With 150 kiosk machines worldwide, including one at Francis Ford Coppola's Cafe Zoetrope in San Francisco, French community publisher Short Edition serves short stories for free. There are about 30 in the US, including some on university campuses and transportation hubs, and each delivers a fiction story, drawn from over 100,000 approved original submissions. Users can select a story for young readers and everybody else and then hit one of three buttons to choose a one-, three- or five-minute long story. After venues purchase the machine, it costs $190 per month for content and software updates. Read more about the program at the New York Times.

NASA's Tess (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) is going in search of some 200,000 of the brightest stars, in an attempt to find alien worlds. The satellite will hitch a ride with SpaceX's Falcon 9 and then spend two years floating around space, not just to observe but ultimately to find exoplanets (potentially habitable planets). Tess will be "flung into a highly elliptical orbit around Earth that has never been attempted before" and each orbit will take 14 days to complete, as she scours for alien planets and then sends data back to earth.

For 60+ years, Tom of Finland (aka Touko Laaksonen) has inspired and empowered viewers, while pioneering expressions of gay desire through his art. While certainly erotic, much of his artwork wasn't overtly sexual, rather playfully suggestive—making male-on-male lust somewhat everyday and casual (nothing if not brave in the '50s, when he began showing his work). In a new show at Detroit's MOCAD, "Tom House: The Work and Life of Tom of Finland," Laaksonen's art is explored alongside his private life. Displaying everything from childhood sketches to personal possessions, the show promises to be tremendously comprehensive, with the team at MOCAD and the Tom of Finland Foundation recreating "the interior of Laaksonen’s own Los Angeles perch." See more at Artsy.

Located just outside of Moscow, a retro-futuristic home built for Vladislav Doronin is the only private residence Zaha Hadid ever designed. With the only brief being that Doronin wanted to "wake up in the morning and just see blue sky," Hadid created a fascinating structure whose first floor merges with the forest and a 22-meter high tower rises above the trees. Inside there's a pool, massage areas, sauna and even a hammam—all in Hadid's striking style. See more at Designboom.

Italian design studio NINE has produced a storage furniture series called Stüda that's covered in studs compatible with Lego bricks. Constructed from corian, the series features three different modular sizes and numerous colors. They'll make their debut at Milan Design Week but the innumerable opportunities for customization will continue to manifest long after they're available to consumers.

A list that's just as fun as it is purposeful: NPR readers have selected the 150 best albums made by women. Roughly 4,500 people participated and ultimately 8,000 received a vote. The poll was done as a counter to NPR's self-assembled list, voted on by 50 NPR-affiliated women. Many of the top 10 don't surprise: iconic works by Lauryn Hill, Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush and Beyoncé. Others just might, from Taylor Swift's placement to which Fiona Apple album ranks highest, and where Madonna happens to crop up. Time certainly plays a role but check out the whole list at NPR to establish your own opinions.

A new luxury hotel called Aurora Station is set to begin accommodating guests in 2022. The brainchild of start-up Orion Span, this is a hotel unlike any other—as it will be in space. Founder and CEO Frank Bunger says, it's the "first-ever affordable luxury space hotel," but the word "affordable is questionable since a 12-day stay is going to cost upward of $9 million. As for the luxury element, it seems that the key is size, as it will be roughly equivalent to a large private jet cabin. Read more at Space.

The last Concorde may have completed travel in 2003 but that doesn't mean supersonic travel came to an end entirely. Three aviation start-ups are hoping to bring Mach speed back by 2023—and plan to tackle the faults of the previous airplane. First, not all companies are planning to reach Mach 2 (as the Concorde did) but max out at Mach 1.1 to 1.8. Further, they'll be more fuel-efficient (with two engines as opposed to four) and with a thinner nose, they should be able to reduce sonic booms. Read more about all three—one of which is referred to as the "direct descendant of the Concorde"—at the Wall Street Journal.

Co-founder of the influential Studio Ghibli, Isao Takahata has passed away at 82 years old. Takahata (who started the studio with Hayao Miyazaki) wrote and directed some of the most magical and poignant animated films of the past 50+ years—including the heart-wrenching "Grave of the Fireflies," an anti-war film based on a short story by Akiyuki Nosaka. Heavily inspired by French literature and film, he was particularly moved by French poet Jacques Prévert's work—especially animator Paul Grimault's "Le Roi et l’Oiseau" for which Prévert wrote the screenplay. While Takahata didn't "put pen to paper," it was his beautifully imagined characters that made his work spellbinding and tender. Read more at the Guardian.

The brainchild of James Yoder, a future Electrical and Computer Engineering student at the University of Texas at Austin, the website stuffin.space offers a realtime 3D map of Earth as seen from outer space—and it includes tracking visualizations for everything in orbit, refreshing daily. Yoder takes orbit data from Space-Track.org and pairs it with the satellite.js Javascript library in order to ascertain satellite positions. The site also lets users isolate specific satellites or missions and chart their course over the years. Learn more at Boing Boing and explore it all at stuffin.space.

From Frida Kahlo to Coco Chanel, Salvador Dalí and more, Artsy has explored the fascinating (and, at times, odd) superstitious habits of famous artists, designers and musicians. While Charles Dickens believed that sleeping facing north helped his creativity, Dr Suess put on a hat when he felt writer's block. Coco Chanel was obsessed with the number five, thanks to a fortune teller saying it was her lucky number, and Pablo Picasso apparently "would not throw away his old clothes, hair trimmings, or fingernail clippings for fear it would mean losing part of his 'essence.'" Read more at Artsy.