Ever since we saw The Jetsons in the 1960s, we've been waiting for flying cars. We aren't quite there yet, but we may see flying taxis at the Summer Olympic Games in Paris next year. And they will be powered by non-polluting electricity! The city is working on partnering with the German firm Volocopter to run their electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOLs) to get people to the sports venues. These electric helicopters don't yet have the power necessary for long-range trips, but a city taxi service using them can cut trip times into fractions. That is, if they can nail down proposed routes and design a system for keeping the skies safe around other traffic. After all, there will be conventional helicopters in use, as well as innumerable drones.
Volocopter isn't the only company pioneering eVTOLs. American company Archer Aviation Inc. is poised to begin taxi runs in 2025, ramping up for full service at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. Still, these taxi runs will be expensive, at least at first. Read about eVTOLs and where you might see them at NBC Sports. -via Fark
(image credit: Spielvogel)
Historically speaking, sports originate with military training. Some sports are more pure expressions of that origin than others, but few sports could compete with actual grenade throwing for practical applications during combat.
Weird Universe tracked down an online copy of a 1918 athletic training guide aimed at branches of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization, in the United States. The United States was massively mobilizing and adapting for its first major war since 1865, so it was necessary to get as many young men ready for modern combat as quickly as possible. Sports should therefore reflect battlefield needs, so Captain Lewis Omer of the newly-formed 86th Infantry Division proposes that young men practice grenade throwing as a sport.
The rules and field reflect life and death in the trenches of Europe. The player is inside a cage simulating a trench. In sixty seconds, he must throw as many grenades as possible into boxes at different ranges representing enemy trenches. Between each throw, he must hit the ground, touching his knees and his chest to floor of the cage. Close, as they say, only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, so land the grenades as close to the target as possible for maximum points.
The rest of the document is also interesting to read. Immediately after the section on grenade throwing is a description of Trench Ball, an adaptation of football for trench warfare.
Apparently in my absence my husband has hung cat-level wall art. So sophisticated 🧐 pic.twitter.com/xwVwWl89Xk
— Yvette Cendes (@whereisyvette) February 23, 2023
An entry in a list at Bored Panda tickled me, so I went to save the Tweet. In the comments below it, I found there was more to the story. Yvette Cendes had also posted the picture to reddit, where she explained what the art piece is.
The response inspired reddit's resident artist Shitty_Watercolour to contribute a rendering of the poor house cat expressing her desire to live like the cat in the photograph.
At which point the discussion turned to whether it is better to be a house cat in Boston or a stray in sunny Havana getting your picture taken. And that's as far down the rabbit hole I want to go today. However, I did check to see if Cendes printed out the watercolor and hanged it at cat level- no word on that. The Tweet is from Bored Panda's list called 50 Hilarious Boyfriends And Husbands Who Never Fail To Make Their Partners Laugh.
The Orient Express was a luxury train route taking passengers from Paris to Istanbul on a posh three-night journey. Between 1883 and 1977, wealthy travelers enjoyed fine dining, sleeper cars, and personal service from a staff of well-trained porters. The route became world famous, and indeed many of us only know about it through fictional stories that took place on the trains. But the demand collapsed when air travel took over. The route and the name were leased by another company, but full trips to Istanbul only occurred once a year.
However, a new company is joining them with the aim to bring back the luxury and nostalgia of the original Orient Express, with a proposed opening date of 2025. Getting the trains back together proved to be an enormous challenge. At its peak, the service used more than 2,000 train cars, including sleeper cars, dining cars, lounges, and cars for supplies and baggage. It means a lot to get those original cars back, but they had been scattered to the four winds, and many are assumed to be unrepairable. The company hired train historian Arthur Mettetal, who is doing his Phd on the Orient Express (about, not literally on) to locate the original cars. Mettetal went to great lengths, including tracking down faintly recognizable blue cars with cream roofs in the background of internet photos. He once ventured into Belarus and faced an armed standoff to negotiate for original Orient Express cars. Read about his quest, and the efforts to collect and refurbish the luxurious train cars of the Orient Express at Messy Nessy Chic.
(Image credit: Honza Groh (Jagro))
She's convinced that sending her dog Molly to the moon is the right thing to do. But she's wrong. We never get to learn why she came to believe this, or how she managed to get him onto a rocket ship in the first place, but no logical explanations are really necessary to the story. You just have to suspend your disbelief and go with the shorthand way the story is told. That saves a lot of time.
Moon Dog is a short and charming little film by Australian filmmaker Nat Kelly. The premise is sort of dumb, and in the middle you'll think the story is awful, but stay with it because the payoff is worth it. No animals were harmed in the making of this video, especially Molly.
Nat Kelly made a name for himself when he was just a teenager and produced a full-length feature film on a zero budget. When it was shown at the local theater in Darwin, the house was packed. -via Metafilter
Wilbur and Orville Wright are acclaimed for building the first ever motorized heavier-than-air flying machine. Its first successful flight was on December 17, 1903. While that may seem a huge accomplishment to those of us who know what came after, it was so low-key at the time that they couldn't even get it into newspapers. Even the brothers' hometown newspaper, the Dayton Journal, thought the flight was too short to count. It was pretty short- the distance they flew was shorter than the length of a modern airliner.
So the Wrights kept trying, staging a demonstration for the press in 1904 that didn't go well. It wasn't until they did figure eights in the air in France that the press decided the Wright Brothers were the real deal- in 1908! Why did it take so long for anyone to notice this stunning breakthrough? Because no one believed powered flight was possible. Read about the slow media response to the Wright Brothers flight at Big Think. -via Real Clear Science
The birthday party invitation above has gone viral. Carys Roberts of Kingston, Ontario, is throwing a party for her twin girls as they turn five years old. Anyone who knows a five-year-old girl can understand that they wanted their party to have a theme of "unicorns but with rainbows and maybe bats but there should be princesses and also Minnie and we need dancing lights" But what's really appealing is that Roberts is trying to lower expectations for the party guests, especially the parents, with phrases like "brought to you by Pinterest fails and the dollar store." It's an appropriate tactic in an age that finds children's birthday parties designed more for social media than for the children.
There's no reason to rent equipment and hire entertainment for young children, although we've seen parties with perfectly matched theme decorations, food, and games for one- and two-year-olds. What children really want is a fun time with their friends and family. Another part of the invitation that caught people's attention is Roberts' polite admission that she could use some help supervising the kids -"adult juice" provided. If you can't read the text in the image above, a larger version and an interview with Roberts can be found here. -via Metafilter
Gav and Dan, the Slow Mo Guys, have played with dangerous things before, but they are serious when they warn us about playing with large neodymium magnets. "They will crush you." But that's exactly what they are doing in their latest video. These magnets are so attractive that you can't work with them before removing all the metal on your body, or you'll be sorry. Getting two of them together is another level- they will rush together so quickly and forcefully that they break! It happens in a blink of an eye, but these are the Slow Mo Guys. They recorded the magnets colliding at 187,000 frames per second, so we can see how it happens. The collision throws parts of the magnets off, but they are quickly sucked back together. That all occurs in the first four minutes; then they try some other experiments and show us how very weird these magnets act when they're trying to handle them. -via Born in Space
It happens. Corporations that seem greedy or too up in people’s business online trying to be “relatable” for clicks and advertisements can get the ire of the common folk. If you’re interested in knowing which companies are really hated by the populace, the 2023 Axios Harris Poll has been released. These results were produced by asking more than 16,000 Americans to score the 100 companies they considered “most visible” across nine categories of reputation.
The list reveals the reputations of around 100 corporations in the U.S. Much to nobody’s surprise, social media companies are one of worst ranked organizations. Twitter, Meta, and TikTok were the giants included, but they were also badly ranked. Meta and Twitter scored badly in the culture and ethics categories, and this can be attributed to the recent lay-off of thousands of workers over email. We’re also going to include Musk’s reputation and as well as his choices after his acquisition of Twitter.
TikTok on the other hand, scored badly on the character category. This also is no surprise, with how American lawmakers are making a big fuss or concern over how it can be used by the Chinese federal government to gain more influence (and information). For reference, here are the other brands with bad reputations in the country according to the poll:
- The Trump Organization
- FTX
- Fox Corporation
- Meta
- Spirit Airlines
- TikTok
Image credit: Pixabay
Book historians refer to this binding style as "concertina" because of its accordion-like appearance. This particular book, now in the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen, was in the collection of Seventeenth Century scholar Peder Scavenius. It's a copy of the Old Testament in Hebrew. Reading it requires flipping the book over as one proceeds through four divisions.
-via Paul Babinski
Who can say no to making a few extra bucks from items we’re not really interested in hanging onto anymore?
Well, with spring coming around the corner, around 77 % of households are estimated to do a full routine cleanup of their home, according to the National Cleaning Survey. This number is a record high, and it’s not going to be surprising to see a lot of old vintage items resurface in the coming months. We’re talking about old family photos, vintage frames, porcelain, music boxes, utensils, and more.
If you’re one of the people who would brave their old family’s attic or basement for spring cleaning, you might want to keep an eye out for these items that can make you some money thanks to collectors. Check out Delish’s full piece here to learn more!
Image via Ebay
From 1809 to 1927, this strange disease killed thousands of settlers and farmers in the Midwest—including Abraham Lincoln’s mother. https://t.co/GODTnGUwJg
— Smithsonian Magazine (@SmithsonianMag) June 20, 2023
When pioneers began settling in the United States midwest, they encountered a deadly illness that was eventually dubbed "milk sickness." It could kill a person within days. Calves died from it, and milk cows suffered as well, so the connection with drinking milk lent the illness its name. But no one knew what caused it, until Doctor Anna put her efforts into finding the cause.
Anna Pierce Bixby saw a need in her new Illinois community, and went to Philadelphia to be trained in nursing, midwifery, and dentistry, and returned to Rock Creek, Illinois, as the only medical practitioner for miles around. Besides delivering babies and pulling teeth, she searched and found the cause of milk sickness, with the aid of a Native American woman whose identity has been lost. But while cases of milk sickness waned in southern Illinois due to Bixby's efforts, it continued elsewhere because faraway doctors and officials didn't put much stock in what a frontier midwife had to say. Time and experience proved Bixby correct, yet even today she is more known for a local legend of buried treasure than for her public health work. Read how Doctor Anna fought milk sickness at Smithsonian. -via Damn Interesting
Simone Giertz, the "queen of shitty robots" (previously at Neatorama), went to a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan to meet Mohammad Waheed Hussein Asaf, who makes toys for the children of the camp. The aim was to collaborate in making a working helicopter for the children. Their time together is a contrast of old and young, Eastern and Western, man and woman, from different parts of the world who don't have a language in common.
"He thinks I'm incompetent, and I think he's a stubborn old man."
There had to be a translator there, but the editing of this video is so exquisite that you don't even realize it. Can they come together to build a helicopter from the materials available? That seems to be almost beside the point, as the real story here is the partnership of two makers.
The video is a project of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, to celebrate World Refugee Day on June 20. The UNHCR's mini-documentary series called We Are Here has four episodes available on YouTube. -via Metafilter
If you were to go by pop culture versions of Viking feasts, a meal would be laden with whole animals roasted over a spit, accompanied by plenty of alcoholic beverages. While that may be appropriate for a celebratory dinner after a successful pillaging, it's not what most people of the Viking era ate. Daniel Serra is the world's foremost expert on Viking cuisine, and has published a cookbook of Viking recipes. He also gives demonstrations of historic cooking in recreated Viking villages in Scandinavia. But how do you recreate meals from a culture that didn't write anything down?
Serra studies a combination of sources, such as archaeological digs, mentions of food in orally-preserved Viking sagas, and extrapolating back from later written recipes. He cross-references his findings with the science of what the area was like in the Viking age, what resources were available, and what the culture was like. Then he tests his recipes and cooking methods to see if they work.
Serra describes the everyday "comfort foods" that Viking communities would produce, and even shares a recipe for Traveller's Fish Porridge at BBC's World's Table. -via Digg
You might think that someone messed up the instructions for assembling their IKEA cat, but this is Gulliver, and he's just weird. That's how he got featured on the subreddit WhatsWrongWithYourCat.
Then there's sangu811's cat, who can sleep in what would be a most uncomfortable position for humans. Honestly, there's usually nothing wrong with these cats, it's just that cats are open to new experiences, exceedingly flexible, and they don't care what you think. If you enjoy cats caught on camera being all weird, check out 50 of them in a ranked list at Bored Panda.
