Fascinating Photos of Abandoned Olympic Sites Around the World

• Mystery fossil turns out to be giant fungus
• Europe’s oldest prehistoric town unearthed in Bulgaria
• North Korean army minister ‘executed with mortar round’
• I.B.M. Reports Nanotube Chip Breakthrough
• In the Olympics of Algorithms, a Russian Keeps Winning Gold
• The bleeding edge of self-healing skin-like materials
• Popular physics theory running out of hiding places
• Totally Bizarre Experimental Video Explores Slit Scanning
• The Island Where People Forget to Die
• For Zelda-playing daughter, dad gives Link a sex change
• Australian drunk survives attempt to ride crocodile
• Jimmy’s End by Alan Moore: exclusive look at the first full trailer
• Chris Addison: Fuckety-Bye To All That
• Op-ed: Is the Web Driving Us Mad?
• Puzzle: Four Men in Hats
• Flash-based puzzle: Einsteins Riddle
• and Frog Faction

Tech/Science Stuff
• Harvard creates cyborg flesh that’s half man, half machine
• Heat-proof face paint to withstand bomb heat
• Researchers Believe They Have Found a Single Dose Cure for Malaria
• Researchers have also potentially deciphered the ‘manic gene’
• High quality Denisovan genome sheds light on human evolution
• Of course, the Antarctic may host large stores of methane
• Illuminating tales of modern mainframes
• A litigator’s love/hate relationship with Apple
• The History of the Floppy Disk
• From The Atlantic: How Can Bioscience Push the Limits of Lifespan?

Internet/Sociological Stuff
• Placing some context into the ‘odd’ Eastwood bit at the recent RNC: The Long History of Americans Debating Empty Chairs
• But then, #eastwooding twitter trend was pretty amusing
• The Samsung/Apple jury foreman’s explanation for verdict? Yeah, he doesn’t understand prior art
• Twitter Says It’s Going To Start Aiming Ads At Users Based On Content Of Tweets
• 4chan wants Taylor Swift to perform at a school for the deaf
• The Attention Economy is now the Location Economy
• A poll on polls shows they’re not very accurate
• From Ars Technica: How video copyright went insane

Culture/Media
• Another Willy Wonka letter of note: If ever an actor can do it – Gene can
• Inside Author Ray Bradbury’s FBI File: Was He a Communist Sympathizer? 
• Manga Artist Lets Anyone Use His Work, Royalty-Free
• This beer chase ad is pretty damn good
• Watch on this Youtube channel: every Troma film online
• This online tournament of movie sequels will be awesome!

Other Things
• Badass of the Week: Neil Armstrong
• An animation of the growth of Walmart in America
• What Happens to Stolen Bicycles?
• 12 Hotel Secrets by Hotel Staffs, From Minibar ‘Refills’ to Ritz-Carlton Largesse
• https://hackertyper.com/

And just because; here is some Maru…

Amphipod: zoomed in from 1 milimeter to 500 nanometers

• New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000 AD
• Stanford biologist and computer scientist discover the ‘anternet’
• Semen: Nature’s antidepressant?
• Simple animations to explain complex principles
• A gallery visualizing the properties of turbulence
• Big Think: The Neuroscience of Creativity and Insight
• The most likely to order late night take out? Art students.
• English language ‘originated in Turkey’
• Millennials: The Cheapest Generation
• Fake Bus Stops For Alzheimer’s patients in Germany
• Surviving a Death Sentence: 27 Years With HIV
• A Different Justice: Why Anders Breivik Only Got 21 Years for Killing 77 People
• A couple I disagree with, but the accusations I can’t deny: The 20 Worst Hipster Bands
• Gangnam Style, Dissected: The Subversive Message Within South Korea’s Music Video Sensation

Lastly, another asshole cat…

• Fuck yeah! Let’s Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum
• At 314,159,265 now: the US population is pi
• Scottish people’s DNA study could ‘rewrite nation’s history’
• Botanicus Interacticus: Disney’s interactive plant technology
• Don’t You Forget About Me: Sarkozy is not about to go quietly into the night.
• Big Think: How To Recognize Your Next Brilliant Idea
• Dr. Michio Kaku’s five must-see science five
• See (and buy) 27 concept images for never-made Gaiman Sandman movie
• How unbreakable this glass is is pretty mental

• Taken over: Mountain Dew ‘Dub the Dew’ Campaign, by 4chan
• Colour printing reaches its ultimate resolution
• The surprising truth about heroin and addiction
• Is Mitt Romney too boring to make funny?
• Charlie Murphy is angry at the pussification of the world
• The time has come for America’s flight attendants to shut up
• What Did Dinosaur Meat Taste Like?
• Wind tunnel acrobatics is pretty sweet
• Flowcharted: The best and worst countries in the Olympic medal count
• How India’s favourite TV show uses data to change the world
• 14 great films that inspired regrettable trends
• 100 Wonderful and Terrible Movies That Never Existed

Also, ceiling cat is real and something straight out of an Aliens movie.

Science/Tech stuff:

• From MIT: Scientists successfully map the mathematical computations of certain brain cells
• From NZ: Further understanding of how the brain allows for free will
• Awesome new tech: radio-wave based wireless power for the price of a penny
• I’ve always hypothesised drunkenly mused this: Scientists claim dark matter surrounds the sun

Arts-ish Stuff

• Woohoo: the potential for a third Bill and Ted movie
• A comic book based (but widely applicable) thought: When do you give up on a creator?
• Drinking has been covered, here’s how to eat like some of your favourite authors
• Editorial note to self: Writing under the influence of ourselves
• Random trivia: selling for US$4.3 million, Rhein II is the worlds most expensive photo (and it was photoshopped)

The rest (I suppose)…

• Fascinating read (even if it’s about Insane Clown Posse): The History of the Gathering of the Juggalos
• Even more ‘what the shit?’: A Mississippi county runs a ‘school-to-prison pipeline’
• Some photo portraits of ‘Preppers’ (people who actively prepare for ‘the end of the world’)
• Website: the Infographics Directory
• Video: The Wonder Years without voice-overs involves a lot of awkward silences
• This guy’s underwater GoPro footage of dolphins is pretty neat-o (music mix aside)

But this video of a dog attempting to steal some cabbage is just plain fucking adorable.

History of Comics in 6 Panels with write up via Paul Lopes

• The first color 360-degree panorama from Curiosity
• The Internet May Have Upended Traditional Institutions, But It’s a Brittle Weapon
• The Internet Archive Now Offers Torrent Downloads
• New software that helps employers read your emotional state
• New Global Warming Culprit: Dams
• New salt-based battery a leap for green energy
• How rogue biohackers are revolutionising the human body
• The science of Staring
• A new prehistoric species of humans identified
• Conservative pundits are plain wrong: Barack Obama hasn’t lost Europe. That was his predecessor’s doing.
• How billionaire backers pick America’s candidates
• The Fog of War: How can we talk about the military if we can’t define what it is?
• The Elephant in the Map Room: The Israel/Palestine Border
• The 1916 Shark Attacks that were the inspiration for Jaws
• Wait… There’s a 30 minute longer cut of The Shining?

• Pareidolia: A Bizarre Bug of the Human Mind Emerges in Computers 
• How text messaging became a humanitarian technology
• The internet as a hive mind
• How Mat Honan had his digital life dissolved by hackers and multiple security flaws
• France has backed away from it’s three strikes downloading law
• John Birmingham on the real cost of Curiosity
• From a NASA contractor: a conceptual video of the Dream Chaser space vehicle
• The ‘spray on’ skin that heals wounds
• The perfectly legal ‘heist’ of $95,000 from a bank
• House cats kill more critters than thought
• Returned to Family: Outlaw Ned Kelly’s Remains, 132 Years After His Death
• Trojan’s PR stunt: hands out 10,000 dildos today from hot dog carts
• From NPR: Dean Norris On Playing Good In ‘Breaking Bad’
• Prometheus (2012) – Calvinball Mythology and the Void of Meaning
• 21 links between unexpectedly shared TV universes
• Tumblr: People Dying Like Marion Cotillard

This also looks interesting: aupcoming HBO documentary called About Face that speaks with former supermodels and talks about plastic surgery and the business of beauty.

A slideshow by renowned animal photographer Tim Flach with annotations about their body language

In science/tech:

• New Computer Will Simulate One Billion Neurons
• Microsoft reveals a muscle controlled computer interface
• Voyager 1 is getting close to ‘the edge’ of interstellar space
• The waves in Quantum Mechanics are real
• The discovery of a HIV protein’s structural change
• The Greenland Ice Melt might not be as apocalyptic as some would make it out to be
• Plants Can ‘Talk’ To Each Other by Clicking Their Roots

In society:

• Why Bronze Medalists Are Happier Than Silver Medalists
• A US Marine couple’s personal account of the Aurora Shooting
• Scientology’s insane concentration camp for it’s Executives
• A counter-editorial of Why Men Can’t Have It All
• Still haven’t seen ‘Girls’, but the parody trailer ‘Boys’ looks good
• Revealed, at last: why women live longer than men
• How to rewire your brain for success
• Do You Believe in Magic? Yes, You Do.
• Interesting Chronicling: history’s changing understanding of mammals
• Lost footage from The Karate Kid

Others:

• Project allRGB: creating images using only one pixel for each rgb color (16,777,216)
• Online app: based on weight/height, who’s your Olympic equivalent?
• The internet map: websites illustrated according to traffic and user activity
• Web-based Game Boy emulator with a slew of games to choose from
• Video: some guy almost walks into a bear while texting

With two prior DUIs, David Wheaton led cops along highways around western and northern Houston, at one point reaching 92 mph, the official limit for the micro-vehicle. Eventually Wheaton drove all the way to his driveway, where police arrested him without fuss.
via

• Today’s rhetorical question: A prequel to The Shining: ‘Wholly unnecessary’?
• The curious case of the blind man who can still see
• I need to keep better track of Australian billionaire Clive Palmer, he wants to clone a dinosaur for a Jurassic Park-style resort
• Bruce Lee on transformation
• DARPA and NIH to fund ‘human body on a chip’ research
• Energy Efficiency: New Drywall Building Material Can Cut Buildings’ Energy Consumption by 40%
• Abraham Lincoln Scrawled This Astonishing (Seven Word) Note To Save a Soldier’s Life
• This YouTube video could help cure Vertigo
• What Aurora Victims Might Face if James Holmes Pleaded Insane
• Answered: Do Olympic/Competitive Swimmers Pee in the Pool?
• A Glossary: of ‘carny’ slang
• Cooking Mama: Breaking Bad edition
• Visualised: the business of Bond films
• Tumblr: Go Cook Yourself

Also, Google Maps is teaming up with NASA to add street view of the Kennedy Space Center. Awesome.