Lifeboat Foundation

In Part 1 of this who-knows-how-many-parts-there-will-be mini-series, we focused on one of my favorite display technologies in the form of Nixie tubes. We also featured a photograph showing the main control room of an abandoned power plant in Hungary that—much like your humble narrator—was simply oozing with style.

In that photograph, you may have spotted another of my favorite display technologies—vintage analog meters—which I typically acquire at Hamfests and electronic flea markets. I really like the look and feel of these little beauties so long as they are of a certain age, thereby bestowing an air of gravitas upon the occasion of their use.

One of my ongoing hobby projects is what I call my Vetinari Clock, which is named after one of the characters from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Lord Havelock Vetinari, who is the Lord Patrician in charge of the city-state of Ankh-Morpork, has a strange clock in his waiting-room. While it does keep completely accurate time overall, it sometimes ticks and tocks out of sync (for example, “tick, tock … ticktocktick, tock …”) and it occasionally misses a ‘tick’ or a ‘tock’ altogether. As a result, by the time Lord Vetinari’s visitors are finally granted an audience, their nerves are already frayed and frazzled.

Saccorhytus is not our grandpa anymore.

Scientists from Bristol University have solved a mystery of a 500 million-year-old microscopic creature with a mouth but no anus. The study reveals that the spiny creature is not the earliest human ancestor, after all.

This creature — called Saccorhytus — was first discovered in 2017. The study found that a wrinkly sack with a vast mouth entwined by spines and holes is a primitive feature of the deuterostome group from which our ancestors emerged.

Continue reading “Meiofaunal deuterostomes from the basal Cambrian of Shaanxi (China)” »

SOLAR STORMS battering the Earth’s upper atmosphere are causing the aurora to brighten — and they should be visible tonight above the UK and much of Northern Europe.

To learn more about text-to-image generators, midjourney, and the future of AI, designboom spoke with kory bieg.

Using a tool called a lithophane, scientists unable to see can feel data representations, while sighted researchers can see a graphic.

Experiments in zero gravity show how a static droplet oscillates on a vibrating hydrophobic surface.