Among humpback whales, which can grow upwards of 60 feet long and weigh up to 40 tons, instances of albinism are exceedingly rare.
But when these otherworldly all-white mammals appear — such as the beloved Migaloo that was first spotted in 1991 off Australia's east coast—they inspire wonder.
Marine photographer Jono Allen captured a unique shot of a baby white humpback being nudged by its mother, taking the top prize in the 2026 World Nature Photography Awards(WNPA), in addition to winning the Underwater category.
During Dutch Design Week, Taiwanese designer Yi-Fei Chen presented her project named "Tear Gun" that collects and freezes actual tears to shoot them back at the person who caused the cry.
Brought up with a strong sense of authority, Chen was taught that disagreeing with teachers was rude.
After an altercation with her tutor about an unrealistic deadline, Chen got reprimanded for not submitting that assignment on time.
Yi-Fei Chen created this visual metaphor to show her personal struggle with speaking her mind.
The poetic concept allows the designer to channel her emotions and fight back against authority.
Tear Gun is a pistol that collects tears in a silicon pocket under the eye, freezes them in a brass bottle of dry ice, and shoots them like bullets.
Yen-An Chen used her gun to point and shoot at her tutor, showing her deepest emotion about the disagreement.
The design was Chen's final Master's project at the Design Academy of Eindhoven, visualizing her personal struggle in a poetic way.
Tear Gun is Chen's way to express her repressed emotions by using design as a vehicle to stand up for herself.
Long story from engadget short: the people who brought us the superb weather app Dark Sky — so good Apple bought it in 2020, incorporated some of its features and then shut it down in early 2023 — have kept their contractual obligations and now, free of legal constraints, bring Dark Sky's successor, called Acme Weather, to the App Store.
Above, the home screen for Acme Weather; below, Apple Weather.
Two weeks free to put it through its paces, then $25/year.
You know it's good when they don't require a credit card for the trial because they're so confident you'll want to subscribe once you use it.
My hose outlets are on the sides of my house, both near the ground next to a sloping hill that makes attaching and disconnecting them a minor pain in the butt.
I happened on this puppy the other day and thought "What a good idea."
Whether by App or Old-School Antennas, Budget-Friendly Options Abound
There’s no shortage of options for watching online videos, thanks to the many streaming services available. But what if you’re looking for on-the-go live television for your phone or tablet?
If you already have a few subscriptions to platforms and shows and your budget is maxed out, you don’t need to pay for another service to watch real-time news and other programming. (You will, however, probably need to wait through commercial breaks and some targeted advertising based on your viewing habits.)
Here’s an overview of what’s out there.
If You've Switched From Cable ...
First of all, if you already subscribe to a multichannel cable-alternative service to watch on your TV set — think YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, DirecTV, Philo, Sling, DISH or the Fubo Sports Network — you should also be able to watch on your phone or tablet. Download the company's app, and log in with your username and password. When you're not hooked up to Wi-Fi, you can casually stream over a cellular connection if you have enough data on your plan.
Amazon Prime Video has a Live TV tab with hundreds of channels, including news programs from local television stations around the country. Some content was consolidated from Amazon's former FreeVee app, which was phased out, but that content is still free on Amazon's site, even for nonsubscribers.
If 'Free' Is the Right Price ...
Beyond Amazon’s free content, there is no shortage of apps for “free ad-supported streaming television,” a category whose name is often shortened to FAST.
The programming contains commercials that you can’t skip. However, the content (typically a mix of older movies, classic TV shows and live programming) usually doesn’t require a credit card to view. With some services, you don’t even need to create an account to start watching — just download the app and go.
Plex, Pluto TV, the Roku Channel (which does not require Roku hardware), Tubi, and Xumo Play are among the bigger FAST services offering live news and selected sports content, alongside movies and shows. Samsung TV Plus is a free service for Samsung devices, and LocalNow focuses on regional weather and headlines.
The programs vary, and some channels are available on several platforms. But since you’re not committing to a paid subscription, you can sample services to find the one (or ones) you like best.
If you’re looking for family programming, Pluto TV, Samsung TV Plus and Tubi are among the services with sections dedicated to children’s content. The PBS Kids Video and Sensical apps also offer free shows for children.
Some subscription services also have free live TV channels. These include Sling’s Freestream and Philo’s free section, which both offer BBC News. And if you’re looking primarily for headlines, most of the major U.S. national TV networks and many local station affiliates have their own streaming news apps.
If You Use an Antenna ...
Long before cable and internet providers began delivering television, people could freely pull broadcast signals out of the airwaves using an antenna. If you’re still an antenna user, you can stream live TV to your devices over an internet connection with tools like Channels ($80 a year) or Tablo ($100 and up).
But what if you have no Wi-Fi or cellular connection — or even lack electrical power after a storm or other incident? If you can keep your device charged (a solar panel or hand-cranked battery comes in handy), a tiny TV tuner connected to your device may still be able to grab nearby broadcast signals so you can stay up-to-date.
When shopping for tuners, read the manufacturer specifications and user reviews carefully. Some products may not work with Samsung gear or are not compatible in North America.
The MyGica TV tuner kit comes with two small antennas for signal reception. It requires the free PadTV HD app, available in the Google Play Store, as well as on the manufacturer’s site, and has mixed reviews. In tests on a Google Pixel 10 phone, the MyGica scanned and displayed several broadcast channels in the middle of Manhattan, including WNBC and WCBS, although stations with weaker signals were choppy or froze.
Using an antenna or an ad-supported service to watch TV may seem like a 20th-century throwback, but you’ll have plenty to view without breaking the bank.
I bought one of these many years ago because my basement floor is concrete and I sometimes I find myself going back and forth between my workbench and whatever it is I'm doing.
Whizzing around on this wheeled seat adds pizzazz.
Turns out the HVAC guy who comes by every six months to check and adjust my heat pump and oil furnace loves it because otherwise he has to kneel or sit on the floor to do stuff.
Nice features besides the wheels:
• 360° swivel seat
• Padded backrest
• Height adjustable
• Holds up to 300 lbs
• Tray for tools and parts
Preparing this post I checked around and found prices up over $300: don't go there.
The other day I was doing something close to nothing (but different than the day before) when I got to thinking about how quick and easy — and free! — it is these days to manage my hair.
About ten years ago I bought a fancy professional-grade hair cutting scissors that, believe it or not, I have never once used for anything other than cutting my hair.
As time has passed it has become more and more obvious that I almost didn't wake up from the erroneous belief that hair should be cut by a professional.
I did the math and it turns out I've probably spent around $10,000-$20,000 since I left for college and started paying for my own haircuts.
It could be more.
That's not even taking into account all the time I've wasted over the decades, thousands of hours travelling to and from barber shops and hair salons, arriving early, then vegetating while I wait for the barbers/stylists who are always running behind.
Not to mention making small talk when I'd rather not, and listening to that around me.
And paying for parking.
But the cherry on the sundae is that never have I been happy with my professional haircut, not when I first look in the mirror at the shop and not the next morning and thereafter at home.
What was I thinking????
I love cutting my own hair: it's super-fast and fun when I'm done and look in the mirror it looks just the way I want it to.
Above, I put these puppies through their functional paces.
The clear... winner to me is the OXO, because it requires much less effort to close and open and it's quiet: the Rubbermaid containers require two hands to break the seal, which itself requires more effort. Also, the Rubbermaid closure produces two loud clicks, as does its opening.
A man takes a train from London to the coast. He's visiting a town called Wulfleet. It's small and old, the kind of place with a pub that's been pouring pints since the Battle of Bosworth Field. He’s going to write about it for his blog. He's excited.
He arrives, he checks in. He walks to the cute B&B he'd picked out online. And he writes it all up like any good travel blogger would: in that breezy LiveJournal style from 25 years ago, perhaps, in his case, trying a little too hard.
But as his post goes on, his language gets older. A hundred years older with each jump. The spelling changes. The grammar changes. Words you know are replaced by unfamiliar words, and his attitude gets older too, as the blogger’s voice is replaced by that of a Georgian diarist, an Elizabethan pamphleteer, a medieval chronicler.
By the middle of his post, he’s writing in what might as well be a foreign language.
But it’s not a foreign language. It’s all English.
None of the story is real: not the blogger, not the town. But the language is real, or at least realistic. I constructed the passages myself, working from what we know about how English was written in each period.
It's a thousand years of the English language, compressed into a single blog post.
Read it and notice where you start to struggle. Notice where you give up entirely. Then meet me on the other side and I’ll tell you what happened to the language (and the blogger).
Simon Roper's annual pronunciation videos were part of the inspiration for this piece. His most recent one (top) is extraordinary. What Simon does for the spoken language, I've tried to do here for the written, albeit running in the opposite direction.
I love this series and have been patiently waiting until all eight episodes will have been released (Episode 8 drops here in the U.S. tomorrow, March 1) so I could enjoy them just the way I like: bingeing* two/night on four successive nights.
This enables me to keep the narrative fresh in my mind, impossible for me if I watch one hour-long episode weekly for eight weeks.
The only thing lacking this time around is the fantastic soundtrack that accompanied Series 1, but no worries with YouTube making up the deficit all day long while I do other stuff.
This video provides a comprehensive overview of all the important Greek and Roman gods, goddesses, nymphs, heroes, monsters, demigods, and other assorted spiritual beings; who begat who; and what all their domains were.
Every human has a unique fingerprint, an original voice, and a personality entirely their own.
It seems so strange that the memorials crafted to honor these unique individuals are so uniform and pay little homage to the person remembered.
With so many cultures and histories, individual quests, and life pursuits, shouldn't we have a diversity of options to remember our beloved?
Lundgren Monuments creates handmade translucent cast glass memorials as an alternative to the traditional granite and bronze headstones.
Luminescent, organic, rugged, and incredibly beautiful, cast glass monuments actually glow with life and spirit, standing out as a beacon amongst a field of dull stones.
FunFact: "Ars longa, vita brevis" is a Latin translation of an aphorism coming originally from Greek, the first two lines of the Aphorisms by Hippocrates.
One of my longest standing fetishes is clean screens on my electronic devices.
Not only clean, but also undamaged: I traded in a four-year-old iPhone at an Apple Store which the tech remarked was the least flawed screen that old he'd ever seen.
To my naked eye there wasn't a single scratch or blemish.
Here's the best part: I've never used a screen protector (and I never will) — no way can the images be as good as on the original screen without intervening layers.
When I bought a Vision Pro two years ago I very carefully read the detailed instructions on how to clean the 6k (!) lenses and my Zeiss prescription inserts.
Long story short: use Zeiss Lens Wipes.
Which is what I've always done.
I figures what was good enough for my Vision Pro lenses for sure was OK for my phone and iPads — but it turns out I was wrong.
Apple recommends only occasional use of Zeiss Lens Wipes on iPhones and iPads (which has been my practice, but only by happenstance) because regular repeated use will cause the oleophobic factory coating to degrade over time.
Instead, it recommends Zeiss Mobile Screen Wipes (pictured up top).
On the back of the box it says "Suitable for use on all mobile electronic device screens (smartphones, tablets, and laptops)."
Micropayments — instantly with one click paying, say, 1 cent to the author/creator of something you happen on online with ALL of that 1 cent going directly into their bank account — have been the subject of endless discussion ever since the internet became a thing.
And yet we're still not even close.
Patreon/Buy Me a Coffee/Ko-fi/Gumroad/Ghost/Substack etc. all aim to let you pay creators but none are even close to the frictionless micropayments envisioned since the last century.
I don't have much hope that they'll happen in my lifetime.
When I was a boy and in my teens my eyes were brown.
Period.
Now they are mostly green.
I noticed the change when I was in medical school and wondered how such a thing could happen.
Over the years I've asked many ophthalmologists about it and they've all said I must be remembering incorrectly because eye color doesn't change over time.
But guess what?
They were wrong and I am not crazy.
Anahad O'Connor, in his "Really?" column New York Times, addressed the question and reported that "in a small percentage of adults, eye color can naturally become either noticeably darker or lighter with age."
Here's his piece.
The Claim: Eye Color Can Change as We Age
THE FACTS It can bend light, bring the world into focus, and next to the human brain may be our most complicated organ.
But for many people the most intriguing feature of the human eye is simply its color.
Can it really change for no apparent reason?
In most people, the answer is no.
Eye color fully matures in infancy and remains the same for life.
But in a small percentage of adults, eye color can naturally become either noticeably darker or lighter with age.
What determines eye color is the pigment melanin.
Eyes that have a lot of it in the connective tissue at the front of the iris, called the stroma, are darker, while those that have less tend to be lighter.
The levels of melanin generally remain the same throughout life, but a few things can change them permanently.
The first is a handful of ocular diseases like pigmentary glaucoma.
Another is a condition called heterochromia, or multicolored eyes, which affects about 1 percent of the population and is often caused by traumatic injuries. An example of this can be seen in the rock star David Bowie, who attributes his contrasting eye colors, hazel and light blue, to a blow to the face as a child.
The third cause appears to be genetics. A study in 1997, for example, looked at thousands of twins and found that 10 percent to 15 percent of the subjects had gradual changes in eye color throughout adolescence and adulthood, which occurred at nearly identical rates in identical twins.
THE BOTTOM LINE Eyes can change color in some people because of genetics or injury.
..............................
Note: the photo up top illustrates heterochromia, in which each eye has a different color.
Sure, irrational exuberance is considered a bad thing when it comes to the stock market and investing but that doesn't mean irrationality itself isn't essential to good and great new things.
Because many really interesting things are the result of doing something dumb or even irrational.
Like that guy who decided to kill himself by going over Niagara Falls — without a barrel, instead just floating on his back admiring the view — and came to his senses unharmed, in the churning waters at the base.
He didn't find that his life had changed all that much a year later, when he wrote an article about it that I read in the Washington Post.
But that's not the point.
And he certainly wasn't enthusiastic when he decided to call it a day by taking what he thought would be his ultimate ride.
And he was quite rational, if you think about it: anyone thinking clearly would predict that you would not survive a trip over Niagara Falls wearing no protection but your street clothes.
So.
Most of my best posts over the decades — at least, those I like the best — are a result of a bit too much coffee or some sort of serotonin overload — but so what?
I'm all for out–of–control, irrational, nonsensical behavior.
