The bigger they are, the harder they fall, especially in the movie business. If your movie grosses $20 million at the box office, that's really good- if you made it for $5 million. But if you spent $100 million dollars to pay the biggest actors and travel to the nicest locations, then you've got yourself a bomb. Studios sometimes invest ludicrous amounts of money in a film just to see it crash and burn in front of audiences.

Shortly before Avatar: The Way of Water was released, James Cameron said that it would have to make two billion dollars to be profitable. That raised some eyebrows, but the movie is nearing the two billion mark now. Read about 15 movies that had huge budgets, but didn't turn out so well for their investors at Cracked.

Have you ever crossed a railroad trestle on foot? Have you ever done it at night during a storm that had already destroyed another nearby bridge? Wearing an ankle-length nightgown? You might do it if people's lives were at stake, and that's what 15-year-old Kate Shelley did in July of 1881. A storm had washed out the wooden supports under the Honey Creek railroad bridge in Iowa, which collapsed when a pusher locomotive crew came by to check the bridges.

Shelley lived nearby with her mother and younger siblings, and heard the locomotive crash. She told the two surviving crew members she would go for help. Living by the railroad, Shelley knew a passenger train would be coming in less than an hour, and she had to go to the station at Moingona to warn the railroad company of the bridge collapse. But to get there, she had to cross the larger Des Moines River trestle, and run two miles further to Moingona. Read the story of Kate Shelley's heroic actions that night that saved around 200 passengers and crew from plunging to their deaths at Honey Creek.

Eclectic Method has been delving into the artistic possibilities of artificial intelligence. In this video, he's fed video dance sequences into an algorithm and prompted it to produce anime-style characters dancing. The song is a real bop, but watching the dancers takes you slightly into the uncanny valley. You will recognize a lot of the dancing here, but it's not the people who originally made those oh-so-familiar moves. And the cartoon characters don't necessarily look as you'd expect.  

For example, there's a split second where you see what is obviously Pee-wee Herman dancing on the counter, but he has Steven Seagal's face. The video draws heavily on Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Dirty Dancing, and Footloose, among other movies. You'll also recognize the dancing of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, too. But really, is this any odder than rotoscoping by hand? You might be better off not thinking too much about the AI part and just enjoy the mashup. -via Geeks Are Sexy

My kids have always been impressed with my ability to instantly switch back and forth from formal, educated speech to my natural hillbilly patois,* depending on who I'm speaking to. That includes using the second person plural "you" instead of the much more useful contraction "y'all." However, "y'all" is the better word. There is a natural tendency among American English speakers to separate the plural "you" from the singular "you," which has given us abominations like "you guys" and "you'ns."

For much of the last couple of centuries, the use of "y'all" has tagged someone as being from the American South, which opened the door for denigration of the word because of who uses it. But it did not originate in the South; we brought it over from the old country, namely England. Nor is it isolated in the South. The rest of the US is fast adopting the word because it fills that need for a separate second person plural in a straightforward and inclusive way. Read about the origins and the modernization of "y'all" at the Conversation. Now if we can just get rid of that apostrophe, everyone would be able to spell it. -via Atlas Obscura



*In this case, "impressed with" actually means "laughed about."

If you've always had a yearning to drive the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile, or if you're looking for a position that will take you places (and put you up in a hotel), then this is the job for you! Oscar Meyer is looking for recent college graduates to sign up for a year as a "hotdogger." Not only will you drive the Weinermobile, but you'll be a brand ambassador, giving talks to the public and logging your adventures on social media. This would be especially attractive to those with a new degree in communications, public relations, or marketing.

WRDW spoke to a couple of hotdoggers about what the job was like, and found out that the first thing a hotdogger does is learn how many hot dog puns can possibly be jammed into one interview.

The job description is online until January 31st, if you think you can cut the mustard.  -Thanks, WTM!

Who is the person who has killed the most people? This question is often answered with various leaders of nations or armies, like Hitler, Stalin, or Genghis Khan. While they might deserve the title, they only ordered those killings, which were carried out by many people. The one person who murdered more people by his own hand than any other in history is Vasili Blokhin, a name you've likely never heard before. He holds the Guinness World Record for the "World's Most Prolific Executioner."  

Blokhin killed plenty of people in World War I, then for the Soviet Secret Police, then in World War II he both gave orders for mass killings and killed a horrendous number of people himself. In the worst episode, in an operation to liquidate 20,000 Polish POWs, he personally shot more than 7,000 of them himself, one by one, over a 28-day period. Read about the bloody hand of Vasili Blokhin.  

After telling Blokhin's gruesome story, Today I Found Out attempts some mind bleach by looking for the person who has saved more human lives than anyone else in the same article. There are several very interesting candidates for that title.

The Sheriff's Office of Jefferson County, Missouri needs you to get inebriated and will provide you with the booze to do it.

On Facebook, the Sheriff's Office explains that, in order to provide practical training for officers in conducting field sobriety tests on drunk drivers, they ask that volunteers get liquored up at a designated facility. The officers will then run the volunteers through standard field sobriety tests, including a breathalyzer. This event is called a "wet lab" and is apparently a common practice among police departments.

Participants will be provided with a free ride home (not to jail, the author emphasizes) at the conclusion of the exercise.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Pixabay

The content you follow me for. 🌈 pic.twitter.com/0agRCcqXgd

— TG (@TG22110) January 5, 2023

Oooh, pretty! TG posted one of those parlor tricks that is circulated in schools and summer camps, but is rarely seen by those of us who don't have young children at home. Now we can all try it! The replies under this Tweet have some pictures from people who have done this at home, and a lot of inquiries into why TG didn't use any yellow Skittles. Maybe he ate them all. Since the Tweet was posted without explicit instructions, it drew the attention of two candy companies.

Please don’t try this with M&M’S @TG22110

— M&M'S (@mmschocolate) January 6, 2023

I, too, thought they were M&Ms at first glance. I don't eat Skittles, but this might push me into buying a small package. -via Everlasting Blort

Part of NASA's plan to return to the moon, which began with the first Artemis mission last year, will include a lunar base and a manned space station to orbit above. The space station already has a name: Lunar Gateway. It will be built near the moon, and the first components for it will launch as early as 2024.

The Lunar Gateway will be built through a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and other partners. But this will be no International Space Station. The cost of sending materials to the moon to assembled is very high, so the Lunar Gateway will be much smaller, about one sixth the size of the ISS. René Waclavicek, one of the designers of the astronaut living quarters, called the I-Hab, discussed the space station recently at a conference in the Czech Republic.

I-Hab “will have habitable space of about 8 cubic meters [280 cubic feet] and you will have to share it with three others,” Waclavicek said during the conference. “In other words, that would be a room 2 by 2 by 2 meters [6.6 by 6.6 by 6.6 feet], and you are locked in there.”

The I-Hab also has no windows. The only windows on the proposed space station will be in the nearby refueling module. However, the astronauts aboard could take advantage of any spacecraft docked at the station to get a little elbow room occasionally. Waclavicek assured us that the design team began with plans for a larger space station, but had to scale back due to restrictions in the materials allowed. Bummer.

(Image credit: NASA)

Luna Park in Melbourne has a very old wooden roller coaster, the second oldest in the world that's still operating. This roller coaster has been in contunous operation since 1912! In case you are now wondering, the oldest is Leap the Dips in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Anyway, the Great Scenic Railway has an employee on every ride, because they have to operate the brakes. That may sound strange, but it can be reassuring to know that the brake operator has some skin in the game, so to speak. To be an railway operator, you have to have stamina, a hearty sense of equilibrium, and you must undergo training. Tom Scott went to Melbourne to talk to the folks who run the Great Scenic Railway, and to take a ride himself. He seems to be having fun, which is in great contrast to his earlier roller coaster rides. Tom even made a video about his efforts to overcome his fear of roller coasters, only about six months ago. Looks like he has come a long way.

Well, here’s a new link to add to the food chain. Viruses are found everywhere, and it comes as no surprise that there will be an organic species that will eat them. Researcher John DeLong at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln found a microbe that actually has them as part of its diet. 

He and his team aimed to discover if any actually ate viruses, and whether it would be enough to support the physiological growth of individuals and the population growth of a community. “They’re made up of really good stuff: nucleic acids, a lot of nitrogen and phosphorous,” said DeLong. “Everything should want to eat them. So many things will eat anything they can get ahold of. Surely something would have learned how to eat these really good raw materials.”

Their efforts lead them to find a ciliate known as Halteria. Its population grew about 15 times when supplied with Chlorovirus. The experts now crown the microbe as the first virovore, a creature that eats viruses.

Image credit: CDC

The Roman Empire is renowned for many things. For the cities it has conquered, the art and culture it has cultivated greatly, and even the structures it built that still leave people in awe today.

We look at the Colosseum and marvel at the possible fights and events held there, sure, but there’s something we can also say about the fact that it’s still standing today. These people used some good foundations to build that massive structure. 

Roman concrete is a subject of research in recent years, and one YouTuber has taken the task of recreating it himself. Shawn Kelly, host of the Youtube channel Corporal’s Corner posted a video on how to make some.

Using volcanic ash, pumice, and limestone, he was able to make a brick that can go up against modern concrete. To learn more about this building material, Open Culture has got you covered.

Check the video above to see the process!

If you find yourselves away from a reliable source of drinking water, it’s vital to know just what you can do to make it yourself, right? Well, to create one means you need to find some water first.

The next step is to boil it long enough to ensure that the water will be safe. Drinking water without doing so can make you ill. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it’s better to use bottled water or boil tap water. They also note that we shouldn’t swallow any water coming from the shower.

Aside from not drinking shower water, the organization also advises against using tap water for wetting your toothbrush and rinsing your mouth after brushing your teeth. CDC also says to boil filtered tap water. To kill pathogens, it needs to reach at least 71 degrees Celsius.

After boiling, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recommends adding a pinch of salt per liter of water that you will be boiling to improve its taste.

Image credit: Steve Johnson

Surprise! 

A group of oncologists from the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam were conducting research to learn more about the cancers that can occur in the neck and head when they accidentally discover a new body organ. 

The new discovery, called the tubarial glands, was found through radioactive glucose injected in patients. The chemical was used so researchers can see tumors in the body during scans when they noticed that two areas in the head lit up over and over again in all 100 participants of their study.

These glands were described as a set of salivary glands located in the back of the nasopharynx, which is the part of the throat that is behind the nose. 

Image credit: Olha Ruskykh

Evolution is a tricky thing. It’s the term used to describe how different species adapt and change the world as time passes, but experts believe there’s a limit to how many can do so, and the number of times these creatures can actually change. 

Their biggest question, however, is why crabs continue to evolve. This doesn’t just involve actual living crabs changing different parts of their body though, as they keep pushing out new kinds to add to the crab species. According to experts, these creatures have evolved at least five times. 

A working theory as to why these crustaceans evolve way too many times compared to other species is that they’re not really a biological group or species. 

As we know, crabs are decapods, animals with ten walking legs. This means that crabs are part of a collection of branches in the decapod tree, so not all of them look the same. Learn more about crabs and their evolutions here. 

Image credit: Pixabay