Science fiction addressed our feelings about robots long before we actually had humanoid robots. The word itself came from the 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), in which mechanical men are exploited for their labor until they rebel. A similar theme lurks under the surface in the 1927 film Metropolis. Both stories made the treatment of robots an analogy for the treatment of laborers because we are bound to sympathize with a robot who looks like a human. But it's not a human, so businesses were keen to appeal to the exploitive side of humanity by offering labor-saving robots to ease our personal burdens. This motive was personified by a robot named Eric that was introduced to audiences in 1928.
Eric wasn't a true robot as we think of them today. His movements were remote-controlled and his voice was pre-recorded, but he seemed human enough to spark sympathy from people he met. For 1928, he was a miracle of a mechanical man. Almost 100 years later, we still haven't perfected humanoid robots, and we haven't truly sorted out our feelings about them either. The working robots we have, from oversized factory arms to Roombas, don't look anything like a person. Read about Eric the Robot and some early ideas about robot labor at Popular Science. -via Damn Interesting
I can so relate to this. You love your family, and you love it when they come visit. At the same time, spending weeks getting the house cleaned and the pantry stocked only to see the house wrecked and the refrigerator emptied in no time when they all get there... well, it makes you realized how tiring all this merriment can be. Your normal schedule is thrown off, you tense up hoping to make it through, and everyone is trying their best not to offend each other. You notice everyone's weird behavior while they are noticing yours, too, yet everyone is pretending it's all okay. But that's just the downside. Years from now, you'll only remember the best parts of the visit, and that will give you the strength to do it all over again. These common facets of a family holiday get together are perfectly illustrated by Foil Arms and Hog.
Claire Lamman is a graduate student in astronomy at Harvard University. So she's a genius. But she's also humble enough to describe herself as a "procrastibaker" -- someone who bakes in order to avoid academic work. Lamman's portfolio of baking work is impressive.
Each Christmas, Lamman composes a gingerbread masterpiece of an astronomical survey instrument, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, favorite space probes, and a model of the Very Large Array in New Mexico.. This year, Lamman made the above model of the Voyager I probe, which launched in 1977 and exited our solar system in 2013, but continues to operate.
Let us hope that Lamman expands upon her work and creates a gingerbread model of the famed Voyager VI spacecraft.
After some disappointments over the last few years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe had a good year in 2024- 100% of their movies were record-breaking hits! That fact is a little easier to swallow when you realize that Marvel only released one movie this year, and it was Deadpool & Wolverine. Still, you can't argue with success.
But Marvel's good year involved a lot more than what you see on the big screen, or what you saw on your television screen. The news going on behind the scenes made it clear that Marvel has changed its focus and may be in for big changes in the future. First, the 2024 movie release schedule shows that Marvel is willing to step back and consider their path, and the one film they had this year shows they are also perfectly willing to venture into new territory with an R-rated film. Other news spoke to the future: Robert Downey Jr. returning to Marvel as Dr. Doom, the Russo Brothers coming back to Marvel to do two Avengers films, and the upcoming Spider-Man and Fantastic Four projects. Read about what Marvel has done this year to inspire confidence among their fans, and what it all may lead to in the coming years, at Gizmodo.
Dr. Laura Driessen is a radio astronomer at the University of Sydney. At Study Finds, she explains that the speed of an object in motion affects sound and light waves from that object relative to an observer. This is called the Doppler Effect.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, who leads Santa's sleigh with his nose so bright, has a red-appearing nose only when he is motionless. The appearance of his nose changes when he travels at speeds sufficient to complete his busy night of work.
Dr. Driessen estimates that Rudolph must travel at 8.2 million KPH in order to deliver Santa to each of his destinations. If you saw Rudolph moving toward you, his nose would appear bright orange. If you watched him fly away, his nose would turn almost black.
Does Santa Claus exist in the video game universe? You betcha- even in Super MarioWorld! But this pixelated Santa in his skivvies turns out to be a grumpy old man who'd just as soon someone else take the title of Santa Claus for a while. That duty falls to Mario, who is only interested in what new powers this arrangement brings him. One is that he can transform koopa troopas into koopa reindeer! It's all in service of bringing gifts to good little boys and girls, and video game characters, too. The problem comes when Mario focuses only on the video game characters, meaning he doesn't quite live up to the standards we set for Santa Claus. What else wold you expect? Dorkly shows us in this video what chaos follows when Mario tries to play Santa. The plot may remind you of The Santa Clause, but luckily here, the old man doesn't have to die for someone else to take his place.
(Image credit: daQueen1011)
Good stories should be shared with strangers on the internet, because we all need to be reminded of what's good in the world. Imagine getting excited for your baby's first Christmas. Sure, he's too young to understand, but there will be pictures documenting it for the rest of his life. Then something happens and he's in the hospital over the Christmas holiday. The child's nurse understood what a first Christmas photo meant, and she went above and beyond to recruit a Santa Claus to be there when the shutter clicked, watching over the little boy and keeping him safe. I checked OP's comment history, and found the baby is okay a year later.
(Image credit: NotGayRyan)
You know how some people buy a gift for their significant other that's really something they want themselves? It works out when a couple is in tune and has shared interests. A husband and wife got the gifts above for each other. Perfect. You have to wonder what their dog got- probably everything! Read a long list of Christmas posts gleaned from reddit that will bring a smile to your face at Bored Panda.
The question for this episode of the What If? series (previously at Neatorama) was, if there were a lake on the moon, what would it be like to swim in it? Well, there is no lake on the moon, but someday there might possibly be a swimming pool. It would have to be sheltered from the elements, or lack of, just like astronauts have to wear helmets. Safely inside a secured moon base, a pool would be a lot of fun. See, physics works the same on the moon, but the gravity is different from that on earth, leading to the kind of fun Randall Munroe is famous for.
Alas, real astronauts know better than to get their hopes up about a pool on the moon. The cost of transporting that much water would be, dare I say it, astronomical. Right now, we can't even manage to get our people back home from the ISS.
Who does the best "pa-rum, pum-pum, pum"? @TheSimpsons #TheSimpsons #Christmas pic.twitter.com/GHz3J2lp6x
— Hank Azaria (@HankAzaria) December 23, 2024
Hank Azaria's greatest acting accomplishment was, in my opinion, a supporting role in the groundbreaking sitcom Herman's Head. But he is most famous for voicing several characters on The Simpsons, having done so for almost the franchise's entire run since 1989.
In this special Christmas video, Azaria sings a few lines from the 1941 carol "The Little Drummer Boy" as Simpsons characters, including police chief Clancy Wiggum, the beloved Moe Szyslak, Comic Book Guy, Captain Horatio McAllister, Professor John Frink, the rascally scamp Snake, and Duffman.
-via Laughing Squid
Licorice is the world's perfect candy. The flavor is optimal for activating dopamine among all right-thinking people. Not everyone agrees, but this is how you can distinguish between the enlightened and the depraved among the people who walk upon the Earth.
Empanadas are a wonderful food delivery system popular here in Texas. In a flash of characteristic brilliance, it occurred to me a few months ago that one could make empanadas with a licorice filling. As far as I can tell, I am the inventor of this epoch-defining development.
Every summer, the town of Watkins Glen in the Finger Lakes region of New York experiences a surge of visitors in search of scenic wonders, both natural and man-made. The latter includes a tiny diner that bills itself as the world's smallest. WETM 18 News interviewed the owner, 83-year old Gerry Collins.
Depending on how it's measured, the establishment covers either 32 or 34 square feet. It hypothetically seats four people, but the heat from cooking makes interior temperatures unbearable for dining. Although a variety of foods are available, most people come for Collins's traditional Coney Island-style hot dogs.
-via Hickman | Photo: World Record Academy
Air Force Colonel Harry Shoup was the operations officer at the North American Aerospace Defense Command in 1955. It was close to Christmas when Shoup received a call on the "red phone," a dedicated line that was to be used if the Soviets were to launch an attack on the US. Back then, Americans expected that to happen any minute. But it was a false alarm of a sort, actually a wrong number. When the news got around to the airmen, they made a joke out of it. But Shoup was a father as well as a straight-laced, by-the-book Air Force officer and knew how to handle children. That one call led to an entire series of events that would change the way we celebrate Christmas.
Shoup later became known as "the Santa Colonel." He died in 2009. Three of Shoup's four children got together to tell the folks at StoryCorps what happened that day in 1955, and what became of it as time went on.
It's not that unusual for artists to dip into the past when designing a gingerbread house, so artist and occasional baker Edward J. Cabral went back to the bloody days of the French Revolution. Behold his Christmas masterpiece: a gingerbread guillotine! Click to the right to see this bad boy from all angles. And it works, too! Well, the blade is probably not all that sharp, but it does move.
The entire gingerbread sculpture is edible, from the glittery rainbow candy platform to the peppermint "heads" in the receiving basket (minus the wrappers). You have to admire the ingenuity and skill that went into this gingerbread device, but at the same time, you have to wonder whether it's meant to be a warm Christmas greeting or a not-so-subtle warning. Miniature depictions of the guillotine were quite fashionable during the French Revolution, from haircuts to earrings, and it was always a warning to aristocrats and the bourgeoisie. Any way you see it, it's an incredible work of gingerbread- just don't lose your head over it. -via Everlasting Blort
The Parker Solar Probe took off from earth in 2018 and has been spending its time bouncing from Venus to the sun and back again, each time getting closer to the sun. On December 24th, it is expected to come within 3.8 million miles of the sun's surface. Nicki Rayl, NASA’s deputy director of heliophysics, calls that "literally touching the star" because the probe will be in the sun's upper atmosphere. And you didn't know the sun had an atmosphere.
The Parker probe is there just in time to catch the sun at the apex of its eleven-year activity cycle, when the magnetic poles move, sunspots appear, and geomagnetic storms flare out into the solar system. But that's what it was sent for, to collect valuable data about the sun from a vantage point never before possible. The probe will be close enough to experience temperatures of 1700 degrees. How will it survive? Read about the purpose of the Parker Solar Probe and the extreme design that allows it to handle temperatures of up to 2500 degrees, at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)
Charlie Brown was always the perfect character to illustrate the feelings of confusion or inadequacy we all experience some time or another. In clips from the 1965 Christmas television special A Charlie Brown Christmas, that inadequacy includes not really getting the Christmas spirit like everyone else around you. That doesn't make him odd, because it happens to most of us, at least in some years. It makes him relatable.
Charlie Brown's depression is a small part of the show, and takes a back seat to his bad luck and Snoopy's World War I fantasies, but it means a lot to people who share those same feelings. Chetreo took the relevant clips and gave them some autotune and arranged them into a song, for those who feel alone in their lack of Christmas spirit. You are far from alone. -via Geeks Are Sexy
