Author: luapo

LOL. It’s handy shorthand for laughter, or the harbinger of an intellectual apocalypse, depending on who you ask. Its part of speech is also debated: spelled out, it’s an initialism, but if you pronounce it as a word, it’s an acronym.

“But I don’t use it at all!” you might say. “I am too smart to use an asinine word like LOL!” Maybe you are, but you might be surprised by how many acronyms and intialisms you do use on a daily basis—and by their origins.

Some are fairly straightforward. For example:

BRB: Be right back
FWIW: For what it’s worth
HTH: Hope that helps
IDK/IDEK: I don’t know/I don’t even know
IIRC: If I recall correctly
IMO/IMHO/JMHO: In my opinion/In my humble opinion/Just my humble opinion
KWYM/KWIM: Know what you mean/know what I mean
OTOH: On the other hand
TMI: Too much information
TIA: Thanks in advance
TTYL: Talk to you later
WTG: Way to go

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A cloud of charged particles from the sun slammed into Earth Monday, setting off an intense geomagnetic storm that spawned northern lights across the U.S.—even in the Deep South. Sky shows were reported in more than half the 50 states, including Georgia, Alabama, and Arkansas, according to Spaceweather.com.

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It’s 75 years since the first lobotomy was performed in the US, a procedure later described by one psychiatrist as “putting in a brain needle and stirring the works”. So how did it come to be regarded as a miracle cure?

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These are the leather gloves that enable complete control of touchscreen devices while keeping the hands warm. Ideal for use with smartphones, ATMs, or GPS devices, the gloves employ carbon fiber conductive threads woven into the index fingers and thumbs that maintain the conductivity necessary for nuanced, tactile control of a touchscreen device, inhibited by traditional gloves. The gloves allow accurate typing and enable any touchscreen command, such as zooming in or out via pinch gestures or scrolling through pictures with finger swipes.

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This is the version of Scrabble that provides only 75 seconds for players to form as many anagrams as possible using letter tiles that automatically recognize words. Speedy placement ensures success–the five 2″ sq. electronic tiles sense their relative positions when placed next to one another, beeping and flashing when an approved three-, four-, or five-letter word is assembled. Two games challenge a solitary player to form as many five-letter words from the same letters or random letters and a third requires the tiles be passed from player to player to form words in a limited time to avoid elimination.

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Ever wonder why you may look prettier in some photos and uglier in others, even with the same smile and the same lighting? It’s all about the camera lens. These portraits—taken by Stephen Eastwood—show how this works.

If you have ever used a dating site and thought “damn, he/she looked so hot in those pictures! What happened?” or “wow! He/she looks a lot better in person!” you know exactly what I’m talking about.

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