2025-10-28 23:41:57
Science Friday had mathematician Paulina Rowińska as guest to talk maps.
It’s easy to take maps for granted. After all, most of us have a pretty good map in our pockets at all times, ready to show us how to get anywhere on the globe. But to make a map useful, you have to decide what to keep in and what to leave out—and, most importantly, which mathematical equations to use. Beyond navigating from point A to point B, math and maps come together for a wide variety of things, like working out the most efficient route to deliver packages, calculating the depth of the ocean floor, and more.
2025-10-28 20:34:37
Various shields are designed to block specific forces or mechanisms. For example, armor is good at blocking swords and shark cages are good at protecting divers from sharks. You’ve probably wondered, as most people have, how these shields work against forces they are not designed for. xkcd has a pairwise matrix for you.
2025-10-27 20:46:42
As fashion changes, so do the colors used each season. Sarah Constantin likes to count the color usage every year in Vogue Magazine’s ready-to-wear collections. Pastels (and red) are so hot right now.
Tags: clothes, color, fashion, Sarah Constantin, Vogue
2025-10-27 19:56:32
Emanuel Maiberg for 404 Media:
Miller said that in May 2025 Wikipedia noticed unusually high amounts of apparently human traffic originating mostly from Brazil. He didn’t go into details, but explained this caused the Foundation to update its bot detections systems.
“After making this revision, we are seeing declines in human pageviews on Wikipedia over the past few months, amounting to a decrease of roughly 8% as compared to the same months in 2024,” he said. “We believe that these declines reflect the impact of generative AI and social media on how people seek information, especially with search engines providing answers directly to searchers, often based on Wikipedia content.”
Fewer humans reading via the site means fewer supporters and contributors to the public encyclopedia. Not good.
2025-10-24 15:32:41
For those who can’t get enough of bird migrations, the Guardian shows the paths for three species: Desertas petrel, Nightingale, and Bewick’s swan. Patterns are changing with climate. On Bewick’s swans:
As Europe warms, Bewick’s swans are making much shorter journeys to ice-free wetlands and agricultural areas in the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Poland – known as short-stopping. Britain has lost an estimated 43% of its Bewick’s swans in five years.
About 60 swans are carrying GPS collars on their necks. Tracking data shows that swans adjust their autumn journeys on a daily basis. On colder days, the birds travel bigger distances but if it is warm, they sometimes do not move at all.
That seems not good. At least we can appreciate the illustrations.
2025-10-23 21:06:15
Middle class income is a range that depends on how much people make where you live. So if income leans higher in one state than in another, the middle-income range reflects that. It also depends on how many people are in the household. Here is how middle-income varies across the states and the country overall.
