Silicon Canals

Two men are each called the inventor of email: one chose the @ sign between two computers in 1971, the other wrote a program he named EMAIL as a 14-year-old in …

In late 1971, Ray Tomlinson wheeled his chair between two PDP-10 mainframes at BBN in Cambridge and sent the first message ...
Silicon Canals

Before it was named Ceratothoa famosa, Nico Smit’s photograph of the parasite staring from a fish’s mouth had already gone viral

Cymothoa exigua is a parasitic isopod that enters a fish through the gills, drinks the blood out of its tongue until the ...
Silicon Canals

Most of what you do all day runs on habit, not choice — but a new study found the habits are usually working for you, not against you

Researchers tracked 105 people six times a day for a week. About two-thirds of what they did was triggered by habit, and ...
Silicon Canals

Apple just banned home services, crypto ATMs and bail bonds from Maps ads before the product even launched — and the exclusions reveal a bet against Google's entir…

Apple has published the rulebook for its forthcoming Maps advertising product, and the document reveals a deliberately ...
Silicon Canals

The hardest part of a long marriage isn't always the arguments or the boredom — sometimes it's the strange grief of watching the person you married slowly become …

Long marriages ask something almost no one warns you about: the quiet grief of watching your partner slowly become someone ...
Silicon Canals

In April 1967, a Palo Alto history teacher named Ron Jones ran a five-day classroom experiment called 'The Third Wave' — and by day four, 200 students had joined a m…

In five days in April 1967, a 25-year-old history teacher in Palo Alto turned a classroom question about Nazi Germany into a ...
Silicon Canals

Psychology suggests we don't reason toward truth so much as defend what we already believe: we seek out the facts that confirm us and quietly wave away the res…

In 1998, a Tufts psychologist named Raymond Nickerson published a long review article pulling together decades of scattered ...
Silicon Canals

Nearly every plant on your plate is quietly chemically defended against being eaten — and a growing line of research suggests that faint, low-dose sting may be one of …

The bitter compounds in kale, broccoli and green tea are plant defence weapons — and the reason vegetables extend human life.
Silicon Canals

Psychology says people who push their chair in when they leave aren't performing for an audience, and the fact that they do it when no one is watching is precisely what …

Last week I watched a bloke in a near-empty café stand up, sling his bag over one shoulder, and then, before he walked out, ...
Silicon Canals

Singapore had no natural resources, no fresh water and no land to spare when it was expelled from Malaysia in 1965, and within a single lifetime it became one of the ric…

Singapore became an independent country on 9 August 1965 after a brief and bitter union with Malaysia. It entered that day ...
Silicon Canals

Plant-based food sales have flatlined after years of double-digit growth, and grocery data suggests the drop-off is coming from vegans themselves, not skeptics

US plant-based food sales fell 2% in 2024 after years of double-digit growth, and the shoppers walking away aren't skeptics — ...
Silicon Canals

After nearly a year on the International Space Station, Scott Kelly found the hard part was never leaving Earth — it was coming back, when the smell of rain felt almost to…

After 340 days on the ISS, astronaut Scott Kelly returned to Earth to find his own home felt staged, his skin broke out from ...