Open Reel Ensemble comically refers to their apparati as "traditional folk instruments." These are electronic instruments that involve pulling and releasing magnetic tape with bamboo rods. When accompanied by keyboards, the resulting techno music is mesmerizing and, I find, reminiscent of 70s-era science fiction. 

The band members do not restrict themselves to these bowed instruments. They also sing in front of live audiences. I don't know what this song is about, but I heard the words "America" and "San Francisco." This electronic piece has no vocals, but it does use the magnetic reels as turntables and percussion instruments. It's impressive how Open Reel Ensemble can find so many uses for these antiques.

-via David Thompson

When European colonizers settled in Africa, they heard tales of an animal in the Congo that was made out of parts of other animals. That matched a lot of medieval fantasy, in which many creatures were described to be pastiches of more familiar animals. They didn't see this animal themselves. The story just seemed so fantastic they called it the "African unicorn," and dismissed it as a myth. You know, "pics or it didn't happen." The myth grew and spread to Europe long before the okapi was ever observed by white men and therefore deemed to be "real." Locals knew better all along, but they weren't seen as credible.

Dr. Emily Zarka tells us the tale of the African unicorn, and goes into detail on the history of mythical animals, real animals, and the weird paths taken in studying unfamiliar creatures not native to one's own region. The same disbelief occurred for the platypus, the giant squid, and gorillas. Some of these zoological "discoveries" are pretty recent, so who knows how many other legendary mythical animals may be yet found and studied.

The 35th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was held Thursday night by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research, at Boston University in Massachusetts. The awards honor and highlight research that may look ridiculous on the surface, but almost always has some underlying purpose in advancing the field of science. In other words, "Research that makes people laugh and then think." To be honest, many science studies are tiny parts of much bigger and more understandable projects. And even studies that don't lead to big breakthroughs all help to further our knowledge about the world. 

The theme for this year's ceremony was "Digestion." Indeed, many of the winning studies involved some form of digestion. The trophy, which is different every year, came in the shape of a stomach with happy and sad faces. A mini-opera titled The Plight of the Gastroenterologist was performed during the ceremony, and the five actual Nobel laureates present participated in non-singing roles. These Nobel laureates also read acceptance speeches by winners who could not attend. Continue reading for the winner's list.

Ball pits--a staple of indoor playgrounds--were invented in 1970 as a children's play area inside an Ikea store in Sweden. They became very popular, despite a reputation as being unhygenic. Adults may cringe at the bodily excretions that may be present in ball pits, but children don't know better or don't care.

One must be very careful to keep one's balls clean. It's not just good business; it's also good manners. Easyfun is one manufacturer of a ball cleaning machine that vigorously brushes, disinfects, and dries balls. They're sucked in through one tube and shot out the other. Although the process may take a few hours, it's a lot faster than cleaning balls by hand. You can see more images of this process at Core 77.

Historically, gravedigging has not been considered a respectable profession. Because of their association with death, gravediggers are sometimes thought to be at least ritually unclean if not physically dirty.

But it's a serious job that requires athleticism. Oddity Central reports that gravediggers from around the world assembled in Hungary to discover which of teams of two men could dig a complete grave the fastest and most precisely. A finished grave is 2 meters long, 0.8 meters wide, and 1.6 meters deep.

A Hungarian team won first place for the second year in a row. László Kiss and Robert Nagy completed their grave in 1 hour, 33 minutes, and 20 seconds.

Landon’s Animation Wheelhouse remade Back to the Future with computer animation, except it's wilder than you can imagine. Imagine those physics simulator traffic videos crossed with Grand Theft Auto starring our favorite time-traveling team.    

In this story, Doc drives like a maniac, so the Delorean's flux capacitor becomes damaged. They've lost the ability to pinpoint what date they are going to! Doc thinks he can fix it if he can get the part he needs, so he continues to drive like a maniac, causing massive mayhem on the roads. Along the way, they change history in ways that will make you laugh. It turns out that the Delorean is tough enough to endure a massive beating. Sure, it loses most of its exterior, but it continues to perform, unlike the real-life version of the automobile. And they do all this without dying. Don't think too much about it- it's just a cartoon. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

We are all familiar with CAPTCHAs that make us perform odd tasks that supposedly robots cannot do, like recognize a square or find a motorcycle a half mile down the road in a picture. We sometimes run into one that was surely made by a sadist who doesn't want any real humans to use whatever it is they're offering, either. 

Neal Agarwal of Neal.Fun (previously at Neatorama) made a game out of those CAPTCHAs to drive you mad without offering entrance to anything. A series of challenges starts out easy and get more difficult as they go. But they're also ridiculously funny. I only made it as far as a Where's Waldo? game because I never played that game and have no idea whether I picked too few or too many Waldos. Therefore, I have no idea how long this game really is. Play I'm Not a Robot, and let us know how far you got. -via kottke 

Instagram user and master chef etn.co_mam shared photos of her latest project--lovely pastries that are instantly recognizable as inspired by Edvard Munch's 1893 painting The Scream.

Well, Instagram's automatic translator rendered the Japanese as "wind gas", but I understood what it meant.

The face is made of cheese and the body of cocoa and chocolate. How does it taste? I'll guess it's reminiscent of existential terror.

Would you make the decision to live forever if you could? You'd have time to do everything you ever wanted to do, but then what? Philosophers and ethicists have varying opinions. Sure, you could get bored, and you'd have to say goodbye to everyone over and over as they died, not to mention watching the love of your (present) life age while you stay 25 or whatever. Some would argue that time is only valuable to us because it is limited. 

Then there are further concerns in the YouTube comments. The proposition in this TED-Ed video says we wouldn't have to worry about death as immortals, but it does not specify whether we'd experience pain or hunger or mental illness. And to keep having adventures, we'd have to keep working to earn money. And we'd have to put up with the ups and downs of the civilization around us. Then when the earth dies out, we'd be stuck in space with nothing to do until the collapse of the universe. Maybe mortality isn't so bad after all.   

On September 17, 1787, delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia signed the final draft of the US Constitution. Since 1952, this date has been celebrated as Constitution Day. By law, all public schools that receive federal funding use this day to educate students about the Constitution. 

The US Constitution documented a framework for how the new nation was to be governed. Since a government ruled by its people instead of a king was a completely unique idea at the time, there were a lot of things to work out. The original document contains seven articles and is rather short, so you can read it in one sitting. Article V sets out how the Constitution could be amended to update the document or address issues not already covered. The first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 to clarify specifics of the people's freedom from government interference. Since then, another 17 amendments have been added to address issues such as slavery, voting rights, alcohol prohibition and repeal, and taxes. 

Schools, local governments, foundations, and other organizations are holding events across the country today to both teach and celebrate the US Constitution. You can attend one near you, or read about how the Constitution came about at Wikipedia in an article that is much, much longer than the Constitution itself.    

(Image credit: Howard Chandler Christy) 

Most of you know how you feel after a glass of wine. Or two, or three. But how do you look? These images are from Brazilian photographer Marcos Alberti as part of his ongoing series The Wine Project. Inspired  by the old saying, "The first glass of wine is all about the food, the second glass is about love and the third glass is about mayhem," Alberti invited friends to his studio, people from all walks of life. He took a picture when they first arrived, usually still stressed after work. He then offered wine, and took another picture after the first glass, then after two drinks, and finally after three glasses of wine. 

You can see some relaxation after one glass, and growing friendliness after the second. The third glass is a wild card, which can mean "mayhem." You can see plenty of these sets of four pictures at his website and at Instagram. -via Metafilter 


 

Math nerds love to take any opportunity to celebrate the mathematical beauty of a date. The way we keep track of days is a human-made system that has no bearing on the way the universe works, but we've done it for a long time and we may as well have fun with it. We observe Pi Day in March (3/14) and Square Root Day occasionally (3/3/09, 4/4/16 and 5/5/25). But today is also "a date of mathematical beauty." 

Written as 9/16/25 (as Americans do), today's date consists of three perfect squares. There won't be another date that does this until the next century. Mathematician Colin Adams points out that those particular squares are special because they are a Pythagorean triple, which illustrates the Pythagorean theorem: the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Adams explains how that happens on 9/16/25 at NPR.  

While we normally celebrate Pi Day by eating pie, Adams is celebrating Pythagorean Triple Square Day with the precisely-cut cakes shown above. We should all use this date as an excuse to eat cake, too. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: Colin Adams)  

James Brown makes amazing things, such as a ring you can play Doom on and LEGO bricks with visual displays. His most recent project is a doll head that lip-syncs audio. The foundation of the animatronic is an electric typewriter ball. In this video, the doll recites the famous BBC Shipping Forecast--a century-old broadcast which has a surprisingly strong fanbase.

Kevin Lee of DIY Garage Bars, Man Caves & More produced this amazing 1/6 scale replica of Doc Brown's DMC DeLorean from Back to the Future II. It's based around a Hot Toys brand realistic model. 

The castle known as Schloss Goldenstein in Austria was established as a convent and a school in 1877. The number of nuns dwindled over the years, and when the building was taken over by the Archdiocese of Salzburg and the Reichersberg Abbey in 2022, the decision was made to dissolve the convent (the school still exists). However, the few remaining nuns were granted the right to live there for the rest of their lives if their health allowed. The last three nuns, Sister Rita, Sister Regina, and Sister Bernadette were all in their 80s. In 2023, they were taken to a retirement facility, but they were not happy about it at all. 

https://t.co/Vke6We3kXS Enchanting story of octogenarian nuns on the run - should be filmed. As The Three Graces shows, you underestimate elderly women at your peril.

— Amanda Craig (@AmandaPCraig) September 13, 2025

So the nuns enlisted some of their former students to help them move back to the convent. They found the building locked, so they called a locksmith to let them in. We assume he had a hard time saying no to the elderly sisters. The convent no longer had electricity nor running water, but they felt at home again. You can imagine the archdiocese thought about evicting them again, but the nuns had many visitors and fans, and the publicity of kicking them out would not look good. Read about the rebellious nuns who just wanted to go home at BBC. -via kottke 

(Top image credit: Ricardalovesmonuments)