Have you ever been to a movie that made you tense up anticipating the evil force, and when it was finally revealed, you thought, "That's it?" You might have even laughed when you finally saw what was supposed to be so scary. We know from Jaws and many Alfred Hitchcock movies that the psychological suspense of a monster we can't see is deliciously scary, but often even the best special effects makeup, or even CGI, can't live up to our imaginations. A reddit post in r/movies asked filmgoers which movie monster was a real disappointment to see after building up a lot of tension. More than 3,000 comments came in discussing those films. Cracked picked out a list of the best, and gave them to us with illustrations. The picture above from the 1956 movie It Conqered the World may be an outlier in its sheer ridiculousness, but we can get a laugh out of it.

It Conquered the World. Paul Blaisdell specifically designed his monster to be seen partially in the shadows, but Roger Corman wasn't having it. He said "I paid for a monster and I'm damn well going to see a monster", so they rolled the giant evil cucumber out into the broad daylight of Bronson Canyon, painfully obvious it was on a little furniture cart.

The same redditor told us more about this alien from Venus. Read about 22 films that built up tension, and then revealed an underwhelming monster, at Cracked.

A crew aboard the EV (Exploration Vessel) Nautilus watches the camera feed from their ROV Atalanta and spots a dumbo octopus (Grimpoteuthis), shining ghostly white in the lights. There are quite a few species in this genus, named dumbo after the Disney elephant because of its fins that look like ears. Or who knows- maybe these are its ears that it uses for swimming, just like Dumbo used his oversized ears for flying. This footage was recorded 5,518 feet (1,682 meters) under the surface at the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument near Hawaii.

These ROV videos are great because we get to see deep sea creatures in their own habitat, but also because we get the real-time reaction from the scientists watching from the ship. Their enthusiasm is contagious. One says, "I'm glad we got to see a live one!" That indicates they saw a dead one earlier. So why is it white? Octopuses have the ability to be any color they want, so this one may have turned white to match the bright light from the ROV. Or the light may have been so bright that it would show up white to us regardless of the real color. Or maybe it's combination of both. -via Born in Space

The earliest G.I. Joe action figures from the 1960s were a foot tall, in line with Barbie doll proportions. In 1982, the toy line was rebooted, and the action figures were rescaled to 3.75 inches tall. This allowed for more military vehicles and equipment to be made for them. They got jeeps and tanks and airplanes, but the biggest G.I. Joe playset came out in 1985- an aircraft carrier! The U.S.S Flagg Aircraft Carrier Playset was not exactly built to scale- if it were, it would have been 65 feet long. But it was still a massive toy, at seven and a half feet long, three feet wide and three feet tall. And you had to assemble it yourself. Or rather, parents did.

Every kid who knew about the U.S.S Flagg Aircraft Carrier Playset wanted one, but it cost over a hundred dollars, which was a lot to spend on a toy in 1985. Besides, it was a rare family that had room for one of these in their house. Those who actually purchased it got a lot for their bucks, including support vehicles, a PA system, and a captain. Read about this amazing playset that's now a collector's item at much higher prices at the Toy Collectors Guide. -via Nag on the Lake   

Robert J. Cumming, an astronomer in Sweden, and several colleagues at various astronomical research institutions in Europe, have submitted for publication a scholarly journal article arguing, in all seriousness, that every observatory should have a disco ball.

The authors note that pinhole cameras are frequently used in observatories. A disco ball, with its hundreds of mirrored surfaces, is basically a pinhole camera with hundreds of different apertures. They are cheap and readily available, thus avoiding serious expense in acquiring a specialized tool for observing bright objects, such as the sun. The article describes at length how the authors use a disco ball to observe a solar eclipse.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Pexels

We all know the Acme Corporation. They were the ones who supplied Wile E. Coyote with all the gadgets and supplies he needed to catch the Road Runner. They didn't work all that well, but he could get them delivered out in the desert. Since those days, the name Acme has been used as a generic business name when you don't want to use a specific name. But wait, those Warner Brothers cartoons weren't the first to use Acme as a generic business name- they are just the most durable and universal media we have from 70+ years ago. Using Acme as a business name was already a Hollywood thing.

Even so, the name didn't spring up in Hollywood. It was a common real business name during the early 20th century, selected for a mundane but genius reason. While a few businesses that use the name Acme are still around, startups rarely select it because of its association with Wile E. Coyote and his many failures in using their products.

The city of San Francisco grew quickly and haphazardly starting with the California Gold Rush in 1848. Many thousands of residents were buried in the city's cemeteries, and over the years, they ran out of room. Besides, that valuable urban property was needed for other purposes. Burial in San Francisco was halted, and existing graves were dug up reburied elsewhere. Starting in 1930, they were sent to Colma for reburial, and the small town was established as the official burial site for San Franciscans.

But those reburials started as early as 1868, when thousands of graves were dug up from the Yerba Buena cemetery with a $10,000 appropriation from the city. That was not nearly enough money. When the funds ran out, the project was declared finished. The U.N. Plaza stands at the site today, above thousands of bodies still buried there. The same approach to moving graves went on in other cemeteries, which is why San Francisco now has a historical Chinese cemetery covered with a golf course and a Native American cemetery underneath a road and school. There are efforts to bring attention to and memorialize those forgotten graves that may never be recovered, which you can read about at Atlas Obscura.   

(Image credit: Library of Congress)

Cyriak Harris (previously at Neatorama) has been producing bizarre and surreal animations for almost twenty years now, although not as often as we'd like. Except for a commissioned music video, this is his first animated project he's shared in two years. Cyriak has a talent for turning everyday objects, often animals, into Eldrich horrors. The subject this time is a goose, which is a silly animal to begin with, but this one is a contortionist, as you would expect.

I noticed that this video comes with YouTube's fairly new transcript feature. What would it say besides "honk"? It doesn't even say that!

I will have to start checking out other videos' transcripts to see if they are as nonsensical.

When capital punishment wasn't enough of a deterrent for criminals to stop committing offenses, the British Parliament deliberated on what would be a better way to deter people from committing crimes, and that's when they passed the British Murder Act of 1751. It is considered quite brutal and even said to be a fate worse than death. Weird History tells us about the BMA of 1751 in the video above. - via Digg.

(Video credit: Weird History/Youtube)

It was when Dr. James Wade was doing research at the National Library of Scotland when he stumbled upon something rather extraordinary. In a 15th century manuscript, he read what seemed to be notes and details for a live comedy act. Today, we have stand-up comedians writing material and going on the road to test that material out on audiences. Sometimes, they would have spontaneous moments on stage creating comedy magic. I would think that minstrels, the entertainers of the Medieval Age, generally performed impromptu or extempore, but having this manuscript with the writer giving details of the sequences he would perform, is definitely rare especially for medieval literature. Read more about it on Sci Tech Daily. - via Metafilter

(Image credit: National Library of Scotland)

When I was a kid, I learned that there were four distinct tastes: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. There is a fifth taste, umami, which is basically that savory sensation described by the Japanese. Apart from these five, researchers are saying that there is a sixth. Or, to be more precise, we can divide the salty taste into two different sensations: one where the saltiness is just right and you can enjoy the flavor of the food being accentuated by the salt, and the other when there's too much salt and you feel repulsed.

In the case of salt, scientists understand many details about the low-salt receptor, but a complete description of the high-salt receptor has lagged, as has an understanding of which taste bud cells host each detector.

“There are a lot of gaps still in our knowledge — especially salt taste. I would call it one of the biggest gaps,” says Maik Behrens, a taste researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology in Freising, Germany. “There are always missing pieces in the puzzle.”

In our culture, we have a condiment made of fermented fish or shrimp paste with salt. If you eat a handful of that, it tastes awful. It's not exactly bitter, but it's a repugnant taste. That's what high levels of salt must taste like. It's not salty the way we would define salty. It's a whole class altogether, and I think that's what taste researchers are looking into. Although, not everybody is convinced. Amber Dance writes about these nuances on Knowable.

(Image credit: Jason Tuinstra/Unsplash)

There have been several times when I have observed our dog moving while she sleeps, and I wondered whether she was having a dream. Of course, I couldn't know. Apparently, there are some animals that exhibit behavior similar to what humans do during REM sleep. Behavioral ecologist Daniela Rößler and her colleagues found that spiders seem to experience a similar rapid eye movement at particular intervals.

Though the spiders are motionless in the run-up to these REM-like bouts, the team hasn’t yet proved that they are sleeping. But if it turns out that they are — and if what looks like REM really is REM — dreaming is a distinct possibility, Rößler says. She finds it easy to imagine that jumping spiders, as highly visual animals, might benefit from dreams as a way to process information they took in during the day.

Furthermore, spiders aren't the only creatures that might be dreaming in their sleep. It is possible that bearded dragons, cuttlefish, octopuses and even pigeons also enter into a REM sleep state. Learn more at Knowable Mag.

(Video credit: Knowable Mag)

The video of octopuses punching fish is quite surprising and funny to me. I know animals display certain odd behaviors from time to time, but seeing an octopus sucker punch a fish is very amusing. What are the octopuses thinking when they do that? Is it a reflex reaction or was it intentional? Furthermore, what did the fish do to provoke the ire of the octopus? A paper suggests that the reason for this is that certain fish are taking advantage of the octopus on a hunt, and the octopus is merely retaliating.

On another note, Marina Wang from Hakai Magazine had created a comic based on a new study where researchers looked into the biomechanics of the octopus punch. Take a look at the comic here.

(Video credit: Hakai Magazine)

Research on artificial wombs have been ongoing for years, and some advisors for the US FDA are now in talks about moving forward to human trials, and how to navigate that delicate line. These devices are designed not to replace an actual human uterus, but merely as a means to help premature babies survive.

In most of the technologies, the infant would float in a clear “biobag,” surrounded by fluid. The idea is that preemies could spend a few weeks continuing to develop in this device after birth, so that “when they’re transitioned from the device, they’re more capable of surviving and having fewer complications with conventional treatment,” says George Mychaliska, a pediatric surgeon at the University of Michigan.

As with any technology, uncertainty surrounds its effectiveness with humans and since we will be dealing with human life, especially the most vulnerable of human life, it's going to be difficult to figure out how we can test the viability of this device. Despite tests having been done on animals, as with research similar to this like cloning, there is a degree of risk that might cross the line when it comes to the ethics of testing these procedures or devices on humans. MIT Technology Review looks into what human testing for artificial wombs will look like, when it might happen, and who might be the first test subjects.

(Image credit: Alexander Grey/Unsplash)

I love stand-up comedy specials. It's a great way for me to get a laugh once in a while. In the world of entertainment, comedians aren't usually equated with award-winning performances as with actors. In awards shows, they're usually the hosts and rarely the nominees, unless they are involved in a show or film wherein they are the producer or in Ricky Gervais' case for The Office, the creator. But the Golden Globes wants to change that and recently announced that they will be adding two new categories in their lineup which includes one for best performance in a stand-up comedy special.

The Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy on Television recognizes outstanding work from a comic in a traditional stand-up format (or as a breakout comic in a troupe or ensemble). Comedy specials airing on broadcast, basic and premium cable, streaming and pay-per-view cable will considered. Projects must have a recognized distributor and individual social media accounts will not be eligible.

In response to this, several stand-up comedians shared their opinions on the latest addition.

(Image credit: Michel Grolet/Unsplash)

Designed and developed by the Sung Robotics Lab from the School of Engineering and Applied Science in the University of Pennsylvania, this tiny robot inspired by an origami design can do so many things despite having only one motor. CurveQuad is able to "self-fold and unfold, crawl, and steer, all using a single actuator."

(Video credit: Mashable)