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One day in Venice, sometime near the end of the 14th century, a busy merchant found himself with a few spare moments. Maybe it was a slow day at the docks, or he arrived home too early for dinner. Whatever the reason, he did what people of his era tended to do when they had some time—he took out his notebook and his set of pens, and he put together a page-sized patchwork of his afternoon.

Over 600 years later, you can still open that notebook and see that day. Written in spidery loops are daydreamy calculations regarding how large a particular tree is, and how long it might take to get to Rome. There’s a sketch of a pair of colorful ships, and another of two tradesmen in green hats, examining a meal of bread and fish. Keep flipping through, and a whole life emerges. Scribbles and sketches fill each page. Personal anecdotes and hard-won lessons nestle alongside gathered material, including prayers, copied quotations and lists of spices.

I have a ‘commonplace book’ on this very blog.

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Tractors revolutionized farming. We’ve written about tractors in Popular Science for a century, and like the use of domesticated animals before them, tractors greatly increased the amount of land a farmer could use, and because tractors ran on fuels and not grains, using tractors instead of horses and mules freed up former animal feed land for other crops. The revolution first took off in the 1920s, and it continues to this day. Only this time, instead of a human driving the tractor across the land, autonomous tractors drive themselves.

BBQ Toolbox.

One-Man Mosquito Tent.

Anti-Mosquito Socks.

Hands-Free Level.

Stirling Engine Viking Longships. If they’d had them, they’d have used them.

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Ship designers, their operators and regulators are gearing up for a future in which cargo vessels sail the oceans with minimal or even no crew. Advances in automation and ample bandwidth even far offshore could herald the biggest change in shipping since diesel engines replaced steam.

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An antibody that can almost completely clear the visible signs of Alzheimer’s disease from the brain has been discovered in a breakthrough that left one scientist “trying not to get too excited”.

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A 65-year-old woman grabbed her shotgun and shot down a drone after she spotted it flying over her property in rural Virginia.

…

The men, presumably either perturbed or angry, approached Youngman. She told them the police will be there shortly, and advised them to leave.

The men reportedly agreed to depart.

“They got in their fancy ostentatious car–I don’t know if it was a Range Rover or a Hummer–and left,” Youngman told Ars Technica.

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But not all is as it seems. Beneath the tiny church, hiding under tufts of grass, trees and soil, is an ancient pyramid of truly gigantic proportions. Standing 450 metres wide and 66 metres tall, from end to end the Great Pyramid of Cholula is equivalent to nine Olympic sized swimming pools.

For an obscure temple no one’s heard of, Cholula holds an impressive array of records: it’s the largest pyramid on the planet, with a base four times larger than the Great Pyramid at Giza and nearly twice the volume.

Never mind the largest pyramid – it’s the largest monument ever constructed anywhere, by any civilisation, to this day. To locals it’s aptly known as Tlachihualtepetl (“man-made mountain”). Thanks to the church on top, it’s also the oldest continuously occupied building on the continent.

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I did not know that.

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“New ideas normally do sound ridiculous,” Miller says from his office at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, about an hour south of Anchorage in a valley popular with backcountry adventurers. The organization, which Miller founded two decades ago, houses hundreds of displaced or orphaned animals and has worked on big projects like reintroducing the Wood Bison to the Alaskan wilderness and repatriating condors from the San Diego Zoo. But what’s got Miller excited these days is training and breeding Kayla and Kasper, the two wolverines he’s recently acquired.

“Anything you can train a dog to do, you can train a wolverine to do, five times quicker,” Miller says.

Miller is fully aware that his plan sounds a little ridiculous. When I emailed him to ask about his idea, he felt compelled to defend it preemptively. “One hundred years ago, people who suggested using dogs for avalanche victim search were thought to be crazy,” he wrote. “I hope your readers understand that we are professional and serious.”

Kindling Cracker.

iPin Spatial Ruler. Get it quick before Apple pulls the earphone jack.

Ikea Utility Cart.

Portable Flamethrower.

Indexing Flat Pry Bar.

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A new kind of virus is making scientists rethink how infection works. This virus, found in mosquitoes, is broken up into several pieces. If the mosquito doesn’t come into contact with at least a few pieces, it won’t get infected.

This shakes up our existing knowledge, which is that once you come in contact with any part of a virus you get the full infection. In a study published Thursday in the journal Cell Host and Microbe, scientists describe how this new virus — named Guaico Culex after the Culex mosquito found in Guaico, Trinidad — works.

Other viruses have all their genes packaged together. Guiaco Culex has five genes packaged separately, and a mosquito needs to come in contact with at least four different pieces for anything to happen. The fifth one seems to be optional, or could control how deadly the virus is, study author Jason Ladner told NPR.

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Hungary became one of the first European countries to build a border fence in October when the daily refugee influx was more than 6,000. In just one day, the fence brought down the number of illegal entrances to below 100.

Don’t they listen to Hillary? Don’t they know that fences are raaaaaaacist?

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Somebody check Sandy Berger’s pants.

(Bear in mind that the Daily Mail is a tabloid. But bear in mind also how the Monica Lewinsky story broke.)

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Known as resistant starches, they naturally occur in certain carbohydrate-rich foods such as beans and legumes, whole grains and even rice and potatoes.

…

“While we should reduce the amount of sugar in our diet, we should base our meals on starchy carbs. There is strong evidence that fibre, found in whole grain versions of starchy carbs for example, is good for our health.”

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Probably similar to what Hulk did to Iron Man in the first Avengers movie.

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Indeed, that was a big clam.

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A Spanish publishing house has won the right to publish a limited series of reproductions of the so-called Voynich Manuscript, whose parchment-like pages of strange letters and swirling images have bamboozled the world of medieval academe and cryptology for decades.

Indeed, by making copies of the tantalising tome available to a wider audience for the first time, its custodians at Yale University are hoping that perhaps someone somewhere in the world will glimpse its pages and step forward with the key to crack their strange and wonderful code. There are 20-25 unique symbols in the book’s text, all running in a jumble no one can grasp.

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The Department of State is set to release tens of thousands of undisclosed documents the FBI found on Hillary Clinton’s private server that she used while secretary of state, after Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit over the documents.

Pass the popcorn.

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Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte blasted the United Nations in a speech Sunday for criticizing his anti-drug policies, saying if the international organization doesn’t back off, the Philippines will simply leave.

…

CNN Philippines then translated his subsequent comments from Tagalog into English: “Take us out of your organization. You have done nothing anyway.”

Hey, somebody finally figured that out.

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Nature has developed innovative ways to solve a sticky challenge: Mussels and barnacles stubbornly glue themselves to cliff faces, ship hulls, and even the skin of whales. Likewise, tendons and cartilage stick to bone with incredible robustness, giving animals flexibility and agility.

The natural adhesive in all these cases is hydrogel — a sticky mix of water and gummy material that creates a tough and durable bond.

Now engineers at MIT have developed a method to make synthetic, sticky hydrogel that is more than 90 percent water. The hydrogel, which is a transparent, rubber-like material, can adhere to surfaces such as glass, silicon, ceramics, aluminum, and titanium with a toughness comparable to the bond between tendon and cartilage on bone.

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The new treatment, called Electrically Accelerated and Enhanced Remineralisation (EAER), accelerates the natural movement of calcium and phosphate minerals into the damaged tooth.

A two-step process first prepares the damaged area of enamel, then uses a tiny electric current to push minerals into the repair site. It could be available within three years.

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To help the cornea heal itself, the scientists grew its cells on a hydrogel film before inserting the cornea into the animals’ eyes through a small incision. The film biodegraded within two months, leaving the fresh new cells to uncloud the cornea.

Zip-Store.

Wardrobe Dryer.

ReLeaf leaf scoops.

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U.S. District Judge Sean Cox threw out a lawsuit the federal government brought against a Detroit-area funeral home over the firing of a transgender employee. His Thursday ruling said the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission failed to accommodate the religious beliefs of the funeral home’s owner, who said he feared violating “God’s commands” by permitting one of his directors, a biological male, to wear a skirt-suit while ministering to grieving customers.

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Think of it as evolution in action.

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A team that included Nobel Prize-winning chemist Professor Brian Kobilka, of Stanford University in the US discovered the drug called PZM21 after evaluating some three million different compounds.

Morphine, derived from the opium poppy, works by acting on a receptor in the brain that reduces pains, but it also affects a different receptor that can lead to fatal breathing problems in the event of an overdose.

But PZM21, which so far has only been tested on mice, appears to act on the first receptor to about the same level as morphine without significantly changing the second one.

Vis-A-Vis Trunk. This is more entertaining than useful, but still.

FarmBot. This is amazing.

Gopher Goo. If you have a gopher problem, you know who you are.

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These oddly poetic three-word codes will soon act as a stand-in for the more common addressing convention of house number, street name and postal code, which never quite caught on in Mongolia, one of the world’s most sparsely populated countries.

They are the invention of a British start-up, What3Words, that has mapped the world into 57 trillion patches of nine square meters and given each one a unique three-word identity.

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During the last ice age more than 13,000 years ago, rising temperatures began to melt the massive ice sheets that blanketed Canada and the northern United States. Their retreat opened up an ice-free corridor more than 900 miles (1,450 kilometers) long that snaked from Alaska to Montana—a gap that some archaeologists believed was humankind’s highway into the Americas.

But ancient DNA recovered from the bottom of glacial lakes reveals that the corridor didn’t become livable for humans until about 12,600 years ago, centuries after the first Americans are known to have arrived. The finding suggests that the first Americans didn’t come by land; instead, they may have come by sea, perhaps walking—and boating—their way along the Pacific coastline.

“The first human migration out of Africa is a fascinating story—especially the colonization of the Americas,” says lead study author Mikkel Winther Pedersen, a researcher with the Center for GeoGenetics at Denmark’s University of Copenhagen. “It’s actually the last continent that humans colonized, [and] that makes it quite interesting. When and where did humans actually pass through?” (See maps that chart the first Americans’ possible migration routes.)

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My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

And yet Trump Is The New Hitler….

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Recent research by Professor Valentina Zharkova (Northumbria University) and colleagues has shed new light on the inner workings of the Sun. If correct, this new discovery means that future solar cycles and variations in the Sun’s activity can be predicted more accurately.

The research suggests that the next three solar cycles will see solar activity reduce significantly into the middle of the century, producing conditions similar to those last seen in the 1600s – during the Maunder Minimum. This may have implications for temperatures here on Earth. Future solar cycles will serve as a test of the astrophysicists’ work, but some climate scientists have not welcomed the research and even tried to suppress the new findings.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Watch it. Or the angels will weep for you.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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Good to know that there’s still one Bush who’s actually a Republican.

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Ha! Vindicated!

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No, it just seems longer.

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Specifically, in the test at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, the Osprey’s engine nacelle contained a 3D printed titanium link, small enough to hold in one hand, that helps hold the engine onto the wing. (There are four links per engine; only one was 3D printed in this test). So this wasn’t the usual low-risk, low-hanging fruit for additive manufacturing: a plastic bracket to hang things from, a disposable syringe, a mock-up or model — the kind of things produced by the first 3D printer installed on a Navy warship. Instead, it was something so essential that if it broke, the engine might start coming off.

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“If the right to a jury means anything, it means the right to have a jury drawn from the community and acting as a proxy for its diverse views and mores, rather than one judge, make the awful decision whether the defendant should live or die,” wrote Chief Justice Leo Strine in the opinion.

This is actually a very reasonable position.

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Hey, if Bloomberg can ‘switch parties’ in order to get elected….

Pennsylvania Rep. Bill Shuster faces a familiar face as he enters his general-election race: the same guy he beat in the spring’s Republican primary, and in the Republican primary before that.

Former Coast Guard captain and tea party activist Art Halvorson, who narrowly lost to Mr. Shuster in the state’s GOP race in April, will now appear on the November ballot as a Democrat after winning that party’s primary via write-in votes. He announced Tuesday he was accepting the Democratic nomination.

This could be entertaining.

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We are standing above the new Sorek desalination plant, the largest reverse-osmosis desal facility in the world, and we are staring at Israel’s salvation. Just a few years ago, in the depths of its worst drought in at least 900 years, Israel was running out of water. Now it has a surplus. That remarkable turnaround was accomplished through national campaigns to conserve and reuse Israel’s meager water resources, but the biggest impact came from a new wave of desalination plants.

Star Trek Planetary Glassware.

RightGrip right-angle scissors.

The Simple Shower.

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I’m saddened to announce the death of Jerry Doyle, who hosted a great nationally syndicated radio show out of Las Vegas that Reason staff appeared on dozens (and perhaps hundreds) of times over the years. Doyle was also a cast member of the fondly remembered science fiction show Babylon 5, on which he played “Mr. Garibaldi.” He also wrote at the site Epic Times, a treasure trove of commentary and links. Doyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in New Jersey, was 60 years old. The exact cause of death isn’t known.

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The Swedish off-duty police officer has told The Local about the story behind this viral picture capturing the moment she wrestled a brazen criminal to the ground – while wearing a bikini.

Don’t mess with the Swedish Bikini Team.

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Slow news day.

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It’s good that Bloomberg has quit pretending to be a Republican. I always thought that mask was rather skimpy.

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The Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals issued an alarming bulletin today, warning residents of the home county of both Biffy Clyro and Nicola Sturgeon that at least one of the large flightless birds was on the loose.

Specifically the beast – more usually found roaming the African Savannah – was spotted around the village of Patna, in the east of the county. Which has left authorities puzzled as there are no ostrich farms, or other potential sources of the mega-bird, in the area.

Animal Rescue Officer Alistair Hill said, “It is unclear where the ostrich has come from but we think it may also have young with it.”

Must be related to African swallows.

Apparently, ostriches in captivity can survive well into their early 60s – putting them about a decade behind the average Glaswegian male. They can outrun most predators, but if cornered will deploy a flurry of powerful kicks. Ostriches, that is, not Glaswegian males.

The 2013 film Under the Skin featured Scarlett Johansson as mysterious alien adopting the form of an attractive young woman to prey on unsuspecting men in Glasgow and the Scottish countryside. We suppose it’s possible some actual aliens have completely gotten the wrong end of the stick.

Hmmm.

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PHILADELPHIA — Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the embattled outgoing chair of the Democratic National Committee, was forcibly driven out of her own state delegation’s breakfast Monday amid vocal and unwieldy protests by Bernie Sanders’ supporters.

Schultz, who announced Sunday she would resign her chairmanship after emails showed top staffers at the Democratic National Committee worked to undermine Sanders’ primary campaign against Hillary Clinton, attempted to talk over a chorus of heckles and boos at a downtown hotel hosting the Florida Democratic Party.

But the Florida congresswoman, who faces a newly emboldened primary challenge in her home state, could barely be heard over the ruckus. As soon as she took the stage, attendees donning Sanders shirts and holding signs that read “Email” began to disrupt her remarks. The delegation breakfast, normally a calm, sleepy, mundane affair, devolved into outright chaos.

My. How distressing.

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Sometimes the system works.

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At a lively Sunday march in support of former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, chants of “lock her up,” “Hillary for Prison” signs and t-shirts and calls for indictment were common among the most ardent supporters of Mr. Sanders, who arrived in Philadelphia to make their voices heard to the delegates attending the Democratic National Convention.

Seems like a trend.