Wednesday, August 12, 2026
Tuesday, August 11, 2026
Giant U.S. company cancels major employment perk for new staff - TheStreet
This is an interesting turn of events. While we may simply sluff it off as corporate greed and kind of what we expect today, there’s a little more to this.
Many of the large companies have events, retreats, and otherwise use Disney World as a kind of a fun perk for employees.
Taking these perks away and “cost cutting” has a bottom line impact to Disney.
While Disney doesn’t provide exact figures, it’s estimated that there are around 1,000 corporate events held each year. And that’s not even considering events with under 250 people. They book rooms, using meeting space, dine, take advantage of the amenities, and often will rent a park for a signature event one evening.
That’s a lot of potential lost revenue.
Saturday, August 8, 2026
Most people can hold their breath underwater for a minute or two, but a people called the Bajau can spend up to five hours a day underwater, diving to depths that would unnerve a scuba diver — and scientists have traced the ability to a change written into their very DNA
If you don’t believe in any kind of human evolution, I present to you this story about bajau people who have adapted because they live near the sea, and spend a lot of time under the water … their bodies can maintain their oxygen supply for much longer than most humans, go deeper than you and I, and they have a unique ability to recover quickly once they return to the surface; they can dive again almost immediately.
When a child mixes white school glue with liquid starch, the long polyvinyl acetate chains in the glue tangle around borate ions from the starch and form a stretchy net — the same cross-linking chemistry that makes slime peel off a table in one rubbery sheet instead of a sticky smear. - The Artful Age
I can remember the teachers in my kids’ preschool making slime! From a mixture of cornstarch and school glue. It’s safe, non toxic, and fun to play with.
I made it at home to play with too.
Well it turns out that there’s an interesting thing that happens in chemistry that makes this a kind of a unique substance - that has other uses.
You can read the details of how it works here:
Alzheimer's patient in Broward sees brain plaques cleared after year and a half of treatment - CBS Miami
Here’s a breakthrough in Alzheimer’s research. Scientists have known that the plaque buildup is the main factor in the onset of Alzheimer’s. There are various things one can do to try and protect against the plaque buildup and the clearing of it.
But now Eli Lilly has a drug they are testing. It’s an anti-amyloid medication and in early trials it is clearing the plaque efficiently.
More needs to be done, but it has some promise as a treatment. And probably will lead to other things as well.
3D-printed porous ceramic cubes cool rooms by 12.6°F with no electricity or refrigerants
Essentially, researchers used the concept of a clay pot that is soaked in water and expanded on it.
The science is that said clay pot will use evaporative cooling to reduce the ambient temperature. And there’s a fun little science experiment wherein you can take a bottle of soda and cover it with a wet clay pot to cool the drink over a short amount of time.
The group looked at shapes that can more evenly disperse the evaporative effect and can make those shapes using a 3D print.
Now there’s a use case I can rally behind.
Wednesday, August 5, 2026
Four astronauts, 3 spacecraft, 2 weeks in orbit: Artemis III will be NASA's most complicated mission ever | Space
I have to say that this particular plan seems complicated, perhaps overly so.
The plan is to launch the Artemis astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft, and then have it synch up with both of the proposed lunar landers (one from SpaceX, the other from blue origin) to test up how all this will work out.
It’s a reasonable test, but it just feels like a lot to try and coordinate.
We’ll see how this works out.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)