In the past, orchids were a symbol of conspicuous consumption. The flowers are beautiful, yet their value lay in the fact that they were hard to propagate, demand exact conditions to survive, and take years to bloom. Orchid lovers could devote their lives to the challenge of caring for them, or spend ridiculous amounts of money buying more. Today, a few of the 10,000+ species of orchid can be bought at stores all over for the same price as other houseplants. What happened?  

It took around 400 years of trying for anyone to understand what makes an orchid seed grow into a plant. The smallest orchid seeds weigh less than a microgram and are as tiny as a human sperm, and for many years scholars in Europe believed that orchid flowers grew from fermenting semen left behind in fields and forests by goats or birds. Only in the 16th century did a scientist first identify and describe their seeds.

Europe has hundreds of orchid species of its own, but the orchids that drove plant people to madness and obsession came from across the ocean. In the early 1800s, naturalists started shipping flouncy, bright cattleya orchids from tropical Brazil back to England. These flowers grow larger than a person’s palm, and they drip with color and ripple along their petal edges. But no one could figure out how to create more of them. A single pod can contain millions of seeds, and all of them might fail to grow, whether they’re sown on pieces of fern, strips of cork, patches of moss—at one time growers tried anything that seemed like it might work. Demand for these tropical orchids kept rising, but no one in Europe could reliably produce them. Orchid fever ran so hot that the wealthiest orchid lovers hired professional collectors to travel to faraway jungles and send plants back home.

The great orchid turnaround began when plant physiologist Lewis Knudson began studying why orchid seeds were hard to grow in the early 20th century, and continued when cell biologist Donald Wimber experimented with orchids in the 1950s. Read the fascinating history of orchids at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY 2.5)

Cole and Marmalade meet their new housemates, Zig Zag and Jugg, but only after a gradual program to get them used to each other first. Along the way, we can marvel at the cat paradise that Chris Poole and his family have made their home into.

Dan Martin of the webcomic Deathbulge (previously at Neatorama) went to Finland for the Helsinki Zine Fest and got arrested for sexual assault. Understandably, he tells us the story in comic form. Read the rest of it here.

OK, we take it back... @AlisonHammond2 #ThisMorning30 pic.twitter.com/jdUUMD8QSg

— This Morning (@thismorning) October 3, 2018

Forget that boring ol' green screen! To capture today's fickle TV viewers, news channels need a new and exciting way to broadcast their weather report. Say, with a floating map shaped like the British isles.

Watch what happened when ITV brought British television personality Alison Hammond to present the weather forecast straight from a Liverpool dock, with the help of two hunky sailors ...

All weather reports should be as fun as this!

King of Customs garage in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, modified a Nissan SUV so the driver's seat - complete with steering wheel, pedals and the gear shift - is in the back! View more images over at Carscoops.

Move over, Chris Hemsworth!

For his What If: Movies Reimagined for Another Time/Place series vol 7, artist Peter Stults (previously on Neatorama) imagined Mad Max actor Mel Gibson as Marvel Comics' Thor.

M.J. Mouton, who has a daughter in school, tweeted:

My daughter's school has dress up week.

Monday is ...

Wear Red if you are taken.

Wear Green if you are single.

Wear Yellow if it is complicated.

She is in middle school.

Totally inappropriate. Welcome to Louisiana.

Read the story over at TODAY

Yes, there have been many machines that can solve a Rubik's cube - some in lightning speed - but this Rubik's cube invention by a Japanese guy who called himself Human Controller is different: it can actually solve itself!

Watch it in action:

Four lanes each from four directions, and everyone is in a hurry to get somewhere else. According to redditors, this is Warsaw, Poland, at the intersection of Grojecka and Wawelska.



Yes, there are traffic lights, but they malfunctioned last month during a rush hour rain storm, so this happened. -via Digg

(Image credit: ToxicPapercut)

Christine McConnell (previously at Neatorama) became an internet star because of her intricately-decorated baked goods, her creepy sense of style, and her awesome cosplay. She's parlayed that success into her own Netflix series called The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell. It's part cooking show and part sitcom, as she makes treats for her creepy collection of animated talking pets. -via Laughing Squid

Got a smart dog? No, you don't ... according to science, that is!

Researchers from the University of Exeter and Canterbury Christ Church University found that dogs actually aren't all that intelligent:

The study examined more than 300 papers on the intelligence of dogs and other animals, and found several cases of "over interpretation" in favour of dogs' abilities.

"During our work it seemed to us that many studies in dog cognition research set out to 'prove' how clever dogs are," said Professor Stephen Lea, of the University of Exeter.

"They are often compared to chimpanzees and whenever dogs 'win', this gets added to their reputation as something exceptional.

"Yet in each and every case we found other valid comparison species that do at least as well as dogs do in those tasks."

Read the rest over at Phys.org

Image: Lab-Rador by louisros

This map by Hackernoon used data provided by the dating app Hater to determine which foods are most disproportionally disliked, relative to how other states feel about those foods. Take a look around, and it appears that many states' pick for the worst food is less about how the food actually tastes, and more about what that food represents. The environmentally-minded coffee connoisseurs of Washington state hate Keurig K-Cups. Macho Montana hates pumpkin spice flavors. And while Texas cattle ranchers love steak, they hate seeing it overcooked. Some make sense, like Kansas disliking shellfish. The shellfish they get isn't as fresh as it would be anywhere else. A few states are confusing, like Missouri. There must be a story somewhere about the last bite of a hot dog. See the enlargeable image at Hackernoon.  -via Uproxx 

Expectations were high for the movie Star Wars: The Last Jedi last December. If you followed opinions on the internet, you may have been surprised at the vehement anger over Rain Johnson's episode of the Skywalker saga. We know that Star Wars fans are the harshest Star Wars critics, but this time it felt different. And it was. Morten Bay of the University of Southern California has published his research about the social media backlash against the movie, and found that it was highly influenced by Russian social media users, whether people or bots, and what might have been an exercise in covert influence.   

Bay suggests that reputation may not be earned, and instead “finds evidence of deliberate, organized political influence measures disguised as fan arguments,” as he writes in the paper’s abstract. He continues, “The likely objective of these measures is increasing media coverage of the fandom conflict, thereby adding to and further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society. Persuading voters of this narrative remains a strategic goal for the U.S. alt-right movement, as well as the Russian Federation.”

The paper analyzes in depth the negative online reaction, which is split into three different camps: those with a political agenda, trolls and what Bay calls “real fantagonists,” which he defines as genuine Star Wars fans disappointed in the movie. His findings are fascinating; “Overall, 50.9% of those tweeting negatively [about the movie] was likely politically motivated or not even human,” he writes, noting that only 21.9% of tweets analyzed about the movie had been negative in the first place.

The study is available online. Scroll down at the link to read the whole thing.

Finding microbes living deep underground is surprising, although it's happened before. But researchers were very surprised to find cyanobacteria, which normally requires light for photosynthesis, living in deeply-buried rock in Spain. A team led by Fernando Puente-Sánchez of the Spanish Centre of Astrobiology in Madrid dug a borehole 2011 feet deep and examined the sample they brought up. The presence of cyanobacteria was so unexpected, they dug another hole to control for contamination. The cyanobacteria was there, also.

So what’s going on? How can these microorganisms survive at such extreme depths with no access to sunlight and scant traces of water?

Observed through a microscope, the subterranean cyanobacteria appeared similar to their cousins that live on the surface. Genetic analysis, however, told a slightly different story; the enigmatic cyanobacteria produce enzymes that convert hydrogen into useful energy. And revealingly, the researchers observed lower levels of hydrogen within the air pockets of the rocks where the cyanobacteria lived compared to areas in which they were absent. This suggests the underground microbes are consuming hydrogen gas to get their fuel.

The discovery is all the more weird because species without access to light and water are thought to have restricted opportunity for mutation and evolution. But life, uh, finds a way. Read more about the underground cyanobacteria at Gizmodo. 

(Image credit: PNAS)

Sometimes internet brings you a beautiful piece of art , culture and philosophy. All Li Ziqi (ok Zikai) videos are a pure aesthetic thrill, but this one has a nice twist.

Bbpeach has the story behind on Reddit : "This girls name is Li Ziqi and she was orphaned at a very young age so she went to live with her grandparents in the countryside. As a young adult she lived in the city but then moved back to the countryside to take care of her grandma after her grandpa passed away.

She uploads her videos on Weibo and her fans re-upload her videos on Youtube.

She also has longer videos with bloopers that show she is the one setting up the camera and recording/cooking/building.. basically doing everything herself."

After the movie version of The Addams Family showed Thing as a hand with free movement about the house, it didn't take long for the toy version to become a Halloween classic. They are good for something besides scaring people, as Kiko the cat demonstrates. She is game for being petted by an automated hand for quite some time before she decides she's had enough. -via Tastefully Offensive

Psychiatry in the 19th century was filled with quack doctors and quack cures. The need for doctors specializing in mental illness rose quickly during and after the Civil War, and among the new crop of doctors was Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell. He studied phantom limb syndrome among the many battlefield amputees, wrote about it, and became known as the “Father of Modern American Neurology.” Mitchell then turned to other mental maladies, such as “neurasthenia,” which could be pretty much anything. The cure for men was to get back to nature and do physical labor.

But the cure was not quite so simple for women. Ladies, too, found themselves impaired by the pace of modern life, or, at least, swept up in the medical trend. More specifically, white, upper-class, educated women came to dominate Mitchell’s patient demographic. Women who occupied privileged positions like this, who were often writers and artists, had been increasingly afforded time outside of the home, the opportunity to socialize, and higher education. But using their minds so extensively, Mitchell believed, could easily deplete their energy and fry their fragile nerves.

Mitchell proceeded to prescribe the rest cure almost exclusively to these women—“nervous women,” writes Mitchell, “who, as a rule, are thin and lack blood.” And the way to quell the overexerted brain and depleted blood supply of a woman was to, essentially, prescribe her a long, milky, much-needed rest.

Patient were prescribed isolation, bedrest for months at a time, a calorie-rich diet of milk and baby foods, and no mental stimulation. Many gained weight, which for some, was a benefit. Read about Dr. Mitchell's weird treatment at Atlas Obscura.

The Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina is huge and inhospitable. That made it an unpleasant place to live, but preferable to living in slavery, and perfect for hiding from slave hunters. Great Big Story tells us how escaped slaves made it their hiding place, and then their home. -via Mental Floss

This looks like a close-up of the xenomorph from Alien. But it's green! This is the South African succulent Faucaria tigrina or the Tiger’s Jaw. Photographed from different angles, you'll see that the Tiger's Jaw shares another xenomorph feature: the jaws-within-jaws. No, it's not a meat-eating plant. According to Plant Africa, the toothy shape of the leaves is optimal for collecting moisture from water vapor in the air. See lots of pictures of Faucaria tigrina at Kuriositas. 

(Image credit: Flickr user Mike Keeling)

Horror films have never gotten much respect at the Academy Awards. Over 90 years, only six horror movies have been nominated for Best Picture, and you could argue about whether some of those were really horror films. Now, imagine that the Oscars had a category for Best Horror Film. What movies would have won that prize over the past 40 years? The Ringer took this fantasy exercise and ran with it, coming up with five nominees for every year since Halloween came out in 1978, and crowning an imaginary Best Horror Film winner from those nominees (with short critiques and video clips) for each year. Some of those years were thin on great horror, while others had so many good movies that it's hard to compare them with each other. And whether or not you agree with their choices, you'll have a great list of movies you might want to watch or re-watch in October.

-via Metafilter

HORSE PLAY: Surveillance video captured the moment a runaway horse galloped into a French café after escaping her racing stable -- bucking, kicking and spooking several customers; no one, including the horse, was injured. https://t.co/b1xc3q32yi pic.twitter.com/MbvduwuRFk

— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) October 1, 2018

This time it's not a joke: a horse did walk - or rather gallop and buck into a bar in Chantilly, France.

Credit: Stephanie Jasmin

This happy heifer is definitely playing fetch and obviously having a wonderful time! She can't pick that big ball up in her mouth like a dog would, so she soccer-kicks it back to the woman. As the top commenter at YouTube says, this is the type of thing that makes you go vegan. -via Laughing Squid

Mountain goats are being airlifted out of Olympic National Park in Washington State because according to the National Park Service:

the fluffy ungulate has begun harassing visitors at campsites “where they persistently seek salt and minerals from human urine.” Goats are known to “paw and dig” where people have relieved themselves, causing the animals to become a nuisance.

They are attracted to sources of salt and minerals to supplement their diet. These nutrients are a lot harder to come by for this non native species in Olympic National Park.

The mountain goats are being relocated to the Cascade Mountain Range of Washington State, where they are a native species. As of September 28th, 98 mountain goats had been relocated and released. Read more at Motherboard.

You know about Tokyo Rose, but did you know the Nazis had their own woman on the radio, feeding propaganda along with popular music? “Axis Sally” was the nickname of American citizen Mildred Gillars, who had dreams of becoming an actress. Instead, she followed a series of lovers to various countries and ended up broadcasting in Berlin.

For her part, Gillars vacillated easily between playing hot swing-era, big-band hits and denouncing the Jews, Franklin Roosevelt and the British on air. “One thing I pride myself on,” she’d say in a typical broadcast, “is to tell you American folks the truth and hope one day that you’ll wake up to the fact that you’re being duped; that the lives of the men you love are being sacrificed for the Jewish and British interests!”

She was very calculating, though, pushing back whenever she worried the text she was given to read on air went too far—“If she had something in the script that she thought was going to make her liable for treason in the future she fought it,” Lucas says.

It didn't work, and Gillars was convicted of treason in 1948. Read the short version of Axis Sally's life as told by Richard Lucas, author of the book Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany, at Smithsonian.

When the #WrigleyRallyRat gets the biggest cheer of the night? I think it was rigged by the piRATes! It’s been a rough game! @barstoolsports @BarstoolBigCat @Deadspin @SarahSpain pic.twitter.com/H8PrgnLqtI

— Will Byington (@willbyington) September 26, 2018

Chicago Cubs fans didn't have a lot to cheer about last week as their team lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-0 at Wrigley Field. But if you're a fan, you gotta cheer! When a rat tried to jump a wall, an entire section rallied to give the rodent some encouragement. It took him three tries, but he did it, as the crowd celebrated the small victory. Will Byington caught the incident on video. -via Digg

"Home sweet home" is the literal truth in case of this chocolate house, made by artisan chocolatier Jean-Luc Decluzeau as a promo for the travel aggregator Booking.com.

Approximately 3,000 pounds of chocolate was used to create the 200-square foot home - and yes, everything is made out of chocolate!

Actually that's Asteroid 2015 TB145 as spotted by NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, when it zipped past Earth - missing it by just 300,000 miles - on Halloween three years ago.

It's making the rounds again on the Internet, but its likely won't come that close to Earth when it comes around again this year.

The YND239-20 cafe (named after its street address in Seoul, the capital of South Korea) looks like an optical illusion: everything in it - from the walls to the chairs and even the dishes - look like hand drawn black and white cartoon!

Lonely Planet has the scoop:

“We wanted to supply a place that looked like a cartoon to our customers,” the cafe’s marketing manager, JS Lee, told Lonely Planet. He also said they’re all happy to see that guests take pictures and make good memories in the cafe because that is “exactly what we wanted.”

Turns out that this little corner of black and white design and stellar Instagrammability gained its popularity exclusively through word-of-mouth. “Famous bloggers, Facebook stars, magazines and TV programs all talked about us,” JS Lee remembered. “Then we became famous very naturally.”

When Jeremy and Krista lost their wedding venue before the big day, they decided to have the wedding ceremony over at Jeremy's place of work: a fire station in St. Paul Park, Minnesota.

"We talked about it, 'What if there's a call?'" Krista told KARE11, and said "You can let the other guys go; you're not leaving our wedding."

But after the ceremony, there was an urgent "all call" request to fight a nearby fire ... and Jeremy had to go.

Read about what happened over at KARE11.

(Photo: December Orpen Photography)

You might see this picture around the internet claiming that these are the same people as the original stock image, just a few years later. That's not it at all. This spot-on recreation came about almost by accident. Charlie Todd, the guy in the middle, explained what really happened.

-via reddit