It’s the holiday season and with that often comes festivities. And what better way to complete the merry-making tradition than with sharing drinks. Smithsonian shares with us nine tasty drinks served during the holidays all around the world. From South America to the Slavic countries, many different cultural groups carry their own special traditions with drink recipes that have their own story to tell. What’s yours?
Here's the original article from Smithsonian Magazine.
(Image credit: Pixabay)
Pteryx Videos brings us a masterfully-edited mashup of 2019. While the clips are mostly from movies, you'll also see some TV, news, and internet videos. It's altogether enjoyable. One song of the soundtrack contains lyrics that may be NSFW.
Shayna Leib is an artist masterfully skilled in the intricacies of glasswork. For this project involving cane pulling, she uses her technical expertise in the craft to illustrate sea life influenced by the flowing forces of waves and the wind. A classical pianist by training, she credits music and philosophy as two major influences in her life and work. Leib explains how she creates these artworks step-by-step on her website.
Check out more of her jaw-dropping creations here.
-via This Is Colossal
Photo: Daniel Frank / Pexels
A British family were forced to bid farewell to their Yorkshire puddings on Christmas after they were engulfed in flames in the oven. The video was caught by James Healing, who shared it on Twitter.
As the man filming - presumably James - cries 'There's a fire!', a concerned woman in the background can be heard saying: 'No seriously, I don't know how to get it out!'
Leaping to the rescue, the man grabs an oven glove before assessing the task before him, quipping: 'Oh s***' as he realises removing the tray may not be as easy as he first thought.
He then calls to another family member to open the back door before he heroically grabs the corner of the tray.
I love how calm the man was on the video.
(Image Credit: @jameshealing/ Twitter/ DailyMail)
The progression of cancer has been an extensive study over the years. Key steps in the progression, at least in some solid tumors, have been well mapped.
Lesions to genes that confer risk of cancer accumulate and alter normal cell behaviors, giving rise, scientists believe, to early stage cancer cells that eventually swamp normal cells and become deadly.
Researchers from Yale, however, have discovered a bit of cellular shenanigans that jumpstart cancer. They report in the journal Nature Communications that cells with cancer-causing genes can stay normal and healthy, at least, until the cell division (or cell cycle) speeds up.
“Many people with cancer-causing genes remain healthy for many, many years,’’ said senior author Shangqin Guo, assistant professor of cell biology and a researcher at the Yale Stem Cell Center. “So, in these cases, you have to wonder whether the dogma ‘mutations cause cancer’ is the complete truth.”
This finding may explain why we are more prone to cancer as we age.
More details of this study over at YaleNews.
(Video Credit: YaleCampus/ YouTube)
Have you ever noticed that we become very generous on the holiday season to their friends, and family? After the new year, however, we go back to our normal self-centered selves. Is this hypocrisy? Not at all, says evolutionary anthropologist Michael Gurven.
...he argues that giving to others is a fundamental part of human nature — but so is being selective about who we give to, and under what circumstances. Therefore a “season of giving” makes perfect sense.
That’s especially true at this time of year, when the air is filled with familiar melodies of carols proclaiming peace and goodwill.
Full article over at The Current.
(Image Credit: blickpixel/ Pixabay)
Samsung accidentally published on their website a listing for the Galaxy Tab S6, which seems to say that the tech company is developing the world’s first 5G tablet. Details on the device, however, is very light, and the price has been left out as well.
Known by model number SM-T866, the Galaxy Tab S6 5G surfaced on Samsung's website with a generic "coming soon" label. Its shown alongside Samsung's regular Galaxy Tab S6, the Galaxy Tab S5e, Galaxy Tab A, and Galaxy Tab A with S Pen. All of them are currently available; however, the Galaxy Tab S6 5G still needs to be announced.
Good eye for those who noticed!
(Image Credit: Samsung)
The simple hand sign to tell someone “okay” is now also a hate symbol, with actual white nationalists using the symbol to “trigger” liberals. It all started when some trolls on 4chan thought it was funny to trick the media into thinking that the “okay” hand sign is a secret Nazi symbol. The trolling work until it was used by white nationalists. The Washington Post looks into the impact the hand sign as as a hate symbol, and how the Internet can change the meaning of simple things because online racists think it’s funny to radicalize these things.
image via wikimedia commons
YouTuber AtinPiano performs a mashup that you would have never considered on your own, but the truth is that the Imperial March from Star Wars blends gracefully with "Carol of the Bells." Bonus points for wearing stormtrooper armor while playing it. The visuals are interesting, too!
Nice house, huh? According top the real estate listing, the home at 2475 Glendower Place in Los Feliz, California, has five bedrooms, four bathrooms, and a ballroom on the third floor. But this house comes with a history and has been vacant for 60 years, since the murder in 1959.
The property was sold in a probate action a year later to Emily and Julian Enriquez, but the couple never moved in.7Instead, they used the expansive estate as a glorified storage facility, periodically dropping off their stuff over the decades. The Enriquezes also never moved any of the Perelson furnishings out. They supposedly even kept the Perelson’s Christmas tree and unopened presents. The property became a twisted time capsule that attracted urban legends and lookie-loos.
When Emily Enriquez passed in 1994, her son, Rudy, inherited the home. Like his parents, he never moved in and did not maintain the mansion.7 In 2009, he told the Los Angeles Times, “I don’t know that I want to live there or even stay there.”7
For more than fifty years the Enriquez family allowed the “Murder Mansion” to decay, rarely even making repairs. The lawn turned brown, weeds swallowed the terraced gardens, the driveway asphalt remained cracked, and broken windows were not fixed.7 Neighbors eventually took it upon themselves to help maintain the ramshackle house, going so far as to paint the street-level garage and clean the front yard.7 The city eventually intervened, requiring Rudy to make repairs on the rundown property.7
What makes a $3 million property in Los Angeles so cursed that no one wanted to live there? Read what happened to the Perelson family, the last residents of the "Murder Mansion," at Strange Remains. -via Strange Company
(Image source: Realtor.com)
Remember the Digit robot who delivers packages to your door? Agility Robotics has developed a newer version of the same robot that will work as a team with other robots. Watch two of them hand off and stack boxes together. The payoff comes at the end, when they celebrate a job well done with a little happy dance. -via Laughing Squid
The coolest legos are a minifigure and a four-block stack. Why? It’s because a team of temperature physicists managed to cool these lego blocks to the lowest temperature possible. The legos were subject to temperatures that reached 1.6 millidegrees above absolute zero (-273.15 °C) for an experiment that can develop quantum computing, as Geek.com detailed:
Strapped inside a custom-made (record-breaking) dilution refrigerator—the most effective fridge in the world, capable of reaching 1.6 millidegrees above absolute zero (-273.15 °C)*—the toys did what no human can: survived.
“Our results are significant because we found that the clamping arrangement between the Lego blocks caused the Lego structures to behave as an extremely good thermal insulator at cryogenic temperatures,” team leader Dmitry Zmeev said in a statement.
“This is very desirable for construction materials used for the design of future scientific equipment like dilution refrigerators,” he added.
Invented 50 years ago, the dilution fridge is at the center of a global multi-million-dollar industry, and is crucial to the work of modern experimental physics and engineering, including the development of quantum computers.
image via Geek.com
Spin around and around with these electric vehicles (EV) made by automaker company Rivian. Through a video posted on Christmas Day, Rivian showed off how the quad-motor version of their R1T and R1S can make tank-turns.
It will surely cost a lot of money, however, but I guess it’s a good feature for your car to have. What do you think?
(Video Credit: Rivian/ YouTube)
For the first time ever, scientists have been able to “unmix” the black pigment that colors our skin and gives bananas their spots, through the use of eumelanin, a form of melanin that produces brown or black colors.
Melanin is important to the human body: It acts as a natural sunscreen, protecting DNA from damage caused by the sun’s ultraviolet rays. It also destroys free radicals in the body and keeps metal ions from harming organs.
But despite knowing all of that, scientists do not know one of the most basic things about melanin, said Bern Kohler, senior author of the study, published today in the journal Chemical Science.
“The most fundamental question that can be asked about a pigment is what gives it its color,” said Kohler, Ohio Eminent Scholar and chemistry professor at Ohio State.
More details over at Ohio State News.
(Image Credit: ClickChemist/ Wikimedia Commons)
This is “Kaleido”, a humanoid robot designed to assist disaster areas. Kaleido was made by Japan’s Kawasaki Industries.
The humanoid robot can lift heavy pieces of metal, and kick objects. It can also go to a kneeling position to properly carry the mannequin (which most likely represents an injured person), and stand up again. Kaleido, however, is a bit slow on moving. But he looks promising.
See the video over at Reuters.
What do you think?
(Image Credit: Reuters)
