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Bees can count. They’re not going to be doing your taxes anytime soon, though after a little bit of evolution and a reading of the tax code, it’s not completely off the table. A new study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B adds weight to a long-running debate about whether honeybees actually understand numbers or are just really good at spotting visual patterns. Some have argued that bees weren’t actually counting at all, just reacting to how busy or complex an image looked. A team of researchers led by Monash University revisited earlier experiments, but this time they tried to see the data the way a bee would. That meant taking into account all the limitations inherent in a bee’s eyes, which perceive the world with a lot less detail than human vision. Previous studies didn’t seem to fully take this into account, as they stacked the deck by using images with finer details that bees can’t fully process. When the researchers took another look at th...

The skies are busy this week, and the themes are hard to miss: what you’re building, what you’re avoiding, and what’s finally demanding your full attention. Pluto turns retrograde, pulling collective focus inward and asking everyone to audit the transformations they’ve been navigating—whether they’re ready to or not. This one’s not a slow burn. The pressure is immediate, and it’s pointed directly at the places you’ve been telling yourself you’d deal with later. Mars squares Jupiter and puts ambition up against reality in a way that’s going to feel personal, no matter what sign you are. The Half Moon in Aquarius closes the week out with a clear-eyed inventory of what’s actually working. The cosmos aren’t being cruel this week, stargazer—they’re just done letting you off the hook. Show up honestly, and the stars will meet you there. How will your sign fare this week? Aries: March 21 – Apri...

Snack Kingdom opened in Changsha, China, on April 17, set a Guinness World Record on the same day, and immediately had to shut down sales two days later because too many people showed up. (Are we surprised?) The store spans more than 13,000 square meters , comparable to roughly 30 standard basketball courts, and was built by Busy Ming Group, the parent company behind China’s largest snack retail chain, Mingming Henmang. More than 35,000 kinds of snacks from 70 countries and regions stock the shelves, with about a third of the products imported. If you ate one new snack per day, it would take approximately 96 years to try everything. The entrance is a long corridor of glass cupboards loaded with snacks floor to ceiling, which gives you some idea of what you’re getting into. Inside, the store runs on a section-by-section layout. “Instant Noodle City” carries over 3,500 varieties. The cola shelves cover about 20 countries, with classic brands and flavors s...

There’s always a fraction of every generation who insist they were born in the wrong era, romanticizing some mostly imagined past where everything was simpler, better. Usually, those people are idiots. Right now, though, given the state of things, I totally understand where people who think that way are coming from, even if the past they’re romanticizing was more or less the same kind of trash with a different set of causes and villains. I say all of this because, according to a recent NBC News survey , a massive number of Gen Z young adults would genuinely prefer to live in the past rather than deal with the present. Nearly half, 47 percent, of Americans aged 18 to 29 said they’d choose the past if given the option, according to NBC News. Only 38 percent would stay in the present, and a small minority are willing to risk looking forward to what the future holds. The report says that 62 percent of Gen Z believe their life will be worse than those of the previous generations,...

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Your brain has been working overtime, and May is about to give it somewhere worthwhile to go. With your ruling planet Mercury moving through two signs this month and collecting aspects along the way like it’s running errands with a very full schedule, the mental landscape shifts more than once. That’s your natural habitat, Gemini — you thrive when the air is electric with ideas, conversations, and the particular thrill of a mind that won’t sit still. The question this month keeps posing isn’t whether you can keep up. It’s whether you’re directing all that intelligence toward something that actually matters to you, or just enjoying the speed for its own sake. Mercury enters Taurus on the 2nd, which puts your ruling planet in slow, deliberate territory right out of the gate. That can feel like trying to text with oven mitts on. Taurus wants to think things through. It wants to weigh, consider, and arrive at conclusions that feel solid enough to bui...