King of Customs garage in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, modified a Nissan SUV so the driver's seat - complete with steering wheel, pedals and the gear shift - is in the back! View more images over at Carscoops.
Move over, Chris Hemsworth!
For his What If: Movies Reimagined for Another Time/Place series vol 7, artist Peter Stults (previously on Neatorama) imagined Mad Max actor Mel Gibson as Marvel Comics' Thor.
Yes, there have been many machines that can solve a Rubik's cube - some in lightning speed - but this Rubik's cube invention by a Japanese guy who called himself Human Controller is different: it can actually solve itself!
Watch it in action:
Four lanes each from four directions, and everyone is in a hurry to get somewhere else. According to redditors, this is Warsaw, Poland, at the intersection of Grojecka and Wawelska.
Yes, there are traffic lights, but they malfunctioned last month during a rush hour rain storm, so this happened. -via Digg
(Image credit: ToxicPapercut)
Christine McConnell (previously at Neatorama) became an internet star because of her intricately-decorated baked goods, her creepy sense of style, and her awesome cosplay. She's parlayed that success into her own Netflix series called The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell. It's part cooking show and part sitcom, as she makes treats for her creepy collection of animated talking pets. -via Laughing Squid
Got a smart dog? No, you don't ... according to science, that is!
Researchers from the University of Exeter and Canterbury Christ Church University found that dogs actually aren't all that intelligent:
The study examined more than 300 papers on the intelligence of dogs and other animals, and found several cases of "over interpretation" in favour of dogs' abilities.
"During our work it seemed to us that many studies in dog cognition research set out to 'prove' how clever dogs are," said Professor Stephen Lea, of the University of Exeter.
"They are often compared to chimpanzees and whenever dogs 'win', this gets added to their reputation as something exceptional.
"Yet in each and every case we found other valid comparison species that do at least as well as dogs do in those tasks."
Read the rest over at Phys.org
This map by Hackernoon used data provided by the dating app Hater to determine which foods are most disproportionally disliked, relative to how other states feel about those foods. Take a look around, and it appears that many states' pick for the worst food is less about how the food actually tastes, and more about what that food represents. The environmentally-minded coffee connoisseurs of Washington state hate Keurig K-Cups. Macho Montana hates pumpkin spice flavors. And while Texas cattle ranchers love steak, they hate seeing it overcooked. Some make sense, like Kansas disliking shellfish. The shellfish they get isn't as fresh as it would be anywhere else. A few states are confusing, like Missouri. There must be a story somewhere about the last bite of a hot dog. See the enlargeable image at Hackernoon. -via Uproxx
Expectations were high for the movie Star Wars: The Last Jedi last December. If you followed opinions on the internet, you may have been surprised at the vehement anger over Rain Johnson's episode of the Skywalker saga. We know that Star Wars fans are the harshest Star Wars critics, but this time it felt different. And it was. Morten Bay of the University of Southern California has published his research about the social media backlash against the movie, and found that it was highly influenced by Russian social media users, whether people or bots, and what might have been an exercise in covert influence.
Bay suggests that reputation may not be earned, and instead “finds evidence of deliberate, organized political influence measures disguised as fan arguments,” as he writes in the paper’s abstract. He continues, “The likely objective of these measures is increasing media coverage of the fandom conflict, thereby adding to and further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society. Persuading voters of this narrative remains a strategic goal for the U.S. alt-right movement, as well as the Russian Federation.”
The paper analyzes in depth the negative online reaction, which is split into three different camps: those with a political agenda, trolls and what Bay calls “real fantagonists,” which he defines as genuine Star Wars fans disappointed in the movie. His findings are fascinating; “Overall, 50.9% of those tweeting negatively [about the movie] was likely politically motivated or not even human,” he writes, noting that only 21.9% of tweets analyzed about the movie had been negative in the first place.
The study is available online. Scroll down at the link to read the whole thing.
Finding microbes living deep underground is surprising, although it's happened before. But researchers were very surprised to find cyanobacteria, which normally requires light for photosynthesis, living in deeply-buried rock in Spain. A team led by Fernando Puente-Sánchez of the Spanish Centre of Astrobiology in Madrid dug a borehole 2011 feet deep and examined the sample they brought up. The presence of cyanobacteria was so unexpected, they dug another hole to control for contamination. The cyanobacteria was there, also.
So what’s going on? How can these microorganisms survive at such extreme depths with no access to sunlight and scant traces of water?
Observed through a microscope, the subterranean cyanobacteria appeared similar to their cousins that live on the surface. Genetic analysis, however, told a slightly different story; the enigmatic cyanobacteria produce enzymes that convert hydrogen into useful energy. And revealingly, the researchers observed lower levels of hydrogen within the air pockets of the rocks where the cyanobacteria lived compared to areas in which they were absent. This suggests the underground microbes are consuming hydrogen gas to get their fuel.
The discovery is all the more weird because species without access to light and water are thought to have restricted opportunity for mutation and evolution. But life, uh, finds a way. Read more about the underground cyanobacteria at Gizmodo.
(Image credit: PNAS)
Sometimes internet brings you a beautiful piece of art , culture and philosophy. All Li Ziqi (ok Zikai) videos are a pure aesthetic thrill, but this one has a nice twist.
Bbpeach has the story behind on Reddit : "This girls name is Li Ziqi and she was orphaned at a very young age so she went to live with her grandparents in the countryside. As a young adult she lived in the city but then moved back to the countryside to take care of her grandma after her grandpa passed away.
She uploads her videos on Weibo and her fans re-upload her videos on Youtube.
She also has longer videos with bloopers that show she is the one setting up the camera and recording/cooking/building.. basically doing everything herself."
After the movie version of The Addams Family showed Thing as a hand with free movement about the house, it didn't take long for the toy version to become a Halloween classic. They are good for something besides scaring people, as Kiko the cat demonstrates. She is game for being petted by an automated hand for quite some time before she decides she's had enough. -via Tastefully Offensive
Psychiatry in the 19th century was filled with quack doctors and quack cures. The need for doctors specializing in mental illness rose quickly during and after the Civil War, and among the new crop of doctors was Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell. He studied phantom limb syndrome among the many battlefield amputees, wrote about it, and became known as the “Father of Modern American Neurology.” Mitchell then turned to other mental maladies, such as “neurasthenia,” which could be pretty much anything. The cure for men was to get back to nature and do physical labor.
But the cure was not quite so simple for women. Ladies, too, found themselves impaired by the pace of modern life, or, at least, swept up in the medical trend. More specifically, white, upper-class, educated women came to dominate Mitchell’s patient demographic. Women who occupied privileged positions like this, who were often writers and artists, had been increasingly afforded time outside of the home, the opportunity to socialize, and higher education. But using their minds so extensively, Mitchell believed, could easily deplete their energy and fry their fragile nerves.
Mitchell proceeded to prescribe the rest cure almost exclusively to these women—“nervous women,” writes Mitchell, “who, as a rule, are thin and lack blood.” And the way to quell the overexerted brain and depleted blood supply of a woman was to, essentially, prescribe her a long, milky, much-needed rest.
Patient were prescribed isolation, bedrest for months at a time, a calorie-rich diet of milk and baby foods, and no mental stimulation. Many gained weight, which for some, was a benefit. Read about Dr. Mitchell's weird treatment at Atlas Obscura.
The Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina is huge and inhospitable. That made it an unpleasant place to live, but preferable to living in slavery, and perfect for hiding from slave hunters. Great Big Story tells us how escaped slaves made it their hiding place, and then their home. -via Mental Floss
This looks like a close-up of the xenomorph from Alien. But it's green! This is the South African succulent Faucaria tigrina or the Tiger’s Jaw. Photographed from different angles, you'll see that the Tiger's Jaw shares another xenomorph feature: the jaws-within-jaws. No, it's not a meat-eating plant. According to Plant Africa, the toothy shape of the leaves is optimal for collecting moisture from water vapor in the air. See lots of pictures of Faucaria tigrina at Kuriositas.
(Image credit: Flickr user Mike Keeling)
