My kids once rigged up a pulley to take their clean laundry upstairs. However, after they inched a basket up, they still had to walk up the stairs to put it away and were just as tired. Maybe if they'd studied how to use a pulley a bit more, they'd have tried it a little differently. 

A pulley is one of the basic simple machines, those that harness physics so people can do more work than they could without them. How a pulley works seems really intuitive, until you examine them closely. Single pulleys will transfer work from down to up, but once you multiply them, they transfer work from weight to length. You can balance weight with two pulleys, but once you cross the ropes, you get different results. 

James Orgill of The Action Lab (previously at Neatorama) shows us some of the weirder effects of a pulley. The weirdest is the floating table, which seems like a cool idea until someone bumps into a corner and your dinner goes flying. This video has a 65-second skippable ad at 2:00. -via Damn Interesting 

Vacuum tubes powered the development of new electronics through the first half of the 20th century. That was one reason early radios, television sets, scientific equipment, and even hearing aids were so big and bulky. Tech companies were working on the problem, though, and in the 1930s, Raytheon engineer Norman Krim managed to make vacuum tubes smaller than today's triple-A batteries. These were subminiature tubes, which made the military's Cold War weapon the proximity fuze possible. It also led to the first portable radio and revolutionized the hearing aid industry. Meanwhile, it put Raytheon on the map.

But then Bell Labs gave us the solid-state transistor in 1947. Krim had spent his career miniaturizing vacuum tubes, so he could have led an all-out war between the competing technologies. Yet he was able to see the future of transistors, and made the hard decisions that led to transistors everywhere. Read the story of subminiature tubes and how the transistor took over at Tedium. 

(Image credit: Engradio)   

This is not only dandy, but handy. Any time you start to feel blue about all this (gestures wildly around), click on Have a Dandy Day. Dandy Dan will sing you a curiously uplifting song. It very much reminds me of an '80s sitcom intro. Then you can go for a quote and boop Dandy Dan on the nose to get one of his encouraging lines, like the one shown above. You're not limited to one quote, so keep booping that nose. Going to the faqs and the about pages won't give you much in the way of real information, but there are more good wishes for you in every line.  

Send the link to anyone you know who needs a smile today. Sure, it's silly, but there is a dearth of silliness on the 'net these days, and we need to encourage what little is there, especially when it's this quick and wholesome. -via Boing Boing 

At 19 minutes, this video is a bit longer than any I would normally post, but I couldn't stop watching. We are well aware that Elon Musk is the richest man in the world today. But how does that compare to wealthy men (they are all men) from history? That's a sticky question for a number of reasons. First, you have to adjust for inflation. But that's still just numbers. Then you have to separate personal wealth from state riches under their control. How wealthy was each of the historically richest men compared to other people of his time? And what was the foreign exchange rate then? And most importantly, how can we really define wealth- by units of currency or by power over your neighbor? 

The Corridor Crew wrestles with each of these questions to determine the wealthiest man in history. That is/was probably something these rich guys are/were personally proud of, while the rest of us look at it as shameful. The video tries to alleviate our anger by portraying these guys as goofy CGI contestants in an elimination contest. -via Memo of the Air 

An ambigram is an illustration of a word or phrase that changes depending on its orientation, or it could be that the word or phrase stays the same despite a change in orientation. Changing the orientation could mean rotating it 180°, or 90°, or flipping it as a mirror image, horizontally or vertically. It's a kind of optical illusion. The website Ambigr.am is where ambigram enthusiasts go to see them, learn about them, and show off their own ambigrams. There are constant discussions and competitions between those who craft ambigrams. 

The most impressive page is the Hall of Fame filled with the best winning ambigrams ever. Click on each image to change the orientation (if it isn't already animated). If you can't read it, click on the title to remove the spoiler guard. These are really clever, and some even find novel ways to define "orientation." Who knows? It might imspire you to become an ambigramist.  -via Metafilter 

(Image credit: Otto) 

Okay, I got a little carried away with the aliteration in the title, but have you ever looked at a drawing or other depiction of the moon and laughed? That most likely happened when you see a crescent moon with stars visible inside. That's impossible, but it is only the beginning of the many ways you can screw up a picture of the moon.

Once you get away from the more common mistakes, we get into moon mistakes that you were not even aware of until now. How the crescent moon is angled depends on where on earth you live. That explains why the angle of the moon is different on the many national flags on which it appears. If you are out in the African savanna, the moon does not look at all the way it was depicted in The Lion King. Still, if it had been correct, that's what people would have been talking about after seeing it instead of what a great movie it was. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

The image above is described as a "graphic representation," which sounds like it would be a photo, but in this case I'm pretty sure it's an illustration. It's meant to represent two overlapping "odd radio signals," or ORCS. Now, Tolkien fans and D&D players know what an Orc is (they are bad news), but in this case it's a huge ring of magnetized plasma, hundreds of thousands of light years wide, and only visible in radio wavelengths. They've never been seen overlapping until now, and this "Venn diagram" is particularly large and powerful. It was spotted by citizen scientists observing distant space through a radio telescope in Europe called the Low Frequency Array. 

Read some of what we know about these ORCs at Gizmodo. What we don't know covers even more ground, but studying them could lead to breakthroughs in the formation of black holes and the behavior of the universe. -via kottke 

Fire drills were always fun when I was in school. It got us outside for a while, and away from the drudgery of "learning." We didn't realize it at the time, but those protocols became well ingrained in every student and teacher, until we couldn't imagine doing it any other way. We also had nuclear attack drills occasionally, but no one took those seriously because we couldn't imagine actually surviving one.  

It's sad that most safety innovations come after a tragedy, because no one ever visualized what could possibly go wrong until it's too late. American schools grew bigger and bigger over time, and still became crowded during the Baby Boom. In December of 1958, a fire broke out at a parochial school in Chicago. Before it was over, 92 students and three nuns were dead. Immediately, school authorities nationwide rethought building standards and safety protocols for schools. The tragedy was that many of these fire codes were already in place in Chicago, but older buildings were exempt. The new idea of fire drills was found to be very useful in only a short time. Stewart Hicks explains how those came about. The video is not as long as it looks, as the last minute and a half are promotional. 

No, you haven't stepped inside a cartoonist's notebook. This is Shirokuro, a high-end sushi restaurant in New York City. The unique facility bills itself as the opportunity to "dine in 2D."

The New York Post reports that Denver is preparing for an especially brutal endurance race. The Taco Bell 50K is a demanding test of not only cardiovascular fitness but also intestinal fortitude. Participants are required to stop at at least 9 of the 10 Taco Bells along the route and consume food. This is the eighth such competition and the rules (including banning the use of performance-enhancing drugs) make this race into the ultimate test of athleticism:

3. By the 4th stop, all entrants must have consumed at least one (1) Chalupa Supreme or one Crunchwrap Supreme (dietary restrictions will be allowed within reason).

4. By the 8th stop, all entrants must have consumed at least one (1) Burrito Supreme or one Nachos Bell Grande (dietary restrictions will be allowed within reason).

5. Finish under 11 hours.

6. Drinks do not count as food.

7. Entrants must keep all receipts and wrappers for confirmation of stupidity at the end of the run. [...]

11. No on-course Pepto, Alka Seltzer, Pepcid A/C, Mylanta will be allowed!

12. Additional "rules" may be added, amended, or changed to promote the intent of this run, which is to do something completely stupid.

What would be the optimal meal plan at Taco Bell to power through this run?

-via Jarvis Best

Århus, the second largest city in Denmark, lies on eastern side of the Jutland peninsula. Dating back to the Eighth Century AD, it is one of the oldest continuous settlements in the country.

The city leans into its Viking Era history. Atlas Obscura informs us that since 2019, some of the traffic lights in the city show axe and shield-bearing Norse warriors walking or standing still.

Photo: Atlas Obscura user Johan SWE

It's rare to be able to pinpoint the exact origin of a fad or a meme, as in who first thought of it, but we sometimes have documentation of the incident that made it popular. It was 45 years ago that a John Deere office got a new Xerox machine, and 21-year-old Jodi Stutz thought it would be funny to sit on the machine and photocopy her butt. After all, other employees were having fun copying their faces and hands. What made it a sensation was that Stutz was fired for the prank after the story was blown out of proportion. That firing made the national news, and suddenly similar incidents were seen in offices everywhere -or at least the results were seen. They usually consisted of just a white piece of paper with a line across it, so it didn't last long.  

Stutz became an instant celebrity, thanks in part to Johnny Carson, since the story was right up his alley. Read about the firing that led to celebrity status at Weird Universe. -via Nag on the Lake 

We don't know where Ryder's story began, but it became a tragedy when he was abandoned. From what his foster parents could tell from his personality, he had been a pet, since he was so sociable with humans. But his back was recently broken, which left his back end paralyzed. Maybe that's the reason he was tossed out in a trash bag. Or maybe the injury came as a result of the cruel method of abandonment. Then someone heard his cries and rescued him. 

Then tragedy turned into triumph. With loving care from his new family, who ended up adopting him, Ryder has adapted well to using what he has. He's now living his best life with his humans and a dog, doing almost everything an average house cat would do. He's also paying back, by being a loving cuddlebug. You can see more of Ryder, full name Low Ryder Kitty, at Instagram. 

Kat Slota is an artist in New Brunswick. She specializes in pyrography, which is selectively and precisely burning wood with a hot point to create intricate designs. She does lot of portraits, still lives, and Christian images reminiscent of Baroque art.

Sometimes, though, her choice of material is delightfully novel. Above and below, for example, is an antique ironing board that is now made into a museum-quality art piece with a hunting scene.

We know that our ancestors, even our most ancient ancestors, drank wine all the time. While more expensive than water, wine was still affordable to the masses, while the more potent drugs were reserved for the rich and for special occasions, as well as medicinal use. A 2,700-year-old altar found in the Negev desert still shows traces of marijuana, showing us that the Israelites burned it during worship services. In Scythia, the Carpathian mountains, and western China, marijuana was burned at funerals, presumably to ease the mourners' pain. Greeks ate marijuana for the fun of it. 

Opium was a more serious, and more expensive drug, used in Egypt to keep children quiet, to alleviate pain, and for a "bit of extra fun." Early physicians documented how to use opium as to reduce the danger of overdose, but Romans saw it as a painless method of suicide in addition to its medicinal uses. Opium may have been the most popular hard drug, but the ancient world also knew of and used hallucinogenic drugs derived from various plants. Read about the widespread use of drugs in the ancient world at Haaretz. -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: Radio Tonreg)