Quartz:

At its height, almost three-quarters of American households bought and kept orange juice in their refrigerator. But shifting American eating habits—which stigmatize sugar and leave little time for breakfast—and surging juice prices have done significant damage to American demand.

As a kid, we never had orange juice for breakfast (too expensive) and the only time I ever drink it now is if I go to a diner for breakfast and then I crave it. When’s the last time you had a glass of OJ? For our non-North America readers – was/is orange juice ever a staple of your breakfast?

Fast Company:

Twenty years of wild parties, legendary product launches, and heated controversies: how an unlikely mix of “nerds, rock-and-roll hippie freaks, and business suits” grew into the tech world’s most-talked-about annual gathering.

It’s interesting to read where SXSW came from. Keep an eye on the buzz that surrounds various apps, startups, services and technologies that invariably rise out of the show each March.

Vice Australia:

A coal mine is currently burning the hell up in Australia. For obvious reasons fires in coal mines are especially problematic—the exposed coal face burns, just like coal should, and smoulders through the underground seam where it’s safely protected from any firefighting. if you find yourself in Australia, avoid Morwell. It’s just not a healthy town.

Brings to mind the (still – since 1962) burning coal mine in the now mostly abandoned town of Centralia, Pennsylvania.

The Verge:

Gravity is a major contender at the Academy Awards this year, carrying a muscular 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, for a sci-fi epic that really raised the bar. While it has stiff competition from the likes of American Hustle in terms of acting and direction, the award for Best Visual Effects (which doesn’t typically hold the same cachet) ought to be a lock.

I don’t think it’s a great movie (even though I enjoyed it immensely), I left the theatre wanting to buy the DVD just to see how the visual effects were accomplished.

So Bad So Good:

One the final night of the Chinese New Year, the locals of Yanshui District in Tainan City, Taiwan put on a firework display that likes of which you’ve never seen before.

Several thousand bottle rockets are stacked together in a beehive formation and then simultaneously ignited all at once.

Everyone likes fireworks and bottle rockets but these folks are nuts.

NYCAviation:

Airline pilots will use one of three techniques when landing in a crosswind.

While the writer is a pilot who may think these kinds of landings are “not as scary as they seem”, I can tell him that, as a passenger, they can be terrifying. Still, it’s interesting to read about them and know pilots train for them.

The Atlantic:

I want to tell you about the controversy the Bell System’s embrace of numeracy provoked—how resentful some people became when their familiar method of making phone calls was taken from them. I want to tell you about why the change was necessary, and how it still informs our conception of phone calls and text messages. I want to tell you about the future of the phone number.

Interesting article if only for the tidbit about why New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit got their respective area codes.

Mashable:

The 2014 American International Toy Fair this week ushered in a collection of the hottest toys due out this year — from a Siri-like teddy bear and an augmented reality bedtime stories to a board game that teaches coding to pre-schoolers — but scattered within the shiny and new is the bizarre and wacky.

Gotta feel bad for today’s kids. Some of these toys are really lame.

The Atlantic:

A new study from the Transportation Research Initiative at the University of Michigan looks at global driving fatalities with up-to-date World Health Organization data. Around the world, deaths in fatal car crashes are 1/6th as likely as dying from a common health problem, like heart disease. In the U.S., where road crashes account for just 2 percent of deaths, individuals are 13 times more likely to die from cancer.

Here is the map of driving fatality rates per capita, with the most deadly countries (led by Namibia) in red and the safest countries (led by the Maldives) in green.

Of course Maldives is the safest – they’ve only got ten cars in the whole country. Good to see the countries I drive in most often are relatively safer for any number of reasons.

The Vancouver Sun:

A new survey shows that four Canadian cities – led by Vancouver – are the highest ranking in North America for quality of life.Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal take the next three places respectively in the 2014 Mercer Quality of Living rankings.

I live here and it really is a spectacular city.

Yahoo News:

When the co-pilot on flight ET-702 from Addis Ababa to Rome locked himself in the cockpit while the pilot went to the bathroom and announced a hijacking, Italian and French fighter jets were scrambled to escort the plane through their respective airspaces.

But although the co-pilot-turned-hijacker quickly announced he wanted to land the plane in Switzerland, where he later said he aimed to seek asylum, Switzerland’s fleet of F-18s and F-5 Tigers remained on the ground, Swiss airforce spokesman Laurent Savary told AFP.

This, he explained, was because the Swiss airforce is only available during office hours. These are reported to be from 8am until noon, then 1:30 to 5pm.

If only the bad guys kept the same hours.

Betabeat:

For those of us in the startup, Silicon Valley-makes-the-world-go-round tech industry, the name Sam Biddle incites fear (in the timid), disgust (in the short-tempered) and a chuckle (for those with a good sense of humour).

But before the 27-year old Brooklyn-based tech stroke gossip blogger wrote his first word, there was another Sam Biddle, the “real Sam Biddle”, as she jokes, who has beaten cancer and raised two children while building a global empire for nail artisans.

Anyone else have this issue? I share a fairly common name and have gotten all kinds of misdirected tweets for an NFL football commentator, a pastor in Haiti and Larry King’s wife.

Wall Street Journal:

Starbucks isn’t an Olympic sponsor and is therefore forbidden to have an official presence here. But after Mr. Glinton, a journalist for NPR, trailed the mystery cup for several hundred feet, its owner told him that he was out of luck. It came from the”Office,” she said – the Olympic broadcasting center where NBC has its own secret Starbucks.

The best line of the piece had to be from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review sports columnist Dejan Kovacevic who carries around an empty Starbucks cup and pours other coffee into it. He said, “It’s a status symbol,” he explains. “It shows I’m not some kind of lowlife.”

If you believe that, you’re still some kind of lowlife.

The Atlantic:

Recently I watched the four-episode original BBC House of Cards series from 1990. It’s on Netflix too, and, seriously, if you are interested in either politics or satire, this is not to be missed.

As a Canadian, I usually love the British originals of American shows better but the comparisons between both of these very good adaptations of the book is interesting.

Phys.org:

Ten questions about physical and biological science were on the quiz, and the average score—6.5 correct—was barely a passing grade.

Just 74 percent of respondents knew that the Earth revolved around the Sun.

One in three respondents said science should get more funding from the government.

Apparently, so should science education.

Bored Panda

There are many biological theories behind why women live longer than men, but we’re sure that behavior like that in these pictures isn’t helping.

There’s an amazing amount of The Stupid going on here.

It’s Valentine’s Day so, why not? Not safe for work because of language but completely safe for facts. The “diamond ring is a scam” story is a fascinating one.

MSN Autos:

There are really only a few important features in a car: brakes, drivetrain, seats, steering, suspension and wheels.

Still, there’s no better way to personalize your vehicle than to order up a few options, so let’s take a look at some of the most outrageous factory-installed options ever devised.

After I posted about the “11 features you no longer see in cars“, I got a tweet from @Jenns79 about this story. Some of these factory options, especially the idea of a record player in the car, are insane.

BuzzFeed:

Canada has a heart of gold. And also just a lot of gold.

The best story has to be #2.

Mental Floss:

If you fondly remember being surrounded by two or three tons of solid Detroit steel with a whip antenna on the front from which you could tie a raccoon tail or adorn with an orange Union 76 ball, and enough leg room that you didn’t suffer from phlebitis on long road trips, then you might also miss a few of these.

I’m not old enough to remember tail fins or suicide doors but I certainly remember vent windows and the floor mounted dimmer switch!

TechCrunch:

Former Daily Show correspondent John Oliver returned to host this year’s Crunchies, the tech industry awards show co-hosted by Gigaom, VentureBeat, and TechCrunch. And he didn’t pull any punches.

Absolutely not safe for work but funny nonetheless.

Vice:

Artist Simon Menner was recently granted permission to spend some time with the German Army and its snipers. During the two occasions he visited, he captured the soldiers’ remarkable ability to blend into their environment, producing images that appear to be simple landscape shots until you look close enough to spot the barrel of a gun.

None of these guys would get me. Mostly because I don’t go into the woods.

Grantland:

Go to any speedskating race and you’ll see them: the happy hordes of fans from the Netherlands who have come to support their athletes in their nation’s most dominant sport. They carry HUP HOLLAND HUP banners and bells; they have their own band, called Kleintje Pils, which means “a little bit of beer.” And at the end of the night, they flock to the Holland Heineken House — in most cases, to celebrate another win.

Much like the Brazilians at soccer events, the Dutch have more fun than anyone at speed skating events around the world. And the words “Heineken House” must bring a tear of joy to the eye of The Loop’s Publisher.

TIME.com:

Today’s Flickr has more than 10 billion photos. It hosts 1.8 million groups, which are being joined by 50,000 new members a day.

I’ve been a member since 2005 but have almost left a couple of times. Good to see it’s having a bit of a resurgence.

New York Times:

Gravity is defeated, for a beat or two, when it all works perfectly, and “it’s a great feeling because you can just float,” says Jessica Jerome of the United States, who will be competing in the first women’s ski jumping competition at an Olympics.

This is interesting not just for the information provided (ski jumping is much more technical than you would imagine) but for the way it is presented too. Make sure you check out the pages on Halfpipe, Luge and Slopestyle.

Punch:

A white-jacketed bartender steps up to the long wooden bar at the Buena Vista Café and lines up a dozen tulip-shaped glasses. Into each go two white sugar cubes pulled from a bulk box. Then comes hot black coffee in a continuous steaming stream from a diner-style pot. Next: Irish whiskey, delivered in a dramatic long pour all along the line of waiting glassware. Last comes the cream—aged for half a week and then lightly whipped in a milkshake blender—ladled gently from a metal pint glass like a fluffy floe.

The pattern will continue all day long—filling anywhere from 2,000 to 3,500 glasses—until the bartender’s white jacket sleeves are spattered with coffee and the century-old tavern shutters at 2 a.m.

Whenever I go to San Francisco, I always stop in at the Buena Vista Café for four to seven Irish Coffees.

io9:

Add this to the list of things we never knew existed but now desperately need: The Evolution Door, a “flip-panel” invention by Austrian designer Klemens Torggler.

We’ve all opened a thousand doors but I bet you’ve never opened a door like this.

PetaPixel:

In 50 seconds and one uninterrupted flowing video shot, UK directing duo US and advertising agency Grey pay tribute to six completely unique, culturally iconic images by expertly recreating one after the other.

If that sentence made no sense, it’s because it’s hard to describe what you’re about to see.

Rodin, Forest Gump, Mad Men, Michelangelo, Reservoir Dogs and Daft Punk all in one shot. Make sure you watch the behind the scenes video.

The New York Times has a “firehose” of live stream photos from the Sochi 2014 Olympics. It’s cool to watch but lacks context.

Salon:

I don’t remember any of what I’m about to tell you.

I died, in a way, and was reborn, with the same physical form, but not the same mind. I still to this day sit around with my family and listen to stories about the other Su.

Fascinating and terrifying story.