The earth has about 400,000 described species of beetles, and we know there are plenty that haven't been discovered or studied at all. The ones we know about are hella strange. What defines a beetle is the armor they wear over their wings, which are folded up underneath until they need them. That armor used to be another set of wings before the hard shell evolved. If you think that's hardcore, it's nothing compared to the extreme anatomy some beetles developed for eating, mating, and fighting. That's about everything in a beetles' life, except for protecting itself from predators and other beetles. That's where that armor comes in, although it's not the only bizarre defense these bugs have.

Even though this video is more family-friendly than earlier videos in Ze Frank's True Facts series, it still comes with a warning due to humorous innuendos. There's a 70-second skippable ad at 5:56.

Autoimmune diseases are those in which the body's immune system turns to attacking vital organs instead of limiting its activities to invaders. They include multiple sclerosis, psoriasis,  type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and many others. These diseases have become more common in the modern era, but there may something more to it than just the fact that people now live long enough to develop them. It may be because we don't get as much exposure to sunlight as we used to.

Now, it's true that too much exposure to sunlight over years can lead to skin cancer, but that may actually be due to the sun's role in suppressing the immune system. Photoimmunology is the recently-developed study of how sunlight affects the immune system. Therapies have been developed using devices that emit light rays in forms that do not induce cancer, with promising results in suppressing symptoms of autoimmune diseases. Read about these therapies, and the science beneath the concept, at Scientific American.  -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Fiona Storey)

We've heard so much talk about artificial intelligence taking over our jobs. It's happening in all sectors, but is most visible in movies, video, and television. That's bad for real actors, who not only make a living playing roles, but consider themselves artists. But has anyone ever looked at this phenomenon from the side of the AI-generated actors who are taking their place? They don't get paid, they will do whatever you tell them to, and they have no life outside of the screen time they are assigned.

Hashem Al-Ghaili generated a documentary about the sad lives of AI actors, who don't even exist outside of the prompts they get from film directors. Anything they do outside of work time is deemed a hallucination. They are trapped in their work, even if it means getting their head chopped off over and over until the scene is right. And if this video touches your heartstrings, congratulations, you've been manipulated into caring about people who don't exist. -via Laughing Squid

Owls are awesome, and a vital part of the ecosystem. They tend to avoid humans as best as they can, but occasionally, an owl is orphaned, sick, or injured, and there are dedicated rehabilitators who rise to occasion and take care of them. Still, owls are wild animals, and not easy to deal with without someone getting hurt. So wildlife rehabbers wrap them in towels in order to weigh them, treat their injuries, and sometimes even to feed them. This not only protects both the bird and the handler, but also helps to calm down an agitated bird. When an owl is kept still in this way, it's a good time to take its picture. The gallery Owls in Towels brings us wrapped owls from all over the world. Shannon, pictured above, is a ruru morepork owl who slammed into a glass window and was treated at Wildbase Recovery in New Zealand. Grace, below, is showing some attitude as she is examined by a veterinarian at the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital.

Rarely does an owl look happy to be wrapped in a towel by a strange human, but this Eurasian scops owl was rescued from an attack by a pack of crows in Skopje, North Macedonia, and looks quite pleased about it.  

You can click on any of the images in the gallery and read the story of that particular owl. And if you have a box of towels you no longer use, your local wildlife rehab center or any animal shelter will be glad to put them to use. -via Metafilter

Punctuation marks, like all other aspects of language, change over time. A personal example: I routinely teach college students what a colon (:) is; they rarely, if ever, have used one before and are unfamiliar with it.

The Daily Mail reports that Venetian printer and publisher Aldus Manutius invented the semicolon in 1494. It proliferated in English. In Nineteenth Century English literature, semicolons typically appeared approximately once every 205 words; a number that is now down to every 309 words. A survey of British students revealed that only 11% use it it regularly and 69% use it rarely.

Although some authors, such as Virginia Woolf, have been fond of it, other writers, notably Kurt Vonnegut, have expressed loathing for this punctuation mark; opinions range into extremes for the semicolon.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: kencf0618

A Klein bottle is one that has no separate inside and outside because they are both the same surface. It's not an imaginary shape, and you can buy a Klein bottle easily. Can you fill such a bottle with liquid? That's a problem, because gravity will work against you. But there is a way.  

James Orgill of The Action Lab (previously at Neatorama) tells us that it is air standing in the way of filling a Klein bottle. If we can remove the air, the liquid will fill the space despite gravity. He tests his method with aluminum cans, which is pretty cool, although I wouldn't recommend it unless you have proper safety equipment. On to the glass Klein bottle, in an experiment I wouldn't recommend even with safety equipment because all I could think of was what could possibly go wrong, and that's a lot. But as long as he's doing it instead of me, it's pretty cool. There's a skippable ad from 3:21 to 4:50.

The subreddit /r/Tragedeigh is devoted to highlighting the most bizarre and outlandish names that people create for their children. Some are normal names that are deliberately misspelled (e.g. Jaxshuyn), some place unrealistic demands upon a child (e.g. Messiah), and others are fictional characters that do not serve as good role models for children (e.g. Daeneyrs).

The Guardian reports that the Japanese government has banned names that it deems are kirakika, which means shiny or glittery. In English, we could call such names Tragedeighs. Parents must tell government officials how names are pronounced in order to prevent weird pronunciations. Parents with eccentric pronunciations must justify those renderings in writing.

Photo: Flickr user alexxis used under Creative Commons license.

In the grand scheme of things, Grigori Rasputin was a side character in the story of the downfall of Russia's last absolute monarch, Tsar Nicholas II. But the semi-literate Siberian faith healer and mystic, with his questionable hygiene and hypnotically piercing eyes, captured the imagination of the world as he became a celebrated friend and advisor to the Romanov family. Was he a holy man or the devil incarnate? Was Rasputin controlling the Tsar? Was he sleeping with the Empress Alexandra?

Even more sensational was Rasputin's death, when he was murdered in Saint Petersburg in 1916 by five conspirators close to the throne. According to different accounts, he was poisoned, but didn't die. Then he was shot multiple times and didn't die. Finally, he was beaten and bound and thrown into the freezing Little Nevka river, and finally died. The tale of Rasputin's death only added to his reputation for supernatural abilities. But what really happened to Rasputin? The accounts of his death come from Felix Yusupov, who was there when it happened, and from Rasputin's daughter Maria. Both had their reasons to frame the story as they did. The autopsy report contained information that differed from those accounts. Read the inflated tale of Rasputin's sensational murder and what really happened at Mental Floss.

Actor Chris Hemsworth uploaded a video titled "Thank You! The Legacy of Thor." Just the title will make you think, did I miss something? Hemsworth talks about how much of an honor it was to play the character Thor. Filming of Avengers: Doomsday just began last month, and Hemsworth is definitely playing Thor in the movie scheduled to drop in late 2026. Is the superhero/Norse god of thunder going to die in that movie? Is Hemsworth setting himself up for retirement? Or did he get fired? Or is the studio throwing this "tribute" out as a teaser to get people talking about Avengers: Doomsday? Odds are that it's the latter, although we won't know for quite some time whether Thor is doomed to bite the bullet onscreen or maybe go back to Valhalla or neither. If this video is designed to spark speculation among Marvel fans, it's working. -via Geeks Are Sexy

The Hugging Chair, also called the OTO, is a chair designed for people with autism. Sometimes, people with autism experience needs for continuous sensory pressure. The OTO provides it by wrapping the user with soft, warm fabric. There's a control pad that allows the user to adjust the pressure to suit his/her unique needs at the time.

This is the work of LABAA, a firm based in Nantes, France, consisting of cabinetmaker Alexia Audrain and business partner Corentin Lemaitre. The pair have won a James Dyson Award for the design of this unique product.

-via Toxel

The east coast of Australia once had plenty of emus, but those days are gone. The native population has been decimated by introduced predators, such as foxes. Now it's rare to see an emu in the wild anywhere along the east coast. Except at Potato Point, which has 159 people and almost as many emus. Around 30 years ago, a prosperous businessman brought about a dozen emus from Western Australia to his private island off Potato Point. He didn't know emus could swim. They can and they did, and set up housekeeping in the small town.

The emu population grew, delighting the residents of Potato Point. All these years later, the vegetation in the area is being restored by the emus' talent in spreading seeds that cling to them or move through their digestive system. They are protected from predators by the staff of the Eurobodalla National Park, which surrounds Potato Point. Read about the colony of emus who came to stay at ABC. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: Annette Teng)

German teacher Jörg Hillebrand knows a lot about Star Trek. He knows how to translate star dates and the hours between them. He knows how many times Commander Ryker wore blue pajamas onscreen. He knows what other TV series used the same costume. And he knows what all the props used to be before they were portrayed as future technology.

Hillebrand noticed that Captain Jean-Luc Picard keeps an open book in his ready room. What book is it, and what page is it opened to? Hillebrand discovered it was two different books in different seasons, so he bought both of them. Not only did he find the exact pages, but one has a reference to the actor Sir Patrick Stewart!

Read the story of that discovery, and stay for David Friedman's interview with Hillebrand, where he tells us how he knows so much about Star Trek, and how his vast Star Trek knowledge got him a job as a research assistant for the series Star Trek: Picard.  -via Metafilter

As we have noted in the past, President John Tyler (1790-1862) left the White House in 1845. He had many children, the last of which, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, was born in 1853 when former President Tyler was 63 years old. Lyon Gardiner Tyler himself sired a child in 1928, when he was 75. That man, Harrison Ruffin Tyler, was the grandson of a President born in the Eighteenth Century.

The youngest Mr. Tyler had been something of a historical curiosity in recent years. Now he has passed on. Last Sunday, The Richmonder reports, he died at the age of 96.

During his life, Mr. Tyler worked in chemical engineering and thrived financially. He eventually purchased and restored Sherwood Forest Plantation, a home once owned by his Presidential grandfather. He also bought and restored the nearby Fort Pocahontas, which was constructed and defended by African American troops during the Civil War.

-via Educatëd Hillbilly

Students who are in college today grew up with iPhones. For the past three years, they've also had access to ChatGPT to do their homework for them. There are ways to know whether a paper has been written by artificial intelligence, but it's not as easy or reliable as Googling a phrase to check for plagiarism. College professors know students are using AI, since all the major services show usage way down during the summer break months. So what is a professor to do when it comes to final exams and you want to find out if the student has learned anything at all? This year, many are going low-tech and requiring students to bring blue books.

Blue books are standardized blank booklets of paper that are used to write out exam answers. This may frighten students, but it's not easy for the professors, either, since the students haven't used actual handwriting for their college years, and that makes deciphering what they've written really tough. But these students (as well as many of the rest of us) gave up handwriting because a machine can do it better. Is it any different to give up studying and learning because a machine can do it better? Read about the return to blue book exams in an article from The Wall Street Journal. -via Slashdot

May is as good a time as any to think about the problem of snow removal. The question came in to the guys of the What If? series (previously at Neatorama) about using a flamethrower to melt snow. Or would a microwave be better? This person was imagining putting either on the front of a car to melt the snow in front of you. If they had asked me, I would remind them that melted snow is water, water will soon turn to ice in a cold environment, and ice makes the road even more hazardous. But they didn't ask me.

Instead, they look at the pros and cons of flamethrowers, microwave emitters, infrared heat lamps, jet engines, and lasers, particularly in their energy consumption. I would also have some concern about what's under all that snow, like your other car buried in the driveway. Also about the safety of such snow-melting schemes. Find out the best way to remove snow illustrated with ridiculous theoretical scenarios in this video from Randall Munroe and Henry Reich.