1. Strategies for making people love robots. 

"People also want to protect robots. One study monitored people watching a robot being abused. Adults, knowing that the robot was circuits, got agitated when they saw the being mistreated. Watching robot suffering does a lot to people - it convinces them of the humanity of a robot, makes them feel protective of the robot, and gives them a positive feeling when they take care of the robot. We need to be needed."

2. A history of the future in 100 objects (e.g. ankle surveillance monitor, 2014)

"Turner was taken to an induction centre and shown a short video. His mobile phone number was entered into a computer, a technician looped a measuring tape around Turner's ankle and, after a short wait, snapped a light plastic ring into place. He was free to go, albeit with certain restrictions, and inadvertently Ralph Turner became one of the first people to benefit from America's slow turn away from its ruinously expensive and ineffective penal system.

The object I'm holding right now, an 'ankle surveillance monitor', is a thin ring of plastic, maybe half a centimetre thick if you count the inner padding. Inside the plastic is a simple computer, a radio, and a microphone array."

3. A book about lost words organized by the hour of the day you might need them.

"Do you wake up feeling rough? Then you’re philogrobolized.

Find yourself pretending to work? That’s fudgelling.

And this could lead to rizzling, if you feel sleepy after lunch. Though you are sure to become a sparkling deipnosopbist by dinner. Just don’t get too vinomadefied; a drunk dinner companion is never appreciated."

4. What airplane junkyards look like. 

"Where do airplanes go to die? Here's the answer... These are scenes from aircraft scrapyards, boneyards, and storage facilities in Arizona and California."

5. China is building its fourth Antarctic research base. Here's a list of how many facilities each country has on the continent from the Council of Managers of Antarctic Programs.

Today's American English usage tip from 1957 is:

abysmal, abyssal. The first is the rhetorical word (abysmal ignorance, degradation, bathos); abyssal, formerly used in the same way, has now been appropriated as a technical term meaning 'of the bottom of the ocean,' or of a depth greater than 300 fathoms.

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Vinomadefied.