Although I personally do not see the draw, the popularity of ocean cruises just keeps going up. To keep up with the demand, cruise ships are getting bigger all the time. Royal Caribbean's new ship Icon of the Seas is twenty stories tall and can carry almost ten thousand people, but it also cost two billion dollars and took years to build. Cruise companies get more bang for their buck by "jumboizing" their existing cruise ships. The "jumboization" process takes about nine months from start to finish, removes a ship from service for only a couple of months, and costs around $80 million.
What they do is cut a ship in half, slide in a new section in the middle, and weld it all back together. This requires precise measurement and design, so that the new section can be built to match every hallway and pipeline that runs through it. The exciting part (if seen in time-lapse form) is when the ship is brought in and cut into two pieces with acetylene torches. The parts are separated, and the new section is rolled in and welded. When it's done, a much longer ship leaves the dock, ready to book hundreds more passengers than before. New Atlas explains jumboization and has a series of videos documenting how this has been done to several different ships. So the next time you want to spend a week or so floating on the waves up close and personal with a few thousand strangers, there may be a ticket for you. -via Boing Boing
(Image credit: Silversea Cruises)
You may see news articles about organic food proliferating on the internet. This is because people increasingly care about their health and the dangers of industrialized food. Hence a revival of interest in Mountain Dew.
Writer and filmmaker Ellen Lang has experimented with recipes that incorporate Mother Nature's nectar into common foods. These include grilled cheese sandwiches. The cheese is a paste made from reduced Mountain Dew, cream cheese, and shredded cheddar cheese, then spread onto bread.
How does it taste? Lang kindly gave her creation to members of her beloved family. Lang's mother says that it "Definitely gets worse with every bite."
-via reddit
When a driver sees a pedestrian about to cross a street a crosswalk, the driver is supposed to yield by coming to a stop and allowing the pedestrian to cross. Not everyone is aware of this rule and the police of San Francisco would like to change that. Naturally, this goal necessitated dressing like chickens.
The San Francisco Gate reports that police leadership required their subordinates to wear the chicken costume in order to increase their visibility. In the above video, Lt. Jonathan Ozol is unable to cross when a car drives right through the crosswalk. An officer on a motorcycle speeds off to confront the driver.
-via Colin Rugg
Taylor Swift supports Travis Kelce @taylorswift13 @tkelce @Chiefs #tayvis #football #taylorswift pic.twitter.com/WT4n21NaWZ
— Fried Rice Art (@friedriceart) September 18, 2024
It is an ephemeral art that lasts for only a split second, which is why it is necessary to play back the video recording in slow motion.
Alissa, an artist in Dallas, produces what she calls fried rice art. She carefully arranges mosaics composed of rice on boards. A precise flip flings it into the air while temporarily retaining its order. That shatters after just a moment. But that moment is a perfect one, as you can see demonstrated in the above portrait of Taylor Swift.
-via Massimo
No matter how powerful a person may become, they are still no match for the force of millions of gallons of water following gravity. Typhoon Yagi raged across Southeast Asia earlier this month with such force that it has been classified as a super typhoon. More than 700 people have been killed by the storm, thousands were injured, and the damage exceeds $15 billion. In Vietnam, floodwaters caused two sand dredgers laden with equipment to become unmoored on the Chay River on September 9. One was carrying a crane! Both barges struck the To Mau bridge. As you can see in this footage, the first barge was completely broken up, with the wrecked pieces passing under the bridge. That's some powerful flow. The second barge became stuck, and the crane was eventually toast as the dredger came apart underneath it. The bridge held up surprisingly well, considering the mass that hit it. -Thanks, Brother Bill!
There are thousands of species of animals that have developed the ability to change their sex. It's not so much a matter of what chromosomes they carry, because only mammals have X or Y chromosomes. Other species have sex chromosomes, but they are so different they are labeled in their own way. These animals are classified as male or female by whether they produce sperm or eggs. And that can change over time, often due to environmental conditions.
For example, there is a snail that changes from male to female depending on where it is in the mating chain, and since they are snails, that takes a long time. Some amphibians change sex when there is a big imbalance between males and females in the population. Many species of turtle will change sex when the temperature of the water changes. One fish can change from male to female in a hurry if confronted by a male rival it doesn't want to fight. And the clownfish has a sex change scheme that would give a whole new meaning to the movie Finding Nemo if Disney had wanted to be completely accurate. Read up on seven species of animals that change their sex at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: Nick Hobgood)
Stargazer and Northstar (Nora for short) were wild mustangs in Utah who were captured in 2021 when their herd was reduced. Melissa Tritinger adopted them together, knowing they were pair-bonded. You can read their story here. The mustangs live with another horse named Reuben. One day Stargazer spotted a kitten in the field that was obviously hungry and lonely. All three horses were fascinated, and welcomed the kitten into the paddock. It took a little longer for Turnip to trust Melissa, but that came with a good meal or two. The family decided to adopt Turnip, but he'd need approval from the other two cats. That wasn't a problem, either, because everyone loves Turnip. No one knows where he came from, but Turnip isn't going anywhere. The Dodo shows us that first encounter when the horses decided they wanted this cat. You can see more of Turnip at Stargazer and Nora's Instagram page. -via Laughing Squid
Sunday is the autumnal equinox, when we officially say goodbye to summer. What it really means is that for the rest of the year, we in the Northern Hemisphere will have more nighttime than daytime. One way to mark the occasion is to make the transition psychologically, with a pumpkin spice latte, some popcorn or early Halloween candy, and a good fall movie.
Bored Panda has compiled a list of 30 movies that will put you into an autumn mood. Most of them take place in fall for at least a substantial part of the story, with gorgeous scenery of falling leaves and a hint of a chill in the air. First, there are ten big hit movies evoking fall, then five family movies that both adults and children will enjoy, then five romances to make you feel cozy and loved, then five spooky features for spooky season. The final five are autumn movies that are available now on Netflix. All have descriptions, and some have trailers. Happy equinox weekend!
The rise of digital cameras changed photography for all of us, because it eliminated the cost of film, the cost of developing, and the wait to find out if the picture you shot was any good. A hundred years earlier, there was another revolution in photography, when we went from only having expensive portraits shot in a studio by a professional to cameras that anyone could use, and therefore, the invention of the snapshot. The century in between was dominated by one company that produced not only the cameras, but the film for those cameras, flashbulbs, and the developing of the pictures. Yes, it was Kodak, who took control of the photo industry by making us all photographers. They led the industry for snapshots, and then retreated when their film was no longer needed. I had a Kodak Brownie when I was a kid, but it was already an antique. I took pictures with my Instamatic, with Magicubes for the flash. -via Digg
The Difficult Chair is, well difficult. The Easy Chair is easy and thus has certain advantages. But as one Instagram commenter notes, you really need to experience the Difficult Chair to appreciate the Easy Chair.
So, inspired by this comic by Dan Piraro, let us endure the Difficult Chair to ensure that our children may have the liberty to study the Easy Chair. This plan does, though, assume that we are able to have children after sitting in that chair.
Native Americans and early colonists marked the graves of their dead, but markers made from wood don't last and stones weren't carved as they are today, until one man was memorialized in Jamestown, Virginia. A polished black limestone grave marker was found near the settlement's church in 1901. Jamestown was founded in 1607, but the tombstone has no dates. It had indentations where metal inlays have corroded and disappeared. One is in the shape of a knight, so it has been titled the Knight's Tombstone.
According to a new study published in The International Journal of Historical Archaeology, it was the shape of that indentation that led to the identification of the man who was originally buried there, and the fossils contained in the stone itself that led to the identification of its origin in Europe. As with many historical mysteries, the conclusions are labeled "most likely" in a lot of places. Read the story of the man who got America's first carved tombstone at IFLScience. -via Strange Company
(Image credit: Jamestown Rediscovery (Preservation Virginia))
TikTok is the modern equivalent of central Italy in the Fifteenth Century. It's the heart of a renaissance of intellectual development in which daring pioneers push the frontiers of human understanding beyond walls imposed by the reactionary elements of our society. It's why air fried Twinkies are able to exist.
@MorganChompz tests and evaluates mass-marketed foods in her home laboratory, but she also performs experiments at the edge of scientific certainty. Having heard that it was possible to cook Twinkies in air fryers, she conducted her own study. To follow her Promethean example, set your air fryer at 400° American and toast your Twinkie for three minutes. The result is a perfect balance between chewiness and crispiness.
-via The Takeout
Cartoonist Mark Parisi illustrates the proliferation of tipping as a practice for services that do not traditionally solicit tips. This dog really hopes that you wil click "Custom".
In the past year or so, I've seen automatic payment systems asking for tips and outrage from people on X and in real life objecting to this practice. But with the rise of AI, I accept that it may be worthwhile giving in to this shakedown. Perhaps tipping a robot now delays my future rightsizing into biomass energy.
Redditor valardohaerisx spotted this scene on the highway near Idaho Springs, Colorado. While refreshingly seasonal, one has to wonder why they felt the need to use ratchet straps to secure a pumpkin on top of the vehicle. From the comments, here are the most plausible reasons, not at all ranked in the order of likelihood.
1. The kids in the backseat were fighting over who gets to hold the pumpkin. And the trunk is full.
2. Dad recently bought ratchet straps and by golly, he's going to use them.
3. You don't put a dirty vegetable inside a Lexus!
4. The car is already full of pumpkins.
5. It worked for the Christmas tree.
6. Someone in the car is allergic to pumpkin.
7. "Because one stray "Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo" from a passenger, and you got a big freakin' horse carriage in your backseat."
8. Because it's funny.
A good time was had by all.
Amara is a young southern white rhinoceros at Knowsley Safari in Prescot, UK. She's just under two years old and was noticed to be limping earlier this year. Rest and pain medication didn't help, so the zoo consulted with veterinarians from the University of Liverpool. Scans revealed that Amara had a broken ulna and needed surgery. How do you perform this kind of surgery on a rhino? Very carefully. In fact, it had never been done before.
The university sent a team of ten large animal veterinarians to perform the five-hour surgery. But they had never operated on a rhinoceros -they specialize in horses. And who knows the amount of anesthesia to give a juvenile rhino that weighs 800 kilgrams (1,760 pounds)? But Amara came through the surgery just fine and her leg was fitted with a cast. She spent the next six months confined to a paddock with her mother, but now the cast has been removed. Veterinarians will continue to monitor the condition of Amara's leg, but she is doing well and back to playing with the other rhinos in the park. Click to the right on the image above to see Amara.
