Appropriate for Valentine's Day, the New York Times (paywalled) tells the love story of Sophie Lund Rasmussen and Troels Pank Arboll, two Danish academics who share an interest in the history of the ancient Near Eastern culture known as the Assyrian Empire. Rasmussen is actually an ecologist, but she likes to read within the academic specialty of her husband, Arboll, who is a professional Assyriologist.

The couple are credited with groundbreaking research into the history of kissing. The historical and archaeological records from ancient Mesopotamia indicate that couples kissed. It was generally a practice not engaged in as a precursor to further intimacy but something that couples did after they had "clashed chariots", if you know what I mean. Specifically, a clay tablet from 2400 B.C. describes a male god impregnating his mother/sister with seven gods and then kissing her.

If you get some romantic time with a partner on this Valentine's Day, perhaps you should pass along this story to set the mood.

-via Dave Barry | Image: British Museum

Traveling around the world these days is fast and convenient due to modern transportation. But before planes and bullet trains were invented, people had to travel the old-fashioned way, on ships or sometimes on foot. And perhaps, one traveler who truly had it rough was James Holman, who circumnavigated the globe in four different trips during the 19th century.

Holman had entered the Royal Navy between the ages of 10 and 12. After serving about 12 years, he contracted a disease, a rare form of arthritis which first affected his joints, and later left him completely blind.

He could have lived a comfortable life at Windsor Castle on his navy pension, but Holman longed for adventure and thrill, so he first decided to study medicine in the University of Edinburgh to figure out whether his arthritis could be cured.

When it was clear to him that the disease was final and incurable, Holman hatched this idea of traveling around the world. He made four separate trips. The first was a Grand Tour of Europe. He published a book about his travels which became a huge hit, despite having such a long title.

During that trip, Holman crossed Siberia which was featured in his second successful book, in which he recounted in detail how he and his driver ate stale bread for weeks, and how he was accused of being a spy and taken to the Polish border.

Holman's third trip involved going to Africa and parts of Asia. Despite the successes of his first two books, it seemed interest started to die down, and people were no longer buying his third book. And finally, his swansong trip took him from Spain down to the Middle East, then from Egypt to Bosnia, Montenegro, and finally, Hungary.

Holman's fourth book was never published, and he died just a few days after completing his memoir in 1858. The end might have been bittersweet, but one can truly say that James Holman had lived an adventurous life.

(Image credit: John Richardson Jackson, Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons)

New research on the rongorongo script suggests that it might have been an independent invention of a writing system, similar to that of the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Chinese.

This finding came about when a fourth wooden tablet was dated to around 1493 to 1509, 200 years before the first Europeans set foot on Rapa Nui (another name for Easter Island). It could probably explain why the glyphs are harder to decipher as there's no other writing system to which it can be compared.

The first three rongorongo tablets' date of creation had been pinned to around the 18th and 19th centuries, but the fourth one surprisingly was said to have been made in the 15th century, although there are theories which suggest that "old wood" was used, and that's why the radiocarbon dating tests resulted in a much earlier date.

In that case, it would mean that a piece of wood had been stored for 200 years before it was finally used to write on, which Silvia Ferrara, the lead author of the study and a philologist, said was highly unlikely. So, it's a more plausible explanation that the rongorongo script is an original invention, having no external influence from other languages.

So far, there have been 400 different glyphs identified in the rongorongo script which contains 15,000 characters, and cross-referencing these glyphs with other writing systems, the team has not found any similarities, which gives even more credence to the idea that it had been invented from scratch. - via The Daily Grail

(Image credit: INSCRIBE and RESOLUTION ERC Teams)

Fearing a crisis of too many mouths to feed, the government of China instituted the one child policy in 1980. For 35 years, citizens were told that limiting your family to only one child was best, and many came to believe it. Others were subject to forced abortions, fines, and loss of jobs and homes for violating the policy. Gradually, as the effects of the policy were realized, the rules were refined in some areas to allow a family with one girl to try once again for a boy. Then in 2015, the policy was changed to two children. Now the Chinese government is encouraging young women to have three children. But it's not working.

For one thing, there are fewer women reaching childbearing age every year, thanks to the original policy. And the current childbearing-age cohort grew up in one-child homes, believing that was best, as the government told them. Economic reforms led to more young people moving to the cities for better jobs, and the cost of living discourages having any children at all. The population crisis was averted, but now China is facing the prospect of too few young people to support a large population of aging grandparents. The country's population began to drop in 2022, and in 2023 there were half a million fewer births than the year before. The same trend is seen in other countries, but in less stark numbers due to the erstwhile policy. How did all this happen? The original policy was a reaction to demographic projections by a missile scientist who used rocket trajectory numbers in his calculations. Maybe sociologists should have been consulted. Read the history of the one child policy and how China is feeling the fallout today.  -via Damn Interesting

Get ready for a slight case of cognitive dissonance as the Caped Crusader strolls down the corridor of the Death Star. It's the dark side vs. the Dark Knight! What's even more amazing is that in this story, Superman with all his powers is being held hostage, and Batman, with only his money, science, and gadgets, must rescue him. We know that Batman has everything he needs in his utility belt, but we never imagined one of those things was a lightsaber! Who will prevail, Batman and his amazing gear, or Vader with his Force powers?

To really cement the crossover, they should have enlisted Mark Hamill. He could have played both Luke Skywalker and The Joker.

The confrontation is neither AI nor animation, but an old-fashioned fan film that's very well produced. We can thank Batinthesun. This is actually a recent edit and re-upload of a longer video from the Super Power Beat Down series. You can see the original episode here, and the alternative ending version here that gave us this cut, which includes an opening crawl with some exposition, although it's not necessary to enjoy the video.  -via Born in Space

The Uros people live on floating islands on Lake Titicaca, high in the Andes on the border of Peru and Bolivia. They have always maintained that they are an ancient and distinct people who have always lived on the shores of -or in- Lake Titicaca. Outsiders are split about this claim. Some consider the Uros indistinguishable from other indigenous South Americans such as the Quechua and Aymara, and think that the people who live there now are staying because they benefit from the lake's resources and the tourist trade. They've even been accused of fabricating their history and customs as a performance. The government of Peru has been planning to turn the area into a national reserve, so the question is important to the people who live there now and demand the right to continue living in their ancestral home.

That's where DNA tests come in. A team of geneticists traveled to Lake Titicaca and had a time convincing the Uros to give swabs of DNA for testing. Julio Vilca, mayor of the floating islands, convinced others that this was the way to prove their lineage and history, and was the first to take the swab. Read about the Uros people of Laka Titicaca and what the genetic tests revealed at Big Think.

(Image credit: BENNY GROSS.1)

As a general statement, it would be helpful if popular architecture made broader use of slides. Like batpoles, they're fun and convenient. Julijonas Urbonas, a Lithuanian architect known for his eccentric designs and art installations, erected this one as a public sculpture in a business district in Vilnius.

From one side, it looks just like a stainless steel escalator, yet it leads not to a boardroom but instead to a slide. Two-piece suits are not required for the dress code, but they are strongly recommended. Use it to relax during your coffee break.  Also, since you don't really go anywhere or accomplish anything, you can regard it as just another day on the job.

-via Core77

It has long been known the J.R.R. Tolkien did not like Disney, since the day he saw Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with his close friend C.S. Lewis in 1938. But let's set the record straight. First, he didn't hate Walt Disney, the man. Tolkien wasn't that kind of person. But he hated the way The Walt Disney Company changed traditional folklore to appeal to the maximum possible numbers of American children, dumbing them down, so to speak. Second, he felt this way long before he saw Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Tolkien was an old-fashioned writer even for his time, and he had massive respect for classic fairy tales that went back hundreds of years, if not more. He also had his own particular vision of storytelling as a whole. You know that, but when you contrast it with the way Disney, as a company, works, you can see that the twain would never meet.

In 1531, Francisco Pizarro led 168 Spanish soldiers and two dozen horses inside the city of Cajamarca, then the capital of the Inca Empire, in what is now Peru. The Inca, with a huge army, did not see them as much of a threat, but they didn't know the deadly superiority of steel swords. The monarch of the empire, Atahualpa, was captured and confined to a room in his royal complex. With no way out and his empire at stake, Atahualpa began to offer treasure for his release.

Once he realized what the Spanish were really after, Atahualpa said he would give them enough gold to fill the room he was in up to the point he could reach (which was designated as a red line on the wall), plus enough silver to fill the room twice. The Spanish were very open to the idea, but made sure the gold and silver artworks were crushed and even melted down to maximize the take. The "ransom room" was 22 feet long and 17 feet wide, and the red line was more than eight feet up. It took two months to bring that much gold and silver to the room. The ransom ended up being 6,000 kilograms (13,227 pounds) of gold and twice as much silver, which would be worth almost half a billion dollars today.

How did that turn out for Atahualpa? You can imagine, but it would be better to read the story at Amusing Planet. The Inca Empire is gone, but the ransom room is still there, preserved for posterity.

How far will you go to restore something that has been lost through time? A few superfans of the old Nintendo racing game F-Zero have searched high and low for anyone who may possess the ROMs and/or data from the SNES add-on of the original F-Zero game. And here's the story of how they successfully recreated the game.

In the mid '90s, Nintendo offered a satellite modem peripheral that could be attached at the bottom of the SNES so that players can download games and other content through the burgeoning satellite broadcast connection, for which Nintendo partnered up with St. GIGA.

One of the games that was offered through the Satellaview service was a couple of supposed sequels to the F-Zero series titled F-Zero Grand Prix I and II. Broadcasts for BS F-Zero Grand Prix survived and have been uploaded to the internet. However, Grand Prix II was not so fortunate.

So, a programmer named Guy Perfect decided to launch a project that would recreate these games, but they needed data for the Grand Prix II broadcast. The community on Reddit even offered anyone $5,000 if they were able to provide them with any kind of data of that Soundlink event broadcast.

In 2018, they got it. Youtube user kukun kun uploaded recordings of all the Soundlink broadcasts of F-Zero, including the ones from the second Soundlink event which showed the Grand Prix II game.

From these, Guy Perfect, along with Porthor and Power Panda, were able to recreate the game's graphics, courses, and program to come up with a playable mod of Grand Prix I and II. That mod is called the BS F-Zero Deluxe and can be downloaded from Archive.org. It can be played using an emulator or the original SNES. - via MetaFilter

(Video credit: DidYouKnowGaming/Youtube)

Marvel has been in a slump the last couple of years, producing more and more TV shows and movies with diminishing returns. Yeah, that's relative. The Marvels was a box-office bomb because it only made $200 million, since the budget was so much higher. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was also a disappointment. Who is going to save Marvel? Why, Deadpool, of course!

In the first teaser trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine, Ryan Reynolds takes on the challenge of saving the MCU single-handedly, although we know from the title that he will have some help. This will be the third Deadpool movie and the 34th in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But didn't Wolverine die in the 2017 movie Logan? Yes, but this story takes place before that, so he is not being resurrected from the dead. Marvel did not need "saving" back then, but it's a superhero movie, let's not let details get in the way of a good time. The trailer itself is irreverent, salacious, and self-aware. Will the R-rated superhero series save Marvel? We will find out when Deadpool & Wolverine opens on July 26. -via Fark

In 2014, three Japanese physicists received the Nobel Prize in Physics: Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura for their invention of the blue LEDs. But the story behind it is probably one that the ordinary person wouldn't know, even though it's because of their invention that we get to enjoy many technological advancements that make our lives more convenient.

The story began in the late 1980s when many technology companies and semiconductor manufacturers were in a race to create the blue LED. For decades, only red and green LEDs were available, and that's because creating the blue LED was much more technically challenging, requiring a lot of trial and error. It needed somebody who had the guts to take risks.

Enter Shuji Nakamura, who was an engineer at Nichia Corporation, in a time when the company was almost at its lowest point. His coworkers and bosses were haranguing him for a lack of results in his research, and so he submitted a proposal to the then-president Nobuo Ogawa, that led him on the journey to unlocking the secrets of blue LED.

The first phase of this journey brought him to Florida, where he worked on an MOCVD, a machine used to grow crystalline layers, an important component in producing LEDs. After spending a year tinkering with a non-functional MOCVD, he returned to Japan and ordered a fully-functional MOCVD for Nichia.

With that in his arsenal, he spent about a year and a half working on making gallium nitride crystals suitable for LEDs. At the time, the consensus among LED manufacturers and scientists was that zinc selenide was the more plausible path toward the blue LED, so Nakamura went against the grain and tried to make the less popular gallium nitride work.

This is where Akasaki and Amano come in, who have been researching on the matter before Nakamura entered the picture. There were three problems that these scientists tried solving to make gallium nitride viable for blue LED production, and for the first two problems, Nakamura took the lead from Akasaki and Amano, adding a few tweaks to improve on their initial results.

The third problem became a difficult obstacle for Akasaki and Amano, but Nakamura's innovative thinking helped him break through and solve the problem. In 1992, Nakamura showed Nichia's chairman the very first functional blue LED. The company announced it to the world, catching everybody by surprise, and this resulted in double and later, triple the profits for Nichia.

But as with many inventions, their inventors don't always get compensated properly. Nakamura later quit Nichia and migrated to the US. Legal battles were fought along the way, and Nakamura still has a tense relationship with Nichia to this day.

At the moment, Nakamura is currently working at the University of California Santa Barbara, and making progress on the next generation of LEDs, paving the way for technologies like augmented and virtual reality, and even a solution to COVID-19.

For the full details of the science behind the making of blue LEDs, you may watch Veritasium's video above. - via Laughing Squid

(Video credit: Veritasium/Youtube)

Our computers and mobile devices have become completely essential to our everyday lives that we spend, on average, 6.5 hours a day looking at a screen, a little over a quarter of our day.

Kristin Blain, a researcher from Smartick, wanted to find out which countries spent the most time in front of their screens on any given day. So, using data from Data Reportal, she looked at the data of about 40 countries, and compared their average screen time. With design from Iryna Osipchuk, they laid out the data on the map above.

Based on the data, South Africa led the pack of 40 with amount of time spent on their screens at an average of 9 hours and 38 minutes per day. Closely following their heels is Brazil with 9 hours and 32 minutes per day. In third place is the Philippines with 9 hours and 14 minutes per day.

They attributed this internet usage statistic to mainly internet penetration and adoption in these countries despite still not having widespread accessibility to high-speed internet connections. For the Philippines, the researcher mentioned a lack of censorship and an increase in the cost of living as significant factors to this high screen time.

Taking a look at screen times segmented by devices i.e. desktop computers and mobile devices, we still see these three countries claiming the top spots, but there are other countries who made it onto the respective lists. For example, Russia is second in internet usage via computers. Meanwhile, Thailand and Indonesia secured spots 3 and 5 on top internet usage via mobiles.

It's possible that infrastructures and availability of devices coupled with the strength of internet connectivity, whether by wired or wireless connections, contributed to these numbers.

The US, on the other hand, has mostly been in the mid-range, while countries like China and Japan spent the least amount of time on their screens which might have something to do with productivity, work ethic, and perceptions on the use of these devices and the internet. - via Digg

(Image credit: Smartick)

Collectors' items are worth a fortune because of their rarity, and vintage toys have risen in resale value these days due to nostalgia fueled by some new movies slated to come out in the near future.

With this increase in demand, '90s toys have seen a bit of resurgence, and you might want to dig through your toy stashes in the attic to see if you've got some of the most valuable '90s toys. Based on The Toy Zone's research, here are some '90s toys that are worth a fortune today:

Out of all the '90s Nintendo video games, Mario Kart 64 has a current value of $21,812.56 beating out some classics like Kid Dracula, the 1993 Game Boy spinoff of Castlevania, selling at $20,400, and The Flintstones: Treasure of Madrock for the SNES, with a current value of $19,999.

Pokémon cards are also worth a lot, with some going as high as six figures, and Logan Paul's Pikachu Illustrator topping the list, selling at $6 million. If you have the 1st Edition Shadowless Charizard card, however, it can fetch you up to $420,000 on the auction market. Sitting in third place is the Wizards of the Coast Presentation Galaxy Star holo Blastoise card, currently at $350,000.

Due to the recent critical success of the Barbie movie, some vintage Barbie dolls are also fetching quite a good price, but none as high as the De Beers 40th Anniversary Barbie from 1999, which is selling at $85,000. The rest of the Barbie collection are priced at $1,200 or less, which might still be a good deal.

The ones above are the most expensive from the list but The Toy Zone also included electronic consoles, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures, and vintage blasters, although not as lucrative save for the Scratch the Cat (AFA 80) TMNT action figure, whose resale value is currently at $10,000. - via Digg

(Image credit: Senad Palic/Unsplash)

Skylab was the United States' first space station, and so far the only space station completely controlled by the US alone. The station was launched in 1973, housed astronauts on three missions, and crash landed across Australia in 1979. Slylab's purpose was to establish the feasibility of a space station and conduct experiments on living in space for extended periods of time. The third crewed mission launched on November 16, 1973, with astronauts Gerald P. Carr, Edward Gibson, and William R. Pogue.

The Skylab 4 crew spent 84 days on the space station, and were tasked with operations that basically had them working around the clock. Their 12-week mission was also longer than any NASA mission at that time. In January of 1974, the crew informed NASA that they were taking a day off. They turned communications off, and there was nothing NASA could do about it. Was it mutiny? It was only one day, and it led to NASA reconsidering how it treated its astronauts. Read about the one-day strike on Skylab at Smithsonian. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: NASA)