How Wi-Fi Works on Airplanes, the Unusual Origins of US City Names, and Iceland’s Clouds
This week we check out some of the beautiful national parks in Europe worth visiting, learn how airplane Wi-Fi works (aside from being bad), and dive into the unusual origins of many US city names.
How Wi-Fi works on airplanes (except for bad ones)
It’s no secret that Wi-Fi on flights is generally … not the best, but how exactly does it work? Is the plane essentially a giant cell tower in constant contact with terrestrial cellular networks? Or is there some other technology, maybe satellite?
Well, this TechQuickie video explains how it all really works, and how miraculous it is that you can access the Internet on your plane, sometimes tens of thousands of feet. But even if it’s a miracle, it’s not the most reliable, so Linus also explains how Wi-Fi in flight can become more reliable in the future. [ via TechQuickie ]
The food we eat
In this week’s TED radio hour on NPR, we detail our relationship with food, how climate change and economic factors will slowly change our food and, inevitably, the types of foods we can eat and how often we can. there are them and much more.
From a big discussion about how the American diet has changed over time with Mark Bittman (formerly of the New York Times), to the future of food, namely insects, a food source some people choose to forget about, with Marcel Dicke. The entire episode is delightful to listen to and extremely timely considering that here in America we just celebrated one of our biggest food celebrations of the year. [ via NPR ]
Unusual origins of 39 U.S. city names
From absurdity to arbitrariness, many US cities were named for interesting reasons – for example, Atlanta was named after the Western and Atlantic Railroad, which was much better than Terminus, its original name. Philadelphia, on the other hand, actually means “brotherly love,” which is more than the city’s motto, and Jacksonville is named after Andrew Jackson, even though he never actually spent time there. Also, we have no idea why Dallas is named that way, and there are many theories as to where the name actually came from. All this – and more – in this video from Mental Floss. [ via Mental Floss ]
11 beautiful European parks worth visiting
Similar to our quick rundown of 12 beautiful US national parks you should plan your trip to , this list of 11 beautiful parks in Europe, many of which are national parks in their respective countries, are also worth checking out if you’re planning an overseas vacation. …
While the drawing is focused on “if you only had a day,” it’s obvious that you could never explore 11 different national parks in one day – but each park is seen as a day trip that has something to do when you’re there. , something you should definitely see, an animal that you can meet while you are there, and much more. Check out the full text below. [ via Medway Travel ]
Iceland Clouds
To summarize this week, I’ll share a beautiful time-lapse video of Iceland , a place I’d really love to escape to visit right now, full of beautiful landscapes and gorgeous beaches. I stumbled upon this because a lot of the scenes can be seen in one of my favorite Chrome new tab extensions, Delight, which shows you a little time-lapse landscape with each new tab. Whether you install it or not, enjoy the video – and have a good week. [ via Jonathan Mitchell ]
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