1. You knew the New Yorker takeout on missions to pretend to be on Mars would be fascinating, and it is.

"A little more boredom would have been welcome during an analogue study conducted in 1999 by the Institute of Biomedical Problems, in Moscow. A month in, on New Year’s Eve, a fistfight between two Russians left blood splattered on the walls. Minutes later, the crew commander forcibly kissed a female volunteer, a Canadian with a doctorate in health sciences. When she protested, she later recalled, the Russian scientific coördinator reported that she was ruining the atmosphere in the test module. Then she got head lice. A Japanese participant quit in protest. A decade later, when Russia launched its five-hundred-and-twenty-day study, to simulate a trip to Mars and back, all six participants were men. 'I guess their solution to the problem of sexual assault was to not have women,' Binsted said."

2. Crickets have been a presumed food of the future because they convert plants efficiently into edible(ish?) protein. But...

"New research from the University of California, Davis suggests that these numbers — at least for chickens — may be exaggerated. Mark Lundy, an agronomy advisor, and Michael Parrella, an entomologist, have found that house crickets (Acheta domesticus) fed a poultry-feed diet showed little improvement in protein conversion efficiency. Their research appears in the journal PLOS ONE. 'Everyone assumes that crickets — and other insects — are the food of the future given their high feed conversion relative to livestock,' Dr. Parrella said. 'However, there is very little data to support this, and this article shows the story is far more complex.'"

3. 3D-printed lenses mimic Photoshop warps IRL.

"Created by Robb Godshaw and Max Hawkins, Smaller & Upside Down is a collection of custom designed 3D-printed lenses, each custom-designed and fabricated using new rapid prototyping processes. The lenses were made using Rhino and Neon, relying on ray-tracing technique offered by most 3d rendering packages. In this particular case, T-Splines plugin for Rhino was used (see video below) that made it easier to design smooth lens geometries. To 3d print lenses, the duo used 3d printers at Autodesk’s Pier 9 Workshop. This included the photosensitive resin Objet Connex 500 3D printer along with VeroClear transparent material to create half of the lenses. The other half were milled out of acrylic plastic on a 3-axis CNC router and finally sanded to optical clarity."

+ File under category: The Flip Flop.

4. Get to know your anthrome with this beautiful tree map of NYC.

"I would've thought the trees throughout the city would be fairly homogeneous in terms of the percentages planted. Instead, Brooklyn has more London Plane trees than any other species (23.6%), Queens has a ton of Norway maples (18.3%), the majority of Manhattan's trees are Honey locusts (23.3%), and Staten Island has a high percentage of Callery pears (24.8%). The Bronx has the most evenly distributed assortment of trees—Honey locust, Norway maple, and London Plane tree are all popular (11-13% each)."

+ Anthrome.

5. Another disaster of an ed-tech deployment.

"In a letter sent Monday to Apple, Holmquist wrote that it 'will not accept or compensate Apple for new deliveries of [Pearson] curriculum.' Nor does the district want to pay for further services related to the Pearson product. Apple did not respond to a request for comment. Pearson defended its product. The $1.3-billion iPad effort was a signature program under then-Supt. John Deasy. But it faltered almost immediately during the fall 2013 rollout of the devices. Questions later arose about whether Apple and Pearson enjoyed an advantage in the bidding process; an FBI criminal investigation is ongoing."

On Fusion: In the future, your insurance company will know when you're having sex.

Today's 1957 American English Usage Tip:

dubiety. The usual word would be doubt, doubtfulness, or dubiousness. See WORKING & STYLISH WORDS.

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A Little More Boredom Would Have Been Welcome