- There’s hope for the pandas → Finally, Some Privacy: After 10 Years, Giant Pandas Mate in Shuttered Zoo … and for us? → Thanks to COVID-19, Internet-Connected Sex Toy Sales Are Booming
- It turns out tunnel-boring machines are far from, well, boring. → Meet the Most Interesting Tunnel Boring Machines
- A promising early experiment that may become more important than ever. → A Brain Stimulation Experiment Relieved Depression in Nearly All of Its Participants | Paradoxical pairing: If You Have Anxiety and Depression but Feel Better During Coronavirus, You’re Not Alone
- If you’re an introvert jonesing for some of the stress of extroverting, Hyphal Mesh has you covered, every Tuesday at 12:30 PT / 3:30 ET.
- Paper-Bag Masks from 50 Years Ago
- People are finding delight in all kinds of things right now. Is it time to discover delight in the dead?
- The Letterform Archive is a (well) “curated collection of over 50,000 items related to lettering, typography, calligraphy, and graphic design.” And now the online archive is open to all.
- Some long(ish) reads: The Mortician and the Murderer | a bank-robbing Olympic cyclist naturally uses his bike as a getaway vehicle | The highly unusual company behind Sriracha, the world’s coolest hot sauce | How a tiny endangered species put a man in prison | The Crazy True Story of the Zanesville Zoo Escape
- Get ’em in your ears: NPR’s updated list of virtual concerts of all kinds | the Cabin Fever Tunes schedule of folk/country/americana livestreams | Nightly Met Opera streams. And your eyes: The Art Of Quarantine | Unraveling the Mysteries of Ancient Egypt’s Spellbinding Mummy Portraits | Jonathan Harris’ works. And a bit of both with the ongoing Social Distancing Festival.
- Today in 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space on a voyage lasting 108 minutes. At lift-off, Gagarin spoke to ground control, saying “Off we go! Goodbye, until [we meet] soon, dear friends!” The first phrase, Poyekhali! in Russian (listen to it)—popularly translated as “Let’s go!” or “We’re off!”—became a popular phrase that is now a regular part of the Russian lexicon. See also: a ► 5-minute mini-documentary of the historic event, a nice piece on how Gagarin inspired Soviet design, Poyekhali! Gagarin cut, a collaboration between composer Úlfur Eldjárn and filmmaker Christopher Riley celebrating astronaut Tim Peake’s first orbit of Earth in 2015, and the finally-revealed true story of Gagarin’s death in 1968.