Seen in → No.149
- ☕️ The Economics of Coffee in One Chart. “Coffee production is a big industry for one reason: coffee consumption is truly a universal affair with 2.3 million cups of coffee consumed globally every minute. By total volume sales, coffee is the fourth most-consumed beverage in the world. That makes the retail side of the market a major factor. Dominated by companies like Nestlé and Jacobs Douwe Egberts, global retail coffee sales in 2017 reached $83 billion, with an average yearly expenditure of $11 per capita globally.”
- 🗿 Weird, wacky and utterly wonderful: the world’s greatest unsung museums. “A bullring full of blood, a house full of sweet wrappers, a power station full of sculpture, a roundabout full of plants … Hilton Als, Mary Beard, Russell Tovey and more pick their alternative favourite museums” (Via things magazine.)
- (This one and next two via Future Crunch.) 🇬🇹 💧 Researchers Uncover 2,000-Year-Old Maya Water Filtration System. “The system—which relied on crystalline quartz and zeolite, a compound of silicon and aluminum, to create what the researchers call a “molecular sieve” capable of removing harmful microbes, heavy metals and other pollutants—remained in use until the city’s abandonment around 1100. Today, the same minerals are used in modern water filtration systems.”
- 🧠 In your face, Elon! Stentrode implant lets paralysed patients text and email. “[T]he Stentrode was able to wirelessly restore the transmission of brain impulses out of the body, enabling the patients to complete daily tasks such as online banking, shopping and texting, which previously had not been available to them.”
- 🇦🇺 The Mystery of The Platypus Deepens With The Discovery of Its Biofluorescent Fur. “Biofluorescence has now been observed in placental New World flying squirrels, marsupial New World opossums, and the monotreme platypus of Australia and Tasmania”
- 🌱 Short 🧵 by Prof Julia S. I hate to be the one to tell you, but there is no way to be a “good” consumer. To identify as a consumer is to identify as a destroyer, and you are so much more than that - for example, how about a citizen/activist who is actively destroying consumer-culture? Much better, no?
- Room-Temperature Superconductivity Achieved for the First Time. “Materials scientists now face the challenge of discovering a superconductor that operates not only at normal temperatures but under everyday pressures, too. Certain features of the new compound raise hopes that the right blend of atoms could someday be found.”
- 🧊 🇨🇦 Arctic Town. Ideas for a town in the Arctic. “Both houses and cities must unfold itselves as flowers do in the summer sun, but also like flowers should turn away from shadows and cold northern winds, providing the warmth of the sun and wind protection to the terraces, gardens and streets.” We actually have a northernly city with a wall in Québec, Fermont. (Via The Prepared.)
- 💡 📱 Precursor. “Precursor is an open hardware development platform for secure, mobile computation and communication. This pocket-sized device accommodates a built-in display, a physical keyboard, and an internal battery while remaining smaller and lighter than the average smartphone. Precursor was built for use on the road, but it compromises nothing as a development platform.”