Swarms of cyborg insects controlled remotely via electrical implants can now operate underwater, thanks to tiny diving suits supplying them with oxygen – which could one day enable them to explore Mars. Hirotaka Sato at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and his colleagues first demonstrated in 2021 that Madagascar hissing cockroaches could be remotely controlled with electrodes embedded in sensory organs known as cerci. In 2024, they demonstrated that a swarm of 20 of these cyborg insects could coordinate. Cockroaches breathe through pores called spiracles on their abdomen. But Sato and his team were unhappy with the insects’ inability to search flooded areas, which aren’t uncommon in disaster zones, so they have developed a diving suit to allow them to operate underwater. The researchers 3D printed a watertight resin suit, which protects the abdominal spiracles from water. Tiny hoses run forwards from the suit to connect directly to the thorax. (via New Scientist)
Wheeled vehicles existed for 5,000 years before someone thought of the bus
Buses do not seem like the sort of thing that needed to be invented. Anyone can see that the wheel needed to be invented, and that some further innovations were required to build carriages large enough for a substantial group of people to travel in them simultaneously. Once big carriages were invented, however, we might assume that people automatically started running them on regular timetables between fixed locations. The practice is so universal today, and its advantages so obvious, that it does not seem to require active innovation. Surprisingly, however, this is not true. The world had thousands of wheeled vehicles for millennia before it had a single bus. We know exactly who invented buses, when he did so, and how quickly his invention spread across the world. Wheels started being used for transport some time after 3,500 BC. For a very long time, however, wheels were not a world-changing technology. Early carts were precarious, and roads were too bad for them to be very useful. (via Works In Progress)
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They planned to avoid the apocalypse in luxury air-raid bunkers and then the HOA showed up
Row upon row of concrete bunkers with steel blast doors peek up from the rolling grasslands — like hobbit holes for the apocalypse. There are 575 of them, clustered on a former munitions depot near South Dakota’s Black Hills and billed as “The Largest Survival Community on Earth.” The pitch: Ride out nuclear war, the next pandemic or societal collapse in relative comfort. Yet for many residents, the dream has soured. The threat hasn’t come from Armageddon, but from friction that resembles a suburban homeowners’ association battle. Lawsuits, countersuits and disputes are piling up over septic systems, property taxes, off-leash dogs and a growing list of rules. The legal skirmishing has reached the state supreme court—twice. Promised amenities, including a restaurant bunker, a pool bunker and a horse-stable bunker, have yet to materialize. Guns have been drawn, and there have been offers to settle things with fists. The developer denies wrongdoing and says complaints come from a few malcontents. (via the WSJ)
Hi everyone! Mathew Ingram here. I am able to continue writing this newsletter in part because of your financial help and support, which you can do either through my Patreon or by upgrading your subscription to a monthly contribution. I enjoy gathering all of these links and sharing them with you, but it does take time, and your support makes it possible for me to do that. I also write a weekly newsletter of technology analysis called The Torment Nexus.
Archaeologists found an Egyptian mummy buried with a copy of The Iliad
Archaeologists working in Egypt have discovered a remarkable combination of Homeric epic and Egyptian ritual: a 2,000-year-old mummy with a papyrus fragment of the “Iliad” sealed in a clay packet outside its wrappings.It is the first time a literary work has been found playing a functional, spiritual role in the mummification process. And it suggests that for a Roman-era Egyptian, the “Iliad” — specifically some lines from Book 2’s “Catalogue of Ships” — was perhaps as crucial for navigating the afterlife as a magical spell. The mummy, a nonroyal male, was unearthed by the Mission of the University of Barcelona at a burial site known as Oxyrhynchus, as part of a project directed by Ignasi-Xavier Adiego of the university’s Institute of Ancient Near East. Leah Mascia, a specialist in the written and material culture of Greco-Roman and Late Antique Egypt at the Free University of Berlin, coordinated the collaborative breakthrough that finally brought the damaged text to light. (via the New York Times)
These baseball players didn’t know they had an identical twin with the same name
Brady Feigl was pitching for the University of Mississippi in 2014 when he tore his UCL. He went to Dr. James Andrews, the leading expert in Tommy John surgery, for the procedure shortly thereafter, and figured that would be that. Yes, there’s a year-long recovery, but you typically don’t have to have a second procedure done. So when Dr. Andrews called Ole Miss in April of 2015, asking if Feigl would be coming in for the procedure the next day, he was confused — he had already undergone the procedure six or seven months prior. It’s unclear what happened next, but per some accounts, the doctor’s office asked Feigl to help them solve the mystery. Were they speaking to Brady Feigl, the pitcher? He confirmed, yes. Was he 6’4” tall, with red hair, glasses, and a beard? Yep — he matched the description perfectly. But, he didn’t need the surgery — he had already had it. And that’s when he and the doctor’s office realized the nearly impossible coincidence: Ole Miss’ Brady Feigl wasn’t the only 6’4” red-headed pitcher named Brady Feigl who needed Tommy John surgery. (via Now I Know)
Dad of the year built a tractor-powered rollercoaster for his kids and their friends
Acknowledgements: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other places that I rely on as “serendipity engines,” such as The Morning News from Rosecrans Baldwin and Andrew Womack, Jodi Ettenberg’s Curious About Everything, Dan Lewis’s Now I Know, Robert Cottrell and Caroline Crampton’s The Browser, Clive Thompson’s Linkfest and Why Is This Interesting by Noah Brier and Colin Nagy. If you come across something you think should be included here, feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com