[commentsense888]

Memories by SubAtomicFaraday https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/70wayn/memories/?utm_source=ifttt

[humanoidhistory]

Planet Jupiter, observed by the Juno probe on September 1, 2017.

[kingofno1]

2 GATES by VOMIT SPIT

[fuckyeahfluiddynamics]

Substances don’t have to be a liquid or a gas to behave like a fluid. Swarms of fire ants display viscoelastic properties, meaning they can act like both a liquid and a solid. Like a spring, a ball of fire ants is elastic, bouncing back after being squished (top image). But the group can also act like a viscous liquid. A ball of ants can flow and diffuse outward (middle image). The ants are excellent at linking with one another, which allows them to survive floods by forming rafts and to escape containers by building towers. 

Researchers found the key characteristic is that ants will only maintain links with nearby ants as long as they themselves experience no more than 3 times their own weight in load. In practice, the ants can easily withstand 100 times that load without injury, but that lower threshold describes the transition point between ants as a solid and ants as a fluid. If an ant in a structure is loaded with more force, she’ll let go of her neighbors and start moving around.

When they’re linked, the fire ants are close enough together to be water-repellent. Even if an ant raft gets submerged (bottom image), the space between ants is small enough that water can’t get in and the air around them can’t get out. This coats the submerged ants in their own little bubble, which the ants use to breathe while they float out a flood. For more, check out the video below and the full (fun and readable!) research paper linked in the credits. (Video and image credits: Vox/Georgia Tech; research credit: S. Phonekeo et al., pdf; submitted by Joyce S., Rebecca S., and possibly others)

ETA: Updated after senoritafish rightfully pointed out that worker ants are females, not males. 

[commentsense888]

I made a bad comic, thought you guys might like it. by GVmG https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/6b4run/i_made_a_bad_comic_thought_you_guys_might_like_it/?utm_source=ifttt

[ulfilas-grammaticus-deactivated]

The Libertarian Party lost the election because they whipped out their  Johnson at an inappropriate time

And we all witnessed a major case of electile dysfunction

[npr]

People around the world use more than a trillion plastic bags every year. They’re made of a notoriously resilient kind of plastic called polyethylene that can take decades to break down.

But the humble wax worm may hold the key to biodegrading them.

It was an accidental discovery. Scientist and beekeeper Federica Bertocchini was frustrated to find that her beehives were infested with the caterpillar larvae of Galleria mellonella, commonly known as a wax worm.

Bertocchini, who works at the Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology of Cantabria in Spain, tells NPR that she was cleaning out the hive and put the worm-infested parts in a plastic bag.

But shortly afterward, she noticed that “they were all crawling around my place and the plastic bag was riddled with holes.”

The Lowly Wax Worm May Hold The Key To Biodegrading Plastic

Photo: Wayne Boo/USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab

[commentsense888]

What if we tried designing C a second time? by paula_sutton https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/692ldr/what_if_we_tried_designing_c_a_second_time/?utm_source=ifttt

[scifigeneration]

The Electric Sands of Titan

The grains that cover Saturn’s moon act like clingy packing peanuts

Experiments led by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology suggest the particles that cover the surface of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, are “electrically charged.” When the wind blows hard enough (approximately 15 mph), Titan’s non-silicate granules get kicked up and start to hop in a motion referred to as saltation. As they collide, they become frictionally charged, like a balloon rubbing against your hair, and clump together in a way not observed for sand dune grains on Earth — they become resistant to further motion. They maintain that charge for days or months at a time and attach to other hydrocarbon substances, much like packing peanuts used in shipping boxes here on Earth.

Keep reading

[kingofno1]

Listen to There’s a Science Advocate in the House (of Representatives) by SciFri #np on #SoundCloud

[commentsense888]

DJ Khaled laying down some wisdom by peskypotato https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/5mg0hd/dj_khaled_laying_down_some_wisdom/?utm_source=ifttt

[commentsense888]

Google’s opinion on Object.finalize() by TagPort https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/5mg59w/googles_opinion_on_objectfinalize/?utm_source=ifttt

[kingofno1]

[fuckyeahfluiddynamics]

Sediment swirls in Bear Lake caught the eye of an astronaut aboard the International Space Station last year. Bear Lake is situated in the Rocky Mountains, on the Idaho-Utah border. The eddies in the center of the lake are each about 3 km across and are likely the result of inflow from the lake’s tributaries. Silt and sediment picked up by the rivers and streams gets deposited into Bear Lake, revealing the turbulent mixing of tributary waters with those already in the lake. (Image credit: NASA; via NASA Earth Observatory)

[npr]

It started with a cup of coffee, or more precisely, a hot beverage. Seven years later came fries, the now infamous eggplant and friends. Sandwich lovers waited for their time to come, while begrudgingly sending another drumstick, wishing it were barbecue.

Food and drinks account for just 82 of around 2,000 emojis approved by the Unicode Consortium, the official body that regulates what emojis are added and their appearance, ensuring they work on different devices. On Twitter, millions of pizza slices have been sent, but there is still no sausage, no chips and a dearth of vegetables if you decide to live on an emoji-only diet.

How hard is it to create a more culturally diverse menu of emoji? Harder than you think, argue design experts and those familiar with Unicode’s systems.

“I tried designing a hummus emoji and that did not go well,” says Jennifer 8. Lee, a former New York Times journalist and co-founder of literary studio Plympton, whose campaign for a dumpling emoji now sees her sitting on a Unicode sub-committee.

“It has to be visually distinctive as a food: Falafel would just be little brown balls. A lot of Indian foods like chaat or dosa are also hard — it has to be something that is iconic enough to make it through the process,” Lee says.

A Brief History Of Food Emoji: Why You Won’t Find Hummus On Your Phone

GIF: Joy Ho/NPR

[kingofno1]

[commentsense888]

This is my new excuse from now on by xXxNoScopeMLGxXx http://bit.ly/2h6IpY4