Same Battery, Bigger Plan The lithium-ion battery in your phone is a quiet workhorse: it recharges overnight, survives years in a pocket, and nobody thinks twice about the chemistry inside it. Small, personal, and completely unremarkable. In 2008, while laptops and phones were still the main use case, car manufacturers were already looking at that … Read more
The Name Everyone Pins on the Wrong Kidnapping Ask someone where “Stockholm Syndrome” comes from and you’ll usually get the same answer: Patty Hearst, the kidnapped heiress who seemed to switch sides and join her captors. It’s a memorable story, and it’s the one that stuck in pop culture. But the term already existed a … Read more
A Holiday for the Sandwich Sidekick Every November 14, the United States marks National Pickle Day: a real, recognized food holiday for the thing most people shove to the edge of the plate. That’s worth a raised eyebrow. Nobody throws a parade for mustard. But pickles got their own day, and the story behind it … Read more
Her Nicest Outfit At the Academy Awards ceremony held in March 1938, honoring the films of 1937, an actress climbed onto the stage to collect her second consecutive Best Actress Oscar, becoming the first person in Oscar history to win the same acting award two years running. Her name was Luise Rainer, the film was … Read more
An Innocent Countdown On September 24, 2022, Neatorama published a short blog post titled “Halloween is Just Around The Corner!” It reads like a thousand other seasonal posts: pumpkins, costume ideas, a promise of snacks before October 31. Nothing to see here, you’d think. Except buried in the links sits a bedroom designed to look … Read more
A Bike You Run, Not Pedal Picture a bike frame with no pedals, no chain, no crank. Just two wheels, a seat, and your own legs doing the work, the way Fred Flintstone scoots his stone-age car along by running his heels against the ground. In September 2012, a post titled “Flitz: The Flintstones Bike” … Read more
A Portrait Made of Forest and Sky Picture a face built out of trees, a shoulder dissolving into fog over distant mountains, or a head full of birds where hair should be. This “double exposure” portrait style shows up constantly on Instagram and movie posters, and it looks like something only a film photographer with … Read more
Something Odd on Avenue des Gobelins Paris’s 13th arrondissement isn’t short on charm, but one short stretch of Avenue des Gobelins, about 984 feet (300 meters) long, started drawing a different kind of attention in 2018. A giant teddy bear turned up in a bookshop window, tall enough to reach a grown adult’s shoulder. Another … Read more
Somewhere, Someone Is Building a Dalek in Their Garage Picture a Dalek: the pepper-pot-shaped alien that glides across a floor, eyestalk twitching, gun arm humming, a flat metallic voice ordering someone to “EXTERMINATE.” Now picture it not on a BBC soundstage but in a garage in some ordinary town, built from scratch by a fan … Read more
A Vegetable Legend From the Land of Ice Alaska doesn’t exactly scream “vegetable garden.” Six months of weak daylight, short summers, and ground that stays frozen through much of the year aren’t growing conditions anyone would pick on purpose. Yet this is the place people point to when giant rhubarb comes up, stalks thick enough … Read more