Board racing is a traditional sport of the Zhuang people, an ethnic minority in southern China. Legend has it that the sport was devised as a military training technique. In this video, you can see why: the sport requires precise coordination and teamwork for squads of three people in order to remain upright and move faster than competitors.
This video is from the twelfth National Games of Ethnic Minorities, a sporting event which brings together teams from 35 of China's politically recognized ethnic minorities. You can see photos of the pageantry of this event at the state-run media outlet Global Times.
I first became aware of the impending death of the star Betelgeuse in this xkcd comic a few days ago. Orion will lose his shoulder! Betelgeuse is one of the brightest stars in the sky, a red supergiant 640 light years away. This star is 700,000,000 times our sun’s volume, and if it were here, it would fill our solar system. Over the past few years, Betelgeuse has brightened and dimmed (or "faintened," a word new to me) considerably. That means it is getting ready to collapse and explode, lighting up our sky to a superlative degree.
When it happens, Betelgeuse will go supernova, and become brighter than a full moon over the course of about ten days. It will stand out among other stars for many months. When will this happen? It could be soon, or anytime in the next 100,000 years. We will know when it happens, because astronomers will detect neutrinos before the light show begins. Or when it has already happened sometime in the last 640 years. Read what is going to happen to Betelgeuse in more detail at Big Think.
Ze Frank was surprised with an invitation to join the advisory board of the Senkenberg Ocean Species Alliance (SOSA), based in Frankfurt, Germany. To find out if this was legit or just a prank, he went to Germany, and surprise! He's on the advisory board of a research center that studies and names new species of mollusks. They obviously realized that an American who makes fun of ocean creatures draws a lot of attention to them. So of course, Ze Frank repays the gesture by making fun of the institution, its scientists, mollusks in general, and Germany as a whole. In the meantime, we learn about how taxonomy works and how long it takes for a new species to be named. Some of the folks he roasted in this video came into the comments to show they are good sports. Of course they are, or they wouldn't have contacted Ze in the first place. The result is that today, a lot more people know what SOSA is and what they do, even if they never hear the end of a crayon's worth of argon or jiggly DNA. Watch out, Ze, you'll be inundated by requests to join other scientific boards now.
Houska Castle is in the city of Blatce in the Czech Republic (Czechia). It was built sometime between the years of 1253 and 1278 under the reign of Ottokar II of Bohemia as a sort of headquarters for the administration of his estates. No one lived there for a few hundred years until it was renovated in the 16th century. Why would such a castle be built in the middle of nowhere, on a mountain side where there was no water supply? And why were the fortification walls built facing inward, so that defenders could shoot into the compound?
Because the castle was built over a "bottomless" pit, said to be the gateway to hell. Legend tells us monsters, demons, and human-animal hybrids emerged from the pit. Anyone that ventured into it came back aged and traumatized, if they came out at all. The castle was meant to keep the demons enclosed. The castle's chapel is directly over the pit.
During World War II, the castle was occupied by the Wehrmacht, who are said to have conducted occult experiments there. There are tales of ghosts still roaming the castle. If you want a thrill while you're in the Czech Republic, you can visit Houska Castle, although getting there won't be simple. It's still in the middle of nowhere. -via Cracked
We librarians must get creative in order to draw patrons to us and make our services relevant to current needs. And what do people need? To study the blade. The steel calls to our souls.
A particular Walmart in Chesterfield County, Virginia was flooded with about 50 officers who were engaging in a "shop with a cop" event for children picking out presents. WTVR News reports that during this event, a Walmart employee informed an officer that a shoplifting was in progress.
The suspect had lifted about $1,400 worth of loot before officers converged on him from multiple directions, cutting off any opportunity to escape through overwhelming numbers. Lt. James Lamb of the Chesterfield County Police Department expressed amazement that the suspect chose this time to engage in criminal activity when dozens of marked police vehicles were in the parking lot and uniformed officers could be seen everywhere within the store.
Sir John Gordon was a Scottish nobleman who lived from 1707 to 1783. In 1723, the French sculptor Edmé Bouchardon composed this bust of him. The statue was present around the family estate in the town of Invergordon, but was, at some point in the 1970s, disposed of by the estate. BBC News reports that it was rediscovered in 1998 being used as a doorstop in the nearby town of Balintore.
Legally, the antique belonged to the community at large, so the Invergordon Common Good Fund is offering it up for auction. It's valued at over $3 million USD.
The 1947 Treaty of Paris ended the war between Italy and the Allied powers. Articles 64-66 placed severe limitations upon the Italian Air Force, which the Italians hoped to circumvent.
For this purpose, the postwar Italian government sought assistance from the Order of Malta, a chivalric order that dates back to 1099 and exists to this day.
Are the Knights of Malta their own country? That's hard to answer. They have sovereignty over their headquarters building in Rome. They have diplomatic relations with 113 countries, permanent observer status in the United Nations, and issue their own passports which are recognized internationally.
For a few years, starting in 1947, the Order of Malta even fielded its own air force. This consisted of military aircraft transferred by the Italian government. The Order painted a roundel derived from its flag on the planes and flew them on transport and humanitarian missions.
After Italy joined NATO as a founding member in 1949, it was permitted to resume normal air operations and resumed control over these loaned aircraft.
Posy is a Dutch musician who has wide ranging interests and hobbies. Last year he introduced us to motion extraction. Posy has a camera that takes macro video images with an overly sensitive focus. In this video, he shows us some of the everyday objects in his home in very closeup mode. You might be able to guess some of them, but certainly not all. Surfaces that we normally think of as smooth are anything but at the macro level. The wandering focus gives these objects a surreal and artistic, if confusing, quality. Posy's narration is what's really entertaining here. He doesn't have interesting facts about what we are seeing, but he shares our marvel at the way they look with his lovely European accent. You can tell he's having fun with the camera. Until he gets bored. To be honest, it's rather charming to listen to a video producer who has the same reactions his audience has. The music is really nice, too. -via Kottke
Christmas is a festive, loving time, but a story about it wouldn't last long without a villain to create conflict, or at least a dilemma. Slashfilm has taken on the challenge of collecting Christmas movie villains and ranking them, counting up to the best villain. They lay out the rules they made up for themselves when considering a villain for the list, and even acknowledge that they eliminated the actual best villain ever in a Christmas movie, although the reasoning behind his absence isn't all that clear. Maybe it's the eternal squabbling about what is and isn't a Christmas movie.
Oh yes, Old Man Potter (Lionel Barrymore) from It's a Wonderful Life is there, but he's not ranked all that high. The explanation is that Potter completely gets away with his crime, and that's not quite acceptable to the audience. I disagree; I think it makes the fantasy scenario more realistic in our modern world. At any rate, you might disagree with the choices for the list, but you probably won't have an argument about numbers 1 and 2 on the list of the ten best Christmas villains at Slashfilm.
The last video we posted from the What If? series looked at the feasibility of light reaching from the earth to the moon. It ended up with a disaster, actually blowing the moon out of its orbit. After the video was posted, the question stayed with Randall Munroe and Henry Reich. Munroe couldn't stop thinking about even more power, and what that would do. After all, there are more powerful beams than mere visible light. He's talking about gamma rays, the kind of things that pull stars apart. Not that we have gamma ray weapons here on earth, besides the flashes produced by nuclear explosions, but this is a thought experiment. If we could harness such power, it would be in line with the planet-killing beams from the Death Star or Starkiller Base. Once we've fashioned this hypothetical death ray, we could cause all kinds of destruction. Yay! -via Damn Interesting
You've heard of Sasquatch and Mothman, yet there are other cryptids told of in the hills of Appalachia that may go by various local names, but are referred to collectively as the "white things" (pronounced "white thangs"). What they have in common is that they are big, white, hairy, and will scare the crap out of anyone who sees them. Some are described as humanoid, yet much larger than any human, with horns. Others walk on four legs and have claws. From the accounts of sightings, they rarely do much damage beyond terrifying the observer and fortifying the story.
You may get the idea that the white things are a combination of fear, the power of suggestion, and alcohol or drugs. Or maybe they are albino versions of scary animals that make the mountains their home, such as bears, bobcats, or even deer. Even the occasional stray white cow would be terrifying in a dark forest at night. Someone who is predisposed to fearing the white things they've heard of would become a true believer if they encountered such wildlife, especially if they've had a few. But the stories continue. Read up on sightings of the white things of Appalachia at Mental Floss.
The science fiction genre often falls into the escapist direction of storytelling, so it's no surprise that male writers tend to create ideal heroes, villains, and other characters. So the male gaze comes into play. That's not criticism--in fact, I'm a fan at times. There's a female gaze, too, although it is far from a direct equivalent.
This video shows a clip from the improvisational comedy show Make Some Noise. Comedian and actress Caitlin Reilly is tasked with depicting an idealized female character from a male writer. The character keeps us abreast of the true dangers facing the group in what I'm guessing is a Robert A. Heinlein story.
It's that time of year when the producers of various dictionaries let us know about trends in language. The Oxford University Press, who produces the Oxford Dictionary, has decided that "brain rot" is their word of the year for 2024, despite the fact that it's two words. Brain rot means the deterioration of someone's intellect or mental health due to overconsumption of mindless entertainment, mostly on the internet. Oxford noticed that the use of the term has grown by 230% over the past year. The word of the year was determined by an online poll of six finalists presented by Oxford. The term brain rot is not new, however. Henry David Thoreau used it in his 1854 book Walden.
The Oxford Dictionary word of the year is not the last word, though (pun in tended). The Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year for 2024 is "manifest." Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year for 2024 is "demure." And Collins Dictionary’s word of the year is "brat." Maybe we should look these words up in the dictionary.
A man in Texas sought medical help for a severe rash, actually a burn, on his hands. The burn eventually produced blisters, and it took several months for him to fully heal. He was diagnosed with phytophotodermatitis, a condition in which chemicals from certain plants interact with the skin and makes one extremely vulnerable to sunburn. The man had manually squeezed a bunch of limes and then went to a soccer game without sunscreen. The traces of juice on his hands altered his skin to react with UV light, causing serious sun damage.
The plant chemicals that can do this are called furocoumarins, which exist famously in hogweed, but also in many plants we eat. Read about phytophotodermatitis, and learn which foods can cause it, so you'll know to wash your hands thoroughly after preparing them. And always apply sunscreen before attending outdoor events.
Minnesotastan cites the same study and reposted a case from 2013 with much more explicit pictures of the worst effects of phytophotodermatitis. You've been warned.
