you need to share documents and files with other people over the internet, you want to be able to do it quickly, securely, and with as little friction as possible. Thankfully, plenty of apps and services meet those three criteria.Whether it’s tapping into the tools included with the cloud storage app you already use,…
Hey, remember last year when the Academy Awards ceremony didn’t have a host because Kevin Hart couldn’t bring himself to apologize for his old tweets? Welp, it must’ve worked out, because this year the Oscars are once again hitting the air without a master of ceremonies.But that doesn’t mean the 92nd Academy Awards are not…
Last year, Ted Serbinski called his accelerator, TechStars Detroit, the “‘comeback city’s’ startup ecosystem.” Since 2015, the accelerator had supported and mentored 54 transportation-related companies, with funding from some big transportation names, like Ford, Honda, AAA, and Nationwide. Success stories included Cargo, a startup that helps ride-hail drivers make supplemental income by running rider-friendly “convenience…
Okay, maybe I wouldn’t really want to experience this part again.In 2019, I played the brilliant sci-fi space exploration game, Outer Wilds. If only the game’s time loop was a real thing so that I could go back and experience it all over again.If you’ve played Outer Wilds by Mobius Digital Games, you’ll know that…
