For a Nochebuena (Christmas Eve) party, artist Lissette Carrera assembled an oz of Yoda eggs using what appear to be apple slices for the ears. It looks like spicy hot wasabi, right? Carrera says that her husband wanted to, as a prank, make one egg pure wasabi.

-via Super Punch

Earth and Sun is a neat interactive tutorial on what makes a day for people on Earth. In specific, it explains the Earth's rotation, revolution, speed, axial tilt, solstices and equinoxes, and more that you haven't thought all that much about.

The duration between two solar noons is known as a solar day which lasts the familiar 24 hours. However, that’s not completely accurate. If you look closely at the simulation of the sidereal and solar day you’ll notice that we didn’t account for two important factors – eccentricity of the orbit and the axial tilt of the Earth. In fact, 24 hours is the duration of a mean solar day. The actual duration of each individual day varies, but before we witness that variation we have to discuss the most important consequence of the axial tilt.

In the visual shown here, you can drag the Earth around on any axis, but you can't change where the sun is, so depending on what time you do it, you'll see where daylight and dark falls. That's just one of the many ways you can visualize what's happening on Earth at the site. -via Metafilter

Intermittent fasting is a type of diet in which a person limits either his eating times to 6-8 hours per day, or the number of moderate-sized meals that he will eat in a week. The big question is, is it effective?

Mark Manson, a neuroscientist from Johns Hopkins Medicine, says that “it could be a part of a healthy lifestyle”. He has studied the effects of intermittent fasting for 25 years, and he adopted it in his life 20 years ago.

An array of animal and some human studies have shown that alternating between times of fasting and eating supports cellular health, probably by triggering an age-old adaptation to periods of food scarcity called metabolic switching. Such a switch occurs when cells use up their stores of rapidly accessible, sugar-based fuel, and begin converting fat into energy in a slower metabolic process.

Mattson says studies have shown that this switch improves blood sugar regulation, increases resistance to stress and suppresses inflammation. Because most Americans eat three meals plus snacks each day, they do not experience the switch, or the suggested benefits.

More about this study over at EurekAlert.

(Image Credit: congerdesign/ Pixabay)

#SolarEclipse2019 — in pictures https://t.co/rv9FO0hDDk pic.twitter.com/Bv6F91967V

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) December 26, 2019

The eclipse, which is known as an annular solar eclipse, was also viewed in space. The eclipse started in Saudi Arabia. The Moon passed in front of the Sun, but it did not entirely cover the Sun’s face, and this created a brilliant ring (“annulus”) which gave it a “ring of fire” effect. It is the last eclipse of the year, and also the last eclipse of the decade.

See the many photos and videos over at Space.com.

What a way to end the decade!

(Image Credit: Al Jazeera English/ Twitter)

Spotify has sent a number of USB drives to reporters last week. The USBs had a note with them which said, “play me.” While it is not uncommon for reporters to receive USB drives in the post (as companies distribute USB drives which often contains promotional materials or very large files), anyone with basic security training knows that plugging in a USB drive with no precautions is a big no-no.

People over at TechCrunch have examined the drive sent by Spotify.

It was benign and contained a single audio file. “This is Alex Goldman, and you’ve just been hacked,” the file played.

The drive was just a promotion for a new Spotify podcast. Because of course it was.

Jake Williams, a former NSA hacker and founder of Rendition Infosec, called the move “amazingly tone deaf” to encourage reporters into plugging in the drives to their computers.

USB drives are not inherently malicious, but are known to be used in hacking campaigns — like power plants and nuclear enrichment plants — which are typically not connected to the internet. USB drives can harbor malware that can open and install backdoors on a victim’s computer, Williams said.

More details about this over at the site.

(Image Credit: TechCrunch)

Shark skin may be tough, but it is not tough enough to handle the acidified oceans of the future.

For nine weeks, researchers have exposed three puffadder skysharks to seawater modified to mimic projected acidic levels in 2300, and what they found out was corrosion had frayed the edges of many denticles (which are the toothlike protrusions that make up sharkskin). Sharks with damaged denticles could be more vulnerable to infection or injury.

“Shark denticles are made from dentin, which we know from human dentistry is susceptible to degradation from carbonic acid,” says Lutz Auerswald, a fisheries biologist at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. “That could make [sharks] especially vulnerable.”

More details over at ScienceNews.

(Image Credit: Albert kok/ Wikimedia Commons)

The Court of Historical Review and Appeals was an unofficial court in San Francisco that tried cold cases, often very cold cases that were thought to have been settled decades ago. It was a publicity stunt concocted by San Francisco publicist Bernard Averbuch in 1975. The first case it heard was that of police chief chief George W. Wittman, who was relieved of duty after being charged with accepting bribes to allow gambling to flourish in Chinatown -in 1905.

Averbuch had heard of Wittman when city archivist Gladys Hansen discovered police personnel records dating back to 1853. He saw injustice in Wittman’s firing, noted briefly in the ledger in red ink, and enlisted the help of his friend Harry Low, a Superior Court judge, to stage a rehearing. Local TV cameras turned out for the much belated trial. With the benefit of hindsight, Wittman’s “defense team,” a collection of civil servants, including Hansen, told a twisted tale of turn-of-the-century yellow journalism, mayoral corruption, racism and greed that had been hidden from the public at the time. Wittman, they argued, had been a pawn in a scheme to paint Chinatown as an unseemly and dangerous place, part of a bigger effort to move the Chinese immigrants off of their valuable land. With a bang of his gavel, Judge Low rewrote history, ruling that Wittman’s firing was unjust.

The "re-trial" was so popular that the Court of Historical Review and Appeals continued, examining many other historical cases for possible injustice over the next 25 years. The findings were not binding, but drew a lot of national press. Read about some of the other cases heard by the court at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Shaylyn Esposito)

Accessories sized for 11-inch fashion dolls will also work for 12-inch action figures. Redditor adultish- scored a used beachfront mansion made for Barbie dolls for $20 and converted it into a superhero headquarters for her son! While the superheroes don't need a kitchen or bathroom (at least not for adventures), they do need a roomy garage. And sure, that couch is too small for Hulk, but life-size couches are too small for life-size Hulk as well. See the before and after images here.

An American doctor has spotted something amazing on David, the statue created by Renaissance artist Michelangelo. That something is an anatomical insight made by the artist, which have gone unnoticed on the statue for more than 500 years.

In the vast majority of sculptures, and in the everyday physiology of living people, the jugular vein running from the upper torso through the neck is not visible.

But in the Renaissance masterpiece, the vessel is clearly "distended" and made visible above David's collarbone, as would occur in any healthy young man who's at a pitch of excitement about facing a potentially lethal opponent—in this case, Goliath.

"Michelangelo, like some of his artistic contemporaries, had anatomical training," Gelfman wrote in a letter published Dec 26 in the journal JAMA Cardiology. "I realized that Michelangelo must have noticed temporary jugular venous distension in healthy individuals who are excited."

But what is so amazing about this feature on the statue? This observation came to the artist over a century before its documentation by medical science! Talk about awesome powers of observation.

(Image Credit: Jörg Bittner Unna/ Wikimedia Commons)

Take your time to properly clear the ice and snow from your tactical vehicle before initiating your morning reconnaissance, or even just taking the kids to school and picking up groceries. That's how you stay safe and alert to potential threats.

The police department of Mansfield, Massachusetts appreciates your diligence. Several months ago, to encourage proper snow and ice removal, it invented the Snow Enforcer. This advanced device, ideal for urban operators such as yourself, has an extended buttstock, red dot sight, and side-mounted light.

What it lacks is a couple Picatinny rails and sling mounts for essential accessories. You may have to take your Snow Enforcer to a skilled scrapersmith to fully equip it.

-via reddit

You've seen, and probably worn, those New Year's Eve party eyeglass frames that have the number of the coming year on them. They were everywhere in 2000, as we celebrated the new millennium. But you might not know that the idea goes back thirty years ...and you almost certainly don't know the guys who came up with them.

Thirty years ago, in a small Seattle apartment, two friends smoked some weed, knocked back a few beers and talked the night away. That was tradition for Richard Sclafani and Peter Cicero, two best friends working middling jobs to supplement their music careers. But on this particular Friday night in January 1990, Sclafani and Cicero’s doodling would change New Year’s Eve celebrations forever.

“We were always coming up with ideas — they’d just pop into our head and we’d scribble them down — but we’d never do anything about them,” Sclafani tells me. “We’d somehow gotten onto drawing novelty glasses and had ideas sketched out. Pete drew the number 2000 and put a couple of eyeballs inside the zeros. I took one look at it and had this vision of the year 2000 in Times Square, and all the people wearing these glasses. It was really a vision.”

Sclafani and Cicero registered a patent, and started borrowing money to make the idea work. And it did, better than they ever expected, right up until the knockoffs started arriving. Read about the real history behind those New Year glasses at Mel magazine. -via Digg

Kyler Bourgeous has hiked, biked, and run through every trail in Antelope Island State Park in Utah over his life, but 2019 was the most eventful year in his outdoor activities. In June, he ran the Frary Peak Trail and encountered a group of bison.

I was almost to the three-mile marker on the trail, where it crests this ridge—that’s when I ran into them. As soon as I saw them, I said, “Oops” out loud. Then I started walking away slowly, trying to get some distance between us. But I only made it a few steps when the bison decided to charge. I ran when I saw it coming.

It closed the gap quickly, because their top speed [up to 35 miles per hour] is so high. Right before it got me, I turned sideways into it. So I have this flashback now, where I see the bison right before it hits me, which has been a problem because the incident has caused some PTSD.

I turned into it with my right side, which ended up working as well as it could have because I didn’t suffer any permanent injuries. It hit me with both of its horns. I got one in my hip, which took out a pretty big chunk of flesh, and the other one in my arm, which took out a smaller lump. It also fractured a rib, putting a small hole in my lung, which started collapsing.

The impact sent me flying through the air. I rotated and hit the ground. The bison trampled me after that. I remember this whirlwind of hooves and getting smashed under it, which ripped my ear and scalp and bruised my back.

One might think that such an experience would discourage Bourgeous from frequenting the park, but no. Once he got out of the hospital, he was back to hiking the trails. He began dating Kayleigh Davis, who accompanied him on an outing to the park on September. This time, it was Davis who was gored. What the odds? Bourgeous and Davis tell their stories at Outside Online. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Jack Dykinga)

Two young guys hack into a drone delivery service by changing recipients' orders. What could possibly go wrong? Um, everything. However, like Alive in Joberg or Kenobi, this sequence leaves us wanting more, and we hope the story can be expanded on at some point.  

Colin Levy wrote and directed the Hollywood-quality short Skywatch using a combination of hard work, crowdfunding, modern technology, and serendipity. In a behind-the-scenes video, Levy explained how he got Jude Law to appear in his film.

No, you're doing it wrong. Don't take the earrings off the card. Each card of earrings is itself an earring. So you'll actually need two sets to make one set. You follow?

Maison Margiela offers Tag, an earring that will turn heads--especially when you tell people you paid $92 for each. That will impress them because it's marked down from $305. Thoughtful, stylish people will be impressed with your fashion sensibilities and thriftiness. It speaks of what Twitter user Mari xx calls "shoplifter chic." That's the ideal look this season.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Ssense

Thomas H. "Boston" Corbett went down in the history books as the man who avenged President Abraham Lincoln by shooting and killing his assassin, John Wilkes Booth. However, Corbett led quite an eventful life, mainly because he was seriously mentally ill. He was a hatter, a profession known for psychosis induced by inhaling mercury fumes (hence the phrase "mad as a hatter"). Corbett was also a soldier, a street preacher, a self-inflicted eunuch, and an asylum escapee. But let's refresh our knowledge of the incident in which Boston Corbett's military unit was dispatched to find Booth after he murdered Lincoln and fled Washington.

They located Booth, then set the barn he was in on fire to force him out. Precisely what happened next is unclear, but Corbett's unit was under strict orders to take Booth alive so he could be questioned. Corbett, upon seeing Booth through a slat in the wall, instead shot him very dead. Corbett claimed self-defense in response to Booth raising his gun, to which some witnesses called BS, while a couple argued that it might not have even been Corbett who fired. Whatever happened, Corbett took credit, and was stuck with everything that followed.

Corbett was unrepentant about disobeying orders, claiming that God had directed him -- which if nothing else, certainly one-upped Booth's claim that he had been an instrument of God's justice. There was talk of a court martial, but that was abandoned when the media and the public began celebrating Corbett as an American hero. So Corbett was thanked by the government, given a portion of the reward money (the modern equivalent of about $27,000), discharged (this time honorably), and sent on his way. Like many people, he then had to figure out what to do after the biggest moment of his life. And like with many people, it didn't go well.

Yes, there's a lot more to Corbett's story, and of course the part that took hold as you read this was "self-inflicted eunuch." Read about that and the other adventures of Boston Corbett at Cracked.