Antonio Vazquez, who calls himself the "Brujo Mayor", or grand warlock, leads a Mexican tradition of "brujeria" (sorcery), centered in the south-eastern city of Catemac.

He has been making new year predictions for 25 years, with mixed results.

Grand Warlock. BBC, you're on fire this morning.

Researchers have been trying to reproduce such silk for decades.

But it is unfeasible to "farm" spiders for the commercial production of their silk because the arachnids don't produce enough of it - coupled with their proclivity for eating each other.

Silk worms, however, are easy to farm and produce vast amounts of silk - but the material is fragile.

All we need now is the ability to synthesize and implant adamantium.

As a former employee of Best Buy (and for full disclaimer, a current shareholder), I can't say I entirely disagree with Larry Downes' post on Forbes regarding his latest experience at one of their stores.

It stinks that the store I loved visiting as a kid (and mostly loved working for) is going through such trying times right now. I hope Brian Dunn and the rest of the crew can turn the boat around before it's too late.

And I agree, there are far too many salespeople who work there that don't really understand how to give great customer service. But for every awful experience I've personally had there as a customer, I've easily went through dozens of solid interactions. There are lots of people I know who work at Best Buy for the same reason I wanted to work there: making sure people understand how cool technology is and how it can really change your life.

"Congress has sat idly by as the TSA strip searches 85-year-old grandmothers in New York, pats down 3-year-olds in Chattanooga, and checks colostomy bags for explosives in Orlando. Enough is enough!" said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) "The least we can do is end this impersonation, which is an insult to real cops."

First step towards ending the charade of security theatre in airports. Kudos to you, Marsha Blackburn.

Work in 60 to 90 minute intervals.  Your brain uses up more glucose than any other bodily activity. Typically you will have spent most of it after 60-90 minutes. (That’s why you feel so burned out after super long meetings.) So take a break: Get up, go for a walk, have a snack, do something completely different to recharge. And yes, that means you need an extra hour for breaks, not including lunch, so if you’re required to get eight hours of work done each day, plan to be there for 9.5-10 hours.

I don't normally like to link to these list type of posts since they mostly seem to offer mostly obvious tips. In this case, though, staying focused and productive is easily the most difficult part of being a freelancer, and this list offers some good advice for doing just that.

Susan Etlinger, an analyst at the Altimeter Group, said society was adopting new behaviors and expectations in response to the near-ubiquity of Facebook and other social networks.

“People may start to ask the question that, if you aren’t on social channels, why not? Are you hiding something?” she said. “The norms are shifting.”

I don't know if people ever think that because you're not on Facebook, you are hiding something. It can be frustrating to organize an event and try to remember all of your friends who aren't on Facebook, but besides that, I think a lot of my friends have a bit of respect for those who can get away.

As soon as something better comes along, or as soon as Facebook screws up big (like GoDaddy big), people will move to greener pastures.

Nilay Patel, for The Verge:

Faced with concrete impact to its business, it appears GoDaddy did the only sensible thing — fold.

Yeah, I'm still going to leave them.

The Olympian measure of endurance for a Soyuz crewmember is to hold your bowel for the two-day passage.

Pooping from the point-of-view of a NASA astronaut.

So it's been about 12 days since the thing started and yesterday we hit the crazy number. One million dollars. That's a lot of money. Really too much money. I've never had a million dollars all of a sudden. and since we're all sharing this experience and since it's really your money, I wanted to let you know what I'm doing with it.

Another nail in the cable television model of content distribution. But beyond that, it's really cool that he's showing everyone what he's doing with the money he earned.

I forgot I had this in my RSS feed list until today, when I got blasted with 30 pictures at once.

But really, it was a pleasant surprise. Some of these photos (like the one I linked to) are really, really well done.