Each year, Dixon Ticonderoga produces an estimated 1.5 billion pencils, the bulk of which— about 1 billion—are yellow No. 2 pencils used by standardized test-takers around the world. Placed point-to-eraser, those 1 billion No. 2s would circle the globe nearly five times. http://museumofeverydaylife.org/exhibitions-collections/current-exhibitions/visual-history-of-the-pencil

To save the monarch butterfly, Mexican scientists are moving a forest 1,000 feet up a mountain. https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-col1-mexico-monarch-butterfly-20190409-htmlstory.html

Director of Cybersecurity at the EFF, Eva Galperin, has embarked on a quest to have stalkerware (the spy-on-your-spouse apps) die. She wants anti-virus vendors to flag it as the malicious crap that it is. #cososec https://www.wired.com/story/eva-galperin-stalkerware-kaspersky-antivirus/

Members of the Spitsbergen bowhead whale population produced 184 different song types over a 3-year period. And you can download the whale songs. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2018.0056

5 Good Books That Inspired Bad Deeds https://www.britannica.com/list/5-good-books-that-inspired-bad-deeds

"Oregon police responded with guns drawn after a woman reported a burglar was locked in her bathroom. Instead, they found an unlikely suspect." A trapped Roomba. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/juliareinstein/roomba-burglar-bathroom-police-oregon-washington-county

An illustrated guide to all 2,339 deaths in Game of Thrones.
"After weeks of frame-by-frame analysis, here it is: every on-screen death from the first seven seasons of Game of Thrones, including who, how, why and where. But be warned, these numbers will undoubtedly rise."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/entertainment/game-of-thrones/

Men Are Better At Maps Until Women Take This Course http://nautil.us/issue/32/space/men-are-better-at-maps-until-women-take-this-course

A dangerous invasive species is ruining Florida’s reefs. The lionfish derby is one effort to curb this aquarium pet gone destructive. https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2019/0409/If-you-can-t-beat-them-eat-them-dangerous-invasive-species-on-the-menu

For a sample of what AI can do right now, take a look at photo apps on the web. Editing photos can be daunting, but web apps make it easy. If you can upload a photo, you can use a web app to colorize it, remove the background & more! https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2019/04/put-artificial-intelligence-to-work-on-your-photo-editing/

Death by a Thousand Clicks: Where Electronic Health Records Went Wrong "eCW’s spaghetti code was so buggy that when one glitch got fixed, another would develop, the government found." http://fortune.com/longform/medical-records/

The Hidden Resilience of “Food Desert” Neighborhoods https://www.sapiens.org/culture/food-deserts-washington-dc/

"Webcomics creators often went online after being rejected by newspaper syndicates, gatekeeper conglomerates that grew increasingly conservative in the ‘80s and ‘90s. The best ones grew into beloved phenomenons, and the nascent funny T-shirt industry allowed many artists to make a living on daily cartoons throughout the 2000s. Social media and a glut of internet merchandise have shifted the economics." https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/5/18295369/webcomics-xkcd-questionable-content-dinosaur-comics-90s-internet-social-media

Your future violin teacher might be an AI. The system uses an arm sensor to identify a user’s bow technique. https://newatlas.com/ai-violin-technique-recognition/59128/

"It takes $28,642 on average to operate a food truck per year in San Francisco. In contrast, it takes only an average of $5,410 to operate a food truck per year in Portland." https://thebolditalic.com/a-closer-look-at-sfs-food-truck-industry-69a56055dc05

Basic Computer Games http://www.vintage-basic.net/games.html

GIT PURR! Git Commands Explained with Cats!
https://girliemac.com/blog/2017/12/26/git-purr/

One in four cowboys was black. So why aren’t they more present in popular culture? https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/lesser-known-history-african-american-cowboys-180962144/