Tornadoes have always made me nervous. When I was a kid growing up in the suburbs of Detroit in March of ’76, an F4 touched down in our city, and it was very scary. It was extremely rare for this sized tornado of this size to strike Michigan. So when…
Category: Science
Health
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Nine Blood Molecules Predict Survival Better Than Your Birthday
The piRNA longevity test results came out of Duke University this week, and they’re the kind of findings that make you wonder what else we’ve been measuring wrong. Researchers analyzed blood samples from 1,271 adults aged 71 and older — samples drawn in the early 1990s from five North Carolina…
Culture
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Doomsday Clock 2026: Closer to Catastrophe, Further From Solutions
The Doomsday Clock 2026 announcement landed this week with all the fanfare of a fire alarm in an empty building. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the clock four seconds closer to midnight. We’re now at 85 seconds — the closest humanity has ever been to self-inflicted annihilation since…
Health
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The Harvard Longevity Study Just Killed Your Gym Bro Routine
Thirty years. Over 111,000 people were tracked. Harvard researchers are asking one question: what actually helps you live longer? The answer wasn’t what the fitness industry wanted to hear. Published in BMJ Medicine, the study found that people who mixed different types of exercise — walking, tennis, rowing, stairs, cycling…
Mother Nature
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Just Because You Can Get Close to Lava Doesn’t Mean You Should
There’s something about fire on the horizon that grabs us — especially when that fire is molten rock flowing down the flank of a volcano. Mount Etna in Sicily, Europe’s most active volcano, lit up again this winter with lava flows that have tourists itching to get nearer. But what…
Medical
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A Human Brain Was Recorded While Dying. It Happened More Than Once.
This wasn’t a planned experiment. However, it was not a one-off. An 87-year-old man was being monitored with EEG equipment because of epilepsy. The recording was routine. Continuous. Then he suffered cardiac arrest. The machines kept running. That case produced the clearest data. But it wasn’t the only one. Two…
Culture
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Praying Mantises Have a Reputation — This One Learned a Workaround
I was reading about a newly discovered praying mantis the other day — the kind of thing you stumble on while pretending you’re just “checking the news” — and it turns out one species has solved one of nature’s more awkward problems. Specifically: how not to get eaten immediately after…
Humor
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They Found a Seven-Limbed Octopus on a Scottish Beach
A large octopus washed up on a beach in Scotland this week. Pale. Heavy. Motionless. Arms splayed in different directions, like the instructions got lost halfway through. Seven of them. Not torn. Not injured. Just seven. The photos show it lying there quietly, as if the ocean set it down…
Humor
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Turns Out Monkeys, Wolves, and Polar Bears Were Kissing Before We Existed
There’s nothing like waking up to a BBC headline that basically says, “Hey humans, you’re not special — monkeys did it first.” Scientists now believe the first mouth-on-mouth kiss goes back 21.5 million years, long before humans, before Neanderthals, before whoever invented the first scented candle. And get this: they…
Humor
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La Niña vs. Polar Vortex-The Winter Forecast Nobody Saw Coming
There’s a special kind of dread that creeps into your chest when you see meteorologists argue online. It’s like watching two doctors disagree over an X-ray of your lungs — you’re not sure what’s happening, but you know it’s probably bad for you. Right now the argument is over whether…