Mark Xavier
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Stories (52/0)
Everything You Should Be Using Your Local Extension Office for (but Aren’t)
If you grew up on a farm, participated in 4-H, or went to a land-grant university, you are probably already aware of what a rich resource your county extension office is for pro tips and life skills. On the other hand, if half of that sentence sounded like gibberish, let me introduce you to the Cooperative Extension: your hyper-local link to the research and expertise of 112 universities across the U.S.
By Mark Xavier16 days ago in Lifehack
How to Store Bread, According to Your Bread Personality
Welcome back to The Grown-Up Kitchen, a segment of Skillet devoted to answering basic kitchen questions. Not every voting-age adult is comfortable slingin’ steaks or even heating their frozen pizza. (My stepfather insists he’s never been able to microwave popcorn without burning it.) From basic cooking skills to gadget functions, food storage, and knife care, I’m here to help you feed yourself like a whole grown-up.
By Mark Xavier16 days ago in Lifehack
Netflix’s Free Password Sharing Is Over (but Here’s How to Do It Anyway)
Well folks, we’ve had a good run. Netflix has officially ended free password sharing in the U.S. If you have a Netflix account, you might have received an email confirming as much. If you borrow someone else’s account, you may have already been blocked from watching. People are pissed, with some cancelling their accounts in protest.
By Mark Xavier16 days ago in Lifehack
How to Snack, Italian Style
Been to Italy? Or know someone who has? They probably talk about aperitivo. It’s a tourist rite of passage, well known by students who just got back from their first semester abroad and seasoned travelers alike. With similarities to tapas, happy hour, or even a buffet, this uniquely Italian tradition brings people together after work, and in some extra leisurely instances, after lunch.
By Mark Xavier16 days ago in Lifehack
An Environmental Horror Story
In a paper just published in Nature, Hana Jurikova from the Center of Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany, and colleagues detail a global catastrophe a quarter billion years ago that resulted in the extinction of about 70 percent of land life and 95 percent of life in the ocean. Even insects were hit hard, with many whole orders in that class becoming extinct. Current lines of evidence indicate that the trigger was not a meteorite impact, but huge amounts of lava being extruded in Siberia over tens of thousands of years—during which time enormous amounts of greenhouse gases were pumped into Earth’s atmosphere.
By Mark Xavier17 days ago in Horror
Fifty Years Later, Remembering Sci-Fi Pioneer Hugo Gernsback
When expat Luxembourger Hugo Gernsback arrived in the United States in 1904, even he could not have predicted the impact his lush imagination and storytelling drive would have on the global literary landscape.
By Mark Xavier17 days ago in Fiction
Thomas Edison’s Forgotten Sci-Fi Novel
When Thomas Edison died in 1931, he held more than 1,000 patents in the United States alone. He was credited with inventing, or significantly advancing, electric lighting, storage batteries, the motion picture camera, the phonograph and even cement making—among many other things.
By Mark Xavier17 days ago in Fiction
NASA’s Snake-Like Robot Could Look for Life on an Icy Saturn Moon
NASA is testing a snake-like robot in hopes that it could one day look for life on Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. Developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the 220-pound and 13-foot-long machine is called EELS, or the Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor, and it’s designed to be “self-propelled” and “autonomous,” according to a statement from the agency.
By Mark Xavier17 days ago in Futurism
This 1000-Mile Long Storm Showed the Horror of Life in the Dust Bowl
The street lights were invisible. It was hot. It was dry. “It got so dark that you couldn’t see your hand before your face, you couldn’t see anybody in the room.” Confused animals milled around. Wells were choked and fields levelled.
By Mark Xavier17 days ago in Horror
The True-Life Horror That Inspired ‘Moby-Dick’
In July of 1852, a 32-year-old novelist named Herman Melville had high hopes for his new novel, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, despite the book’s mixed reviews and tepid sales. That month he took a steamer to Nantucket for his first visit to the Massachusetts island, home port of his novel’s mythic protagonist, Captain Ahab, and his ship, the Pequod. Like a tourist, Melville met local dignitaries, dined out and took in the sights of the village he had previously only imagined.
By Mark Xavier17 days ago in Horror
India’s Abandoned Island of Colonial Horror
For decades, an obscure speck of an island—measuring less than one-third of one square mile—was the site of the brutalization of thousands of convicts and political prisoners amidst a luxurious British colonial settlement. Today, the jungle has reclaimed the land of Ross Island, shrouding in foliage its gruesome past. Giant knots of Ficus tree roots ensconce the dilapidated remains of opulent bungalows, and have taken over a ballroom where couples once waltzed. Some 800 miles away from the coast of mainland India, the island in the Indian Ocean is now swaddled in eerie desolation and overgrown vegetation.
By Mark Xavier17 days ago in Horror
