Yeah, I’d watch this.

Rare blue ‘night-shining clouds’ pictured at dusk over Edinburgh

• Seinfeld’s Producer: Listen to Your Gut, Then Fight For What it’s Telling You
• When His Project Was Canceled, an Unemployed Programmer Kept Sneaking Into Apple to Finish the Job
• Higgs week starts with Fermilab updates, strong evidence expected
• Scientists Invent Particles That Will Let You Live Without Breathing
• How Do Glowsticks Glow?
• How To Decide Baking Temperature When a Recipe Doesn’t Mention It
• Why you were just ‘unfriended’ on Facebook
• Anderson Cooper: “The Fact Is, I’m Gay and the internet’s reaction
• With Google Now, Android Puts Apple’s Siri To Shame
• The Oatmeal fights back, snaps photo of cash, sends money to charity
• If Harry Potter was written like a Madeline book
• Bin Laden realized the truth: Terrorism doesn’t work
• Video/Article: On board a real-life ‘ghost train’

Ziccup is becoming my favourite person on the internet. Here’s his latest super-cut:

During the 1960s and 70s, thousands of monuments commemorating the Second World War – called ‘Spomeniks’ – were built throughout the former Yugoslavia; striking monumental sculptures, with an angular geometry echoing the shapes of flowers, crystals, and macro-views of viruses or DNA. In the 1980s the Spomeniks still attracted millions of visitors from the Eastern bloc; today they are largely neglected and unknown, their symbolism lost and unwanted. Antwerp-based photographer Jan Kempenaers travelled the Balkans photographing these eerie objects, presented in this book as a powerful typological series. The beauty and mystery of the isolated, crumbling Spomeniks informs Kempenaer’s enquiry into memory, found beauty, and whether former monuments can function as pure sculpture.

– Roma Publications

Many more of these incredible structures at retronaut

In this video, astrophysics graduate Alex Parker has taken the orbital information about the Kepler-11 system and, by corresponding a musical note with each planets’ transit, has created a beautifully unique sonata.

…The pitch (note) is determined by the planet’s distance from its star (closer=higher), and they are drawn from a minor 11 chord. The volume is determined by the size of the planet (larger=louder).

The near-4:5 mean-motion resonance of the innermost two planets is audible as the notes “beat” against each other.

A triple-transit (three planets crossing the face of the star at once) in August 2010 is also audible. This event is what is illustrated in the artist’s impression of the system used in cover photo.

• How can you distinguish colour? (I managed a score of 11)
• The rediscovery and survival of the largest flightless insect in the world on a deserted volcano island
• For the first time in 100 years, cities growing more than suburbs as young adults shun owning property
• Why our brains are addicted to computers
• Charisma: who has it, and how to get it
• Cyborg makes art using seventh sense
• Redefining ‘Masterpiece’: How a Shift in Collectors’ Focus Is Changing the Art World
• How bad people can make good art
• Graphing the history of philosophy
• The Early Jobs of 24 Famous Writers
• 10 Shocking Secrets of Flight Attendants

Whether you love or hate the prolific writer, this is a pretty fun collection:

This video is a tribute to the work of Aaron Sorkin: the recycled dialogue, recurring phrases, and familiar plot lines. This is not intended as a critique but rather a playful excursion through Sorkin’s wonderful world of words.

While disassembling an engine for repair, youtuber nothingheroek had the brilliant idea to use the reference photos taken and use them to create this stop-frame animation.

The Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition winners

• Great fun/dumb science video: How powerful is an MRI magnet?
• Scientists develop a spray on battery
• Has the Speediest Pulsar Been Found?
• Upcoming Science Fiction and Fantasy Movies That Aren’t Remakes, Sequels or Prequels
• Awesome personal account: Intolerable intolerance
• Crazy: Ex-Wall Street banker, may have swallowed poison pill during courtroom conviction for arson

Finally, along with this Phil Plait write up (bookmark him!) is this really cool video from NASA detailing the recent observations of a giant planet 63 light years from Earth orbiting only 4 million kilometers from its sun. So close is this, that its atmosphere is being boiled and blasted away, streaming a tail of gas ‘behind’ it.

Fuck do I love the crazy/cool things out there for us to keep discovering. Keep it up Universe.

Collecting from various sources, filmmaker Michael Marantz has edited together this very impressive inspirational and optimistic video. Recommended stuff.

The future excites me so much, that is why I made this video. We need to be inspired by the immense possibilities of the future and work extremely hard to achieve them. We can do it, we just have to commit.