2026-02-27 06:36:38
The NY Times has added another daily crossword to the line-up: the Midi. “The standard Times daily crossword, you see, is a 15×15 grid. The Mini is 5×5. The new Midi is 9×9, snug in between.”
2026-02-27 05:58:57
During the recent annular solar eclipse on February 17, the ESA’s PROBA-2 satellite captured this great shot of the Moon passing in front of the Sun. Cue up the Johnny Cash.
Tags: astronomy · Moon · photography · science · Sun
2026-02-27 05:03:08
“Eclipses have been connected with the fate of rulers since at least ancient Mesopotamia, around 4,000 years ago.” But more recently: “In 1581, Queen Elizabeth I of England made it a felony to use horoscopes to predict her death or her successor.”
2026-02-27 04:20:35
Calculating the longest line of sight on Earth: 530km (329 miles) between “an unnamed Himalayan ridge near the Indian-Chinese border and Pik Dankova in Kyrgyzstan”.
2026-02-27 03:36:59
“x86CSS is a working CSS-only x86 CPU/emulator/computer. Yes, the Cascading Style Sheets CSS. No JavaScript required. What you’re seeing above is a C program that was compiled using GCC into native 8086 machine code being executed fully within CSS.”
2026-02-27 02:47:01
Ali Akbar, the last newspaper hawker in Paris, has been awarded a knighthood by French president Emmanuel Macron. “Macron went on to refer to Akbar as ‘the most French of the French — a Voltairean who arrived from Pakistan.’”