The summer interns at Microsoft got together (with some employees, 150 people in all) to make a Broadway-style musical about the company. These computer geeks are talented! Sure, a lot of it is high praise for Microsoft, but there's some humor involved, too, because no one should be above poking fun at themselves... or their workplace. Read more about the project at Gizmodo.
The next time you travel through New England, or even if you live there, keep your eye out for stone enclosures with nothing inside, except possibly overgrown weeds. These relics of the past are not promoted much, but they are historic. They are town pounds. Not for stray dogs, but for stray livestock.
If an animal strayed and was found wreaking havoc on private property, it was brought to the pound, where it was corralled with other wayward creatures and watched over by a town-appointed “pound-keeper” (sometimes called a “pound-master,” or “pounder”) until its owner could retrieve it—for a fee.
(Prices varied by time and place. One community, according to Elizabeth Banks MacRury’s book Town Pounds of New England, set the bail of a horse, mule, ass, cow, or pig at 12 cents and 5 mills (a mill was a thousandth of a dollar). For a sheep, it was 1 cent and 4 mills; for a goose, 8 cents. Unclaimed animals could be sold at auction after three days (one day for geese). Stealing an animal from the pound incurred a fine of $7.)
Villages in colonial Massachusetts were required to have pounds, and since a lot of work went into lifting the heavy stones, the structures are with us hundreds of years later. Read about town pounds and see plenty of pictures at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Johnna Kaplan)
The European Space Agency's Rosetta probe took ten years to reach its target, comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Then it spent two years studying the comet up close, including deploying the Philae lander to the comet's surface. The ESA released 400,000 images of the comet, which motion designer Christian Stangl weaved together to make this video. Composer Wolfgang Stangl created the sound. The Comet gives the mission an epic science fiction feel, one that the mission deserves. You should watch this in full-screen mode. -via Kottke
Perhaps as many as 3,000 people were planning to descend upon this Ikea in Glasgow, Scotland in order to play hide and seek together. When store management learned of this plan, they summoned the police to quash the fun. The Scotsman reports:
At some point on Saturday, staff at Braehead became aware of a Facebook thread suggesting some 3,000 youths were about to descend on the store.
As well as drafting in extra security, Ikea contacted Police Scotland, who dispatched five officers.
Police remained at the store until it closed at 8pm.
-via Marginal Revolution | Photo: The Scotsman
Every year, Dragon Con highlights the work of cosplayers who find new and ingenious ways of mixing up the classic bunny girl costume. Jen of Epbot attended this Bunny Hutch party and photographed many of the elegant and funny cosplayers.
At least eleven herbs and fabrics went into this Colonel Sanders. You can see others at Epbot, including bunnified versions of Mrs. Doubtfire, Edward Scissorhands, the Demogorgon, and Beetlejuice.
People who produce internet content would kill for a viral recipe, like Swineapple. That's more difficult than it seems, because Swineapple is actually tasty. That's not the case with most "food hacks." Doing something new and different with food might get attention, but it will only last until someone tries it out and finds it useless, unpalatable, or downright gross. Or even dangerous, like opening a wine bottle with a blowtorch. There's a recipe for pancakes with only three ingredients, and they aren't pancake mix, butter, and syrup. No, these pancakes are supposed to be made with bananas, eggs, and cinnamon, and nothing else.
This is a fried egg that tastes vaguely like cinnamon. Egg is a strong flavor, and when desserts taste eggy, that's not good. With no sugar to speak of and just cinnamon to contribute any real flavor, this ends up tasting like Christmasy eggs that once thought of a banana. Are all of these rapid-fire cooking hack videos just an elaborate prank?
Check out ten recent food hacks and their horrifying real-world results (many of them involving cheese) at Cracked.
“If you ever want an ice cream, there you have an ice cream parlor,” the 89-year-old man said as he points to a part of the rubble with his walking stick. Pointing his walking stick towards another part of the rubble, he continued, “Do you want a special dessert? There’s a shop just around the corner. Well, there was. Today, there is nothing left.”
This man is Pablo Novak. He was born here in Villa Epecuén, a small town in the Buenos Aires province. He has witnessed the town’s birth and death.
The whole town was flooded due to violent rains in the year 1985, and the waters would only subside 25 years later.
“When the city flooded, I didn’t leave. Both because I wanted it and also because I felt an obligation towards this place.”
See the full story over at BBC.
(Image Credit: BBC)
Tennis balls were already yellow when I grew up, and, I admit, I didn’t really pay much attention to that detail and pretty much took it for granted. But really, why are tennis balls colored yellow?
Believe it or not, tennis balls before were white, and the reason for its color change was quite simple. Check it out on CNN.
(Image Credit: skeeze/ Pixabay)
A new poll finds that almost 3 out of 4 Americans see disasters, such as Hurricane Dorian, worsening, with most of them blaming global warming to an extent, and scientists say they’re correct.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey shows 72% of Americans think catastrophic weather is more severe, while 4% see it as less nasty. About one-quarter say those disasters are about as extreme as they always were.
Half of the people who believe that the catastrophic weather is becoming severe say that the reason behind this is man-made climate change. Another 37% say that randomness and climate change are equally to blame.
See more details of this survey over at AP News.
(Image Credit: 12019/ Pixabay)
With its strategy to make their services more accessible to a wider population, the National Health Service in the UK launched the NHS app which will give users information about their symptoms, allow them to book appointments, and order repeat prescriptions.
And in order to increase the public's awareness of the app, they are seeking social media influencers who will promote its benefits and encourage people to download it.
England's chief nursing officer, Ruth May, said the NHS is looking for people from a range of different backgrounds. "The best advert for our NHS is our extraordinary staff who continue to be the envy of the world, and with some of our leading lights soon to be promoting the next generation of health care tech across social media, the benefits of the NHS App will be experienced by even more people across England."
Tara Donnelly, chief digital officer at NHSX, said: "Just like you can book a flight or order food to your door, we want NHS services and advice to be available in the palm of your hand. "The official NHS App has the potential to benefit millions of people and is an important step in driving forward digitalisation of the NHS."
(Image credit: Digital Health)
Do you want to look like a Cheeto?
Of course you do! That's because you have good taste.
And so the Cheetos snack brand revealed its Flamin' Haute line of fashions at a show in New York City over the weekend.
One of my signature dishes is borscht. I generally cook a big pot of the stuff and freeze quart-sized volumes for easy family dinners.
That got me thinking: could I freeze this delicious dish in a popsicle mold?
This the result of my brilliance: the borstsicle. It's a frozen portion of borscht serve with a dollop of sour cream.
So here's my business idea: I could buy an old ice cream truck and drive around the neighborhood blasting Russian folk music from the speakers. Kids will come running out to buy my borschtsicles at, say, $5 each.
I'll make a fortune!
B’z
— 〖新〗ゆーた✨B'z (@pleasure_yuta) September 3, 2019
ロッテ戦
アイマスが同時に終わった悲劇の海浜幕張 pic.twitter.com/AmTa7mvjqf
When there's a big event, concert, or sports game, one would expect that there will be crowds of people bustling in the area and that train stations as well as other modes of transportation will be filled with people.
But when three different events ended at about the same time, all within the same area, everybody was in for a very tough and uncomfortable train ride. Sora News 24 reports:
The crowds at Kaihin Makuhari Station, though, about half an hour east of Tokyo in Chiba City, are less regular. Chiba doesn’t have anywhere near the population Tokyo does, and so Kaihin Makuhari isn’t a commuter nightmare like Tokyo’s three Shi-s.
But there’s a good reason Kaihin Makuhari is designed with a large, open plaza just outside its gates. The station is the nearest access point for Makuhari Messe, one of the Tokyo area’s largest convention centers, as well as Chiba Marine Stadium, home to professional baseball team the Chiba Lotte Marines.
Both venues were in use on Tuesday night, with the Marines taking on the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters and Makuhari hosting both a concert by legendary J-rock duo B’z and a fan event for the Idolmaster anime/video game franchise.
Now, despite the harrowing experience being crammed in one station amidst a sea of people, when you are a hardcore fan, come hell or high water, nothing will stop you from going to see your favorite team, band, or anime event. And these fanbases must have gone home incredibly satisfied after their events and an interesting experience to share with others.
(Image credit: @pleasure_yuta/Twitter)
Oftentimes, we tend to adopt certain words, phrases, and their meanings without giving a second thought as to why they mean or how they came about. We just accept them as we listen to others use them in certain contexts. One such word is "OK" which generally means "fine", "all correct", or "all right". But how did the word get its meaning and who started it all?
On 23 March 1839, OK was introduced to the world on the second page of the Boston Morning Post, in the midst of a long paragraph, as "o.k. (all correct)". How this weak joke survived at all, instead of vanishing like its counterparts, is a matter of lucky coincidence involving the American presidential election of 1840.
One candidate, Martin Van Buren, was nicknamed Old Kinderhook, and there was a false tale that a previous American president couldn't spell properly and thus would approve documents with an "OK", thinking it was the abbreviation for "all correct".
Within a decade, people began actually marking OK on documents and using OK on the telegraph to signal that all was well. So OK had found its niche, being easy to say or write and also distinctive enough to be clear.
Despite its growing trend, it didn't gain widespread use until the 20th century due to some associating the use of the word to being illiterate. But as with most trends, it found its way into everyday speech and eventually, everyone started to incorporate it in conversations with others.
OK used such familiar sounds that speakers of other languages, hearing it, could rethink it as an expression or abbreviation in their own language. Thus it was taken into the Choctaw Native American language, whose expression "okeh" meant something like "it is so".
US President Woodrow Wilson, early in the 20th Century, lent his prestige by marking okeh on documents he approved. And soon OK was to find its place in many languages as a reminder of a familiar word or abbreviation.
But what is it that makes "OK" okay? Read on to know more about it.
-via Twisted Sifter
(Image credit: d97jro/Pixabay)
India expressed their interest to join in the space race by being the fourth to land on the moon. It was launched in July and was expected to land in early September. As it reached the final stages of its landing attempt on September 6, transmissions from the spacecraft were cut and the status of the lander is uncertain.
From Space News:
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was present at Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) mission operation complex at Bengaluru, told press following the communications loss that, “it is not a small thing that we have achieved. Be courageous.”
The landing attempt continues a surge of lunar-related activity in 2019, following a failed soft landing attempt by an Israeli spacecraft in April and China’s unprecedented January lunar far side landing. The United States in March announced plans to accelerate a human lunar program with the target of a first landing in 2024.
(Image credit: ISRO)
