Guest Post: Fact-Checking: the Polar Bear Test

Everyone has an embarrassing moment on social media. For me, the most memorable started with an adorable photo of a baby polar bear. The bear had gleaming white fur, big brown eyes, and a sweet expression. It floated into my line of vision one morning two summers ago, as I consumed Twitter while consuming my […]

Guest Post: Data Mining and Visualization: Bed Bug Edition

Data mining. Maybe the term makes you think of tapping out facts out with a pickax, or of scary algorithms and programming. But it doesn’t have to be that way. With this handy guide, I’ll show you how to do (rudimentary) data mining from the comfort of your desk, no computer science degree necessary. All […]

TGIPF: The Bed Bug and His Violent Penis

Behold the bed bug penis. Entomologists call it a lanceolate paramere, where lanceolate means “shaped like a lance head” and paramere, the “copulatory hooks formed from outer subdivision of primary phallic lobes.” Put more simply, it curves out from the tip of the male’s abdomen and ends in a wicked point, like a dagger. This […]