Mexico’s Haunting Underwater Sculptures

• There’s currently a cheese fire in a Norway tunnel causing traffic issues
• “It might not get weirder than this” an account of being in a North Korean-visiting delegation
• How one man escaped from a North Korean prison camp
• CurbTXT service: contacting drivers through their license plate
• Very interesting study into the growing dichotomy of our online and offline identity
• Sleep problems could jeopardise future missions to Mars
• Using pulsars as a form of interstellar GPS
• What would hyperspace travel really look like?
• How a quarter of the cow genome came from snakes
• How Leprosy reprograms the body
• Wired’s best of CES 2013
• It’ll certainly be interesting to see how Oculus Rift will effect gaming
• The ridiculously charming world of ‘Ni No Kuni,’ Studio Ghibli’s gaming masterpiece
• This device supposedly trains you to become a human compass
• A great send up on attending a tech press release conference (and subtly, tech ‘journalism’)
• Answered: How valid is the implied legal advice in Jay-Z’s “99 Problems”?
• The producer of ‘2 girls 1 cup’ has been sentenced to 4 years for obscenity
• Drew Struzan may return for the new Star Wars trilogy posters
• A great observational piece that goes behind the scenes of Paul Schrader’s The Canyons and what happens when you cast Lindsay Lohan in your movie
• Some anniversaries you can expect to see covered this year
• 7 Strategies to outsmart writer’s block
• Bad writing advice from famous authors
• The Serif Readability Myth
• Clay Shirky: Remembering Aaron by taking care of each other
• A gallery of 30 insane cloud formations from around the world
• Another gallery of 18 Funny Restaurant Signs
• This website interestingly maps and tracks every current flight: https://www.flightradar24.com/
• And then there’s this video of this dog strutting around on two legs. TWO!

• The ‘end of history’ illusion and why we can’t imagine getting old
• “The finite is nested within the infinite” (or my favourite parable: somewhere in infinity, an alternate universe exists where you are the Batman)
• Of last year’s bestselling sci-fi list, only one was published that year
• Does a techno utopia require physical books?
• Reshaping the brain: scientists reprogram neurons after birth
• The mysterious disappearance of the Russian Crown Jewels
• The courtroom sketches of Bill Robles
• Inside the prison journal of West Memphis Three’s Damien Echols
• Papers reveal extent of the British royals’ veto over bills
• The Guardian’s stats on the size of their commenting community
• The science of why comment trolls suck
• An interesting design proposal: I want the world to scroll this way
• Good god, someone’s patent application disturbingly mirrors the artificial second stomach sketch from Tim and Eric
• Parkinson’s treatment can trigger creativity
• Password security in Deus Ex
• What Games Are: the fun boson does not exist
• To look into: a best comedy books of 2012 list

Lastly, a super-cut of famous people playing themselves

• A Pickpocket’s Tale: The spectacular thefts of Apollo Robbins.
• Don’t read the comments! How online communities shape risk perception
• From Mubi: The Best Movie Posters of 2012
• Tree seeds offer potential for sustainable biofuels
• Japan cyber probe cops find cat collar clue
• Nice. PaperTab prototype wows at CES
• SSD predictions at CES: fewer OEMs, lower prices
• Adobe almost does something amazing by accident
• An account of living on 1.5kW
• Scientists look to fireflies to make a more efficient LED
• I’m heavily considering backing this thin-watch kickstarter
• An account of when 1080p does matter (vs. screen size vs. viewing distance)
• Another op-ed on The Hobbit’s 48HFR
• Also, this invisible driver prank video is pretty great

• Ars Technica’s craziest Craigslist posts of 2012
• Buzzfeed’s 27 science fictions that became science facts in 2012
• io9’s Most futuristic predictions that came true in 2012
• NYP asks designers for their favorite book cover designs of 2012
• Computer Weekly editor on digital publishing, growing revenue and life after print
• SMBC on Economics and the study of scarce resources
• The strange case of Grant Morrison and Alan Moore, as old by Grant Morrison
• A martian dream: What the Red Planet would look like with Earth-like oceans and life
• Profile on Jerry Seinfeld: intends to die standing up
• I now want to play Singularity Chess
• Scientific paper on The Effects of Peanut Butter on the Rotation of the Earth
• What does randomness look like?
• This guy’s assessment of the multiple visual qualities of The Hobbit‘s format is pretty damn good
• And this one at least illuminates some of the science how human perceive high frame rates
• Right on: Love Actually is rubbish
• Website: Essay Typer
• Website: Wi-fi joiner QR Code Generator

• Guns and the limits of shame
• Anonymous continues its hack offensive against Westboro Baptist Church
• I am Facebook friends with Ryan Lanza
• The Un-Wikileaks: new website spots And spreads info already censored
• Canadian company claims to have perfect an invisibility cloak
• Chasing the Cicada: Exploring the darkest corridors of the Internet
• Here’s what happens when a piano is abandoned on the streets of Manhattan
• New photo craze? People being pretend attacked by statues
• A guide to disagreeing and coping with all these bloody end-of-year lists

• Even Rupert Murdoch wants tighter gun control
• Building a Better Truth Machine: Could algorithms help debunk online rumors before they spread?
• Secretaries of Safe: will Obama’s new cabinet be ‘too safe’?
• 9 signs the War on Drugs is almost over
• Monotremes (Platypus/Echidnas) are still fucking weird
• Bioethics, should we live to 1000?
• Hrm… Basketballer Yao Ming came from a special genetic breeding program to produce super-atheletes
• Why afternoon may be the best time to exercise
• Website: Google60 (punch card interface)
• Website: Moodstream (streams depending on set mood)
• Website: Mathrun (brain-juicing)

• The ‘Mad Men’ Economic Miracle: the new business model that’s brought on a wave of great TV
• From the Criterion Collection: Christopher Nolan, self-made filmmaker
• Facebook scans private messages for brand page mentions, admits a bug is boosting Likes
• GravityLight: lighting for developing countries
• Quantum networks may be more realistic than we thought
• Largest glacier break-up yet caught on video
• Video: These guys get two hookers to re-enact a scene from Braveheart
• Video: Kids songs with Cat Power

• Bryan Stevenson’s crusade with the US justice system and why mass incarceration defines us as a society
• While Europe debates it, decriminalising prostitution has been great for New Zealand
• Craig Thornton and the obsessive world of underground cuisine
• “It’s so pervasive. It’s a virus.” Tom Waits’ 2002 letter on the commercialisation of songs
• The 25-GPU cluster that’ll crack a password in under 6 hours
• A letter to the TEDx community on TEDx and bad science
• Statistician Howard Wainer on the most dangerous equation (pdf)
• Study shows Fox News viewers have a 20 point lower IQ than the national average
• A man wrestled a shark to get back his nephew’s severed arm
• Wickr – now you can send ‘self-destructing’ messages
• A new trailer released for that South Park video game. Still looks good.

• Photos: What it looks like inside Amazon
• Truth in advertising: The Birth of ‘Just Do It’ and Other Magic Words
• Christopher Nolan discusses making his first feature Following
• On Monday, not a single violent crime was reported in New York City
• Chew On This: 10 Food Idioms Explained
• Like it or not, non-replaceable CPUs may be the future of desktops
• Augmenting a light bulb to make a touch screen desk
• Prices have finally been announced for the Surface Pro
• Plus Microsoft have put out a pretty great self-depreciating ad for IE10

• The Secret Lives of Supercutters
• NASA is actually working on a Faster-than-Light Warp Drive
• Cambridge to study technology’s risk to humans
• Shinichi Mochizuki’s ABC proof too tough even for mathematicians
• China’s state paper falls for Onion joke about Kim Jong-Un, publishes 55 photos in “sexy” tribute
• The New Moot: 4Chan wants to make Kim Jong-Un Time’s Person of the Year
• What would happen if Texas actually seceded?
• Building the World’s tallest skyscraper in 90 days
• An interesting outcome to a really good job interview