1. It's National Dolphin Day, which means it's time to revisit this conceptual video of a space station designed for dolphins to inhabit along with a supercomputer.

"The Media Burn video archive sent over this little clip of Ant Farmer Doug Michels, the architect of the embassy idea. It reminded me that Michels' ultimate plan was a dolphin habitat IN SPACE. The dream was called Bluestar and it is about the most awesomely crazy idea I've ever heard. A ring of laboratories and places to think would surround a sphere of water that contained a population of dolphins who programmed a supercomputer with 'their sophisticated sonar systems.'"

2. I think I like the Old Space branding better?

"We’ve seen a transition from Old Space – a government-capitalized industry focused on military uses of space and general exploration, to New Space – the emergence of entrepreneurial and private space companies including Stratolaunch Systems, to what we’re now calling NextSpace – a shift toward inclusiveness as the hallmark of a new era in the expanded utilization of space. Access to space is also expensive and inconvenient, with significant constraints in launch range and operation infrastructure. Vulcan Aerospace wants to support a collaborative ecosystem."

3. A state-by-state breakdown of regulations on fracking.

"Policies that govern the disclosure of chemicals injected deep underground during hydraulic fracturing operations vary from state to state. Federal action in March 2015 established rules for drilling on public land, including disclosure to FracFocus, the nation’s voluntary, industry-backed registry for fracking chemical disclosures. The rest of the U.S. is covered piecemeal, with some states requiring disclosure to FracFocus, others requiring submission of chemical information to a state agency, and nearly all allowing some measure of trade-secret protection."

4. Bot works as a name because it conjures a bit of "bug."

"So why is it called a 'bot' despite the fact that it is far simpler than most real-world robots, which have complex software architectures? To answer this question is to go to some foundational debates about what machine intelligence really represents. In their textbook on artificial intelligence, David Poole and Alan Mackworth delineate several approaches to building artificial agents. One is to make a complex computer program that functions well in an environment simplified for the agent. For example, a factory robot can do well in its industrial home but might very well be lost outside that context. The other is to make a simple, buglike agent with limited abilities to reason and act but the ability to function in a complex and interactive environment. Many bio-inspired robots fit this design paradigm."

5. The coming age of design theater.

"This is a classic problem. Consumers refuse to adopt a new technology if it visibly disempowers them or departs radically from trusted patterns of practice. This is the case even when the system is better at a task than a human operator — as in the case of the self-driving car, which is safer than a human driver. The solution? Allow the interface of your technology to engage in a form of design theater."

+ Sadly, Re:form will no longer be publishing original design criticism. It's been a key source of inventive and far-reaching design thinking that goes beyond Post-It-note platitudes and hipster aesthetics. I couldn't be prouder of my wife, Sarah Rich, for creating such an awesome place on today's (not usually awesome) Internet.

On Fusion: DRONES VS DOGS.

 Today's 1957 American English Usage Tip:

drunk(en). The difference, as now established, is complex. Drunk is in predicative use only, or at least is unidiomatic as an attribute: Drunk as a lord, but NOT A drunk lord is a disgrace. Drunken is the attributive word, whether the meaning is now in drink or given to drink or symptomatic &c of drunkenness; it may be used predicatively also, but only in the sense given to drink (he was drunken and dissolute means habitually so; He was drunk & incapable suggests his being so at a specific time); He was drunken yesterday is contrary to modern idiom.

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A Population of Dolphins Who Programmed a Supercomputer