Once a song is mixed and any master tapes of individual performance are discarded, there's no un-mixing the music, right? Not so fast. A new artificial intelligence project from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) can extract and isolate individual instruments from a blended recording, or even a recording of a band playing together.

The system, which is “self-supervised,” doesn’t require any human annotations on what the instruments are or what they sound like.

Trained on over 60 hours of videos, the “PixelPlayer” system can view a never-before-seen musical performance, identify specific instruments at pixel level, and extract the sounds that are associated with those instruments.

For example, it can take a video of a tuba and a trumpet playing the “Super Mario Brothers” theme song, and separate out the soundwaves associated with each instrument.

This technology will be a boon to recording studios, remixers, and anyone who wants to learn, say, the trumpet part from an orchestra performance. I can see it being used in schools to help music students, which would be great if done in private, but humiliating in front of one's classmates. What's the worst that could happen? Someone will record a middle school band recital, isolate the worst player, and upload it to social media for laughs. Read about the program and its potential uses at MIT News. -via Gizmodo

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Jeb Corliss used a GoPro 360° Fusion Camera to record a roller coaster ride at Magic Mountain. That means you won't be able to see the coaster itself as it appears to the rider, or anyone else. The POV is his hand! He stabilized the footage, and the finished product is a weird, almost psychedelic ride that you'd expect from a cartoon. Cosmic! -via Geeks Are Sexy

Paula Godwin took her dogs out for an early morning walk last Friday in Arizona. Along the way, she came close to stepping on a rattlesnake! But her 6-month-old puppy Todd jumped in the way, and was himself bitten by the snake. Quick medical intervention saved Todd, but the golden retriever's nose was swollen and itchy for days. Godwin's Facebook posts indicate that her hero dog is healing up nicely. See a video gallery of Todd here. That's a good dog. -via Laughing Squid

(Image credit: Paula Godwin)

We learned in grade school that America was named after Amerigo Vespucci, but we didn't learn much about the Italian explorer or how his name came to be linked with two continents and eventually the short name for the Unites States of America. The picture here shows one panel of the world map that provided that link.

Similarly to many other countries, the US did not decide on its name after a careful selection process in which its people sought a fitting linguistic symbol of shared national heritage; instead, its name was somewhat randomly bestowed upon it by an outsider. The person credited with naming America was a German cartographer named Martin Waldseemüller. Born around 1470, Waldseemüller drew his seminal map in 1507 with a colleague, Matthias Ringmann. He created a 32-square-foot woodcut map that had a land mass separate from Europe or Asia, in its own hemisphere, with two oceans on either side. And he gave one sliver of it a name: America.

That sliver was a just a small part of South America, but somehow the name stuck. Waldseemüller did not include the label "America" on his subsequent maps, indicating that he learned more about the relative explorative contributions of Amerigo Vespucci. Read about the single map that named America, and see all 12 panels of it at Quartz.  -via Digg

(Image source: Library of Congress)

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The Hacksmith became a walking meme for Independence Day as he walked around in a T-rex costume holding Roman candles. Don't try this at home.  

WARNING: THESE VIDEOS ARE FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY. PERSONAL USE OF VIDEO CONTENT IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. THE HACKSMITH IS A TRAINED PROFESSIONAL WHO KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT HE'S DOING. EXCEPT WHEN HE DOESN'T.

Those T-rex costumes are probably just flame-retardant enough to pass the US standards for Halloween costumes. They weren't designed for pyrotechnic stunts. That said, we'll always have this video. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

An exhibit called Medieval Monsters: Terrors, Aliens, Wonders is on display now through September 23 at at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City. The artworks of Medieval Monsters were selected to show how the depiction of monsters communicated larger concepts. Fear of the different and the unknown could be harnessed to promote ideas such as the power of authority, the evilness of an opponent, and the punishment for sin.

“Monstrous imagery was often associated with members of socially disadvantaged groups in order to suggest that they were less than human; such a strategy rationalized repression and could even be used to instigate violence,” write curators Asa Simon Mittman and Sherry Lindquist in the accompanying catalogue. “In addition to the representation of nonnormative figures within European Christian culture, such as the mentally or physically impaired, whole groups of outsiders were also demonized. Representations of Jews and Muslims, whom Christians believed sinful for denying Christ, were made monstrous with exaggerated or animalistic features and graceless bodies, such as the caricatured representations of Jews — identifiable by their pointed hats — who torture Christ in a thirteenth-century German Book of Hours.”

The works would come with a trigger warning if they weren't drawn by hand. See some of the monsters with messages from the exhibit at Hyperallergic. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Graham S. Haber, courtesy the Morgan Library & Museum)

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The blades on a lawnmower aren't as sharp as the name would imply (although they will hurt you), and they don't use an opposing force like a knife on a cutting board or scissors, so how do they cut grass instead of just pushing it down? The answer may surprise you. Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day takes us underneath a mower with a high-speed camera so that we can understand what's going on. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Mark Hough and his wife were enjoying some margaritas in their backyard Jacuzzi last Friday, when their fun was interrupted by a bear! The Houghs hightailed it into the house, and the bear took over the good times. First he swam in the Jacuzzi.

Hough said the bear was "bobbling away having fun, playing with the chlorinator and the thermometer, and grabbing the string of the thermometer and throwing it up in the air."

He stood "about 15 feet away" and started filming.

The bear was "playful" and "kinda cute, even though he’s huge," Hough said.

Then he helped himself to Hough's abandoned margarita, climbed into a tree, and slept it off for a couple of hours. You can read the whole story, and see a couple of videos taken from a distance at Buzzfeed.

(Image credit: Mark Hough)

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Pierre Gombaud made a video of the Beatles crossing Abbey Road by animating the still picture from the album cover. But that's just the beginning! As soon as they make it to the other side, the Fab Four enter their psychedelic period. The songs used are "Two-Finger Chord & Whistle" by Paul McCartney and "Tomorrow Never Knows" by the Beatles. -via Digg

While the members of the second Continental Congress didn't celebrate American independence with picnics or backyard grilling the way we do today, they did their share of celebrating. Smithsonian takes a look at the food that was available to the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia at the time, but the more interesting subject was what -and how much- they drank. They drank a lot of alcohol. George Washington was known for spending prodigiously on drinks for everyone, while Thomas Jefferson worked to produce better wine. Benjamin Franklin was the most famous drinker of the bunch, because he wrote about his appreciation of alcohol. Steven Grasse and Reverend Michael Alan, who produced a book on colonial drinking, tell us more.   

Benjamin Franklin was especially unabashed about his love of “the cups.” Though Grasse writes that he was careful to advise temperance, he regularly enjoyed wine and what some might argue were early iterations of craft cocktails. His favorite, according to Alan, was milk punch, a three-ingredient brandy-based sip whose two non-alcoholic components–milk and lemon juice–washed and refined its third. Another Franklin foodie badge is his “Drinkers’ Dictionary,” a compendium of Colonial slang describing the state of drunkenness. Initially printed in 1737 in the Pennsylvania Gazette, its publication made Franklin one of America’s first food and drink writers.

Then there was Alexander Hamilton, who reportedly couldn't hold his liquor as well as the others. Read about the food and drink of the Founding Fathers at Smithsonian.

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There are already four movies in The Purge franchise -who knew? The fourth film, an origin story called The First Purge, opens nationwide today. Not that anyone will go see it for a logical explanation. Violence sells, and The Purge delivers. Now Screen Junkies delivers an Honest Trailer for the franchise as a whole.

Filmmakers know they can snag an audience by appealing to their sense of patriotism. The most notable patriotic movies that stand the test of time are pretty straightforward: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Independence Day, 1776, Rocky IV, etc. There are many other movies that faded into the mist because they were riding a trend that passed. A story that illustrates America's mood one year will appear as ridiculous propaganda when the political winds change.

In 1933’s Gabriel Over the White House, President Judson Hammond (played by Walter Huston), having been possessed by the Angel Gabriel, brings the Depression to an end by dissolving the Legislative and judicial branches of the federal government, concentrating all political power within himself. He then declares martial law, single-handedly battles the mob, puts the Army of the Unemployed to work on a public works project, and uses the threat of military force to strong arm the other nations of the world into signing a peace treaty. Made in the depths of the Great Depression and confronting many of the problems facing Americans at the time, it’s all portrayed as a very good thing.

Upon seeing it, an historian I know noted that it was the only film he could think of in which fascism, was presented not only as a cure for America’s troubles, but as a force of goodness and light working to protect the common man.

The film’s message was a popular one upon its initial release, but then that damn Hitler had to come along and ruin everybody’s dream. Warner Brothers pulled the film out of circulation for the next 70 years.

In other eras, different ideas of patriotism could appeal to different audiences at the same time. In the very politically-divided year of 1968, moviegoers could see both The Green Berets and The Legend of Billy Jack. Fifty years on, both films come off as overlong sermons about right and wrong. Den of Geek takes a look at quite a few of those movies considered patriotic in their day, but are kind of creepy when you see them now. 

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When the subject of the show is "modern marvels," you really don't know what to expect. Maybe this is a "potpourri" episode of the Mental Floss show Scatterbrained, where each host got to select a subject that fascinates them. Anyway, the new gives us information and trivia about skyscrapers, the history of robots, Tesla's Gigafactory, transportation myths, and the Three Gorges Dam.

Americans go a little crazy blowing stuff up to celebrate the nation's birthday. John Adams said that Independence Day should be celebrated with "bonfires and illuminations," even though he was actually referring to July 2. Our national anthem has "the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air," leading us to do just that on July 4th. The majority of people who set off fireworks don't thoroughly consider the dangers, which can lead to a trip to the hospital.

According to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, fireworks were implicated in 12,900 hospital visits, resulting in eight deaths in 2017. There were 800 hospitalization from firecrackers, 1,200 from sparkler injuries, 400 from Roman candles, and 300 from bottle rockets (if you needed clarification, a device called a “bottle rocket” is not perfectly safe).

Who would you have guessed is affected most? You're exactly right -teenage boys. A 2014 study in The Journal of Surgical Research came up with the data in the above graph (the raw numbers are from 2006-2010). See more statistics on fireworks injuries at Vox.

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YouTuber DogScientist built a mechanical game for his dogs. Was this project just to give the dogs something to do? To make them put a little effort into feeding? Or is it a lesson in figuring out challenges? It doesn't really matter, because all those ends are accomplished as the dogs learn how the machine works, and then learn strategies to make it work better for them. And it's pretty neat to watch, too. -via Tastefully Offensive