Getting a headache when inebriated is par for the course. Anybody who has experienced hangovers would know the aftermath of a wild night of partying and drinking a lot of alcohol. But that's not what red wine headache (RWH) is exactly.

Usually, one might experience getting a headache after waking up from a hangover, but red wine headache is reported to occur even when individuals have only consumed small to moderate amounts of red wine. So it's not about the drunkenness of an individual. But what exactly causes it?

The fact that RWH sparsely occurs and only in very specific individuals might give us a hint that there is a substance in red wine to which somebody reacts negatively. Some have pointed to sulfites as the source of RWH, but the fact that white wine has more sulfites in it, and yet seldom do people report having migraine-like headaches from drinking white wine, which eliminates sulfites as the cause.

Another possible suspect was histamine. There are people allergic to histamine and what it does is that it makes the blood vessels dilate which causes a headache. However, studies have shown no correlation between histamine and RWH.

The latest study on RWH from a team of California scientists suggests that a flavonol called quercetin might be the culprit everyone's looking for, though they still need to test it. What made them suspicious of quercetin was that it inhibited the ALDH2 enzyme, which is responsible for metabolizing acetaldehyde in the bloodstream. When this happens, people can become flushed or get headaches.

We have yet to confirm their hypothesis but the researchers are confident that quercetin may finally explain RWH.

(Image credit: Kelsey Knight/Unsplash)

Singing HBD in Vulcan. Send a singing-gram from T’Lyn 🖖🎂 ! https://t.co/toc0rHWGQ5 pic.twitter.com/kjZUJAhd4v

— Gabrielle Ruiz (@gabrielleruiz) November 20, 2023

Gabrielle Ruiz is the voice actress who plays T'Lyn on the Star Trek comedy show Lower Decks. She's available for appearances on Cameo, an online celebrity video message service. For one happy Trekkie, she sang the "Happy Birthday" song in T'Lyn's Vulcan language.

Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki tells us that the Vulcan language isn't quite as developed and formalized as the Klingon language (in which you can also listen to "Happy Birthday"), but fans and linguists have worked on it since the 1960s. It is a most logical language with a beautiful script that made many appearances on the Enterprise series.

Around twenty thousand Native Americans fought in the Civil War. But on which side? Did they fight for the Union in solidarity with the enslaved people of the South? Or did they fight for the Confederacy to get back at the United States for their own mistreatment? The truth is, they fought for both sides, with way more volunteering for the Confederacy, but for neither of the reasons above. There were many reasons a Native American joined one army or the other, which just shows us the danger of generalizing a large group of people, and the danger of assigning modern motives to people in previous centuries.

After the Civil War, Native Americans fought in all US wars, and continue to this day to sign up in higher percentages than other ethnic groups. Read an overview of Native Americans in military uniforms, with a good look at the Navajo Code Talkers, at Messy Nessy Chic.

Wars and rumors of wars. Fire and brimstone. Deadly plagues and pestilence. The total collapse of society. The threat of an impending apocalypse hits differently in 2023, because we already have those things. In fact, some folks might see the end of days as an improvement on what we have now. Once again, Ryan George (previously at Neatorama) plays all the parts as he gets some reactions from people on the street, who are quite credulous in order to fit this all into a short skit, but don't react the way the street preacher would prefer them to. Despite all that, the end is almost hopeful. And the horse joke can be read in more ways than one. The skit is only 3:10; the rest is an ad. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Janelle Shane at AI Weirdness once again pitted different AI algorithms against each other, this time to give us a Thanksgiving spread. She asked DALL-E3 to generate images of the feast with labels, from a list generated by ChatGPT-4. The food looks good (although we are running low on gravy), but the names of the dishes are priceless.

There are more images, including one with a groaning board of desserts. Shane got into a conversation with ChatGPT-4 over whether the dessert labels were correct in the image, and got varying answers leading us to think that the algorithm just wants to please its programmer. The program Bard disagreed with ChatGPT-4 on that, and read the labels as

Pies: Pumpkin Pie, Cockles Pie, Apple Pie, Chess Pie, and Cheese Coales Pie
Cookies: Thinssving, BPOWHIES, BRIINES, and BROESCKE
Brownies: SIEHECADODOVAN and POKY

When you see the dessert image, you'll see how wrong both the labels and the program reading the labels are. I'd still like to try that pople pie. See all the images and read of the difficulty AI has in recreating our traditional feast. -via Nag on the Lake

I have owned several handheld consoles throughout my childhood. Now that I have given away most of them, I can only use emulators if I want to play them again. But they don't have the same joy of holding the console with your two hands.

In comes Anbernic's RG35XX Plus. It's inspired by the old Game Boy design, and it allows you to play almost every portable game created and more. It is touted to play PSP, NDS, DOS, DC, and even PSX games. Moreover, the Plus version is now equipped with 5G WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2.

For anyone who lived through all the gaming consoles and wants to experience the nostalgia of playing them again but all in one device, the RG35XX Plus offers that and more. Of course, for games that require special features like the touchscreen of the DS or D-pad controls, Anbernic sells variations of their handheld console to accommodate those needs. Check out their website to see their other products.

(Video credit: ANBERNIC/Youtube)

Researchers have published a new paper suggesting that the universe began not with one, but with two big bangs. This hypothesis tries to explain the existence of dark matter, by positing that the first big bang created ordinary matter, and the second one produced dark matter.

According to the standard model of cosmology, the universe is made up largely of dark matter and dark energy. As dark matter does not interact with light or the gravitational field, there have been no means to observe it. However, by observing the way other celestial bodies like stars behaved, scientists concluded that there must be some other mass in the universe that influenced them, and so the idea of dark matter came up to describe that unobservable mass. But the question was, where did it come from?

That's what the new hypothesis tries to explain. And with the technology that we have, the researchers say that it is possible to test it out.

(Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team; ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Chandar Acknowledgement: J. Schmidt)

If there is anything that can succinctly sum up human history, then the short animated film Cuties does the job pretty well. It's five minutes long and it was animated by Theo W. Scott. It starts with the origins of human life, and we then follow the main character of the film depicted by a white, roundish person who goes back through time to all the representations of different eras in human history.

It's wonderfully animated, with no dialogue, but the images and scenes shown through this montage can make you feel squeamish and confused. But that is exactly what we might feel when we try to look at human history. We know the major events that happened in the past, but looking through the details is messy and bloody, and once we get to the end, we feel more perplexed than when we began.

The film also tried to project into the future, with everything collapsing into a black hole. In the end, no matter how far we've come through history, there are still things that remain the same. -from Cartoon Brew

(Video credit: Animatic/Youtube)

Running an Ironman Triathlon is no laughing matter. It entails a 3.9-kilometer swim, a 180.2-kilometer bicycle ride, and a marathon run (42.2 km) completed in one day, for a total of 226.3 kilometers. Usually, participants of an Ironman Triathlon have a time limit of 16 to 17 hours to finish the race.

Connor Emeny has been competing in the Ironman Triathlon for the past three years. Initially, he tried it out after seeing a teammate from his varsity triathlon team compete in the Ironman World Championship. His initial goal was to finish the race faster than the men's average, but after that, he set the goal of finishing an Ironman Triathlon in each of the seven continents.

His first Ironman Triathlon was in New Zealand, and then in Chattanooga, Tennesee. So far, he has been able to complete six, one from each continent, and he's now looking for his seventh and final stop - Antarctica. For this leg, he has increased his training each day, and has been conditioning his body to face the cold waters. He will be running in January next year.

(Image credit: Tony Pham/Unsplash)

When we look at portraits of ourselves juxtaposed with our parents, grandparents, or relatives, we sometimes notice resemblances or similarities in facial features that show how we are related. Sometimes, parents or grandparents look at newborn babies to figure out which side of the family they look like, although it's baffling how resemblances actually occur.

Geneticists have been trying to figure out how to break down the way our facial features and structures are formed for years. Trying to identify the particular gene responsible for the way our faces look is an arduous task. One would have to sift through thousands of genes to analyze how each one affects the development of our facial features.

So, several researchers looked toward grouping the genes into teams instead of identifying each gene responsible for specific features. Particularly, a study by Sahin Naqvi and his colleagues suggest that certain regulatory genes could be the 'captain' of the team of genes that are responsible for the development of the jaw or the forehead.

This, along with research by Benedikt Hallgrimsson and his team, are trying to pave the way to shed light on how our faces develop.

(Image credit: Jennifer Marquez/Unsplash)

Dolphins are highly intelligent mammals, and crab fishers are very familiar with how smart dolphins can be. For two decades, they have noticed that bottlenose dolphins have been stealing the fish they use as bait to catch crabs. And, for the first time ever, researchers have been able to film the behavior.

Although it's an astonishing feat for the dolphins to figure out how to get around the crab baits, some conservation biologists have expressed concern about the safety and health of the dolphins. Despite the dolphins' intelligence, they can still be ensnared in the traps, just like an incident in Clearwater, Florida, in which a baby dolphin got caught in the ropes of a crab trap.

Still, for over two years, the researchers filmed the dolphins as they snatched the fish from the crab traps. No matter what the fishers did to try and dissuade the dolphins from stealing the bait, they were still able to get around it. They tried putting the fish on hooks, changing the location of the fish in the crab pot, and even sealing the bait inside a plastic container with a lid.

The only way they were able to succeed in stopping the dolphins from stealing their bait was by making sure that the bait was tightly fastened in a mesh bait pouch. It may be worthwhile to study why the dolphins engage in this behavior, but researchers suspect that the dolphins wanted to have a little bit of fun while getting a reward for their efforts.

(Video credit: Dolphin Discovery Centre TV/Youtube)

The Ship Handling Research and Training Centre in Poland is a very unique school. This is where ship's pilots can learn how to steer through the biggest, most crucial ports, locks, and canals on earth, like the Panama Canal and the Suez canal. This training is meant to supplement on-the-job training with more experienced pilots, not to replace that experience. The goal is to keep from becoming a global meme, like the Ever Given a couple of years ago. They use a combination of computer simulations and real piloting. The school uses ships and courses that are scaled at only 1/24th the size of the the real thing, but that's still surprisingly big. They also use current generators to recreate various real-world conditions. Tom Scott talked them into letting him pilot one of these ships without taking the entire course, just for funsies. I don't think he's going to try for a job with Evergreen or any other shipping company. but someday, you might.    

Oh yeah, they have another of these training facilities in France, too.

King Frederick William I was the ruler of Prussia from 1713 to 1740. He instituted a number of reforms and improvements in the Prussian military, but one project was for his own amusement. The king, upon ascending the throne, immediately began recruiting very tall men for a regiment that became known as the Potsdam Giants. This recruitment took many forms, from giving incentives to soldiers, their families, and employers to kidnapping and imprisonment for tall men who refused to join. Foreign leaders who wanted to court favor with the king sent the tallest men from their own armies to join the Potsdam Giants. Most, however, were volunteers. After all, the Potsdam Giants got the best food in the entire Prussian military, and tall hats to make them look taller. It turned out to be one of the safest places to serve, too.

Frederick William I himself was only 5' 3" tall, so his obsession with tall soldiers was easily explained- not that anyone spoke of it at the time. The regiment of giants grew to around 3,200 men, some of them topping seven feet tall. But they weren't sent into battle, because they meant too much to the king. That changed after Frederick William's death. Read about the rise and fall of the Potsdam Giants at Amusing Planet.

On the one hand, you'd think that the ability to think outside the box would be an asset for a Jedi Knight. On the other hand, we know young Anakin Skywalker is an ass and is liable to get Obi-Wan killed before his time. You are supposed to discuss new strategies with your master before surprising them with your outlandish new battle tactics. That's what Obi-Wan should have gotten onto him about. Oh yeah, and about Yoda.

At the same time, we all know that Force powers are completely underused in Star Wars, particularly in battle. Anakin has an another idea that might give him the upper hand.



Once again, Obi-Wan is surprised by Anakin's dangerous secret tactics. Events of their future notwithstanding, Obi-Wan should have seen how dangerous this kid was years before. But Anakin eventually gets his comeuppance, and finally learns a lesson. This nonsense is brought to you by Matthew McCleskey. -via Geeks Are Sexy

What makes a good first impression? When meeting someone for the first time, we usually want to leave a good impression because that would generally help us become friends with them, or potentially be their long-term romantic partner, or get a job after an interview. But what exactly do people find likable?

Michael Dufner and Sascha Krause conducted a study in order to figure out what factors contributed to how much people like someone whom they've met for the first time. They recruited 139 undergraduate students, put them in groups where they knew nobody, had each person in the group introduce themselves, and then have round-robin conversations.

After each step, they had everyone rate the other members on how much they liked them. Apart from this, they had observers who watched videotapes of the conversations to see how the pairs responded to each other.

They found two behaviors as key predictors of people's likability - agentic and communal behaviors. Agentic behaviors relate to assertive and dominant traits which would evoke confidence, while communal behaviors generally refer to congenial traits like being polite, friendly, or warm.

People with high levels of agentic and communal behaviors score high with their peers in likability. However, depending on the situation, certain behaviors would be better for a certain objective. For example, communal behaviors are better for making friends, while agentic behaviors would favor those who aim to be popular.

(Image credit: Alejandro Escamilla/Unsplash)