The last telegram ever is about to be sent
On July 14, someone somewhere in India will tap out what is being called the world’s last telegram. India’s state-owned telecom company, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, has been holding out as other countries around the world retire their antiquated telegraph services. Now, after delaying the move for two years, the business operating what is considered to be the world’s last telegraph service is finally ready to pull the plug, saying telegrams are no longer commercially viable in the age of digital communications.
Wow
The future of robotics: in a transhuman world, the disabled will be the ones without prosthetic limbs…
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Bertolt Meyer’s amazing bionic hand controlled by an iPhone app is a glimpse of the advances being made in prosthetics. But in years to come, will everyone want one?
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Bertolt Meyer is used to being viewed as not fully human. Born with a stump where his left hand should have been, he spent his childhood wearing a hook connected to an elaborate pulley and harness. “To open the hook and grasp things I had to flex my shoulders like this,” he says, striking a he-man pose. “The harness was very uncomfortable. To stop it chafing my skin, I had to wear a shirt underneath it at all times. I was always sweating.”
Even when, at the age of 19, Meyer exchanged his body-powered hook for a myoelectric prosthesis with a more realistic plastic hand, he kept his disfigured left arm hidden from view. “It wasn’t simply a question of aesthetics,” he explains, proffering the plastic hand, now grubby and discoloured with use. “You have to understand, this is a stigma. People think it’s weird and that is how you come to perceive it. You walk around with a sense of shame.”
Today, that shame is gone. In 2009 Meyer, a social psychologist at the University of Zurich, was fitted with an i-limb, a state-of-the-art bionic prosthesis developed by a Scottish company, Touch Bionics, that comes with an aluminium chassis and 24 different grip patterns. To select a new suite of gestures, Meyer simply taps an app on his iPhone.
“This is the first prosthesis where the aesthetics match the engineering,” he says, balancing a Biro between his purring electronic fingers. “It’s part of me and I’m proud of it.” (via The future of robotics: in a transhuman world, the disabled will be the ones without prosthetic limbs | Technology | The Observer)
The crystalline patterns of iron meteorites are formed from the slow internal cooling of planetary bodies. Although mostly consisting of iron and lesser metals, they are highly valued due to the nature of their cosmic origin which also hold clues to the formation of our planet and the early solar system. Unlike diamonds, the rocks cannot be reproduced in any laboratory.
These are your shooting stars! They do not grant wishes, but they’re fucking awesome!
15 amazing things in nature you won’t believe actually exist
Animals With Stuffed Animals Of Themselves
Here are some animals hanging out with stuffed animal versions of themselves, which is clearly a thing that animals should be doing a lot more often.
omg <3 so cute!!!
Atomic weights for 5 elements are adjusted
The new intervals may cause some confusion for chemistry students trying to decide which atomic-weight values to use when making precise calculations.>:(
That Mitchell and Webb Look - A New Führer
I have a weakness for WWII related humour, guys.
“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone”
