STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

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Filson Skagit Field Watch

Filson have released a new compact sportsman’s watch, the Skagit Field Watch. The classic watch is made with the same construction and materials as their classic Mackinaw Field Watch, but in a slimmer profile for the sportsman who requires a more compact style. Made in Detroit, USA, and available in four color combinations, the Skagit uses Shinola’s Argonite 517 quartz movement and features an anti-reflective sapphire crystal, a screw-down crown and 40mm stainless steel case. $600

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MAN DOWN - Trailer

Shia LaBeouf, who's battled his own demons recently, returns to a commanding lead as a PTSD-affected U.S. Marine, searching the remnants of his country for his wife and son, in this post-apocalyptic war thriller. Also starring Gary Oldman and Kate Mara.

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ALKEMISTA ALCOHOL INFUSION VESSEL

Infusing liquor with fruits, spices, and other flavors is nothing new — pro bartenders have known for years that a well-done infusion can liven up even the simplest recipe. Yet it's still not that common outside the bar/restaurant. The Alkemista Alcohol Infusion Vessel aims to change that. It uses a four-piece design to make it easy to create delicious infusions. Just place your ingredients in the stainless steel filter, screw the 950 ml borosilicate glass bottle onto the leak-proof bottom lid, pour in your liquor, insert the stopper, and wait while the flavors mingle together, creating a wholly-new liquid you can use to craft pro-quality cocktails at home.

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Look at Microsoft’s Fancy Surface Studio All-in-One PC

Microsoft unveiled a new all-in-one touchscreen desktop computer at its media event in New York today. The Surface Studio is alarmingly thin and objectively beautiful, but its most unique trait is that the whole screen tilts down on a four-point hinge to become a tabletop touchscreen PC. It doesn’t tilt down totally flat, but it sits at about a 20 degree angle, which seems like a natural amount of tilt for drawing, drafting, and swiping things around on the screen.

Pricing starts at $2,999. Brawnier options go up to $4,199. The Surface Studio is available for preorders starting today and will ship in “limited quantities for the holidays,” according to Microsoft.

Along with the desktop, there’s a Surface Pen of course, the same one found in the Surface Book and the Surface Pro. There’s also something called Surface Dial, which looks like a sleek little jog wheel. It sits on the desktop and works as a scroll wheel or a jog wheel. But placing it on the screen automatically brings up a context-aware menu. In a drawing app, for example, it will bring up a color picker or a wheel of brush options. A haptic engine inside the Surface Dial makes it feel like a real mechanical piece—a member of the design team says it was modeled after a safe dial, and it feels like that for sure. It runs on two AAA batteries (the swivel base comes off magnetically and those AAAs supposedly last a year) and communicates to the computer via BT LE. The Dial will come with the Surface Studio through December. After that, it’s a $99 add-on.

Screen Time

The guts of the computer are inside a box that serves as the base. Inside is a Core i5 or Core i7 quad-core processor, up to 32 gigabytes of RAM, and a 2.1 surround sound system. There’s just one cable coming out the back; the keyboard and the Surface Dial are wireless.

That screen measures 28 inches on the diagonal and boasts 13.5 million pixels—that’s a pixel density of 192ppi. The display is scaled true to life, so when you look at a document in Word that prints out to an 8.5 by 11-inch sheet of paper, it’ll show the actual size of the document on the screen. The display is a 3:2 aspect ratio, so it’s taller and more square than the “widescreen” displays seen on other all-in-one PCs. That’s nice for things like drawing on an on-screen canvas, but also nice for working on tall documents or surfing the web.

The Surface Studio’s touchscreen LCD is 1.3 millimeters thick, and the computer itself 12.5 millimeters thick overall. Microsoft VP of Surface Panos Panay, who demonstrated the Surface Studio at a media event today, claims it’s the thinnest LCD ever made. Panay says Microsoft had to redesign the screen’s internals from the ground up to get it that skinny. And while the display is very, very thin, it does weigh 13 pounds, which is heavy for constant fussing on that hinge.

Road Trip

Microsoft has been working toward the Surface Studio for years. In 2008, the company demoed its first Surface device, a big ol’ tabletop touchscreen that ran Windows Vista. The machine was aimed at retail stores, theme parks, casinos, and saffron tycoons that had $10,000 to drop on a super-table-computer.

The original Surface was eventually rebranded as the PixelSense and co-developed by Samsung, but the Surface name lives on. Now, it refers to Microsoft’s ever-expanding lineup of Windows 10 hardware: Hybrid tablet/laptops, laptop/tablets, and even an 84-inch 4K TV that doubles as a giant touchscreen.

But in this brand-new Surface Studio, Microsoft has its in-home spiritual successor to the very first Surface from 2008. And it costs way less than 10 grand.

 

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Spectre's Day of the Dead Parade Was So Amazing Mexico City Is Actually Doing it This Year

Arguably the greatest minutes of Spectre were the opening four, in which a sweeping tracking shot follows a masked Bond through a massive Day of the Dead parade in Mexico City. Thousands of people are in costume, walking the streets and hanging over balconies in masks of the dead. Massive skeletons are marched through the streets, and Bond shares an alluring, tense kiss with a woman before bounding off onto the Mexican rooftops.

While it will likely have significantly less cloak and dagger and international spy romance, you could actually experience this very parade this year, provided you fly to Mexico City on October 29th. While the elaborate procession was invented for the blockbuster movie, Mexican officials had said after the movie's release that they wanted to try to make the parade a reality. Now, hundreds of volunteers will help bring it to life, starting at the Angel of Independence monument and ending at the historic Zocalo square.

The procession will even "revisit the props and the wardrobe of the well-known film Spectre," the city government told the AFP. Tourism Minister Enrique de la Madrid also said that "Now, based on the film, there will be this festival," indicating that perhaps this will be an annual event.

And if you can't make it out for the festival, you can always just re-watch the epic scene:

 

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2018 MERCEDES-BENZ AMG E63 S SEDAN

Times they are a changin’ – or at least that seems to be the case in the car world. The kind of power and speed once relegated to sports cars is no longer, thanks to the boldness of the folks at organizations like Mercedes-Benz AMG. In fact, they’ve just released details on the new 2018 E63 S Sedan, and it’s an absolute monster.

When we say that this sedan is really a supercar in disguise, you might scoff – that is, until you see the specifications behind it. The E63 S features a beastly 4.0 Liter V8 engine fitted with twin-turbochargers. This monstrous motor pumps out a magnificent 603 horsepower to all four of the vehicles wheels (or you can switch to a rear-wheel drive “Drift Mode”), produces 627 foot-pounds of torque, and has a maximum speed of 186 mph. That means this car will give you the kind of ride you’d expect more from a scrappy racer than a commuter vehicle. It even has a 0-60 time of just 3.3 seconds. This luxury lightning bolt will get an official unveiling during the Los Angeles Auto Show in November of this year.

 

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Melted Whiskey Glasses

No, you haven’t had too much bourbon; these glasses really do look like this. While the Melted Whiskey Glass looks like it was pulled out of the kiln a bit too early, it’s actually designed to give the appearance of motion and offer finger-friendly grooves. The unique design allows the tumblers to sit nicely in your hand so you can sip your whiskey slowly. The Melted Whiskey Glass is dishwasher safe and sold in packs of four.

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Mondaine’s Giant Blackout Watch Is Based on a Swiss Train Station Clock

Based on the design of the Swiss Railways (SBB) train station clocks, Mondaine’s Giant range of SBB watches have been popular ever since they were released. The collection grows with the release of the Mondaine SBB Giant Blackout Watch that might be our favorite release of the series yet. The 42mm black case houses a black on black face with that iconic red second hand and red Mondaine detailing on the crown. The watch that’s sure to be a classic is held on your wrist with a genuine leather strap and a lugless design that insures clean lines where the strap meets the face.

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The Struggle and Success of Making a New Irish Whiskey

It’s been a long time since the reputation of Irish whiskey carried any kind of weight beyond that of a few big names. Jameson and Bushmills seem to have a stranglehold on the industry and while it’s true we’ve had a few new names pop up here and there, a true Irish craft whiskey (to borrow some terminology), is hard to come by. But not too far out of living memory, Irish whiskey was an alcoholic juggernaut. Roughly a century ago, Irish whiskey made up 60% of global spirit sales and was the most popular alcohol in the world, with the best of that whiskey coming from Dublin. Now, it’s down to about 1%, for more than a hundred years, there were no new distilleries in Dublin.

But it’s not going to stay that way. There are small indications in Ireland that something akin to the craft beer renaissance is in store for whiskey. Just as craft breweries did both in the US and in Ireland, small distilleries are emerging and experiencing domestic success with plans to expand into the international market as soon as their production allows.

As of this writing, only the Teeling Whiskey Company has broken into the international market, and they’re the first independently owned distillery to be exporting their spirit. We spoke with Stephen Teeling who, with his brother Jack, opened the Teeling Whiskey Distillery to visitors in January 2015. They’re the first distillery to open in Dublin in 125 years, a move that many in the industry thought was far too risky to even think about. Teeling talked us through their family’s personal history with whiskey, why it was important to them to be making whiskey in Dublin, and what exactly sets them apart from names you already know. What he described is a company to be emulated, no matter what country you drink in.

The Teeling Family

Most family run businesses we think of are blue collar artisans like cobblers, contractors, and, if pop culture is to be believed, con men. We simply don’t think of brewing or distilling as family pursuits. Granted, this is all for the average person, because Stephen and Jack Teeling grew up making whiskey the same way some of us grew up fixing cars or working in restaurants.

Their father, who was a man Stephen described as a “serial entrepreneur” founded Cooley Distillery north of Dublin back in the ’80s and immersed his children in the business. Following their father’s lead, the brothers learned what made whiskey a unique business, how to start and survive in the industry, and how to deal with the struggle of going years without knowing what your product is going to be. They also learned the Irish whiskey business has the added difficulty of differentiating your brand from the ones people have been drinking for nearly three centuries. All those lessons piled on top of each other and you have two brothers gearing up to take their rightful place in the world of Irish whiskey.

Then Ireland saw its financial fortunes change for the worse. The Celtic Tiger turned into the Celtic Corpse while people’s finances started to shrivel. The Teeling family owned a majority share in the Cooley Distillery, but it wasn’t enough to stop it from being sold to replenish a bit of the shareholders’ cash stores. Jim Beam bought their distillery and the brothers were set adrift when they felt like they were just getting started.

The sale of Cooley wasn’t all bad news though. It left the two with three important resources that would help them establish their own whiskey company: a sizable supply of cash, a sizable supply of whiskey, and a literal lifetime of knowledge of the industry.

The Teeling Whiskey Company Starts to Take Shape

One of the difficulties in starting a distillery is whiskey isn’t legally whiskey until it’s been aged for three years and one day. No shortcuts, no quick tricks, just three long years of waiting to see what the hell you’ve got in that cask. It’s hard to drum up customers if all you’re selling is a promise.

But the Teelings had a pretty decent stash of whiskey from when they still owned Cooley. And since they’d been following their father’s example, differentiating their whiskey by experimenting with different casks, they had a product that was indicative of what they planned to do with their own distillery. They used the relationships they’d built in their time at Cooley to get people to agree to try their whiskey as well as build confidence in their new venture.

And they were going to need all the confidence they could get, because breaking into the modern day Irish whiskey business is like running headfirst into a brick wall. Producers like Jameson, Bushmills, and Tullamore Dew have built a pretty solid industry. But the Teelings identified one distinct advantage they had over the big guys. Large whiskey companies may have the advantage when it comes to name recognition, distribution, and a healthy dose of nostalgia, but they can’t innovate. Or at least, they face a hell of a lot of resistance when they try. No one wants Jameson to stop tasting like Jameson.

Smaller companies are more agile and able to experiment. In fact, they’re rewarded when they experiment. Teeling Whiskey has seen most of its success with younger, knowledgeable drinkers, a group that actively seeks out new beers and spirits. And we know that’s true because the overwhelming majority of beer articles on this site follow exactly that narrative.

For the same reason craft breweries can hop from IPA to IPA, messing with all kinds of established formulas, distilleries like Teeling can buck the traditional sherry casks and mature their whiskey in rum and wine casks. They get to keep all the smoothness and ease of drinking the Irish style is famous for, while also getting to inject it with the innovation it’s been lacking.

So the Teelings knew where they fit, or wanted to fit, in the grand scheme of Irish whiskey. They wanted to supply another choice of spirit in the $30-60 bracket, and one that was Irish at its base but knew that it needed to bring something new to an old industry. They had the knowledge, they had their product. Now they needed a location.

If you were to visit the Teeling Distillery, as of January 2015, you’d go to Marrowbone Lane in the Liberties in Dublin. But the location that helps set Teeling apart wasn’t even on the brothers’ radar in the beginning. The reason for this is deeply rooted in both Irish and American history, and it’s a significant part of what drew us to Teeling in the first place.

Dublin’s Decline

A century and a half ago, where Teeling is now, there were 37 separate distilleries. Dublin whiskey could be sold at a premium, around 25% more expensive than whiskeys distilled elsewhere in Ireland. So not only was Dublin huge for Irish distilling, it was where the world’s favorite liquor was made. That’s a huge difference from what it is today, where Teeling is the first new distillery to open in city limits in 125 years and the first Dublin whiskey distilled in more than 40 years.

In fact, here’s a bit of trivia. The distinction between whisky and whiskey has its roots in the elitism of Dublin distilleries. Distillers from the Irish capital knew how valuable their spirit was and wanted a way to distinguish themselves from the imitators. The way they did this was adding an “e,” so while whiskey vs. whisky now means Irish and American vs. Canadian and Scottish, it used to mean Dublin vs. everyone else.

Dublin’s decline was a perfect conspiratorial storm. We’ve talked about it before, but let’s have a review. As you may or may not know, Ireland and England have a bit of a history. Anglican influence in Ireland started in roughly the 12th century and it remains today in the form of Northern Ireland, albeit with a relatively solid peace and an open border. The time we want to concern ourselves with is a century ago, with the Easter Rising, and the subsequent fight for Irish independence, and the formation of the Irish Republic.

Unduly restrictive legislation had been enacted on Ireland before, and this time was no different. During Ireland’s fight for its independence, the English imposed harsh exportation restrictions on the island, essentially making it impossible for them to export any Irish-made products. This meant, for a time, Irish whiskey wasn’t getting off the island.

This created an opportunity for the Scottish to jump in on the action. Scotch, prior to this, was a relatively unknown product, its popularity mostly limited to Scotland. But with Irish whiskey out of the way, Scotland was able to turn itself into a globally recognized brand, a reputation that extends to today. Irish whiskeys of all sizes are attempting to reverse this, or at least restore a bit of their global renown.

After the exportation restrictions were loosened, America began its grand experiment in Prohibition, meaning Dublin whiskey lost one of its most significant overseas markets.

Even after Prohibition’s repeal, Irish whiskeys were back in American markets, but the damage was already done. World War I was in there too, so count out people spending their disposable incomes on what little Irish whiskey got off the island.

Through the past century, Irish whiskey shifted its focus to domestic markets. While this works well for a few distillers, it’s not sustainable for all, so in the course of a few decades, Dublin went from dozens of distilleries down to none.

Now, finally, after 125 years, the number jumps back up to a proud one.

Teeling Whiskey Comes to Dublin

Teeling fully admits that Dublin was neither the first location they scouted nor the one that inspired the most confidence. The most honest way to put it is, Dublin wasn’t even an option in the very early stages of the Teeling brothers’ search for a location. What finally made Dublin viable was the same thing that saw the sale of Cooley Distillery.

In the beginning, Dublin’s property costs were prohibitively high for a new whiskey company, but when the economy took a steep dive, so did Dublin real estate prices. Prices quickly dropped from the realm of laughably insane and into “well, maybe…?”

The Teelings took to the Dublin streets, scouting different spots that might be able to house their distillery. The problem was, Dublin is an old city and while it’s exceedingly walkable and pedestrian friendly, there are fewer buildings out of which a modern distillery could ship its product. Most of the buildings they saw had great space and inspiring history, but they couldn’t accommodate modern shipping methods without some serious renovation.

When they finally found a location that fit all their needs, the Teelings then had to go to work on Fáilte Ireland, the country’s tourism board. Before Teeling could start working on their distillery in historic Dublin, the board had to sign off, saying it was in line with their mission statement. To convince the board, the Teelings leaned heavily on the history of the Liberties, citing the 37 distilleries that used to occupy the area, as well as the Guinness brewery only a few minutes walk up the road. In their eyes, and eventually in the board’s eyes, the brothers were bringing a traditional industry back to its rightful place, providing crucial jobs for Irish workers, and creating a tourist attraction unique to Dublin.

And it’s good that they got the approval. Their endeavor’s experienced more success in tourism than they or the board anticipated and the distillery’s expecting 100,000 visitors in 2016, a significant portion of which are Irish. Roughly 40% of those who visit and tour the site are Irish citizens. This estimate is part of a larger trend Teeling has seen, that of the new Irish support for independent, local businesses.

Making Irish Whiskey Palatable Again

During the Celtic Tiger, the young Irish were importing their spirits. Most of what was drunk were international brands, and if whiskey was being sold, it was Jameson and Bushmills selling to the older generations. Their drinking habits had solidified years ago, when Irish whiskey was down to only a few distilleries and was selling directly to Irish nostalgia. These were the people pining for the rare ould times, who remembered a very different Ireland.

Even today, Teeling hasn’t found success in areas with older generations of Irish and Irish-Americans. Big brands retain their loyal base in rural Ireland and old Boston, and that’s something that Teeling understands. He obviously won’t stop people from those areas from drinking his whiskey, but the company’s focus and energy has mostly been spent on educating younger drinkers on how to drink Irish whiskey.

Most of marketing for Teeling Whiskey has stressed the importance and power of word of mouth. It’s a much more grassroots approach to whiskey, where they rely on customers to bring in new customers, not as paid shills, but as people who genuinely enjoy the whiskey. Think of all the beer you’ve bought based on a friend’s recommendation and you’ve nailed exactly why Teeling is thriving.

But there’s also a reputation whiskey has to work to overcome. During our interview, Teeling recounted a whiskey show he and his brother attended early in their endeavor. During a Scotch tasting, they both noticed just how serious the attendees were. Barely anyone was speaking, there was no laughter, and the music, if there was any, didn’t even approach energetic. Somewhere along the line, Scotch whisky got a reputation like old wine, where there were objective metrics to enjoying the drink.

Teeling moves in the opposite direction. Irish whiskey should be a fun, social drink that you can enjoy with friends at a party or a lively night at the pub. To put it in Teeling’s words, “Whiskey isn’t all haggis and kilts.” That’s why a large part of their marketing stresses education. Scotch’s reputation, coupled with the reputation of the rural Irish and older Irish-Americans, can intimidate drinkers right out of experimenting with whiskey. By creating a welcoming, social atmosphere, Teeling can inaugurate new drinkers into the whiskey scene, introducing them to new cocktails, recipes, even foods incorporating their whiskey. Some Dublin chefs have taken to inventing new ways to make coffee
In line with this socially accessible education, one of their recent tasting events had them pairing their whiskeys with different songs. Their Small Batch got a spliced version of Thin Lizzy’s cover and Metallica’s cover of “Whiskey in the Jar,” while Single Grain matched with U2’s “Desire.” Single Malt honored the memory of the great Luke Kelly with “The Auld Triangle.” Their poitín, a sort of Irish moonshine, went more with pictures than it did with music, the pictures being Shane MacGowan before and after he had teeth.

In the end, Teeling Whiskey and those who drink it are people who are proud of their heritage, but not blinded by it. Teeling put it best, saying, “Enjoy the past, but judge us based on what we’re doing now.”

Teeling’s Future

The future looks good for Teeling. They’re making about a million liters of whiskey a year and the brothers have the experience necessary to guide them. Whiskey’s a long term investment and it’s not enough to be thinking five or ten years in the future. The consequences of their actions now might not be felt for another fifteen to twenty years, making it one of the riskier businesses to dive into.

In the US, Teeling Whiskey is selling well. It’s among the 8 to 10 countries where Teeling is experiencing above average success. Young Irish and young Americans have a lot in common when it comes to drinking habits, with both now stressing the importance of local, independent distillers and brewers over big name international brands.

But those big brands can still pose a problem for Teeling. Since they own their own distribution companies, they are able to get their product on store and bar shelves in a much larger capacity than a small company like Teeling. For Teeling, they got a lot of initial shelf space based on relationships they’d built during their time at Cooley. From there, they took about 8 trips to the US, meeting with bar and store owners and importers, selling directly to them. They were successful, but they were far from guaranteed a spot on the shelves.

For US based customers, our best bet is simply to buy their whiskey. When we’re out and we see it on the shelves, pick up a bottle or order a cocktail. If you don’t see it around your area, it couldn’t hurt to request it. Bar owners notice if they’re getting multiple requests for the same type of liquor and they’d be bad bar owners if they didn’t find a way to stock it.

And if you find yourself in Dublin, stop by the distillery. It’s literally one of a kind.

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Man, this is one of the coolest thread ever! Thanks 

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Scientists Hope To Eradicate Disease With Massive Mosquito Orgy

The mosquito genocide is beginning. Millions of genetically modified versions of the useless vampire insects are being prepared for release in Brazil. If all goes according to plan, the mosquitoes will have a huge sex party and begin to kill off all of their natural counterparts.

The world’s “first and biggest factory” for genetically modified mosquitos is in Piracicaba, Brazil. Its owner, Oxitec, is manufacturing male mosquitos that die quickly after they mate and pass on a genetic defect that causes any offspring to kick the bucket as well. In a country that has been hit hard by the Zika virus and dengue, this could be a game-changing, life-saving effort.

The firm has conducted five field tests between 2011 and 2014 — the results showed a 90 per cent decline in the population of wild Aedes aegypti after the horny, modded male mosquitos had time to get it on with unsuspecting female mosquitos.

Oxitec has yet to receive approval from Brazilian health authorities to release its devastating swarm into the wild. The town of Piracicaba is currently its only customer and the two have signed a four-year, $US1.1 ($1) million deal. The company is in conversation with “several municipalities and states,” according to Oxitec president Hadyn Parry.

The factory can produce 60 million mosquitos a week and plans to release 10 million of them in Piracicaba the first week that it has approval. In a town with a population of 360,000, that’s a little over 27 mosquitos per person.

It’s truly unknown what kind of broader effect the systematic extinction of mosquitos would have on the eco-system. The little pests are generally believed to have no broader purpose than to survive and spread disease. But without long-term impact studies, it’s difficult to say whether or not the destruction of mosquito species would come without consequence.

That doesn’t seem to bother the researchers at Oxitec. “There are three essential factors for the transmission of these diseases: the mosquitoes, the virus and humans,” Oxitec biologist Karla Tepedino told AFP News. “What we do here is eliminate the mosquitoes, which transmit the virus.”

She concluded, “Eliminating the vector, we eliminate the disease.”

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Spectacular Halloween Light Show Will Make You Glad You're Not This Guy's Neighbour

If you head on over to Deercreek Drive in Riverside, California, and find the house near Orange Terrace Park, you’ll be treated to what has become one of the best Halloween traditions anywhere in the country. There you’ll find one of the most spectacular Halloween light shows imaginable — making you thankful you’re not one of this guy’s neighbours.

Put together by the folks at Creative Lighting Displays, the house is covered in hundreds of thousands of LED lights that are all perfectly synced to popular Halloween songs. This particular performance plays out to Time Warp from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but there’s about five or six songs featured in every show, including the Ghostbusters theme this year.

 

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Float Through Every Detail Of The International Space Station In 4K Glory

Space is undeniably cool, but you know what else is cool? Space gear. And taking a long, leisurely tour through the international space station in beautiful 4k with pristine focus is the best way to see all those wires, meters, monitors and control stations. 

Bookended by vertigo-inducing shots of Earth as seen through the ISS windows, this video has to rank among the highest quality productions that NASA has dropped on our YouTube accounts. At its highest resolution, it just barely plays smoothly on my computer.

If nothing else, it will make you feel better about your cord-wrangling situation at home. Nobody has it as rough as these astronauts.

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xXx: Return Of Xander Cage Trailer

For Xander Cage, impossible is just a starting point. 

Vin Diesel, Ruby Rose & Toni Collette star alongside Samuel L. Jackson, Deepika Padukone, Nina Dobrev and Donnie Yen in the explosive new trailer (get it? 'cause there are explosions!) for xXx: Return of Xander Cage.

The film hits cinemas January 19, 2017.

 

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China's New J-20 Stealth Fighter Makes Its Public Debut, But The US Isn't Impressed

At an airshow held earlier yesterday in southern China, a pair of J-20 stealth fighters streaked across the sky as Beijing proudly debuted the latest edition to its military arsenal.

The world has known about the Avic J-20 stealth fighters since their first test flights back in 2011, but this is the first time these fifth-generation planes were showcased to the public. Chinese air force pilots flew two of the twin-engine prototypes for several minutes at the International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in the southern city of Zhuhai, as crowds cheered on below.

A spokesperson for the People's Liberation Army (CLA) said the J-20 - a long-range, radar-evading stealth fighter - will add a significant boost the fighting capacity of the Chinese air force, while "safeguarding national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity". Should all go according to plan, the J-20 will become fully operational in 2018.

The J-20 is considered the answer to the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning, which will soon be deployed to the Pacific by the United States and Japan. The exact strategic purpose of the new Chinese fighters isn't entirely clear, but Aviation Weekly says the CLA could exploit their stealth and supersonic capabilities to "penetrate hostile defences and destroy valuable air targets in the rear, such as tankers". Another possibility is that the large design, with its long endurance, will offer more fighting power since the aircraft doesn't require constant refuelling.

As impressive as the J-20 appears to be, some US military officials aren't impressed. In a Breaking Defence article published earlier this year, Gen David Goldfein said, "[When] I hear about F-35 vs. J-20, it's almost an irrelevant comparison." By contrast, the F-35 is "about a family of systems and it's about a network - that's what gives us an asymmetric advantage". Goldfein believes it's more accurate to compare the J-20 to the F-117 Nighthawk, a stealth attack aircraft introduced in 1983 and retired in 2008.

That said, experts worry that the plane's forward stealth and long range could put some of America's surface assets at risk. Several years ago, the Pentagon described the J-20 as "a platform capable of long range, penetrating strikes into complex air defence environments". There's also concern that, with the addition of more powerful jets, the plane could start to rival the J-20, and legitimately threaten vulnerable tankers and radar facilities.

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This New York Mansion Is Legally Haunted

This New York Supreme Court case's real name is Stambovsky v Ackley, but its nickname, "the Ghostbusters ruling", is way catchier -- and way more descriptive. Not to mention accurate, as the most famous part of the decision contains the phrase: "as a matter of law, the house is haunted."

The story goes like this. In 1989, a woman named Helen Ackley decided to sell her house, a striking, circa-1890 Queen Anne Victorian perched right on the Hudson River in Nyack, New York. It had five bedrooms, three and a half baths and three poltergeists.

That last bit of info was something Ackley had widely publicised in a 1977 Reader's Digest article (titled "Our Haunted House on the Hudson") as well as in the local newspaper on more than one occasion. The house became something of a local landmark, included on a tour of Nyack's supernatural hot spots.

This was not another Amityville Horror situation, however. The family lived in the house for over 20 years, and the spirit that Ackley described in 1990 to the New York Times didn't seem at all hostile. Quite the opposite, in fact:

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"He was sitting in midair, watching me paint the ceiling in the living room, rocking and back forth," she said. "I was on an 8-foot stepladder. I asked if he approved of what we were doing to the house, if the colours were to his liking. He smiled and he nodded his head."

But despite courting all that publicity over the years, Ackley and her real estate agent failed to tell buyer Jeffrey M. Stambovsky that the home had a spooky reputation. He wasn't from Nyack, and had no idea he'd just added a haunted house to his portfolio until it was too late. Unable to get his deposit back, he took Ackley to court, arguing the house's ghosts (real or imagined, friendly or otherwise) affected both its value and its potential for resale.

The New York Appellate Court declared that "as a matter of law, the house is haunted" because Ackley had proclaimed it to be true in multiple newspaper and magazine articles -- whether or not there was an actual ghost was moot. But this section of the court's official decision is also notable, for obvious reasons:

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From the perspective of a person in the position of plaintiff herein, a very practical problem arises with respect to the discovery of a paranormal phenomenon: "Who you gonna' call?" as a title song to the movie "Ghostbusters" asks. 
Applying the strict rule of caveat emptor to a contract involving a house possessed by poltergeists conjures up visions of a psychic or medium routinely accompanying the structural engineer and Terminix man on an inspection of every home subject to a contract of sale... 
In the interest of avoiding such untenable consequences, the notion that a haunting is a condition which can and should be ascertained upon reasonable inspection of the premises is a hobgoblin which should be exorcised from the body of legal precedent and laid quietly to rest.

In the end, Stambovsky got half of his deposit back, the NY Appellate Court ruled that sellers would have to disclose if their home had a g-g-g-ghost and Ackley ended up having no trouble selling her Victorian mansion, since it turns out there are plenty of people who actually want to own a haunted house. And as it happens, nobody who's lived there since has reported any bumps in the night. In 2015, the house was sold for $US1.7 million ($2.2 million) by its then-owner, singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson.

[MIKA27]

The Venom From This Snake Will Make Your Life A Living Hell

The menacingly beautiful blue coral snake preys on other fast moving, venomous snakes. To immobilise its prey, this reptile employs a particularly nasty venom -- one that makes the last moments of the victim's life a living hell.

One quick look at this reptile and it's clear this thing means business. Found in southeast Asia, the blue coral snake (Calliophis bivirgatus) features a striking neon red head and tail, and electric blue stripes that run down the length of its body. In a new paper published in the science journal Toxins, researchers from the University of Queensland and several other institutions describe this creature's unique and deadly venom -- a poison that delivers a massive shock to a prey animal's physiological system.

Almost immediately after being bitten, the victim enters into an agonising catatonic state, with its muscles stuck at full flex. The venom causes all nerves in the body to fire simultaneously, triggering full body spasms. Paralysed and helpless, the animal is eventually put out of its misery by the killer snake.

It's nasty business, but evolution has equipped the blue coral snake with this particularly powerful venom for a reason. This highly specialised predator likes to hunt other venomous snakes, which are typically very fast and also exceptionally dangerous. The venom is produced and stored in a gland that extends for one quarter of the snake's body length.

Scientists have seen this kind of toxin before, but never in a snake, let alone any other vertebrate species. Some animals, like some scorpions and spiders, have evolved similar toxins. The cone snail, for example, injects a similar kind of toxin into fish, causing them to go into an instant paralysis, where they fully tense their muscles in a tetanus-like spasm.

The blue coral snake's venom does practically the same thing, and scientists say it's a good example of convergent evolution (where a similar trait emerges independently in different species). Once administered into the body, the toxin causes all the nerves within an animal's body to switch on simultaneously, causing the prey animal to enter into a frozen state. The researchers refer to this state as spastic paralysis, as opposed to the flaccid paralysis induced by other snake venom. The compounds within the venom prevent the nerves from turning off their sodium channels, which results in the nerve firing continuously. It's like pressing the nerve's accelerator pedal to the floor, and then cutting off the brakes.

Ironically enough, this venom -- dubbed Calliotoxin -- could be used in pharmacology to develop new medicines. Scientists are now particularly interested in its ability to act as a painkiller in humans.

[MIKA27]

49,000 Year Old Evidence Of Indigenous Australians In The Outback Found

A rock shelter in the Flinders Ranges, 550km north of Adelaide has revealed that Aboriginal Australians settled the arid outback region of Australia 10,000 years earlier than previously evidenced — around 49,000 years ago.

The finding also pushes back the dates on the development of key technologies, with examples of the oldest bone and stone tools and the earliest-known use of ochre in Australia.
Bones of the extinct giant wombat-like creature, Diprotodon optatum, and eggs from an ancient giant bird were also found in the cave, suggesting humans were also interacting with the local megafauna.

While it is widely accepted that humans have been in Australia for at least 50,000 years, there has been debate over whether these early Australians would have been able to live in the harsh dry interior.

This new research suggests that, following their arrival in Australia, people were able to disperse more rapidly across the continent than previously thought and weren't just living on the coasts.

This story is developing with more details expected to be announced shortly.

[MIKA27]

The Deadliest Volcano In The United States Just Got Really Weird

Picture a volcanic eruption: Fiery magma and smoke billowing skyward as a towering mountain empties its over-pressurised belly of a hot meal. At least, that's how most of us think it works. So you can imagine volcanologists' surprise when they discovered that Mount St Helens, which was responsible for the deadliest eruption in US history, is actually cold inside.

Apparently, it's stealing its fire from somewhere else.

Mount St Helens is one of the most active volcanoes of the Cascade Arc, a string of eruptive mountains that runs parallel to the Cascadia subduction zone from northern California to British Columbia. It's also one of the strangest. Most major volcanoes of the Cascade Arc sit neatly along a north-south line, where the wedging of the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate beneath the North American plate forces hot mantle material to rise. Mount St Helens, however, lies to the west, in a geologically quiescent region called the forearc wedge.

"We don't have a good explanation for why that's the case," said Steve Hansen, a geoscientist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

Seeking answers, Hansen recently led a seismic mapping survey of Mount St Helens. In the winter of 2014, his team deployed thousands of sensors to measure motion in the ground around the volcano. Then, they drilled nearly two dozen holes, packed the holes full of explosives, triggered a handful of minor quakes and watched as seismic waves bounced around beneath the mountain. "We're looking at what seismic energy propagates off in the subsurface," Hansen explained. "It's a bit like a CAT scan."

Their analysis, which is published today in Nature Communications, appears to have created more questions than it answered. From seismic reflections, Hansen and his colleagues learned that the types of minerals present at the boundary between Earth's crust and mantle are markedly different to the east and west of Mount St Helens, confirming that this area is geologically special. But instead of finding a hot magma chamber directly beneath the volcano, seismic data indicates a relatively cool wedge of serpentine rock.

Not only is Mount St Helens out of place, but it also lacks the magma reserves we'd expect given its violent history. So, where on Earth is Mount St Helens getting its fuel?

Hansen suspects the volcano's magma source lies to the east, closer to the rest of the Cascade Arc, where material in the upper mantle is hotter. But that still leaves the question of why gooey rock being forced westward, through the crust or upper mantle, to erupt in this one off-kilter location. Earthquakes in the deep crust may be partially responsible, but more data is needed to confirm such a link.

Fortunately, more data is exactly what Hansen, and other scientists associated with the Imaging Magma Under St Helens (iMUSH) project, are now collecting. What geologists learn about this weird volcano - how its magmas form, how they moved around, when and why they erupt — could improve our understanding of volcanic arc systems around the world.

"Mount St Helens is pretty unusual," Hansen said. "It's telling us something about how the arc system is behaving, and we don't yet know what that something is."

[MIKA27]

TAKE A PEEK INSIDE JAPAN'S HAUNTED THEME PARK

This deserted theme park will haunt your dreams. Originally built as a kind of Disneyland park, the Japanese landmark is a chilling example of urban decay.

Known as "Dreamland", the park was originally built in 1961. Back then, it was a sleek, new development in Japan which offered all kinds of rides and attractions. Unfortunately, people lost interest in the park when Universal Studios Japan was built in 2001. Dreamland struggled on for a few years but was ultimately closed in 2006 due to dwindling interest.

After the park was closed, it quickly began transitioning from a fun, family-friendly spot to one of Japan's creepiest places. And thanks to French photographer Victor Habchy, we can take a peek inside the fences. The over growth and decay that Habchy' photos capture is utterly fascinating

Sadly, the park has now been demolished. These photos are most likely the last remaining memories of a very creepy Urbex landscape.

[MIKA27]

Jack the Ripper and the Royal Conspiracy

In the latter part of 1888, a deadly figure roamed the shadowy and foggy back-streets of Whitechapel, London, England by night. He violently slaughtered prostitutes, provoking terror throughout the entire capital. He quickly became – and still remains to this very day – the world’s most notorious serial-killer. He was, in case you haven’t by now guessed, Jack the Ripper. But, what makes the Ripper so infamous, more than a century after his terrible crimes were committed, is that his identity still remains a mystery. And everyone loves a mystery. So, who might Jack have been? The theories are almost endless. Indeed, more than thirty potential suspects have been suggested. They include a surgeon, a doctor, a poet, and even a midwife.

Without doubt, the most controversial theory for whom, exactly, Jack the Ripper might have been, is that he was a member of the British Royal Family (an outdated, irrelevant entity that should be abolished, in my opinion). The suspect: Prince Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence. It is, however, a claim that has no basis in fact. It was a theory referenced in the early 1960s, specifically in the pages of a book by French author, Philippe Jullian. In Edward and the Edwardians (the 1967 English language version of his 1962 book, Edouard VII), Jullian wrote:

Quote

“Before he died, poor Clarence was a great anxiety to his family. He was quite characterless and would soon have fallen a prey to some intriguer or group of roués, of which his regiment was full. They indulged in every form of debauchery, and on one occasion the police discovered the Duke in a maison de recontre of a particularly equivocal nature during a raid. The young man’s evil reputation soon spread. The rumor gained ground that he was Jack the Ripper.”

Additional rumors suggested that Albert caught syphilis from a London prostitute and, in a deranged state of mind caused by the increasing effects of his condition, roamed the Whitechapel district of London in search of prostitutes, upon who he could take out his rage and revenge. Nothing concrete, however, has surfaced – so far, at least – to suggest the prince was Jack. That hasn’t stopped the theory from thriving, however.

A variation on the theory that the Duke of Clarence was Jack the Ripper is that he was not the killer, but that he was connected to the killer, albeit in a roundabout fashion.

The Duke, theorists suggest, secretly married a woman who was a Catholic. This was too much for Queen Victoria, and so a dark plan was put into place. Sir William Withey Gull, the 1st Baronet of Brook Street, and a noted physician and Freemason, took on the grim task of killing the friends of the young woman in question who knew of the secret marriage. Gull, then, trying to protect the Royals from scandal, was the man behind the Ripper legend. And to ensure that the killings were not traceable back to the highest levels of the British Royal Family, the legend of the serial-killer, Jack the Ripper, was created as a convenient cover and diversion.

As early as the 1890s, American newspapers were reporting on the rumor that Jack was actually a prominent figure in London medicine, one who, according to the man’s wife, had displayed violent characteristics at the height of the killings. Supposedly, the story got back to the man’s co-workers. They quickly visited the family home and found a number of undisclosed items that strongly suggested the man was indeed Jack the Ripper. He was reportedly hospitalized for his own good and died soon after. Perhaps of some significance, Gull died in 1890, and just two years after the Ripper murders took place.

In 1970, the late English physician, Thomas Edmund Alexander Stowell, stated that Gull was not the Ripper, but was the killer’s doctor. Although Stowell did not come straight to the point and name Jack, his words and description of the man make it clear that he was talking about the Duke of Clarence. Six years later, in 1976, the Gull theory was advanced at length in the pages of Stephen Knight’s book, Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution. Knight’s book was praised at the time, but the story he told – of Gull, of a huge Masonic conspiracy, and of terrible murders that were linked to the British monarchy – has since been overwhelmingly denounced, even by leading figures in the Jack the Ripper research community.

John Hamill, of the Freemasons’ United Grand Lodge of England, said: “The Stephen Knight thesis is based upon the claim that the main protagonists, the Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, Sir Charles Warren, Sir James Anderson and Sir William Gull were all high-ranking Freemasons. Knight knew his claim to be false for, in 1973, I received a phone call from him in the Library, in which he asked for confirmation of their membership. After a lengthy search I informed him that only Sir Charles Warren had been a Freemason. Regrettably, he chose to ignore this answer as it ruined his story.”

As much as I despise the concept of a Royal Family, we really should move on from this Masonic/Royal Family garbage when it comes to the matter of Jack the Ripper.

[MIKA27]

FISKER EMOTION

What happens when you get the guy responsible for designing cars like the Aston Martin V8 Vantage, BMW Z8, and the Aston Martin DB9 to build out an electric vehicle? Well, you’re looking right at it. Introducing the Fisker EMotion.

This newly announced car combines efficiency, luxury, and power all in one sleek package. Made from a composite carbon fiber and aluminum the vehicle’s body boasts an aggresive stance that is matched only by its power plant. According to Fisker, the electric engine will use a new graphene infused battery technology (courtesy of a partnership with Nanotech Energy Inc.) that can get it up to 161 miles per hour and a range of 400 miles per hour. Don’t feel like driving? The car is expected to have fully autonomous driving capabilities and a spacious and comfortable interior to match. No word on price, but the first models will be shown in the middle of next year.

 

[MIKA27]

DISTRICT VISION NAGATA SUNGLASSES

Sports sunglasses, generally speaking, aren’t very fashionable. No big deal. It isn’t really their main selling point anyway, but it is exciting when you come across a pair that is just as capable of preforming as it is at looking sharp. Take District Vision’s Nagata Sunglasses for instance.

These sunglasses boast a kind of 1980s old school cool look to them while also being incredibly technically capable. The yellow lenses in the Nagata use the D+ technology and shatterproof polycarbonate to transfer a higher amount of light to make for a brighter more vivid environment for early morning and evening runs. Given the fact that afternoons are getting darker and darker as we approach the end of the year – this makes them a great grab for evening and early morning runners. Get caught in the rain a lot? The oleophobic treatment makes them water and oil resistant so you won’t get beaded up water stuck while charing through the trails. In addition to boasting great lenses, the sunglasses barely weigh a thing. Coming in at 22 grams and featuring adjustable hypoallergenic rubber nose pads and temple tips they are as light as you are fast. Get yours for $250. [Purchase]

 

[MIKA27]

Master & Dynamic MW50 Headphones

Master & Dynamic just expanded their line of fantastic wireless listening devices with the MW50 Headphones. Situated between the signature MW40s and the super luxe MW60s, the MW50s include best-in-class signal range, 16-hour rechargeable battery and the signature M&D rich, warm sound with the minimal industrial aesthetic that the brand has become synonymous with. You have the option for brown or black heavy grain premium cowhide on the headband exterior and ear cup accents, along with soft lambskin on the headband interior and ear pads. Stainless rotating hinges that allow the cups to fold flat. Intuitive tactile controls. Omni-directional, noise-isolating microphones. Bluetooth 4.1 aptX audio with the option to connect a 3.5mm cable for wired listening. This is everything you want in a pair of headphones.

[MIKA27]

Cards Against Humanity

Cards Against Humanity is dubbed as a party game for horrible people, it has received acclaim for its simple concept backed up by its satirical content. The game is simple, well-executed, and laughter is guaranteed. Each round, one player (czar) asks a question from a Black Card, and everyone else answers with their funniest White Card. The czar then awards a point for the funniest combination. Pass the black cards to the next card czar and repeat. Hilarious game, especially after a couple of drinks… Just read the reviews on Amazon and you´ll understand why this is a top seller in games.