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Architects reviewed Trump’s ballroom
Architects are notoriously detailed people. And they have some feedback regarding Trump’s ballroom. The New York Times has a good article with interactive scrolling details that show the issues.
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Tripping on tomatoes
Scientists have created a breed of tomatoes that contain psychoactive properties.
The breakthrough could lead to more sustainable and scalable production of these compounds by using model plants to biosynthesize common psychedelic “tryptamines,” such as psilocybin from hallucinogenic mushrooms, N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) from plants, and psychoactive compounds secreted by the Sonoran Desert toad.
Eventually, this research could pave the way toward—as one example—tomato plants that contain microdoses of psychedelic cocktails in each fruit. However, the study’s authors emphasized that these modified plants would need to be limited to medical use in clinical settings, and should not be accessible to consumers for recreation.
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Artemis II launch stops a softball game
Artemis II launched a crew to orbit the moon on April Fools Day. It occurred during the same time as a women’s softball game between the University of Florida and Stetson. As the Artemis rocket ascended, the game stopped, and the entire stadium watched.
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The Modest Mouse cruise
Earlier this year, Modest Mouse headlined a cruise. Stereogum attended, and delivers a story not only about the cruise, why bands do these, but how the concept of a floating concert at sea came to be.
How do they decide which artists to approach about headlining their own cruise? It’s “a mixture of science and art and just gut,” Cuellar explains. “As a promoter, that’s probably the hardest part. I think you ask any promoter and it’s all gambling.” He says it’s less about finding acts that can headline arenas worldwide and more about finding ones with an extremely engaged fan base. There’s a big difference between asking your fans to kill a couple hours with you in their hometown versus investing the time and money to spend several days trapped on a boat together.
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The 49 MB webpage
Website bloat is a real thing. You’d think it’d be images but it’s ad tracking and all the other garbage. Stubham Bose details what comprises a modern webpage.
To truly wrap your head around the phenomenon of a 49 MB web page, let’s quickly travel back a few decades. With this page load, you would be leaping ahead of the size of Windows 95 (28 floppy disks). The OS that ran the world fits perfectly inside a single modern page load. In 2006, the iPod reigned supreme and digital music was precious. A standard high-quality MP3 song at 192 kbps bitrate took up around 4 to 5 MB. This singular page represents roughly 10 to 12 full-length songs. I essentially downloaded an entire album’s worth of data just to read a few paragraphs of text.
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5 architectural concept buildings
Here are five buildings whose architecture seeks to create a sense of harmony and place within the environment around it. The designs things to blend with the space around it.
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Wired headphones making a comeback
After years of decline in sales, wired headphones are making a comeback.
Maybe I gave up too easily. Recently, a quiet movement has grown in the shadows based on a controversial truth: wired headphones are better than Bluetooth. Sales are through the roof in recent months. You can often get better sound for the money with a wired pair, but it’s not just audio snobs either. Wired headphones are a full-blown cultural trend – a resurgence some tie to a broader anti-tech backlash. Whether it’s practical, political or aesthetic, one thing is clear. Wired headphones are back.
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A different MacBook Neo review
This computer is not for the people writing those reviews — people who already have the MacBook Pro, who have the professional context, who are optimizing at the margin. This computer is for the kid who doesn’t have a margin to optimize. Who can’t wait for the right tool to materialize. Who is going to take what’s available and push it until it breaks and learn something permanent from the breaking.
