Organizers of the 2024 Summer Games have unveiled the medals that will be awarded to winning Olympic athletes in Paris. They will be able to literally take a piece of Paris home with them. The gold, silver, and bronze medals will feature an iron hexagon at the center made from metal salvaged from the Eiffel Tower during its 20th century renovations. Any time metal was replaced in the tower, the original iron was saved for posterity. The medals were designed by French jeweler Chaumet.

The iron hexagons are inlaid with a claw setting, resembling the setting of a precious stone. The outer part of the medals have a starburst pattern to indicate radiance. The reverse will have the image of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. The medals for the Paralympics, which take place after the Olympic games, will feature the same design on the front, but the reverse has a view of the Eiffel tower as seen looking up from underneath. Get a closer look at the medals at CNN. The Paris Olympics will run from July 26 to August 11, 2024.     

What's most important in a pop tune? "It's got a good beat; I can dance to it." So is it any wonder that Van Halen can dance to the groove of "Love Machine" by The Miracles while performing their own song "Unchained"? The latest mashup from Bill McClintock doesn't just have one group singing over the other's music; both the music and vocals are full integrated, and it works. This is as much a dance video as it is a music video. And those stage costumes! There's also a short guest appearance by Ozzy Osbourne as we hear Jake E. Lee's solo from "Bark at the Moon." McClintock calls this song "Unchained Love Machine" by Van Miracles.  

This video of an origin unknown to me shows a bicyclist proceeding quite lawfully through the bike lane on a two-lane road. A driver turns left in front of him, forcing the cyclist to veer off onto the driveway.

The man needed an airbag. Such things actually exist and are technologically improving. But with only a second available, he could not shop for one and improvised with a balloon display conveniently placed a few yards away.

Hey, if it's stupid but it works then it's not so stupid.

-via Born in Space

I wasn't expecting that 😳 pic.twitter.com/UdKiehOW8O

— Penfold (@elbow112) January 28, 2024

G.K. Chesterton, a Nineteenth and Twentieth Century British writer, is perhaps most well-known today for the principle known as Chesterton's Fence. It may be summarized as this: if there is some sort of rule or tradition in place, it may have been created with good reason. You may think that the reason is no longer valid or even counterproductive, but the people who came before you were not idiots and you should proceed cautiously when removing those traditions.

Why was this bicycle in the road? Perhaps it was parked there for a reason. Don't move it until you know what that reason was.

-via David Thompson

ROWDY TREE BOYS aka the Hopkinsville Goblins! pic.twitter.com/QIlQlQldE4

— 🔜FurSquared DD20 (@ZENOPHRENIC) October 18, 2018

In 1955, a family in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, were besieged by what they considered alien beings with glowing eyes lurking outside of their home. A shotgun blast through a screen window did not deter them, and one even grabbed at a man from the roof. The family managed to escape to the nearest police station and begged for help in their battle against the goblins.

What became known as the Hopkinsville Goblins eventually faded from the public's mind, but became embedded in the files of those who keep up with UFO sightings. One of them was astronomer J. Allen Hynek, who Steven Spielberg consulted when he was making the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The film's title actually came from Hynek. It was he who told the story of the Hopkinsville Gobins to Spielberg, and it struck a chord with him. The idea of a family who grows closer while being threatened by outside forces is a running theme in Spielberg movies, and this was right up his alley. He wrote a treatment about the Hopkinsville incident that John Sayles turned into a script called Night Skies. But elements of the script were changed into what would become E.T.: the Extraterrestrial. Discarded elements from Night Skies were resurrected to become Gremlins, and still others were used in Poltergeist. Read how all this happened at Atlas Obscura.

Disney's The Lion King is turning 30 years old this year. The simple story based loosely on Shakespeare's Hamlet tugged at our heartstrings and became an instant classic. The beloved film has become so familiar to us that we tend to forget that the voices behind the animated characters belonged to some of the biggest stars of the time. Thomas H. Smith tracked down footage from various sources to bring us a side-by-side look at the voice actors behind The Lion King with the movie scenes of their iconic dialogue and songs. Those actors include Jeremy Irons, James Earl Jones, Robert Guillaume, Rowan Atkinson, Whoopi Goldberg, Cheech Marin, Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, and others, as well as the wonderful singers who worked on the movie. Some of the clips are from the original recording sessions, while some are from recreations, as those actors were obliged to revisit the experience many times. -via Laughing Squid

Geeks Are Sexy posted this comic from Alzward's Corner. You can see that the host is offended by his dinner guest adding A1 steak sauce to a steak he put a lot of effort into preparing. It's a pretty straightforward scenario, but on the site's Facebook page, everyone and their brother registered their opinion. Some sided with the cook, who went out of his way make sure the steak was perfect when he served it. Some sided with the guest, because everyone has their own tastes, and who are we to tell them they are wrong? And of course, there were those who wondered where the steak sauce came from anyway. Did the host have it on the table? Did the guest bring it with him? But the heart of the matter was illustrated by a thread involving two Facebook members, both named Michael, who spent all day arguing with each other about a steak that neither one could eat. The very persistence of the Michaels was so impressive that Geeks reached out to them and reposted their argument in full on the main site, so you can see how they stubbornly held on long after their spat devolved into insults. This is our modern world, where two people who have never met and probably never will fight to the finish over whose opinion is more valid.

Influence for the sake of influence is much older than the internet, but the global reach of the world wide web makes it not only more satisfying, but brings more people to the competition. We know that some of the most pernicious conspiracy theories were dreamed up in forums like 4chan just to impress other members when they gained a broader reach. Another case of influence for influence's sake is the coining of new slang words. Yes, young folks are still trying to make "fetch" happen.

This is particularly noticeable on TikTok, where you may encounter an explosion of terms you've never heard before. Some will catch on, but most won't, and they all seem like they are trying too hard. But imagine if you were the first person to say "crunchy Mom" or "on fleek" or "orange peel theory" and then other people started using it, and eventually you hear it on the evening news. You'll get influence points from those who know you well, but no money and no recognition once those words spread beyond your inner circle. But it doesn't matter, you have the satisfaction of influence. Read about the heated competition to influence language with "trendbait" at Vox.

You've probably heard the term "suicide by cop," in which people deliberately cause a situation in which the police shoot them, and police are trained to shoot to kill. They want to commit suicide but can't, so they get someone else to do the deed for them. Wanting to die implies some mental health issue, but it doesn't mean the person is irrational. In the 17th and 18th centuries, some folks rationalized that suicide was a more dangerous sin than murder, since you won't have time to repent, so they committed murder in order to be executed for that murder. That idea was even canon in the Lutheran faith. The premeditation in this concept should make that loophole moot, but that's what happened. People even planned their crime according to the expected type of execution that was sure to follow. That's one trend we are glad was extinguished by a change in the law. Strangely, the word "suicide" is censored in this video, but "suicidal" isn't.

When you first encounter Edvard Munch's most famous painting, The Scream, you focus on the person screaming. But what's going on in the background? Is that wavy technicolor sky something he observed, or something he imagined?

Munch painted four version of The Scream between 1893 and 1910. Those who've studied Munch's work have connected it with his 1892 diary entry in which he described his feeling of angst at seeing "The flaming clouds like blood and swords".  The passage could be from his imagination, but it could also be a real meteorological phenomenon he witnessed. Maybe it was a spectacular burst of sunset color caused by a volcanic eruption, maybe the 1892 eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Awu, or more likely the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. But in 2017, three Norwegian researchers offered a theory involving nacreous clouds, that only happen during rare and very particular weather conditions.

You can see the resemblance, right? Read about nacreous clouds and The Scream at Mental Floss.

(Cloud image credit: Cepstral)

Redditor /u/special_evan shares a photo of a multi tool quite unlike the Leatherman PST in your pocket. It's labeled with the words Underwood and Haymarket. Underwood was a metalworker who operated from a shop on Haymarket Street in London. This tool is allegedly made specifically for fishermen and sailors. /u/Nathan51530 identifies the tools from left to right as:

• A hook used to untie knots.
• A scoop for measuring medication.
• A screw starter.
• A different screw starter.
• A corkscrew.
• A toothpick or possibly an awl.
• A saw blade.
• A flathead screwdriver.
• A pick.
• A hook to snag fishing lines.

Of course, from those times to now, tools can be used for different purposes. /u/Big_Message_1110 jokes that, "Every tool is a hammer, unless it's a screwdriver. then it's a chisel."

-via Birch Brother

Florian Ulrich Jehn is a scholar who examines ways that humanity could mitigate starvation risks in the event of existential crises, such as nuclear war. He and colleagues have published a peer-reviewed report which considers the possibility of the mass cultivation of seaweed in the aftermath of a nuclear war.

Such an event and any ensuing nuclear winter could devastate terrestrial food production due to reduced sunlight. But tropical oceans are likely to remain environmentally sound. The authors conclude that it might be possible to produce sufficient quantities of Gracilaria tikvahiae in quantities equal to 45% of global human food needs.

-via Marginal Revolution | Still shot from Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took this picture with its High Resolution Imaging Experiment camera (HIRISE) from about 166 miles above the planet. It shows an area called Aeolis Planum where rivers once flowed billions of years ago, when Mars had an atmosphere. The planet dried up when that atmosphere was stripped away, although water still exists in ice form at the poles. But wait- this picture doesn't look like river channels at all. It looks like those lines are jutting out of the ground!

This happened because the ancient rivers had rocks of all sizes flowing with the water. When the banks overflowed, the rivers would dump smaller sand and silt over the sides, but the heavier gravel and larger rocks remained in the channel. Once the rivers dried up, the silt and sand blew away from the banks, leaving a ridge of larger rocks in place where the river had been. So they are ridges now, but are evidence of ancient rivers. Scientists call these "inverted channels."

Read more about the image and the orbiter that took it at Mashable.

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

The movie Blazing Saddles had its premiere on February 7, 1974, meaning it will be 50 years old tomorrow. It was vulgar and outrageous and crossed the line in so many places that it couldn't be made at all today. Mel Brooks battled producers over many scenes, but he won, mainly by ignoring them. The result was what many people who saw Blazing Saddles that year call the funniest movie ever. Brooks took on the project because he was broke and his wife was pregnant, and he turned a newcomer's script about racism in the Old West into a bizarre comedy that made fun of everything and everyone it touched.

Brooks screened the film and Ted Ashley, the chairman of Warner Brothers, told the director, "The farting scene has to go. You can’t punch a horse. You can’t hit an old lady. And you can’t use the ‘N’ word." If Brooks had followed orders and cut 26 scenes, there would be little movie left. Co-writer Richard Pryor was the one who insisted on using the N word. One area where Brooks bowed to the producers was in dropping Pryor and Gig Young from the lead roles due to substance abuse problems, and struck gold with Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder. Read what went on behind the scenes in creating Blazing Saddles at The Independent. -via Digg

Last month, we brought you the story of Zoozve, the moon of Venus. The name was a misunderstanding of an asteroid, described as a quasi-moon, provisionally designated 2002-VE. John Farrier suggested we keep using the name Zoozve, and so did Latif Nasser, who first noticed the name on a child's poster of the solar system. Nasser took the story to Radiolab, and consulted those who make such decisions for the podcast. Not long after, the name Zoozve has become official.

The International Astronomical Union's Working Group on Small Bodies Nomenclature (WGSBN) has adopted the name Zoozve for the asteroid, on page nine of their bulletin issued yesterday. Wikipedia has already updated their entry to reflect the story of the heavenly body's new name.

There are guidelines for naming astronomical objects, and Zoozve works for a satellite because it contains "ve" for Venus. However, as a quasi-satellite, a majority of votes among the WGSBN sufficed. Besides, Zoozve has a great story. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Alex Foster)