Hero Shrews’ Extreme, Superstrong Backbones Are the Stuff of Legends | Smart News | Smithsonian MagazineEach of their vertebrae are dense and heavily reinforced—features that make the spine sturdier—and fringed with fingerlike projections that interlock the bones together when the shrews contract their muscles. 3Dmol.js – A modern, object-oriented JavaScript library for visualizing molecular dataA modern, object-oriented JavaScript library for visualizing molecular data screencasting technical guide | Learn how to egghead like a pro.Guide for code-based screencasts. Tools | Explorable ExplanationsI don’t know how long this has existed but I like the tool set. They Draw It!I can never find this so I’m re-bookmarking it. It lets you make the prediction graphs similar to what you see in the NYT with the Obama article. The American Time Use Survey Is “Poetry, in Data.” – dy/danContexts are never “real” or “unreal.” They don’t exist in a vacuum. Contexts become real when teachers invite their students to interact with them in concrete and personal ways.

The Movie CorpusThe Movies Corpus contains 200 million words of data in more than 25,000 movies from the 1930s to the current time. All of the 25,000+ movies are tied in to their IMDB entry, which means that you can create Virtual Corpora using extensive metadata — year, country, rating, genre, etc. The TV CorpusThe TV Corpus contains 325 million words of data in 75,000 TV episodes from the 1950s to the current time. All of the 75,000 episodes are tied in to their IMDB entry, which means that you can create Virtual Corpora using extensive metadata — year, country, series, rating, genre, etc. List: 5 Successful People Take Us Through Their Morning Routines – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency5 – 6 AM: I wake up and scream. I reflect on the ants that have infected my bed and also my dreams. I write their messages in my journal and decide on the three hot dogs I will eat that day. Then I go into the bathroom where the ants have organized my magazines. I read a New Yorker poem out loud to no one. Nick Kapur on Twitter: “Something incredible is happening on reddit. I’m tempted to say these people have way too much time, but this is legit amazing. #RecursionFTW… https://t.co/l0ic56gg6s”

Meet FlexiSpy, The Company Getting Rich Selling ‘Stalkerware’ to Jealous Lovers – Motherboard Internal company data, stolen by a hacker and provided to Motherboard, provides new insight into FlexiSpy, its founder, and the sprawling, predatory consumer spyware market at large. The company grew from its customer base of vindictive spouses, and ended up connecting with firms which sold malware to some of the world’s most oppressive regimes. Build a Better Monster: Morality, Machine Learning, and Mass Surveillance The correct way to play Pac Man, of course, is to consume as much as possible while running from the ghosts that relentlessly pursue you. This was a valuable early lesson in what it means to be an American. It also taught me that technology and ethics aren’t so easy to separate, and that if you want to know how a system works, it helps to follow the money. Juicero CEO Begs You: Do NOT Squeeze Our Juice Bags [Updated] This week saw the latest chapter in the utterly wonderful saga of Juicero, the $400 juice machine maker that attracted $120 million in venture capital funding. On Wednesday, a bombshell Bloomberg report exposed the secret that threatened to ruin the company: You can get almost exactly the same juice without the company’s expensive press by squeezing their damn bags yourself with the hands […]