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US president Donald Trump’s decision to pardon Joe Arpaio has focused a spotlight on the 85-year-old former sheriff. During his six terms as an elected law enforcement officer in Maricopa County, Arizona, Arpaio earned a reputation as a publicity-hungry politician who flouted civil liberties through brutal treatment of county inmates and discriminatory practices toward Latinos. […]

We’ve talked about the business. Floyd Mayweather’s bout with Manny Pacquiao sold 4.4 million pay-per-views. Some say his match with Conor McGregor could surpass 6 million buys, and be watched by nearly one in six Americans. It is already looking to be the biggest boxing betting event of all time, more than three times the […]Read More

Countless playground disputes have been settled via rock-paper-scissors, also known as paper-scissors-stone or roshambo. Humans achieve the required cognitive capacity to learn and play the game around the age of 4. Mastering the deceptively simple rules (rock crushes scissors, scissors cut paper, paper covers rock) actually requires advanced problem-solving skills, like understanding non-linear relationships and […]

(Quartz) Facebook and Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) have returned after maintenance gave their over 2 billion users a harrowing glimpse into a post-apocalyptic future without instant access to weird memes, combative political updates, and other people’s great lives.

Hurricane Harvey, the strongest hurricane to make landfall in the United States in over a decade, breached the Texas coastline last night (Aug. 25) around 10pm, according to the Weather Channel. It made landfall as a category 4 hurricane—the first category 3 or higher storm in the US to do so since hurricane Wilma in […]

The weeklong countercultural festival that attracts thousands to the Nevada desert annually known as Burning Man is nearly here. While the festival officially kicks off on Aug. 27, satellite imagery shows that organizers have been on the site for weeks, laying out streets and erecting structures. As you can see in the satellite imagery above, […]

For the first time in 38 years, Angola has someone new sitting in the seat of power. On Aug. 25, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) claimed yet another victory as the only leadership the country has known since independence in 1975. Since emerging from a 27-year-long civil war in 2002, the […]

Today (Aug. 26) two men will beat the crap out of each other and a bunch of other (mostly) men will win or lose a lot of money depending on who beat more crap out of whom. But how much they win or lose depends on the betting odds for the fight between Floyd Mayweather […]

As the finale of Game of Thrones’s penultimate season quickly approaches, we thought it would be useful to compile a list of the most popular and outrageous fan theories left standing. Warning: there are major spoilers are ahead. Bran Stark is the Night King The most popular fan theory currently circulating the web is how […]

When Muhammad Ali turned 30, his speech began to slow. By 1978—when Ali was 36, and three years before he retired—he was slurring his words. According to a new study by scientists at Arizona State University, his speech rate slowed 26% in that time period (an ordinary adult would see little or no decline whatsoever). […]

The Chinese government under president Xi Jinping is continuing to make life on the internet difficult for its potential detractors. Yesterday (Aug. 25), the country’s highest internet regulator released new rules (link in Chinese) that govern who can post what online. The upshot: anonymity on the Chinese internet is just about dead. The new rules […]

As climatologist Katharine Hayhoe points out, seasonal hurricanes are a natural part of the weather system in the Gulf coast, and attributing the cause of a single storm entirely to climate change is currently an impossible task. “Once you get down to a small regional level, hurricanes are so rare and random that you would […]