Author Archives: Carol Edwards

It’s the fourth week of Donald Trump’s government shutdown, with around 800,000 federal employees working without pay since Dec. 22.

That includes air traffic controllers, like those working in the New York Air Traffic Control Center, who, while they’re still waiting for their paychecks, received a tasty symbol of solidarity from their colleagues across the Canadian border.

Canadian air traffic controllers from the Atlantic province towns of Gander and Moncton ordered pizzas for the crew working at the control center in Ronkonkoma, Long Island on Friday, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Read more…

More about Canada, Pizza, Air Traffic Contol, Government Shutdown, and Culture

At 18.1 million likes, Kylie Jenner had the most-liked post on Instagram.

The post from February 2018 was the first photo of Jenner’s newborn daughter, announcing the baby’s name, Stormi Webster.

Now, as of Sunday afternoon Pacific Time, that record has been beaten. By a picture of an egg.

At 19 million likes at the time of writing, the post from Jan. 4 by @world_record_egg eclipsed Jenner’s post, taking just over a week to smash the record. Read more…

More about Instagram, Culture, Kylie Jenner, Social Media, and Culture

On Jan. 2, China stunned the world by landing its Chang’e-4 probe on the far side of the moon.

Now, you can watch its descent onto the lunar surface, with footage released by the China National Space Administration on Friday. 

The video shows the probe finding its way to the Von Kármán Crater, where it will study the surface on the far side of the moon, which always faces away from Earth.

State media reports that the mission includes “low-frequency radio astronomical observation, surveying the terrain and landforms, detecting the mineral composition and shallow lunar surface structure, and measuring neutron radiation and neutral atoms.” Read more…

More about Space, Science, China, Moon, and Chang E4

Buckle up — this Twitter thread is a wild ride. 

A serial plagiarist was caught in a lie — really, many lies — after making up a fake story for an Instagram caption, and it shines a light on the harassment women in tech face.   

In a now-deleted post, a software developer Tee Medlin — supposed software developer, since who knows what’s true anymore — claimed that a woman who was pictured but not named was stalking him during a tech conference. 

“Has not stopped following me around, asking me questions, and telling me about her life since I got off stage this evening,” read his caption. “Now its social hour and I have a shadow. HELP!”  Read more…

More about Twitter, Instagram, Harassment, Women In Tech, and Culture

Travis Scott will be performing at 2019’s Super Bowl Halftime Show, but he made the NFL agree to contribute to a worthy cause first. 

Scott was rumored to be appearing as a special guest on Maroon 5’s upcoming Halftime show. The “Sicko Mode” rapper was quickly criticized for the rumored move, in light of the fact that the NFL effectively put quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s professional football career on hold for his protests against police brutality and racial inequality during pre-game National Anthem performances. 

More about Entertainment, Sports, Super Bowl, Travis Scott, and Entertainment

For at least one former White House staffer, there is life after Donald Trump.

Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci is officially set as one of the 12 contestants who will be competing when Season 2 of Big Brother: Celebrity Edition premieres on Jan. 21. He’s presumably hoping he’ll last longer there than he did in the White House, where bad behavior cost him his job after just a week.

The Mooch won’t be Big Brother‘s first ex-Trumper contestant. Omarosa Manigault Newman, who worked in the White House until Dec. 2017, made it as far as the Season 1 finale of Celebrity Edition in 2018, just a few months after she was unceremoniously fired from her government role. Read more…

More about Entertainment, Tv, Anthony Scaramucci, The Mooch, and Big Brother Celebrity Edition

Someone is going to tell them, right?

Flat Earthers from around the globe disc are planning an all-out cruise for the 2020 Flat Earther International Conference. Promised to be the “biggest, boldest, best adventure yet,” the cruise will bring like-minded people together who all believe the planet is a disc protected by an ice wall barrier. There’s only one tiny hole in this plan — the cruise ship relies on navigational equipment based on a spherical Earth. 

“Nautical charts are designed with that in mind: that the Earth is round,” former cruise ship captain Henk Keijer told The Guardian. Keijer captained cruise ships for 23 years and is now a forensic marine expert.  Read more…

More about Cruise, Flat Earth, Culture, and Web Culture

Video game music is a largely (but not entirely!) untapped treasure trove for the gymnasts of the world.

Brigham Young University gymnast Shannon Hortman-Evans took to the floor on Friday night to perform an impressive routine at a meet against the University of Utah — to the tune of the Super Mario Bros. theme.

Unfortunately, the music is a little hard to hear over the commentators, but you can still catch little pieces of it here and there, including some parts of the main theme, coin noises, and the tune that plays when Mario grabs a Super Star. Read more…

More about Nintendo, Gymnastics, Super Mario Bros., Entertainment, and Sports

Aquaman is officially a billion dollar movie now.

Just over a month after its initial release, in China on Dec. 7, the latest entry in the DC Extended Universe has become the 37th movie in history to make more than $1 billion at the global box office. It’s also the only DC Extended Universe release to reach that milestone.

That’s especially impressive when you realize that Aquaman, with just $287.9 million earned so far in the U.S. (where it opened on Dec. 21), is so far the worst-performing DCEU movie domestically after Justice League. Most of Aquaman‘s success — $732.4 million, to be exact — came from audiences outside the United States. Read more…

More about Entertainment, Film, Box Office, Aquaman, and James Wan

It’s not surprising to learn that women who lived during the Middle Ages didn’t always get the credit they deserved, but tangible proof that further erodes our male-centric view of history is always welcome.

A new study asserts that lapis lazuli found in the teeth from the remains of a Medieval woman indicates that she was an artist. Researchers are calling the discovery a “bombshell” because it provides extremely uncommon proof of the role that women played as skilled artists at the time.

“It’s kind of a bombshell for my field,” Alison Beach, a medieval history professor at Ohio State University and co-author of the study, told the Associated Press. “It’s so rare to find material evidence of women’s artistic and literary work in the Middle Ages.” Read more…

More about Art, Women, Archaeology, Middle Ages, and Archaeology And History