These are child-like figures created by 31-year old Tokyo-based artist Moe Nakamura. Each of these sculptures are carved out of a single block of wood. The figures are under Nakamura’s latest exhibition entitled “Remember You”, and is currently on display at Gallery Tsubaki in Tokyo until September 7, 2019.

Each of the sculptures seem to portray a child-like figure in a costume or mask that they wear as if they were born with them. Most are the size of a child: between 2.5 and 3 ft. They are either propped up on pedestals or, in some cases, low to the ground and you must kneel to get up close. One piece, “Hour to the dawn,” stands out in its towering scale. At over 6 ft tall the sculpture, which depicts the classic prank of children trying to appear taller by standing on each other’s shoulders behind a screen, eclipses the height of most gallery visitors.

Each sculpture emanates an enigmatic aura that leaves a person either perplexed or amazed.

What are your thoughts on this one? Are they adorable? Are they creepy?

(Image Credit: Moe Nakamura/ Gallery Tsubaki)

Edi Okoro bought a diamond engagement ring, but it was some time before he popped the question to Callie Read. During that time, he carried the ring around, waiting for the perfect moment. He even referred to it as "my precious," as he got attached to it. But sometime during that period, he realized that he had a secret that Callie didn't know, and he should take advantage of it. So he took a lot of pictures of the ring right in front of her, without ever giving away the secret. Edi even got some video clips! Yes, they eventually got engaged, and she loves the ring. It was another few weeks before he revealed the photos to her. See the imaginative ways he managed to snap Callie and the ring together before the proposal at Bored Panda.

After a few years of bankrobbing their way across the American West, Robert LeRoy Parker and Harry Longabaugh headed to South America with their stolen money and Longabaugh's wife Ethel. Fifty years ago this month, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid told their story and became the biggest movie of 1969. The film ended with Butch and Sundance being shot by the Bolivian military in a hail of bullets, but skipped over the years they spent as wealthy and law-abiding cattlemen in Argentina.   

For six years they managed to elude the most powerful detectives on the planet and outrun their past across the wilds of South America. Hidden, for years, in the tranquil frontiers of Patagonia and the deep forests of the Andes, they started new lives as law-abiding citizens. They roped cattle, built ranches, and spent their ill-gotten gains on glorious living, including tango parties and cabin concerts where a governor—and even lawmen charged with arresting them—were honored guests.  

They tried to let go of the past. But they were hounded for a crime which we now know they did not commit, and the past caught up with them. Found out, the Old West’s smartest robbers responded by going on an epic spree of bank jobs that filled their saddlebags and humiliated law enforcement in three countries. Given the real story of what Butch and Sundance pulled off in South America, it’s no wonder the authorities tried to forget those years.

Read what happened to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid during their years in South America, and how their lives really ended, at The Daily Beast.  -via Metafilter

If you hate receiving wrong orders, you might not like this restaurant; but once you find out the reason why they serve wrong orders, it might be enough reason for you to love them!

The restaurant I’m talking about is the Tokyo pop-up “Restaurant of Mistaken Orders.” Here, they may or may not get your order right, since all of their servers are people living with dementia.

Un-Japanese though that concept may seem at first, it actually reflects realities of Japanese society in the 21st century: Japan has an aging population with an already high proportion of elderly people, and that puts it on track to have the fastest-growing number of prevalent cases of Alzheimer's Disease.

[…]

You can see more of the Restaurant of Mistaken Orders in last year's "report movie" just above, which shows its team of servers with dementia in action. Some shown are in middle age, some are in their tenth decade of life, but all seem to have a knack for building rapport with their customers — a skill that anyone who has ever worked front-of-the-house in a restaurant will agree is essential, especially when mistakes happen. We see them deliver orders both correct and incorrect, but the diners seem to enjoy the experience either way: "37% of our orders were mistaken," the restaurant reports, "but 99% of our customers said they were happy." This contains another truth about Japanese food culture that anyone who has eaten in Japan will acknowledge: whatever you order, the chance of its being delicious is approximately 100%.

Would you visit their store when you go to Japan?

Video by 注文をまちがえる料理店一般社団法人 / Youtube

The Great Salt Lake in Utah is at a record low and if nothing is done to restore it, then it will continue on its path and dry up sooner rather than later. Several other saline lakes in the world are experiencing the same situation and efforts have been made to mitigate their decline. But it will take billions of dollars to do that.

During the past 50 years, the lake logged its lowest recorded levels. Those two measurements came within the past three years — in 2016 and again in 2018, according to Cory Angeroth, director of the Utah Water Science Center of the U.S. Geological Survey.

The National Audubon Society asked the Great Salt Lake Advisory Council to commission a report that looked at the aftermath of the decline of eight terminal saline lakes around the world with characteristics similar to that of the Great Salt Lake.

Research the society made available last week revealed the economic, environmental and public health impacts of dying saline lakes are incredibly costly.

Restoration in just one phase involving the Aral Sea in Central Asia was projected at more than $270 million, and a program to renovate irrigation and drainage systems to lower water consumption cost about $30 billion. An estimated 60,000 people lost their jobs when the fishery collapsed.

Despite the costs, the long-term impact if the lake dries up will put the surrounding areas in greater risk.

Dried up lakes become sources of dust pollution, not to mention people's livelihoods could be in jeopardy. It would also displace wildlife and bring changes to the weather.

So far, there have been plans to save the lake but there is a need for greater awareness and support, not just from the local government but from every stakeholder in the community.

“We need to get enough traction with the information it provides to keep building awareness that the future of the Great Salt Lake is now,” she said. “It’s running right through our fingers and we have to do something.”

(Image credit: Colter Peterson/Deseret News)

In this short video, USA Today's Reviewed team tries out three different ways to make bacon to see which would be the best: stovetop, oven, or microwave. And now I know why my bacon always turn out the way it does. If you want to learn more about the methods of making bacon and their pros and cons, check it out on USA Today.

(Image credit: Casey DeViese/Unsplash)

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Grey alien face captured in Google Earth map in Antarctica. Go and search it for yourself. Shoutout to Thirdphaseofthemoon 👉 https://youtu.be/BVjH1onTFO4 Follow me👉 @ufo_scandinavia 🤘 . #ufo #alien #ovni #love #planet #earth #phenomenon #strangerthings #news #insta #instagram #ufosighting #antarctica

A post shared by 👽UFO👽 (@ufo_scandinavia) on Aug 20, 2019 at 3:35pm PDT

Our minds are able to make out images or patterns from seemingly unconnected or random things and places. We might see animals or flowers formed in the clouds, shadows, or even in rocks and other objects in the environment. However, this one particular find is quite weird in that it forms the shape of an alien face in Antarctica.

While looking at Google Earth images of Antarctica, the researcher noticed what appears to be a rather sizeable face standing out amid the frosty mountainous terrain.

Sporting what seems to be a proportionate set of eyes, a nose, and a mouth, the eerie 'visage' has captured the imagination of conspiracy theorists who contend that Antarctica is home to all manner of esoteric secrets.

Numerous observers were quick to note that the potential face bears an uncanny resemblance to the famed 'Face on Mars' that is said to sit in the Cydonia region of the Red Planet and was first photographed by NASA's Viking 1 back in 1976.

-via Strange Company

(Image credit: UFO_Scandinavia)

Tom Scott is on a language kick, which is great, because there's always more to learn about the way we communicate. Here, he tells us about the International Phonetic Language (IPL), which no one can read, but it's a standard used to communicate pronunciation across different languages. But that's not really what the video is about. It's about the sounds we make when we speak, and some that we don't. The sounds he says are impossible may present a challenge to you, so go ahead and give them a try.

August 26 was International Dog Day, so the Montreal offices of the Ubisoft game development company compiled this video of dogs wearing its motion capture suits. I had never thought of it before, but it makes perfect sense to add realistic canine motions into the video games using the same types of interfaces that humans wear.

-via Super Punch

They say that children spend more time in school with their teachers than at home with their parents. As such, educators take up a special role as they make an impact in the lives of their students.

For Karen Wunderlich Loewe, caring for her students means breaking the ice at the start of the school year through this “baggage activity,” which she conducted after “establishing that the classroom would be a respectful place where ideas were valued, students would speak individually, and kindness.”

"I asked the kids what it meant to have baggage, and they mostly said it was hurtful stuff you carry around on your shoulders," she wrote in the post, which had over 425,000 shares on Tuesday evening. "I asked them to write down on a piece of paper what was bothering them, what was heavy on their heart, what was hurting them, etc. No names were to be on a paper. They wadded the paper up, and threw it across the room."

The said activity changed the dynamic of the students within their classroom.

"They don't interrupt or talk down to each other," she said. "They're not rude. It's completely, completely changed how they treat each other...I wish I would have done this years ago. It's been so good."

As Loewe shared her story on her Facebook account, it went viral and people started to ask her for tips on how she conducted the activity successfully.

Photo Credits: Karen Loewe

We all know that taking a summer vacation to the French Riviera is the ultimate in high-class living, but it wasn't always so. Before the 1920s, the region wasn't world-renowned, and the French who could afford to sojourn there only did so in the winter. Then came the Americans to change that.

In the summer of 1923, an American husband and wife could be credited with two rather surprising things. Their name is seldom remembered in the context of the glamorous 1920s, but the French Riviera became the summer destination it is today thanks to the infectious expatriate couple known as the Murphys. Gerald and Sarah convinced their circle of friends to summer with them in Cap d’Antibes at a time when the fashionable only wintered there, leaving the region abandoned during the high summer months. Their pals included a young Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Cole Porter, Stravinsky, Jean Cocteau and a great number of artists and writers of the Lost Generation who fell into the couple’s orbit.

Read about the Murphys, their social circle, and their influence on the lifestyles of the rich and famous at Messy Nessy Chic. You'll see a lot of historically fascinating pictures, too.

Children affected with acid reflux sometimes take a syrup laced with a pediatric formulation of the drug omeprazole. The parents of 17 of those children in Spain became alarmed when they noticed their child sprouting hair all over their bodies. They had developed hypertrichosis, a condition that is sometimes referred to as "werewolf syndrome."  

Speaking with Güell, Ángela Selles, a mother whose son had at least two bottles of syrup containing the anti-hair loss drug, says her six-month-old’s “forehead, cheeks, arms and legs, hands became covered in hair.” She adds, “He had the eyebrows of an adult. It was very scary because we didn’t know what was happening to him.”

The cases were traced back to one pharmaceutical lab in Málaga, where a labeling mishap led to the syrup being laced with minoxidil instead of omeprazole. You might know minoxidil better under the brand name Rogaine, an anti-baldness medicine. Doctors believe that discontinuing the medication will cause the excess hair to fall out in the case of these affected children, but the long term effects are unclear. Read how this mixup happened at Smithsonian.

They say that if you want to lose weight or to have a healthy gut but don't want to give up alcoholic drinks altogether, then red wide would be the best alternative to other liquor like beer. However, researchers say that there is no proof to suggest that red wine provides such benefits.

Researchers looked at the self-reported drinking habits of 916 female twins in the UK, and cross-checked their findings in similar groups from the US and Belgium. They found women who drank red wine had more diverse gut micro-organisms.

They also noted that women who drank red wine tended to have a lower body mass index (BMI), which their analyses suggested might be related to the effect on gut micro-organisms.

Despite these findings, the researchers said that there may be other factors contributing to gut diversity and lower body mass index. Furthermore, it is not advisable to drink red wine if one wants to lose weight or stay healthy.

As the researchers made clear, any potential beneficial effects on red wine intake could possibly be achieved by drinking just 1 glass of red wine every 2 weeks.

(Image credit: Kelsey Knight/Unsplash)

56% of the world's ejector seats, including the one photographed above, are made by a British company named Martin-Baker. They are remarkably complex, precise machines that designed to keep pilots alive under extreme conditions. According to Popular Science, so much happens in 1.35 seconds after pulling the lever:

Pulling the handle fires the ejection gun for .2 seconds, starting the ejection at 50-55 feet per second. Simultaneously the aircraft’s glass canopy either shatters, is blown off, or the seat breaks through it, depending on the aircraft model. The rocket motor then fires for .2 seconds with a 5,000 pound thrust, and then a top-mounted side rocket fires for .05 seconds at a thrust of 584 pounds. This side rocket (located to the left of the front seat, and the right of the back one for aircraft with two crew members) ensures the two ejectees hurtle different directions with the person in the back seat always ejecting first, to avoid being burned by the front seat rocket.

Straps tighten around the pilots' arms and legs and an emergency oxygen supply is released. Then a drogue parachute at the back of the 214-pound seat opens. At the same time two small panels about 16 inches long and 8 inches wide open up on either side of the seat to keep it straight.

Then the parachutes deploy:

Then the small box at the top of the seat, which contains the main parachute (harnessed to the pilot) lifts away from the seat, the drogue parachute drops off and, as the main parachute opens, the pilot and the seat shell part company—apart from a section under the butt that contains the survival kit and a raft, which automatically inflates in water. These hang underneath the ejectee, deploying just 5.5 seconds after they’ve pulled the ejection handle.

The forces at work are brutal on the pilot and usually result in injuries:

“It was inconvenient,” one ejectee says, dryly. He was in the backseat of a plane when it collided with a bird in June 1999. “The overhead canopy was smashed and there was blood and gore everywhere,” he recounts. “I didn't realize it was the bird—I thought it was the pilot and when I looked in front he wasn't there, so I ejected. I broke five vertebrae and so lost a few centimeters,” he says wryly. In fact the pilot was there, just bent over checking for damage, and later able to land the plane.

On the upside, people who survive after ejecting with a Martin-Baker seat receive a complimentary necktie:

Ejectees whose lives have been saved by Martin-Baker seats automatically become members of the Ejection Tie Club.

-via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo: Martin-Baker, The Ejection Tie Club

This is the Orion Nebula, a massive stellar nursery located some 1,500 light years away. This image taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope was built from data intended to monitor the brightness of the young stars of the said nebula, of which many are still surrounded by “dusty, planet-forming disks.” Orion’s young stars, which are only around a million years old, are younger than our own Sun, which is already 4.6 billion years old.

The region's hottest stars are found in the Trapezium Cluster, the brightest cluster near picture center. Launched into orbit around the Sun on August 25, 2003 Spitzer's liquid helium coolant ran out in May 2009. The infrared space telescope continues to operate though, its mission scheduled to end on January 30, 2020. Recorded in 2010, this false color view is from two channels that still remain sensitive to infrared light at Spitzer's warmer operating temperatures.

No matter how many times I look at space photos, I never cease to be amazed by the wonders of the cosmos above us.

(Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech)