Blinkist App Solves the ‘Too Many Books, Too Little Time’ Dilemma via InfoToday more
“…The Blink system is designed to present a book in the shortest and most easily absorbed way. Each Blink has a title that summarizes it. The last Blink has a short, one-paragraph Final Summary. The system is skillfully designed to accommodate your time availability. If you have a leisurely 15 minutes, you can read all of the Blinks. If you are a bit rushed, you can choose among the Blink title summaries, conveniently gathered in a separate list. And if you are really pressed for time, you’ve got the whole book in the Final Summary…”
Learn more about Blinkist here.
Time’s 100 Best Inventions of 2020 explore the list
Every year, TIME highlights inventions that are making the world better, smarter and even a bit more fun. (See last year’s list here.) To assemble our 2020 list, we solicited nominations both from our editors and correspondents around the world, and through an online application process. We then evaluated each contender on key factors, including originality, creativity, effectiveness, ambition and impact. The result: 100 groundbreaking inventions—including a smarter beehive, a greener tube of toothpaste, and technology that could catalyze a COVID-19 vaccine—that are changing the way we live, work, play and think about what’s possible.
Notable 2020 entry:
Every day, you inhale countless potentially infectious particles. If one gets past the mucus lining in your upper airway and enters the lungs, you could get sick. When you exhale respiratory particles, others are also put at risk. For more than a decade, Harvard aerosols expert David Edwards has been working on what he calls the nasal “equivalent to washing your hands” to reduce these risks. He thinks he’s found it in FEND ($60), a drug-free salt- and calcium-based nasal mist that strengthens the mucus lining, helping it trap and flush out tiny pathogens. In a preliminary study, people who used FEND exhaled about 75% fewer aerosol particles than those who didn’t, suggesting it could be a worthy addition to the disease-prevention arsenal, along with handwashing, masking and social distancing. Lear morn about FEND here.
Here Is a Photo of a Single Atom via Popular Mechanics more
“The photo, taken by David Nadlinger and titled Single Atom In An Ion Trap, is the winner of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council science photography competition. The photo depicts a single strontium atom, embedded inside a strong electric field, blasted by lasers which cause it to emit light…”
Something to Watch: AlphaGo trailer
With more board configurations than there are atoms in the universe, the ancient Chinese game of Go has long been considered a grand challenge for artificial intelligence. On March 9, 2016, the worlds of Go and artificial intelligence collided in South Korea for an extraordinary best-of-five-game competition, coined The DeepMind Challenge Match. Hundreds of millions of people around the world watched as a legendary Go master took on an unproven AI challenger for the first time in history.
Something Else to Watch: Zappa! trailer
With unfettered access to the Zappa family trust and all archival footage, ZAPPA explores the private life behind the mammoth musical career that never shied away from the political turbulence of its time. Alex Winter’s assembly features appearances by Frank’s widow Gail Zappa and several of Frank’s musical collaborators including Mike Keneally, Ian Underwood, Steve Vai, Pamela Des Barres, Bunk Gardner, David Harrington, Scott Thunes, Ruth Underwood, Ray White and others…. Available on-demand this Fri, 11/27.
Robb Report Recommends: A High-Flying Wine Glass That Will Change the Way You Experience Champagne read the review
“With its tall stem, the glass appears potentially unwieldy, precarious. But it’s not; weight and motion are balanced by a wide base. It is, though, emphatically a tabletop glass, not one for juggling along with your plate of appetizers as you amble around your holiday party. The statement I like in that is that the Champagne in it is meant to go with all the food on the table every bit as much as the still red and white wines in the shorter glasses…”
How Famous Artists Would Serve a Thanksgiving Meal via Hannah Rothstein see them all
Warhol
Schnabel
Rothko
On a related note…. Inside the Holy Restoration of Houston’s Rothko Chapel via WSJ more
“…This fall, nearly a half century later, the Rothko Chapel plans to reopen after a year-and-a-half-long restoration overseen by New York firm Architecture Research Office (ARO). The project is part of a multiyear $30 million capital campaign called Opening Spaces, addressing the institution’s desire to honor Rothko’s original intent as well as its conservation and expansion needs…
