Artificial intelligence has come a long way in the past few years in generating images and video that, on casual viewing, can fool you into thinking it's a real representation of something that actually happened. This in itself has profound implications for news and information. But what about art? Could artificial intelligence ever create a film that moves you like Casablanca or tickles you like The Blues Brothers? For that matter, can AI even create a photographic image that puts you in the photographer's place? Sure, many of our movies now contain computer-generated imagery, but that CGI work, however fictional, is produced by real people who make creative choices. AI can only reproduce what it has learned from existing imagery, which will eventually include a lot of AI-generated images. It hasn't mastered the art of making the creative choices of human beings who are as real and complex as their audience.   

Andrew at The Art Of Storytelling (previously at Neatorama) discusses the qualities of human-generated art and human-generated photography, and artificial intelligence's chances of ever becoming truly relatable.   

Japan is famous for its sophisticated vending machines where people can buy an incredible variety of items far beyond mere cold drinks. These include vending machines that sell chicken nuggets, diapers, and even other vending machines.

Sonsern Lin, known on the internet as Hungry OC, discovered another remarkable vending machine in that fabled land of vending machine wonders. This food blogger known for eating the most extreme foods dared a vending machine that sells edible crickets.

We've known that crickets can be a food source for a while. But it appears that this vending machine also offers hornets as an option.

-via Massimo

Tim King does home remodeling in western Chicago. Recently, he worked on the home that belonged to his parents. While tearing down some drywall, he found a wrapped Christmas present. It had his name on it and dated back to 1978, when King was six years old.

King figures that it must have been in the attic and fallen inside the wall. Now, this prized toy was finally in his hands. WGN 9 News reports that removing the wrapping paper revealed a Matchbox Sky Busters toy plane set. King affirms that, at six, he would have loved to receive this gift. It's a bit late now, but he still enjoys the present.

-via Born in Space

There are thousands of stories of weird events that got their 15 minutes -or a year- of sensation then faded from public memory. Such is the case of a hand that fell from the sky in Bargaintown, New Jersey. In 1916, Henry and Gottlieba Prantl were mourning the death of their 18-year-old son from pneumonia when they witnessed a shooting star fall into their field. The burning object was too hot to touch, and it looked like a hand that was shooting flames out of its wrist. When it cooled, they took it inside and the "flaming hand" was shown to anyone interested. Scientists studied it and offers came in to purchase it, but Gottlieba felt it was a message from their late son Rudolph, and wouldn't part with it. The family, however, made a deal with some businessmen from Atlantic City to display it for profit.

Speculation and legend grew up around the hand, mainly due to its reputation as an omen or a message from Rudolph. Even more interesting were the legal battles between the Prantl family and Dr. Halvor Harley, who treated Rudolph during his illness, over malpractice and their unpaid medical bill. So where is the "flaming hand" now? No one knows, and the facts of the case grow murkier with time. Read what we know about the flaming hand of doom at Thunderbird Photo. -via Strange Company

We've posted quite a few stories about arsenic over the past twenty years here at Neatorama because there are so many things to say about the historic poison. However, you might not have been reading this blog that long, so Neil Bradbury put together a TED-Ed overview giving a brief history of the element and its, uh, "traditional" use in dispatching rivals, wealthy ancestors, and inconvenient spouses. Hence the nickname "Inheritance Powder." That doesn't happen as much these days, or at least we hope it doesn't, because modern chemistry used in an autopsy can detect not only the presence of arsenic, but the amount and the day it was ingested. Arsenic is colorless, odorless, and throughout most of history was undetectable, but it still has legitimate uses in chemistry and industry. There are a lot of stories in this video that you can read more about in our previous posts, going back to 2007.

A group of 226 travelers from the Midwest to California got caught in a terrible blizzard in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. They could go no further, and were snowbound. You think you know this story, because you've heard of the Donner Party. But this wasn't in 1846, it was 1952, and it wasn't a wagon train, but a railroad train.

A 12-foot-tall snowdrift stopped the train called City of San Francisco at 6,880 feet of altitude. The passeners of the 15-car train were buried in snow for three days. Knowing that snowplows would come, they patiently passed the time at first. But then the battery-powered lights went out, and eventually the heat failed as well. Portable heaters belched out carbon monoxide, and the train's food ran out. Meanwhile, the snowplows trying to reach them broke down, as did a rescue train. Read about the ordeal of the City of San Francisco passengers at Smithsonian. The story includes a contemporary newsreel.

Warning: these trailers are bloody and gory.

As of January first, the character Popeye is public domain. Noting the "success" of the movie Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (it wasn't liked, but it made money), two different studios have films ready to go in which Popeye is a crazed killer. ITN Studios is teasing Popeye's Revenge, above. The movie has a standard plot in which a group of young people plan to open a summer camp, but when they investigate the legend of Popeye, they find out he's still around, and not at all happy to see them. Then there's Popeye the Slayer Man, in which young people enter an abandoned spinach factory because legend says it's haunted by Popeye. But it's not haunted; he just lives there, and he's not at all happy to see them.



These movies have more in common than just Popeye and plot. They both look like they were made on a shoestring budget. Both are expected to be released in January, but neither has an official release date. Neither one promises to be in theaters, so you might find them on streaming services instead. -via Geeks Are Sexy

In an early scene in the movie Sergeant York, we see farmer Alvin York shooting turkeys to explain how he was a crack shot. You should also learn about another farmer who rose to the occasion during wartime to become the most successful sniper in history. Simo Hayha (also spelled Häyhä) was a five foot tall Finnish farmer who joined the military during the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union. He brought his own gun and became a sniper.

The war only lasted three and a half months, but in that time, Hayha racked up 505 confirmed kills, and would have killed more Red Army soldiers if he hadn't been wounded toward the end of the war. Hayha earned the nickname "the White Death" for his stealth and accuracy. He did all this without the modern gear any American duck hunter would have. Hayha even refused to use a scope, even though they were available. He just shot enemy soldiers the way he hunted animals back on the farm. Read about Hayha and his accomplishments at Cracked.

(Image credit: Finnish Wartime Photograph Archive/Colorized by Julius Jääskeläinen)

The 1993 movie Jurassic Park had state-of-the-art special effects and convinced us that dinosaurs could be brought back from extinction. But we've learned a lot about dinosaurs since 1993, and now those movie dinosaurs just aren't all that accurate. They've made several sequels, and couldn't change the design of those monsters without seriously damaging the continuity of the franchise. But YouTuber CoolioArt went back and gave those raptors the feathers that we now know they should have. They are of the species Deinonychus Antirrhopus, as they were in the book, only bigger because otherwise the movie wouldn't be as scary. The real dinos were about half the size of these. Oh, they could still kill a person, but they wouldn't have been as menacing on the screen as what we got with Jurassic Park. As it stands, our protagonists are menaced by giant crows. Here they are in a piece of the climactic scene.

Sorry, there's no scientifically accurate T. rex to save the day. Yet. -via Born in Space

In the early 18th century, the disciplines of chemistry and alchemy diverged, as science became more rigorous in its methods. James Price, born in 1752, became a distinguished chemist at a rather young age, but then diverted his efforts into alchemy, determined to create gold from other materials. He became quite famous for it, too. Price launched public demonstrations in which he would use borax, charcoal, nitre, mercury, and a secret red powder he would not explain to make a small amount of gold. Assayers agreed the gold was genuine. Was this the breakthrough the world had been waiting for? Price also developed a white powder for making silver.

But members of the Royal Society, to which Price belonged, insisted that he give a demonstration to its members, all notable scientists. Price had plenty of excuses not to do so, but finally relented in 1783. Then instead of creating gold in front of a panel of scientists, he staged a shocking suicide. Read about the life and death of the alchemist James Price at Amusing Planet.  

(Image credit: John Russell)

The placenta is an organ grown by a mammal fetus that attaches to the mother's uterus. The fetus gets its nutrition through the placenta, but communication goes both ways. Certain placental cells control how much and which kinds of nutrients are sent from the mother, according to fetal needs at different stages of pregnancy. That makes sense, but you may be surprised to learn that these cells' behavior in sending such signals vary depending on whether the genes that operate them came from the father or the mother!

Genes inherited from the father are more likely to demand nutrition, to ensure the health of the child. Genes inherited from the mother are less demanding, as they tend to ensure the health of the mother and her continued ability to reproduce. This aligns with the idea of survival of the fittest, in which the fittest means surviving long enough to produce offspring. This genetic tug-of-war is only a problem during a food scarcity crisis, which happens with every species at times, including humans. The wonder is how this mechanism works at the genetic level, and how scientists figured it out, which you can read about at SciTechDaily. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Wei Hsu, Shang-Yi Chiu)

In 1970, Rupert Holmes was asked for a way to get notice for an unknown band from Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. He said they should record a song that was guaranteed to get banned from radio, and he even wrote that song. The lyrics were a bit confusing at first, but if you listened closely, you understood that it was a tale of cannibalism. But the tune was very catchy, and "Timothy" by The Buoys got significant airplay before radio stations pulled it over the subject matter, which only made audiences more eager to hear it.  

Holmes explained that he had no idea the story in "Timothy" mimicked a real Pennsylvania mining disaster that occurred in 1963. The song was the only American Top 40 hit for The Buoys, although they had another song titled "Give Up Your Guns" that was a European hit. Rupert Holmes went on to record the #1 song "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" in 1979. Holmes explains how he came up with the idea for "Timothy" and the scheme to get The Buoys on the charts at Mental Floss.

Christian Scafidi and his girlfriend Emma were walking outside soon after a hurricane blew through. They spotted a tiny pink thing, and when it moved, they were surprised it was still alive. They didn't know what kind of animal it was, but they took it in and fed it. Richard turned out to be a newborn squirrel, probably blown from the nest by the storm. They looked but never found his mother or siblings, and wildlife rehab wasn't equipped to take on a newborn. Christian really had no choice but to become a daddy to a needy hairless creature smaller than his hand who refused to give up.

The story has a happy ending. Richard survived, started to grow hair, and finally opened his eyes. He is now almost grown up and very much bonded to Christian. He even has his own Instagram page and TikTok gallery, where you can follow his progress.

Part of the charm of cuckoo clocks is their old world charm that inspires images of the Alpine cultures that created them. Etsy seller woodmess of Istanbul designs and builds modern interpretations of the classic design with vibrant colors and robust curves.

Like its predecessors, the bird pops out at the hour to sing and dance. But this time, it pops out of a house that looks like it belongs in a Los Angeles suburb instead of southern Germany. Each clock is made to order to suit each customer's color preferences, although woodmess urges light colors for the bird to ensure that it doesn't disappear in its cave.

-via Core77

If you are looking for some stimulation, try the newest game from neal.fun called Stimulation Clicker. When you start, there's only one button. Click it, and click it again and again. The more you click, the more options for stimulation you will collect. The collection of nonsense you see above cost me a few thousand "stimulations," but I didn't have to push the button for all of them, because eventually the button will take over. You'll have a chance to earn bonus stimulations and unlock achievements, too. If I were to leave this window open while I took a nap, there's no telling what I'd be able to stimulate myself with! It can get a bit noisy, though. Those who know tell me that the game does indeed end at some point, but I had to dump out at level 16 because I was getting overstimulated. Try Stimulation Clicker yourself and kiss an hour good bye.  -via Metafilter