Hey! How are you? It’s time again for five interesting things: stuff you might find intriguing, share worthy, and/or actionable. Or even just interesting.

Twiiiiigs innnn spaaaaaace: So the Japanese have an interesting idea for reducing space debris: satellites made of wood. At the moment, when we deorbit satellites (a fancy way of saying we make them fall down), they burn up in re-entry but leave a lot of alumina particles just hanging around. That combined with all the other crap we’ve left around up there means we basically have a veritable trash minefield around the planet. (There’s an illustration at the link). Wood would burn up more completely.

Time to stop being an ungrateful bastard? Some interesting research on the concept of being grateful has revealed that consciously counting your blessing has lasting positive effects on your mental health. Worth a try to help bolster your mental defences?

The Written Word – In school, we learned about cuneiform as one of the early forms of writing. But it’s hardly the only example. This website shows you a bunch of examples from each of the forms and provides links so you can learn more.

We really do have the technology – Prostheses have come a long way in the last twenty years. Long a very imperfect substitute for the lost body functionality, they can be painful, cumbersome, expensive, and not very functional. Specialists have developed a way to integrate a bionic hand that mitigate some of these concerns. Interesting explained at the link.

Your breakfast cereal and eugenics – A fascinating if disturbing piece about how your morning bowl of flakes has a dodgy and racist history. No, really.

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