London’s Kew Gardens offers visitors chance to try mind-altering drugs

Kew Gardens is offering its customers the chance to try out mind-altering drugs as part of its 'Intoxication Season'. According to its website, the botanical paradise in south-west London will allow 'willing participants' to 'try an unusual plant', including cannabis, magic mushrooms, alcohol and coffee - although not all four at once, not least because each weekend…
wedding hashtags on Pinterest

The rise of the wedding hashtag: do you REALLY need one?

Apparently 55 per cent of couples now have a dedicated wedding hashtag. That’s 55 per cent of couples surveyed by Mashable and The Knot, not 55 per cent of couples in the whole wide world – but still. Having leapt from only nine per cent in 2012, that’s a heck of an epidemic. And by…

Dolphins are sensitive to magnets

Dolphins are sensitive to magnets, French researchers have found. Magnetoreception, or the ability to sense magnetic fields, has long been thought to be one of the ways that marine animals navigate, but there was little evidence that this was the case. So Dorothee Kremers and her colleagues from the Université de Rennes designed an experiment…
Netflix spoilers

Shiny vs Shiny: Do spoilers still matter?

'Some secrets are too good to keep,' says Netflix. The king of streaming has just released a survey claiming that 76 per cent of us now think TV and film spoilers are just a way of life, while 94 per cent will carry on watching even after we've had a major plot point revealed –…
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Eight old TV shows we’d like on Netflix NOW please

At first you think you will never reach Netflix saturation point. The bounty! The volume! The unexpected quantity of Jennifer Aniston films you’ve never seen! And yet, after a few months of blissful cohabitation there will eventually come a point where you find yourself having your first fight with the search box. ‘What do you…

Can the Libratone Diva’s sound live up to its looks?

Libratone has announced a new soundbar, Diva, which hopes to appeal to movie fans and audiophiles alike, and we were invited to an audio demo yesterday, to see whether its sound can live up to its aesthetics. The Scandinavian audio company is probably most famous for its minimalist-looking speakers, like the Loop, and the Diva…

Some dogs are natural pessimists, says study (aww)

Contrary to their reputation for being tail-wagging people-pleasers who are always up for a W-A-L-K, some dogs are apparently real pessimists. Dr Melissa Starling, from the Faculty of Veterinary Science at the University of Sydney, and her team put together a trial where they taught dogs to associate two different sounds with whether they would…

The 8 stages of finishing your favourite web series (or TV box set)

The rise of online streaming services, like Netflix and Amazon Prime, means that everyone could fall victim to the addictive potential of web series. You no longer have to be a loser sat in on your own night after night force-feeding your TV DVDs from box set after box set. In fact, Netflix is an…