AI Dungeon [https://play.aidungeon.io/] is a text-based adventure powered by GPT-3 (the free version uses GPT-2, a less impressive model). It's great fun for about 15 minutes; the AI can be quite creative at times and make up a story

Duck Hunt game screenshot from Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Duck_hunt_pic.PNG]I've always been curious about this, and now MentalFloss has written an explainer [https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/26875/how-did-duck-hunt-gun-work]on it: > When you point

A collection [https://mobile.twitter.com/xuenay/status/1283312640199196673]of frankly incredible things OpenAI's new model GPT-3 can do. This includes being able to (almost) solve coding problems.

A paper [https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.03394]in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society puts forward a new hypothesis for the Fermi paradox. Their hypothesis in a nutshell: Aliens are asleep, waiting for the universe to cool down  so they can do

Look [https://window-swap.com/]through windows from around the world.

A video [https://twitter.com/mikewarburton/status/1280405483334090752]taken in Halifax, England in 1902, colourised by modern technology. There's a whole series of such colourised videos from various cities in this [https://twitter.com/JoaquimCampa/status/1251243294157348864]Twitter thread.

This [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRt-fquxnij9wDnFJnpPS2Q/videos]amazing channel uses a speech synthesis algorithm to do deep fakes of celebrity voices. Here are a few of the best ones: Jay-Z raps the "To Be, Or Not To Be" soliloquy from Hamlet:

Why [https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/TIME/gjnvwwjegvw/]time seems to be distorted during the lockdowns. Basically, our perception of the duration of time is based on the number of interesting events that happen. A month with many interesting events seems longer than a

A profile [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/03/07/voltaires-garden]of the French philosopher from The New Yorker, worth reading.: > It would be nice to say that Voltaire was a courageous man whom no amount of comfort could seduce. The truth is

The Pareto principle came from the observation it's common to find distributions where 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes – 80% of land in Italy is owned by 20% of people, 80% of book sales are from 20% of

From [https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2007/12/05/the-fine-art-of-opportunism/]the Ribbonfarm blog, an article on the art of opportunism: > It [opportunism] works because opportunists are humble enough to realize that the random forces of nature are more powerful than themselves. That these random

From [https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/urban-gilgamesh]Lampham's Quaterly: > The centrality of the city in the Epic of Gilgamesh goes a long way toward explaining why it became so important in Mesopotamian culture. City-states of the kind that appeared in Sumer

On how [https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/auctioneer-school-texas/] auctioneers are made.

How [https://www.boredpanda.com/how-fruits-vegetables-and-spices-grow/]various fruits and vegetables grow.

The Defence Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA) is famous for having invented the internet, among other things. This [https://benjaminreinhardt.com/wddw]essay digs into how DARPA works. Lots of great detail on how to build a small, fast-paced, low budget organization that works

An introduction to the current state of long-haul trucking.

Microfinance platforms like Kiva were really popular for a while. The idea of doing good by simply lending money to budding third world entrepreneurs sounded exciting. The ambitious vision of microfinance lifting borrowers out of poverty while making modest profits for lenders doesn'

Here's a good way to spend 5 minutes: Someone has created a map [https://pic.blog.plover.com/geo/boundary-conditions/squares-map.png]of the world highlighting the most populous city in ever 10x10-degree rectangle. The ones in Western Europe are pretty predictable,

Back in 2015 Japan's Akatsuki orbiter managed to get a few fairly close up shots [https://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2018/0116-a-new-look-at-venus-with-akatsuki.html] of Venus. "Venus' nightside glow" by Damia Bouic, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 [https: