If you are young, you probably feel that the internet has always been with us. If you're not so young, you might be surprised at how long ago many of the milestones of the web have been around. The longest running webcam on the internet has been live for 29 years now. The first set of emojis was released in 1997. The first band to livestream a concert was all the way back in 1993!

I learned these things from Internet Artifacts, a sort of museum exhibit from Neal Agarwal (previously at Neatorama). It begins with a 1977 map of ARPANET that shows 111 computers connected to each other. We have more than that now. It has delicious tidbits like how the White House launched its website in 1994, but it was delayed because they needed more photographs of Socks the cat. The first person to purchase a book from Amazon was dismayed that he was charged money for it. And you might remember that Y2K was a big nothingburger, but that was only due to a lot of work by programmers to head off the disaster. The exhibit ends in 2007, when the iPhone was released and everything changed. -via Metafilter

Chinese YouTuber Aboringday builds new weird devices and adds weird modifications on common devices. In his most recent video, he made usually functional yo-yos from objects not commonly associated with the wood or plastic toys. These include fan blades, circular saw blades, ping pong paddles, and clocks.

Some yo-yo bases were easier to make or use than others. Dumbbell plates, for example, were easy to modify but also very heavy. But by far the most challenging project was making a yo-yo out of ice, which required multiple attempts at 3D design and printing before Aboringday got it right. In this process, Aboringday engages in amusing storytelling without ever saying a word.

-via The Awesomer

Around the turn of the 20th century, Halloween was steadily gaining popularity in the US. Picture postcards were at the height of their popularity, and Halloween gave people another excuse to send one. In the estimated 3,000 Halloween designs, we see familiar icons like witches, black cats, and pumpkins, but we also get a glimpse into some mostly bygone traditions, like petty vandalism, bobbing for apples, and trying to divine one's future spouse.

Despite its appearance, I don't think they meant to show a cat being strangled. He's just drawn that way. These vintage Halloween postcards depict children being frightened in a comical way, but the very weirdness of the images can make any modern person feel a bit ...uncomfortable. So many of them feature grim grinning pumpkinheads with uncanny and unnatural pupils that seem to be leering.

See a gallery of 60 Halloween postcards dated between 1900 and 1920 at The Public Domain Review. And since they are in the public domain, they can be shared with anyone. -via Metafilter

Gremlins were a type of fairy, or "little folk" in European legends. Although seldom seen, gremlins were known to be mischievous. If something in your home was broken or out of place with no explanation, the culprit was obviously a gremlin. This idea took on a whole new meaning when airplanes were developed, particularly in the military. When something went inexplicably haywire on a plane during World War I, the Royal Air Force blamed it on sabotage by gremlins. The idea spread to more countries by World War II, when planes were more numerous, more complicated, and under battle conditions were more likely to malfunction.

The civilian world took up the idea, too, and gremlins were used as shorthand for any kind of industrial accident or malfunction. It may have been used in early computer technology a bit, but those folks settled on blaming "bugs" instead. Gremlins went on to star in a book by Roald Dahl and a hit 1984 movie. Read about the rise of gremlins at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: National Archives)

Generally, I like to think the best of people and believe in humanity. But there are just those instances when people cannot suppress their mean side, especially when they're dealing with customer service. I have had some experience handling customers over the phone, so I know the struggles and the stress of dealing with irate customers and customers from every walk of life with whatever concern or inquiry they might have. But these eight experiences from retail staff, particularly at clothing stores, are probably some of the meanest and rudest I have read.

Personally, I understand what retail staff and customer service employees go through, so I try to be the most pleasant and agreeable customer I can be despite whatever issue I might have with the service or whatever mood I may have at the time. Those people have feelings too, and they're just trying to do the best they can at their job. And it's just the right thing to do, to not be an entitled customer and get along with all sorts of people.

(Image credit: Paolo Chiabrando/Unsplash)

Super Mario is a cultural icon. The original Super Mario Bros. was first released in 1985 and 38 years later, it's still as popular as ever with a new game for 2023, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and another movie adaptation this year, The Super Mario Bros. Movie (apparently, there were previous film adaptations of the video game franchise, but this year probably has the best graphics of them all).

With all the different versions, sequels, and remakes of Super Mario, Polygon looked into the five most popular games in the franchise, and curated the fastest speedrun for each game. I have only played the original and sadly, I haven't even been able to finish that one yet. But, guess how long it took the fastest speedrunner to finish the original? It was 4m 54s 631ms., which was accomplished on September 5th, 2023.

(Video credit: Niftski/Youtube)

Out of all the human activities that have damaged or significantly altered wildlife habitats, entire ecosystems, and nature's way of life, roads seem to be the least innocuous and least relevant. However, Ben Goldfarb, an environmental journalist, would like to make the case of how our roads have drastically changed and shaped nature.

Come to think of it, in order to pave roads, the natural environment needed to be transformed as well. A portion of forests had to be cut down, mountains had to be carved, and land had to be leveled to build roads. Even if we don't change the entire landscape or habitats, Goldfarb writes that it still affects the ecosystem in other ways such as animal migration patterns, food sources, population dynamics, and even soundscapes. And of course, there's the occasional roadkill.

Goldfarb explores all this in his new book titled Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet. M.R. O'Connor writes a short review of the book on Undark.

(Image credit: Mika Korhonen/Unsplash)

That is according to Michael Thomas from The Atlantic. For those who may not be familiar with what e-bikes are, or how they work, here's the quick gist: an electric bike is a bicycle equipped with an electric motor, whose function is two-fold - one, it may assist the rider in adding power to their pedalling, or two, it can provide a throttle mechanism, turning it essentially into something of a moped. And now, you might be wondering whether downgrading your car to an e-bike would be the right decision. Michael Thomas has already made that move and he thinks it's one of the best ways you can improve your life.

First, there is the financial aspect. An e-bike doesn't require maintenance costs rivalling that of a car. Insurance is not that much either, and since the bike is electrically-powered, fuel is replaced with electricity costs, which won't make that much of a dent in your bank account. Second, it's a great way to exercise. Going to work on a bike may sound like an unpleasant means of transportation, but he also found that due to the propulsion technology of the e-bike, you don't always have to break into a sweat. Third, it's surprisingly enjoyable. Being able to feel the breeze through your hair, seeing the sights as you pass them by, and just living in and soaking in the moment makes it worthwhile.

Of course, he also admitted that it won't always be the best means of transportation for all circumstances. Road safety may be one concern especially if there are no dedicated bike lanes in the area, and if people generally don't care about cyclists. But still, it is something worth considering. Besides, it's a great way to get around traffic. -via Kottke

(Image credit: Himiway Bikes/Unsplash)

Of all the ways to lose an expensive drone camera, this is possibly the most wholesome -and it was caught on video! Adam Culbertson was flying his DJI Avata drone over some beautiful terrain near Capitol Reef National Park in Utah when a golden eagle snatched it up. Instead of dropping the drone, we see the eagle fly until the video signal was out of range. The feed was saved up to that point, but there's no indication of how far the eagle flew with it afterward. The drone is most likely not recoverable, even if the eagle would be inclined to surrender it.

The fallout from the incident is not as dire as you might imagine. The drone is made to shut down its propellers when it detects an impact, so the eagle wouldn't have been hurt. Culbertson was able to get a replacement drone from the manufacturer because the theft was classified as a flyaway, or "something outside of your control [that] causes your drone to fly away never to be seen again." -via Laughing Squid

The concept of black holes was first thought of by Albert Einstein in 1916, and the term itself was coined only half a century later by American astronomer John Wheeler. It was a few years before that, in 1964, when the first black hole was discovered, Cygnus X-1, and we have been trying to study black holes ever since. To summarize what we know about black holes so far, XKCD created this lovely table for comparison between black holes and regular holes. - via Kottke

(Image credit: XKCD)

In 1971, a toddler named Melissa Highsmith was kidnapped from her home in Texas by a new babysitter. The police investigation went nowhere, and years passed. The Highsmiths thought they would never see their daughter again. Then in 2022, her father Jeff Highsmith sent a DNA sample to 23andMe, along with other family members, to trace their genealogy. The results came back identifying a relative that was Jeff's granddaughter -one he never knew about! That could only be Melissa's daughter. Soon, the family was reunited with Melissa, who grew up with the name Melanie and never knew she had been kidnapped more than 50 years earlier.

Since home DNA tests were developed, this kind of thing happens more and more often, as cold cases are cracked by DNA from relatives that are matched with both victims and perpetrators. Sometimes the DNA confirms police suspicions in cases where the evidence against them was insufficient, and sometimes an identification comes out of the blue, decades later. Buzzfeed has a roundup of eleven cold cases, mostly murders, that were solved many years later thanks to DNA tests.

(Unrelated image credit: Tim Wightman/US Navy)

Remember when you graduated and got your first full time job? You moved to your own apartment, in a new town with new people and new opportunities? Those were the days. I remember rescuing furniture from the dumpster, counting change to see if I could do laundry, volunteering for public appearances in the evenings because they might have food, and feeling free as a bird- living the dream. But I certainly wouldn't want to do it in this day and age.

This award-winning little ditty called Living the Dream from Ben Meinhardt illustrates the joyful accomplishments of a young man making his way in the world as a new adult. Don't let it get you down too much. -via The Awesomer

A woolly mammoth that was born 17,100 years ago in Alaska only got a name a few years ago. They call him Kik. For the first two years of his life, Kik stayed close to his mother near the Yukon River Basin. Then he roamed more widely, along the grasslands of Alaska and its land bridge to Asia. When he turned 16, he roamed even further, walking at least ten miles a day, eating grass and covering a 700-mile route, each way, for years. In his short life, Kik walked far enough to circle the earth twice! At around age 27, he slowed down from a lack of food, and starved to death at age 28 in the Kikiakrorak River valley. More than 17,000 years later, his tusks were recovered and studied.

How can we possibly know that much about one woolly mammoth? That's the real story. One of Kik's tusks fell into the hands of isotope scientist Matthew Wooller, who assembled a multinational team of scientists to study it. They used a machine called a Laser Ablation Multi-Collector Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer. It cost almost a million dollars and was so heavy they put it in the basement for safety. Read how they mapped Kik's whereabouts through his lifetime, which sheds new light on how woolly mammoths lived, at Smithsonian.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Mauricio Antón)

For some people with diabetes, it's essential to inject insulin to regulate their blood sugar. But insulin can be expensive, so scientists in Switzerland are searching for an alternative. In an article published in Diabetes & Endocrinology, these scientists describe how music can activate neurotransmitter production that releases insulin. Specifically, playing "We Will Rock You" by Queen released 70% of insulin within 5 minutes and complete release within 15 minutes.

The New York Post summarizes the work of the researchers. They discovered that common environmental sounds did very little to stimulate insulin release, classical music did a little bit, but Queen played at 85 decibels (that's about as loud as a food blender) kicked off a full insulin release.

-via Dave Barry

call me chef pic.twitter.com/lKBTQUJf50

— Pablo Rochat (@PabloRochat) October 19, 2023

Pablo Rochat is a conceptual artist, creative director, and internet personality who does the unexpected with everyday objects. Recently, that includes a lot of hot dogs.

Less imaginative people might carry hot dogs by hand downstairs and out the back door to place them on the grill. Rochat, though, linked together what appears to be many strips of a Hot Wheels toy car racing track to travel from his kitchen to his backyard, gradually building up momentum until the hot dog launches into the air and lands on the grill.

-via Born in Space