In 1997, James Cameron's film Titanic was a, well, titanic success at the box office and the launch of a major pop culture phenomenon. I distinctly remember there was a lot of general interest in the 1912 sinking, so it would make sense that toymakers would produce collectibles to take advantage of the craze.
I'm skeptical that Titanic-Bot would have been a popular combatant. Other transforming robots, knowing her track record, might hesitate to go into battle at her side, let alone travel on her.
YouTuber Everything Is Hacked is a computer programmer with interests in writing code under difficult circumstances and making working from home more practical. In the past, he created an interface for controlling a computer using facial movements and having Zoom put virtual pants on him for those times when he's forgotten to wear them.
Now he's radically departing from that sedentary lifestyle for energetic, full-body workouts. He's adapted flag semaphore into a computer interface that will let him type, program, and even control video games with body movements.
This video is a special treat and not just because Everything Is Hacked is smart and innovative technically. It's genuinely funny throughout as he tries to spell out the words for songs as he plays them.
Apo Whang-Od, a mambabatok (traditional tattoo artist), has been invited as the latest cover star for their issue for Vogue Philippines. The 106-year-old woman is from the Philippines and specializes in inking people using a sharp bamboo stick and charcoal soot. She is believed to be the last and oldest artist of her kind in the country.
Whang-Od imprinted symbols of her tribe, the Kalinga tribe on thousands of people who traveled to Buscalan to see her. She began tattooing headhunters and indigenous people when she was just 15 years old. “I’m the only one left alive that’s still giving tattoos. But I’m not afraid that the tradition will end because (I’m training) the next tattoo masters,” she told CNN in 2017. “The tradition will continue as long as people keep coming to get tattoos. As long as I can see well, I will keep giving tattoos. I’ll stop once my vision gets blurry.”
The traditional tattoo artist is now training her grandnieces, Elyang Wigan and Grace Palicas, her unique art as it can only be passed down to blood relatives. Learn more about Apo Whang-Od here.
Zhang Guifang was elected chief of her home town in China and did her best to turn the rundown village into a tourist hotspot. The 26-year-old Hebi City resident won the love of the Internet and other residents as she stepped into the role and promoted the village online to boost the area’s tourism.
Additionally, Zhang also pushed for the advancement of the construction of infrastructure in Hebi City. Her ascension to the post isn’t due to some random occurrence of luck and favor from her constituents. It turns out that she returned home in 2021 to run for the election after leaving school, believing that being a village head was a well-paying job.
“Maybe because I’m young the villagers trust in me. They have shown a very tolerant attitude and supported me,” Zhang told Dianshi News. Since being elected, she had walls painted with rainbow-themed murals to attract more visitors. She teamed up with an artist friend to beautify the walls without any upfront charge. According to South China Morning Post, the chief promised to pay her friend 100,000 yuan (approximately $15,000) after the work was done.
The murals were a hit, and Zhang was able to pay her friend. Additionally, she received more sponsors to fund future construction projects in the village. She now aims to improve the area’s telecommunication network.
A missing Florida toddler was found in the mouth of an alligator a few days ago. Further investigation into this tragedy revealed that the animal did not crawl out of its own mind into the land to nab the boy. Unfortunately, the boy was found to be put there by his father, according to affidavits from the St. Petersburg police affidavits.
The father, 21-year-old Thomas Mosley, is already accused of killing the child’s mother. “Due to the extremely serious allegations surrounding these tragic losses, our investigation is currently focused on gathering information about the facts and circumstances of the case, as well as our client’s mental state,” a spokesperson for Sixth Judicial Circuit Public Defender Sara Mollo said in a statement.
The police also alleged that the man threw or placed his 2-year-old son into the lake, which caused the child’s death. The authorities began the search for the boy when he was not found at the scene of the crime (his mother’s). They then found an alligator miles away where she was found dead, holding an object in its mouth– which was the child.
Barnum Brown was named after P.T. Barnum, but his passion was more mundane than the showman's. As a young boy, he followed the machinery of his father's Kansas strip mine operation to search for fossils. Brown studied paleontology in college (a fairly new discipline at the time) and made a reputation for himself. Under the patronage of Henry Osborn of the American Museum of Natural History, Brown was able to find amazing dinosaur fossils and get his master's degree.
An expedition to Montana in the summer of 1902 yielded Brown's biggest discovery yet- a new species of dinosaur that may have been 40 feet long, which Osborn named Tyrannosaurus rex. Osborn also allowed others to credit him with the discovery. Brown remained in the background, and even found two more T. rexes while Osborn was publicizing the find. But the dinosaur itself was an even bigger star than either man. Read the story of the man behind T. rex at Mental Floss.
There are many different reasons why people spend time in a coma: illness, injury, surgery, or a medically-induced coma for various reasons. Their memories of that time vary even more widely. Some don't recall anything. Some were not even aware of the passage of time. Some had very vivid and weird dreams that stayed with them for years. And some had experiences that strangely melded dreams with reality.
"I remember hearing a woman telling me to squeeze her hand. I found out later that they brought me out of the coma to see if I was brain dead. I squeezed her hand, and they put me back under for several more weeks. I remember being taken to a spaceship orbiting Earth so I could be repaired. I found out that I was actually a cyborg. While I was on the ship, something ruptured the hull, and the ship lost atmosphere and everything froze. I was frozen in place but fully aware that I was frozen and could not move. I was now certain that I would spend eternity fully awake and immobile on this ship, never able to shut down." —Keri1986
You'll also read strange cases of people whose personalities changed after a coma, and one patient who recovered to prove his brother wrong, in a list at Buzzfeed. There are even more such stories in the comments.
John Venn (1834-1923) accomplished much during his life. He began as an Anglican priest, although his study of logic, mathematics, and philosophy eventually led him to shed the clerical collar. He taught at Cambridge and eventually became president of one of its constituent colleges. Venn also tinkered with machines and invented a cricket ball bowling machine that was better than top human bowlers.
But Venn is most famous for one of the diagrams that he developed to show partially overlapping sets of values. That design is the basis for a memorial window in his honor at Gonville and Caius College.
His birthplace in Hull is also marked with an Alternative Heritage marker inspired by Venn's diagram.
With egg prices still high, the potato industry is looking to scramble up Easter traditions with a budget-friendly alternative: Easter potatoes. https://t.co/fP2M9FEaE2
It started out as a joke, an internet meme, then leaked into the real world- potatoes as an alternative to eggs for Easter egg hunts. The price of eggs has been historically high over the past year, but the price of potatoes has risen only 13%. So why not have children decorate potatoes and hunt them for the holiday? Once potato producers heard of the joke, they jumped on it, hoping to sell some potatoes and maybe start a new tradition. There are plenty of tutorials online on how to paint Easter potatoes.
Besides the difference in price, the benefits of using potatoes include less breakage, and the fact that if you use food-safe paint, the potatoes can be cooked and served afterward. People rarely do that with Easter eggs, which are ultimately out of the refrigerator for who knows how long. But overall, it's more of a meme than a reality, as egg hunts have nothing to do with the religious holiday, and so many people use plastic eggs anyway, which are cheap and can be used year after year. Personally, one chocolate egg is enough for me. -via Digg
The first appearance of Virtuix’s Omni was in Stephen Spielberg’s Ready Player One. According to founder and CEO Jan Geotgeluk, Warner Brothers reach out to them for two of their VR Treadmills to be used in the move. “We shipped them two, and they were used as the model for the CGI in the movie,” he shared.
The Omni doesn’t look like a traditional treadmill. It has a concave design and slip-on shoe covers, which use the effect of foot slipping to stimulate movement in VR. A decade since its Kickstarter campaign in 2023, people can now grab their high-tech treadmills for exercise or video games.
The story of how the Omni was built was quite a journey. The production of the device was known by Ernest Cline, the writer of Ready Player One. Interested in the development of the gadget, he even allowed the company to give signed copies of his book to the backers of the Kickstarter campaign.
Initially, they were able to deliver hundreds of units to backers, but refunded all of them eventually as they shifted plans for the Omni. They wanted to focus on commercial clients such as arcades and arcade-adjacent venues. This is because the size and price of the device can be more profitable if pushed toward these bigger companies.
Now, people at home can get their own Omni One, read for individual use after a decade of development. Priced at $2,595, the device comes with a customized Pico Neo 3 headset. Beta users will get the gadget first, but eventually, Virtuix remarked that a commercial version will be released later this year.
A group of researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel discovered that plants make noise when they are “stressed.” These sounds cannot be heard by humans even though they are emitted at a volume similar to human speech. This is because they are at such a high frequency that we can’t hear them.
What’s funny though is that when the researchers recorded and analyzed the sounds, it sounds like either someone is clicking their mouse too fast or someone’s popcorn is popping. The researchers also shared that each plant and each type of stress has its identifiable sound. “While imperceptible to the human ear, the sounds emitted by plants can probably be heard by various animals, such as bats, mice, and insects,” the researchers said.
No, it’s not America. Surprisingly. As of 2023, Luxembourg is the richest country in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, with a value of $135,700.
So what is it like to visit such a wealthy place? Insider’s Mikhaila Friel decided to visit the country back in March, and she’s now back to tell her experience. She spent three nights in different luxury hotels and went to different tourist spots using Luxembourg’s free public transport.
Friel shared that one of the best parts of her trip was the hotels that she stayed in. She paid $275.50 for a one-night stay in a traditional queen room at Hotel Le Royal, a five-star hotel. The furniture and amenities were all there for her, and she had a complimentary fruit bowl and a box of chocolates as a gift.
While all the luxury hotels she stayed in were very high-quality, Friel stated that the highlight of her trip was the public transportation in the country. It is the first country in the world to provide free mass transportation to both residents and visitors in 2022. Everything was easy to use, and the vehicles were clean and comfortable.
If there was something she could say as a bad point about the city is that it was too quiet. While the country has 645,000 residents, most of them commute to Belgium, France, and Germany to work. “While the city was beautiful, the streets were very quiet when I visited,” Friel wrote. “When traveling solo, I usually prefer cities with a larger population, as they usually have a more lively and welcoming atmosphere, which makes it easier to meet new people and to feel less alone.”
Kyoto is one of the cities you’d want to visit when you’re in Japan. As the ancient capital of the country, it has a lot of temples and historical sites to visit. Another big bonus is the cuisine served in the location. There’s a thrill in learning and discovering the local food scene as you try local delicacies and flavors you’ve never tasted before.
For foodies and enthusiasts, Live Japan has created a full-time table of places you could visit for some good food. Their guide is perfect for those who want to sample everything that the city has to offer. They recommend making reservations before you travel to the area.
Aside from that, Live Japan also advises travelers to plan their itinerary based on bus schedules if they don’t have a rented vehicle to use during their stay.
Sometimes, we feel things that we can’t put into words. We can certainly describe things through paragraphs, but finding the exact word to describe our emotions can be limited. It turns out that aside from the common words we used to talk about how we feel, there are other phrases and nouns in English that can describe more complicated human emotions.
For example, the word chrysalism (kris-a-lizim) refers to the feeling of tranquility when you’re indoors when it’s raining heavily outside. Now that’s a very familiar emotion we feel during rainy days.
Another word is monachopsis (mo-na-kop-sis). This term is associated with the feeling of being chronically out of place. It can also refer to the inability to adapt to your surroundings.
If you’re interested in learning more nouns, check out Esquire Magazine’s list of them here.
New York's Hart Island, off the coast of the Bronx, contains the nation's largest cemetery on its 131 acres. But this is no Forest Lawn. This is New York's potter's field, where unidentified or unclaimed bodies are buried, in trenches three coffins deep. The practice has been going on since 1869, and it is estimated that more than a million people are now buried there. Run by the Department of Corrections, the island has been off-limits to the general public for years, except for supervised memorial services twice a month. But that is about to change.
In part by the efforts of the Hart Island Project, the administration of the island was transferred from the Corrections Department to the city's Parks Department. They've been busy cleaning up the island and dismantling some old buildings. Later this year, guided tours will begin as a pilot program, leading to eventual opening of Hart Island as a park. That doesn't mean it will no longer be a potter's field. Burials of New York's more unfortunate deceased will continue. Read about the new park on Hart Island at Smithsonian. -via Fark
