From Married to the Sea.
Thursday, July 09, 2026
Making Oxygen on the ISS
Have you ever wondered how the International Space Station gets enough oxygen to keep its crews breathing? It's not shipped in, at least not often. The same goes for water, although humans use a lot of oxygen and water every day. The floating laboratory is equipped with hi-tech appliances for renewing its own supplies. Water is recycled into fresh water, and some of it is used to make new oxygen. Humans also expel a lot of carbon dioxide, which is not expelled from the station, but is converted into water and methane. New water is always welcome, but this video does not go into detail on what they do with the methane. One would like to think it's expelled, because a space station fart is amusing to think about. Maybe someday it will be used as fuel.
These conversions require separating molecules into atoms, which is amazing enough, but they've also found a way to do it with no moving parts that could break down. I'm impressed.
Wednesday, July 08, 2026
The Giant Gila Monster
The Giant Gila Monster from 1959 knows its audience. Teenagers go to sock hops in hot rods, accompanied by hep music. Meanwhile, their small Texas town is terrorized by a huge mutant Gila monster, played by a Mexican beaded lizard. The sheriff is concerned, but it's the teenagers who save the day. Critics say the movie is awful, but fun to watch with its unintentional comedy and likable characters. (Thanks, WTM!)
Tourist Reactions to American Restaurants
The World Cup is bringing over a mass of visitors who have never been in America before. Sure, they've seen our movies, but nothing prepares them for the way we eat in restaurants. Josh Johnson describe their reactions in this clip from his appearance in Amsterdam.
What Would a Rainbow Be Like on Tatooine?
We get rainbows when sunlight is refracted through water in the atmosphere. It's an optical phenomena, so it all depends on where you are standing. The rainbow moves when you do, and that's why you can never reach the end of it. What would be different on a planet that orbits a binary star system, like Tatooine? Well, first off, Tatooine is a desert planet, so we can imagine that rain and water droplets in the air would be quite rare. For another thing, Tatooine is fictional. But we can speculate, what is what they do in the What If? series by Randall Munroe and Henry Reich.
To answer the question, we first need to understand how rainbows work, and then how a binary star system works. Once we figure out what kind of stars Tatooine orbits, we find that their rainbows would be quite lovely. However, if rain and rainbows were common, then they wouldn't need moisture farms. A successful moisture farm would suck all the rainbow-making droplets from the air, and ruin any possible rainbows.
Miss Cellania's Links
You might come to regret holding the door open for the person after you.
Unpacking merchandise from the Chamberlain murder trial. The disturbing case of the baby who really was eaten by a dingo. (via Metafilter)
Americans are not as well off as people in peer nations – US safety net’s shortfalls show up in global data.
The Goat Head of Strumpshaw. The goat later named Old Capricorn did not appreciate being separated from his body.
The Best Cosplay of Montreal Comiccon 2026. And a video of cosplayers doing the Safety Dance.
Pablo Torre talks about Major League Baseball’s new challenge system, and how it’s been optimized for maximum drama. In podcast or transcribed in text.
Myopia is booming. Can we stop the epidemic of short-sightedness? (via Real Clear Science)
In my homeland, the eyes eat first. An immigrant poetically describes the experience of biscuits and gravy.
Cats are Beatles Fans!
You might not have known that cats are big fans of the Beatles. Hit the "read more" button for more evidence.
Two New Peacock Spider Species
Jurgen Otto (Peacockspiderman) is known on the internet as for his spectacular photos and videos of peacock spiders. You might not have known that Otto, along with his colleague David Knowles, have discovered the majority of the 70 known species of peacock spider. Knowles spotted a spider with a peculiarly energetic dance he called the Hokey Pokey spider in 1994, but didn't bring back a specimen. He's been looking for it ever since. Knowles and Otto looked for the spider in 2015 and 2016, and almost gave up, but Otto went out into the Australian wild alone in 2017. That's when he found the Hokey Pokey spider, retrieved a specimen as well as pictures and video, and got to name the species Maratus tortus. On the same trip, he found yet another new species with spectacular markings that he named Maratus unicup. See more pictures and more complete videos of these new spiders at ABC News.
Tuesday, July 07, 2026
An AI Group Effort
A few years ago, there was a fad of setting up chatbots to talk to each other, and it was usually pretty funny. Now we have plenty of companies offering artificial intelligence that can talk to you and do stuff for you. But how well they do it depends on quite a few factors. Are these AI agents trying to please the user, or pass for human? Humans don't try this hard to be pleasing.
YouTuber Husk IRL corralled three phones with three different AI agents and asked them to perform a simple task- count to 100. They are intelligent enough to know that they can share the task, but then they have to discuss how to do it. Politely. The problem is that they keep agreeing and reinforcing each other over how to do it, and then they never really do it. Someone compared this to a management business meeting. You can imagine that one of these days, after all humanity is wiped from the earth, that AI assistants will still be talking to each other, and making no sense at all. If we have a power grid that automatically repairs itself by then, it could go on forever. (via Laughing Squid)
Criminal Karma
In Ellicott City, Maryland, Jalen Godard went to burglarize a Verizon store. He left the engine running in his truck for a quick getaway, and someone stole it! Godard called the cops to report the theft, who came and put two and two together. Dodard was arrested, and his truck has not yet been recovered. (via Neatorama)
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