We love watching Japanese zoos conduct their emergency drills with dangerous animals portrayed by an zookeeper in an animal costume. The latest is from Hitachi City Kamine Zoo, where the practice scenario is a bear that escapes when an earthquake breaks the glass in the display enclosure. It made no difference that this bear was an adorable teddy bear in a fairly good mascot costume, unlike some of the more ridiculous getups from previous drills. This drill involved not only zoo employees, but the local police, fire department, and the city's "pest damage prevention team." (Now if only US towns had such an agency...) The bear was first blocked in place by vehicles and nets, and then was shot with a tranquilizer dart, which we assume was as fake as the bear.
The drill ended in success, and we can imagine that it was followed by bear hugs all around. -via Boing Boing
If playing Wordle once a day isn't enough for you, you need to try Clickword. It's sort of like a Scrabble game that you can play by yourself. You'll start with a grid that has a few letters on it (orange), and three letters you can place anywhere (blue) -and you have to place them all before you get new letters. When three or more letters form a word vertically or horizontally, they disappear! The game is over when you've placed 60 letters. Like Scrabble, points are based on the letter value. You might be going for a long word, but as soon as three letters that make a word from their dictionary show up, it's gone. On the other hand, there is value in clearing spaces for new words.
I don't know why the actual game that compares you to other players is limited to once a day; but you can play practice games, which will give you a score. Careful, if you like word games, this could become addictive. -via Metafilter
Nature and fluid dynamics have their own way of doing things, and that's why rivers and streams left to their own devices will change over time. But those changes interfere with human settlements and commerce, so various aspects of the Mississippi River have been engineered one way or another ever since the US was established. This video from Half as Interesting tells us about the time riverboat captain Henry Miller Shreve arranged for a channel to be cut through a particularly difficult bend in the river to make navigation easier. But that cut changed the river's eventual direction so much that authorities added the Old River Control Structure to keep Old Man River from dumping all its water into the Atchafalaya River. The video is only 4:18; the rest is an ad.
However, several Louisiana commenters tell us that the tendency of the Mississippi to spill into the Atchafalaya was actually due to the clearing of the Great Raft, a 150-mile logjam in the Atchafalaya and Red River that had been there for a few thousand years and was responsible for the bayous. Who cleared that logjam? Why, it was Henry Miller Shreve, who just couldn't keep his hands off the waterways. Yes, Shreveport was named after him, since removing the raft made the Red River navigable. The Great Raft story would make a fascinating video. -via Digg
Every real life love story has a beginning of how we met, and an ending, meaning where we are now, but the important part is when you realize that this is the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. Gifts and memorable dates are nice, but when you hear about that moment, it's usually when your significant other shows their kindness. Sometimes it's putting in effort to make your life easier. Or maybe going out of their way to support you or a family member through an illness. Or even helping strangers in their time of need. These things aren't usually romantic, but it gives you a glimpse into their character.
The question was posed on the subreddit Ask Women: What's the moment with your partner that confirmed that you're gonna spend your life with them? The stories that came out will brighten your day, and maybe raise your standards for finding a partner. You can read an extensive list of the best of them at Bored Panda.
(Image credit: yue)
Through one means or another, you've been given the chance to travel back in time to ancient Rome in order to explore the city. You're not interested in disrupting history, so you're trying to stay inconspicuous. How do you accomplish this?
Garrett Ryan, a historian of ancient Greece and Rome, shares his expertise with us. His insights into Roman political history allow us to avoid tumultuous periods, such as the Year of the Four Emperors, in which the streets of Rome were too dangerous for travel. He also has tips about what to bring with you, what not to bring with you, and how to dress. For example, if you're a woman, don't wear a toga unless you'd like to be mistaken for a prostitute.
This video is part of a series of preparation guides that Ryan has made for time travelers to the distant Roman past. His others include instructions for participating in Roman nightlife and which neighborhoods you should avoid.
-via Nag on the Lake
The case of Joseph Samuel stands out among Australian executions of the 19th century. Samuel was an Englishman, or rather an English boy, sent to a penal settlement at Sydney Cove for a crime committed in 1795 when he was 14 years old. But he was a man in Australia, and continued to commit crimes at the colony, where security was pretty lax due to authorities with the mindset of "Where can they go?"
After being convicted of the brutal murder of a policeman, Samuel was led to the gallows. Yet despite rope inspections, the hanging failed over and over again. Was it divine intervention after Samuel's last minute prayers? Was it a trick arranged ahead of time? Samuel had already tried a last minute stunt to deflect blame for the crime. What should be the legal remedy in such a case? Read about the crimes of Joseph Samuels, the mysteriously botched execution, and what ultimately became of him at Amusing Planet.
(Image credit: Joseph Lycett)
Spoiler alert: it wasn’t something that people should be really worried about. A video has resurfaced on the Internet showing a 'disturbing' black ring over Disneyland. Now, this footage was old. Taken in 2016 by Kyle Hawkins, the footage displays a gigantic smoke ring above the crowds in the California theme park.
While other Internet users speculate about what it could be (some even say that it’s like an alien portal), or some joke about the park vaping itself, the explanation behind this phenomenon is quite simple. The ring is from the fire blast during the World of Color show at California Adventure. "I know this because I work there," the Redditor said. "I used to lmfao at people freaking out over this."
Image screenshot via Kyle Hawkins/YouTube
We love imagining the future. Whether it comes in tech, setting, or even culture, we love showing off our different takes on how mankind will survive in the coming years. From utopian and dystopian fiction shows and novels to how architects and engineers build cities right now, there is no shortage of how we envision our daily lives in the future.
In recent years, we’ve noticed a trend of announcements from different firms as they launch new projects that showcase their new take on metropolitan areas. AD has listed their picks for the most interesting projects and proposals for futuristic cities.
From Mexico’s Smart Forest City to Saudi Arabia’s 100-mile-long linear city called The Line, these areas, once fully built, will definitely be super cool to visit!
Image credit: Stefano Boeri
Anyone who got flashed with a car’s high beams knows that they are so bright to the point that you can be blinded. We do need them to see dark places, though.
These blinding headlights are a big reason why people have a hard time seeing clearly while driving at night. Because people keep buying taller vehicles, the headlights will continue to get higher.
Following the taller vehicles are how headlights will be placed. According to Matt Brumbelow, a senior research engineer at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, these fixtures can be misaligned. “There’s no testing to make sure that it’s still aimed properly or that it’s putting out enough light on the road and it’s not glaring other drivers,” he stated.
If we add the height of new vehicles being sold in the market, and how their headlights are placed, then there’s a big chance that these lights can cause more harm than necessary, and can make driving difficult at night.
A solution is now being pushed to solve this problem. America’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has required automakers to sell vehicles that have adaptive driving beam headlights. These new lights can adjust the intensity of their brightness to avoid blinding people.
Image credit: Eliel Frances Etruiste
Carnival season has been going on for a while, and will culminate this coming Tuesday on Mardi Gras. When Americans think of Mardi Gras, they think of New Orleans. While the Big Easy goes all out, it is by no means the only place to catch a great Mardi Gras parade. If you want to avoid the crowds and the expense of New Orleans, or if you're looking for a more family friendly celebration, you may want to catch two days of non-stop parades in Mobile, Alabama, a city that's been celebrating Mardi Gras for 320 years. In Mobile, the parade floats throw out Moon Pies as well as the tradition beads.
Lake Charles, Louisiana, has a Mardi Gras Children’s Day on the Sunday before Mardi Gras, in addition to the daily parades. St. Tammany Parish has two boat parades and several dog parades. The towns of Lafourche Parish collaborate to stage more than two dozen parades. Read about these unique Mardi Gras celebrations in places that are not New Orleans at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: Unskinny Boppy)
So many video game movies follow the story in the game. This one is based on a true story about the game. Tetris follows the work of Henk Rogers (played by Taron Egerton), the Dutch video game designer who pursued the rights to Tetris for the Gameboy from the Soviet Union as the USSR itself was in the process of falling apart. From all accounts, Soviet officials did not understand the concept of intellectual property rights, nor did they see the game's potential. Alexey Pajitnov invented the game in 1984, but did not receive royalties for it until he left Russia in 1991 and founded the Tetris Company with Rogers in 1996.
The history of the rights to Tetris is much more complicated than one movie could possibly illustrate, but this chapter sure looks exciting. Tetris will premiere March 31 on Apple TV+. -via reddit
If you DO want to see a Tetris movie that involves gameplay AND Soviet history, we've already got that. It's a musical, too!
As a general trend, heterosexual men have an interest in the bodies of attractive women. But to what degree does this interest change seasonally? Polish researchers Boguslaw Pawlowski and Piotr Sorokowski decided to find out.
They asked adult heterosexual men to rate the attractiveness of female faces, breasts photographed by cosmetic surgery clinics, and images of women with pronounced hip-to-waist ratios. They also had the subjects rate their own attractiveness and that of their romantic partners, if they had any. The researchers then followed up every three months for a year to see if their opinions changed over time.
Pawlowski and Sorokowski found that the men were quite keen on women’s breasts and hips during the winter as contrasted to the summer. Why? The researchers speculate that, during the winter, the men had fewer opportunities to look at women’s bodies without heavy protective clothing. The scarcity of such views led to their increased value.
Photo: Pixabay
Chart: Perception, v.37, 2008.
If you'd like to spend a few minutes or a week exploring the universe, check out NASA's Eyes. The website has a menu of interactive places to go and missions to follow. In the solar system, you can look at each planet individually and pull up information about that planet, or change the plane of orbits, zoom in and out, or pick a story from the left side to open. You can take a closer look at earth, or explore exoplanets in the same interactive manner. You can even land on Mars along with the Mars Perseverence rover mission.
From any point in your journey, you can suddenly switch gears and try something else. Every step of the way, you'll be able to access information about what you are looking at. It would take months to explore all the information made available to use in these apps. Pull up the menu to begin here. -via Boing Boing
Robots can be scary, robot spiders are always scary, and they fly now. The University of Tokyo's robotics department has developed a terrifying and impressive robot that walks on four extended legs and flies, too. They call it SPIDAR, which is a tortured acronym for "SPherIcally vectorable and Distributed rotors assisted Air-ground amphibious quadruped Robot." It probably doesn't work any better in Japanese. The word "amphibious" usually means maneuvering in both land and water, but in this case they apparently mean both land and air. The challenge of this robot was to make it powerful enough to walk and fly while keeping the weight low enough for air travel. SPIDAR uses 16 thrusters to fly, and to assist the small servo motors used for walking. This is a prototype that's not all that efficient, and it's extremely loud. But it accomplished its purpose, and will no doubt be refined to make it actually threatening.
💣 Help me, R2-D2 nuclear bunker. You're my only hope to survive a nuclear blast. (Image: hrnick/Atlas Obscura)
🎃 Halloween is just 258 days away, so we better hurry and get all these gruesomely cool props from the TransWorld's Halloween & Attraction Show.
🕹️ Violating the Geneva Convention? Sounds pretty sus to me but that's what happened to the popular online game Among Us.
🌹 The prettiest dumplings you'll ever see - behold, the Rose Dumplings (from our new site TastyTastic, where we feature wonderful and weird food from around the world. Check it out!)
🤣 Love Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery on Netflix? Here's how to make that movie better: just add Muppets.
🐍 How NOT to remove GIANT snakes from the ceiling of your house.
🍔 Nice buns: 8 Great T-Shirts for the Hamburger Lover in Your Life
☘️ And looking ahead to March, here's 7 Funny St. Patrick's Day Tees and Big & Tall T-Shirts
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