We know that snowflakes are ice crystals that form in the atmosphere from water vapor. We've also heard that no two snowflakes are alike, but how would we ever prove that? Only a miniscule percentage of the world's snowflakes will ever be examined, and if they don't melt immediately, they are mashed up with all those other flakes that we shovel from our driveways. Another thing we know is that snowflake crystals form in six-sided shapes, hexagons to be exact, but why is that? Johannes Kepler thought snowflakes had something in common with the hexagons of a beehive, which is an intriguing idea. Physicist Brian Cox explains exactly why snowflakes form in a hexagon, and why we find them beautiful in this pleasantly charming video from the Royal Society. -via Kottke
We are selling our baby trebuchet. We only used it a couple of times. PM me for a quote. pic.twitter.com/uJnf0TLDsM
— Bojan Tunguz (@tunguz) January 12, 2024
Mr. Tunguz no longer needs the baby yeeter, as he has completed this stage of parenting. Nonetheless, he labels the device incorrectly. Twitter used to have a community note attached to this post:
Amazon has a surprising number of items that are called "I cannot fulfill that request" or something close to that. They have fewer after several websites highlighted the phenomenon yesterday and sent Amazon scrambling to take them down. That's what happens when you use a large language model to name your products, and even worse, write your Amazon ads. While some of these ads may be the result of clueless translation attempts, far more of them are scammers, counterfeiters, and drop shippers who are generating so many ads that they cannot be bothered to actually look at them. And neither does Amazon.
The ads that made it through without encountering any sort of quality control can be hilarious, like when the item name includes a mention of OpenAI's rejection of trademark infringement. After the article was published, Amazon took down all the items that were screenshotted and more, but the same oddities are rampant in social media platforms.
We can laugh, but the real problems come when AI is somewhat supervised and therefore not so easy to detect. Read about the Amazon sellers letting AI run amok at Ars Technica. -via Fark
(Top image: Amazon via archive.org)
Twenty-five-year-old Lawrence Nelson of Lenoir, North Carolina, went missing in 1906. His body was found a couple of months later, and two men were arrested for his murder. Charles Hampton Kendall and John Vickers were convicted and sentenced to 30 and 26 years, respectively. Soon after the conviction, Nelson's father, the pastor of a local church, erected a tombstone for his son that gave his name and birthdate, then underneath was carved, "Murdered and robbed by Hamp Kendall and John Vickers, Sept. 25, 1906." Most families would have been discouraged from using such an epitaph, but it was his son and his church cemetery.
But Kendall and Vickers were pardoned by the governor ten years later, mainly because there were doubts about the one witness against them. Then the real murderer confessed. But the tombstone remained, because to change it would be grave desecration, which was a crime. That set up a conundrum that went on for decades. Read what eventually happened to the falsely accused murderers, the tombstone, and the laws surrounding gravestones at Atlas Obscura. Yes, there's a picture of the tombstone.
"Celebrity" is a catchall term for someone who is famous, or at least notable. Usually there is a reason for their fame, some accomplishment in movies, TV, sports, music, politics, business, or even crime. In our modern media-obsessed culture, there are also people who are just famous for being famous. We call them celebrities because there's no other way to describe them, except maybe "influencer."
But the phenomena is not new. Giacomo Casanova was born in 1725 in Venice and was neither fabulously wealthy, nor powerful, nor all that talented in any one area. Yet he was definitely a celebrity, always appearing in the news and in gossip. He cultivated that reputation because his greatest goal in life was to be famous. We remember Casanova today mostly because of all the women he was associated with- in fact, his name became a term for a womanizer. He would have appreciated that. But in his time, he was noted for simply being noticed. Read the story of Giacomo Casanova's self-made fame at Jstor Daily. -via Strange Company
(Image credit: Francesco Narici)
Medical-X is a company in the Netherlands that produces technologically advanced medical testing and training equipment. Edgaget visited the company's booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas where the Adam-X doll was on display.
Adam-X is, like Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, fully functional. He has "working genitalia", which is, of course, essential for proper CPR training. He can produce either urine or blood depending upon the situation.
Above the belt, Adam-X offers other simulated responses, including flushed cheeks, dilated pupils, a swollen tongue, pressurized blood vessels, deflated lungs, and extremities that turn blue if you don't save him quickly enough. He's the ultimate tool for simulated medical emergencies.
-via paige
Auralnauts has redone the first Star Wars movie, now known as A New Hope, as if Zack Snyder had been at the helm. The story is familiar, but is now chock full of Snyderesque touches, like the overuse of his signature slow motion shift for dramatic emphasis (executed appropriately and perfectly at 8:50), the camera lingering unnecessarily on the most gory details, and too much nonsensical exposition in the dialogue. That weird explaining is necessary to save time for the slow motion shots. All this comes with an over-the-top score to clearly tell us what we are supposed to be feeling. While these tropes can be tiring over a whole movie, you have to admit that Auralnauts greatly improved the originally lame lightsaber fight between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Oh, and the ending telegraphs the fact that Snyder just ran out of time. Those slow motion sequences sure do eat up cinematic minutes! -via Boing Boing
On March 10, 2020, Food and Wine informed us that McDonald's was going to start serving Big Macs with four hamburger patties, to be called the Double Big Mac. Do you recall what else happened on March 10, 2020? My kids called me from from school crying because they were told to vacate their dorms by Friday and go home. Their graduation was off because the school was shutting down due to the COVID-19 epidemic. Also, the Double Big Mac didn't get much notice for its limited run.
Four years later, McDonald's is going to try this again. The Double Big Mac will be on the menu starting on January 24, for a limited time at participating restaurants. If it sells well, this massive meat monster could find a permanent place on the menu. The real question is: how much will it cost? A company spokesman wouldn't say, because prices will vary by location. True carnivores should start saving up. -via Mental Floss
In the latest video installment of his What If? series, Randall Munroe explains the disasters that would follow if our earth stopped spinning on its axis. The hypothetical question included the fact that the atmosphere would continue moving at the same speed, so that part is enough to blow us all away pretty much immediately. We are used to the earth's movement at up to a thousand miles per hour at the equator, so it would be quite disorienting if the rotation stopped, but we wouldn't have time to deal with it because of that atmospheric movement.
Then the long-term consequences would kick in. The oceans would throw a lot of water into the atmosphere, but retain plenty enough to blast the land with tsunamis, and our days would change to years. That makes surviving the effects pretty darn difficult. But all things considered, the earth would eventually start rotating again someday, probably without us. -via Damn Interesting
Lulu Lotus is a children's book author and illustrator from Canada. Her books focus on teaching children the importance of being kind to each other and animals. They do not -so far- teach children how to whistle with their noses.
Nose whistling is skill that Ms. Lotus has carefully honed like a blade since childhood. She used it while growing up to play pranks on her teachers. From the above video, you can see why: when she whistles, there is no change in her facial expressions. It's a silent, ninja-like art.
Guinness World Records has declared her nose whistle, which measures at 44.1 decibels, the loudest in the world. That is approximately as loud as a bird call.
-via Born in Space
J.R.R. Tolkien's world called Middle-earth is vast and varied, with many kinds of sentient creatures interacting through the adventures in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and other works. Swedish chemical engineer Emil Johanssen is a fan who took on the huge project of collating and parsing the information from Tolkien's works in maps, charts, and breakdowns of all sorts. One part of the project is figuring out the demographics of the various kinds of characters.
One thing quite noticeable about those demographics is the dearth of female characters, which are only 18% of the 982 characters mentioned. Hobbits are 30% women, but no other type comes close. There doesn't seem to be any female Orcs at all, but that may be because they were created by sorcery. However, that was only one of several possible Orc origins Tolkien mentioned. The life spans of each type of character vary widely, also. Hobbits live past 100 years easily, but the only two that lived past 130 were both aided by the Ring they carried. The lifespans of Men depended on which age they lived in. Read more about the statistics of Middle-earth at Big Think. -via Kottke
today, after almost 2 years of leaving a yam on the walmart customer service desk nearly every week, i was approached by 2 managers who cornered me as i was headed to checkout. without any other introduction, they looked me in the eyes and whispered …. “why yams…” (1/5) https://t.co/sSRDailekX pic.twitter.com/6sIu14chdP
— ˚₊‧꒰ა clione chan ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ (@boople__snoot) January 11, 2024
Twitter user @boople_snoot is an artist, cosplayer and . . . some other things that I can't figure out. Her profile uses the terms "cybertard" and "jestercore". Anyway, @boople_snoot is, shall we say, not conventional.
This eccentricity shows in her ongoing project to prank workers at her local Walmart. Normally, I'm not a fan of "pranking" people that one doesn't know, especially when they're working. But this prank is truly harmless. In involves just leaving a packaged yam on the customer service desk.
This eventually led to a confrontation with managers at the Walmart.
In 2016, the BBC commissioned Aardman Animation Studios to create an animated tribute to biologist and television host David Attenborough on his 90th birthday. They made three stop-motion videos in the style of their Creature Comforts franchise of the 1990s, with wild animals talking about their own impressions upon meeting Attenborough. Rich Webber, who directed the project, recently uploaded a video featuring the best lines from the series featuring the penguins, gorillas, and lyrebirds that have worked with Attenborough. Keep an eye on the crazy stuff going on in the background of each vignette. You can see all three of the original videos in their entirety here. Attenborough, now 97, is still working in television. -via Nag on the Lake
Strangely, fights to the death staged between gladiators weren't invented in Rome at all. It was an imported custom that was first launched in Rome in the year 264 BCE. That was when Brutus Pera, a powerful member of the Brutus family who ran the Roman Republic, died. His sons held a lavish wake, called a munus, where they distributed meat and wine to the public. They also had six slaves fight each other to the death for entertainment. That began a custom in which the funeral rites of prominent people often included a bloody battle that took more, although less important, lives.
These battles changed and evolved over time. They became so elaborate and popular that the excuse of a funeral became stretched and finally abandoned. The tradition was tweaked to make the fight more horrific, and slaves were trained for the fights. Read the origins of gladiator fights and what they led to at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Carole Raddato)
Trader Joe's is a grocery stores known particularly for their natural and organic products sold under their store brand. A few years ago, I read that the companies Aldi and Trader Joe's were founded by two German brothers and the family still owns both grocery chains. That was not true, but a confusion of the story of Aldi, which was founded by two brothers and then split into two companies, and the fact that Aldi Nord bought Trader Joe's in 1979. Trader Joe's was already an established grocery chain with an interesting story and a founder named Joe.
Joe Coulombe built his business on the back of alcohol and a slightly exotic vibe that was just perfect for its time and place. The only thing you might notice that Trader Joe's and Aldi have in common is a limited selection of items compared to huge supermarkets, which helps control expenses. Weird History Food brings us up to speed on the story of Trader Joe's.
