Michael Walsh wrote about a gadget intended to cross the hound-human barrier:

• A device called TailTalk attaches to a dog’s tail and measures details about the speed, frequency, and direction that a dog wags their tail.
• Left wagging indicates negativity, while right wagging signifies joy. Other cues are more subtle.
• The idea is that pet owners will be able to see how their pooch’s mood changes over the day.
• They may find, for example, that their dog particularly enjoys a certain type of food or toy. Or that they are stressed by certain environments.
• Its creators are requesting $100,000 to bring the product to market on Indiegogo. So far they’ve raised 41% of that.

Read more about the device here.

Source: Yahoo News

Via: Marginal Revolution

Gillian B. White reported on a study that looked at the economic impact of hangovers:

• The study examined the cost of lost productivity, criminal justice fees, and medical bills as a result of people regretting the night before.
• The greatest cost comes from people who have to miss work due to hangovers, or who show up but are ineffective. This is estimated to cost the United States $90 billion.
• Car accidents as a result of hangovers cost $13 billion and arrests and court fees cost $15 billion.
• Overall hangovers cost the US economy $250 billion. About $100 billion of that is borne by taxpayers in the form of medical care and government employee time.

In fairness the study doesn’t seem to have compared the stats above with the value that people derive from being able to drink enough to trigger a hangover. You can read the study here.

Source: The Atlantic

Plans are being drawn up to build the first civilian drone airport in the world writes Lily Kuo. The country responsible for this next generation infrastructure? Rwanda:

• Landlocked Rwanda is known as the “land of a thousand hills” due to its rough terrain.
• The three building drone airport is expected to be able to send drones to 50% of the country.
• The primary focus is on delivering emergency medical supplies to rural areas. It will also be capable of delivering commercial goods much like a postal service.
• The airport will contain a facility to produce more drones, and a medical center.
• If the port is successful then project sponsors claim that dozens more could be built around the country.
• True to Rwanda’s reputation as a tech friendly hub, its liberal policies on drones is in stark contrast to other African countries such as South Africa and Kenya which have heavily regulated the use of drones.

Read more about the project and see photos here.

Source: Quartz

Via: Marginal Revolution

The President of the United States is considered to be the most powerful person in the world. This is not his story. This is the story of the acronym he has come to be known by: POTUS.

• The acronym probably first became popular with the advent of the telegraph when brevity was valued due to the time and effort it saved.
• Even with the advent of telephones, wires were still used for newspapers and railroads meaning that the acronym lived on into the modern era.
• The acronym soon began to attract an allure of mysticism and might around it. Railway telegraph operators knew the gravity of learning that POTUS was in one of the cars on the tracks.
• By 1966 there were telephones around the Whitehouse with a red button labelled “POTUS” connecting directly to the President.
• Today things have come full circle. POTUS is the President’s handle on Twitter because….brevity is valued due to character limitations.

Read more about the history of the acronym here.

Source: Vox

Playboy is going to become a PG-13 magazine, months after making the decision to reorient its website away from nudity. Alyssa Rosenberg noted that this was a good opportunity to examine the magazine’s legacy:

• Saying that people only read the magazine for the articles has become the butt of many jokes. But the magazine has been responsible for many pieces of award winning journalism.
• Playboy provided men a new way to express masculinity. A man didn’t have to go hunting or score the winning touchdown. A man could be indoors, mix cocktails, put on mood music, and invite a woman over for philosophical conversations…and sex.
• Nor did men have to be threatened by gender equality. They didn’t need women to be housewives at home to feel like men. Instead men could support and enjoy the benefits of the sexual liberalization of women.
• The magazine also helped encouraged interracial relationships.
• On issues such as legalizing abortion and expanding access to contraception the magazine’s advocacy provided men with language they could use to side with what were traditionally seen as female causes without feeling insecure.

The magazine was, of course, ultimately one that made money by selling naked images of women. Holly Madison, one of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriend’s, painted a disturbing picture of the founder of the magazine. And Bill Cosby is alleged to have perpetrated sexual assault at one of Playboy’s “mansions”. Read more about these and other criticisms of the magazine, as well as other impacts that the magazine has had on our culture over here.

Source: The Washington Post

Olivia B. Waxman wrote about a dating app for people who know exactly what they want in a relationship: somebody to eat bacon with:

• Users of the app are asked questions such as “what kind of bacon do you love the most” and “how do you like your bacon cooked”.
• Perhaps most importantly users are asked to explain what they would do if they were on a date and only one strip of bacon was left.
• The app is called Sizzl, and just like with Tinder users look at profiles and then indicate which ones they find “smokin'”
• Those that mutually like each other can then message each other.

Read more here.

Source: Time

Deir ez-Zor is a province in eastern Syria that has been controlled by the group formerly known as ISIS since 2014. Recently public accounts figures leaked and Zack Beauchamp took a look at what they showed:

• Surprisingly only a third of ISIS’s revenue comes from oil sales.
• Most of the rest comes from “taxes” and “confiscations” – essentially what is likely extortion by the state government.
• On the one hand this is good news – there is only so much the government can confiscate before there’s nothing left.
• On the other hand it means that bombing campaigns won’t do much good in degrading ISIS’ finances. You can at least destroy oil production facilities.
• Most of ISIS expenditure is on soldier salaries, policing, and military bases.
• There is very little spent on economic development.
• However the group does devote 18% of its budget to what is called a “social services department”.

Read more, and see some fascinating visualizations over here.

Source: Vox

Via: Marginal Revolution

Shaunacy Ferro wrote about a creative litter reduction campaign:

• If the act of throwing trash away can be made fun, rather than seen as a chore, fewer people would litter.
• A UK non-profit is attempting to do this by making the act of throwing away a cigarette butt a way to express one’s true allegiance.
• Smokers can choose between Ronaldo and Messi as the best player in the world, and passerby’s can see whose winning.
• Cigarette butts are specifically targeted because 89% of them are left on the street.
• No word on whether the campaign could inadvertently increase rates of smoking among die hard sports fans.

See another example, and read more here.

Source: Mental Floss

Turn on the television and it seems like the world is spinning out of control with bizarre and unexplainable things, from ISIS, to unlikely Presidential candidates filling the airwaves. Steve Coast looked at the recent spate of weird aircraft incidents to explain why the world seems to be getting weirder:

• Planes used to crash because of cracks in the frame, outward opening doors, and even urine corrosion. All those problems were fixed.
• In fact most problems with airlines were fixed with the introduction of a checklist. Since then we’ve been trying to solve ever smaller and niche problems.
• Thus now when airlines crash it’s for the most bizarre reasons – pilot suicide, anti-aircraft missile, or simple disappearance into the oceans.
• With airplanes we may be at a point where the solutions we’re coming up with are actually creating more problems.
• After 9/11 airplane cockpits had to be locked. This allowed a suicidal German pilot to fly a passenger jet into a mountain.
• Now an air steward has to be in the other pilot’s seat anytime one of the pilots has to leave the cockpit. Perhaps the next crash will happen when a steward makes a mistake while sitting in the pilot’s seat.
• It could also be why America’s houses of government are grid-locked. The US government has arguably come up with fixes for most of the problems that governments face. Now lawmakers are bickering over weirder things like debt ceilings.

Read more about what this could say about the wider economy and the internet, as well as how this all connects to The Joker from The Dark Knight here.

Source: Playboy

An academic paper by Geoffrey Fain Williams looked at the life of a typical thief:

• People seem to engage in thievery for short periods – usually around a year.
• Reported earnings from stealing are low.
• Those who engage in risky behaviours such as smoking are more likely to engage in theft.
• Most thieves have stopped their dastardly heists by their late 20s – those that haven’t don’t earn a lot of money from it.
• It’s possible that there are professional thieves that are so uncommon they aren’t captured in the data, or don’t respond to such surveys.
• Or maybe the average thief is just a risk-taking adolescent who earns little more than they would from a part-time job.

The above summary is taken from the abstract. You can read the full paper here.

Source: Science Direct

Via: Marginal Revolution