Bee pollination is tied to almost 33 percent of all American crops, but the bee population has drastically declined in recent years. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), 42 percent of bee colonies collapsed in 2015 alone. But San Francisco startup Seedles intends to do something about it by planting one billion wildflowers.
Mondays might not be your favorite day of the week, but the good news is that we’re all in this together ladies and gentlemen. As purveyors of prime Grade A web content, the SolidSmack crew has done some of the heavy lifting to make sure you get your Mondays started on the right track. Welcome to The Monday List. Each Monday, we’ll link you up with some of the most insightful, informative, and socially-relevant stories to keep tabbed, bookmarked, reading listed, pocketed, or what have you. Be sure to check in each Monday morning for a new crop of freshly sprouted words curated straight from the source of your favorite…
Nearly a year ago, the BBC revealed a pocket-sized computer called the BBC Micro:bit that they planned to give to one million UK-based Year 7 school children as a part of their mission to “inform, educate and entertain” as more schools adopt more STEM-friendly curriculums. At 70 times smaller and 18 times faster than the original BBC Micro computers used in UK schools in the early 1980s, the Micro:bit is a handheld, fully programmable microcomputer for building digital devices and interactive objects that can sense and control physical devices. Now, the BBC has opened up the floodgates to allow anyone to tap into their platform to learn the basics of…
Don your favorite bathrobe, cream that coffee and get comfortable with this week’s SolidSmack Weekend Reader. The Weekend Reader features a handful of the most interesting articles featured on the ‘Smack over the past week ranging from tips and tricks to inspirational designs, processes, and more. So lay back, relax and take a load off while reading the top ten stories on SolidSmack this past week. Oh and uh…don’t forget to shed some much-needed sunlight on your face, too. BaseLantern Camp Light Packs a Big Beam, Charges Mobile Devices “Sometimes you just need to unplug, pack up some snacks, grab the gear, and make for the hills. But just because…
We would pop a few over the fence, just to hear the reaction. It was usually a grumble of sorts, a low guttural sound of pre-digested enzymes breaking down the fats. We had yet to see it, until one day, when we bound ten together around a ball of butter. Lowering it slowly, we saw it rise, mostly teeth, mostly skin, and wrapped in these links. Ross Tran – If you’ve seen his work, you know him as Ross Draws. Loads of super-mega style with so much video to go along. Connected World – Data viz geek Martin Grandjean maps the flight paths of the 3,275 airports in the world…
Often used for the production of engine parts, lost-foam casting (LFC) has seen a resurgence of interest in recent years despite having first been invented by sculptor Armand Vaillancourt in the 1950s and first used commercially by General Motors in the mid-1980s for their Saturn car line. More recently, Dutch industrial designer Klaas Kuiken became fascinated by the iron casting technique while visiting the Lovink Technocast LFC factory and set out to use the process for making consumer products outside of the traditional industrial setting – particularly clocks that could be made from the upcycled styrofoam from discarded consumer waste. To create the clocks, Klaas started with various pieces of discarded…