Mussels are shellfish that spend almost all their lives attached to rocks and filtering the passing water for food particles. But before that, in their larval stage, they are parasites, and grow up inside a fish that their mother has caught for them. Yeah, nature is metal. Some species of mussel mothers snatch up a fish for this purpose, while others arrange their eggs and/or larva into a sort of pod that's shaped like something a fish would want to eat, which achieves the same purpose in the end. There's no one better to explain this weirdness than Ze Frank in his True Facts series. I mean, admit it, you wouldn't be exploring the reproductive habits of a mussel if it were from any other source. There's a one-minute embedded ad at 4:30.
Redditor Ok_Journalist120 presents us with a mystery. His father keeps bees in Florida, and one honey harvest was green! How did that happen?
The most common reason for odd colored honey is sweet industrial waste that the bees feed on. You might remember the 2012 story in which French bees produced green and blue honey. It was discovered that the bees had been feeding on uncovered candy waste from a nearby Mars plant that was making M&Ms. Then there was the 2015 case of Arthur Mondella, whose marijuana growing operation came to light after bees started producing red honey by eating illegally discarded syrup from his maraschino cherry factory.
Redditor Steadyandquick found all kinds of examples of green honey. Honey can be green if the bees have been consuming the nectar of yellow star thistle, which flourishes in California.
An expensive honey from Borneo is green due to chlorophyll in the exotic flowers found on the island of Banggi. Another study on the same type of claim for green honey from the Palawan forest of the Philippines found no hives, hinting that this type of honey is faked.
Beekeepers in Greece found their honey green in 2016. They believed it was because of kiwi plants, but kiwi plants do not produce nectar, which is what honey is made from. An investigation found that the bees had been feeding on the juice of mature kiwi fruits that were unharvested after a hailstorm damaged the crops. What bees make can't officially be called honey unless it is made from flower nectar. While the "fruit juice honey" was delicious, it was not good for the bees, and they didn't survive the next winter.
As for the honey pictured here, Ok_Journalist120 has been eating it a little at a time for a year now, and hasn't suffered any ill effects. But there's no definite answer yet for this particular case of green honey.
Yes, in the past, we've looked at various inventions that allow challenged young men to experience simulated relationships. Those wondrous machines, though, did not require the assistance of another person.
This invention does require a second person to function properly. I'm sorry if this news brings you disappointment.
The South China Morning Post reports that the invention, who is named Jiang, developed his idea to allow him to be intimate with his long-distance girlfriend. Plug in paired smartphones and you can virtually smooch your partner with plastic lips that are close enough to resembling a human pair. Each one costs about $38.
Remote kissing device recently invented by a Chinese university student. The device is designed specifically for long-distance relationships and can mimic and transfer the kiss of a person to the "mouth on the other side" pic.twitter.com/G74PrjfHQA
— Levandov (@blabla112345) February 23, 2023
-via Marginal Revolution
Baby bottles are capped with plastic nipples that only vaguely resemble the real thing. Usually babies accept this alternative to human nipples and feed. But Fast Company reports that startup company Emulait thinks that it can provide a better alternative.
Plastic nipples commonly have just a single hole perforating the top, unlike the more porous human nipple. Emulait's design more closely resembles milk ducts--an approach that the company calls "biomimetic." The plastic nipples themselves come in one of five shapes that reflect the five major shapes that a study of 1,000 scanned nipples determined the most common.
Five different colors are available to reflect different skin tones and the bottles themselves are available in a variety of shapes that reflect actual human breasts.
The end result is a bottle feeding experience that, Emulait speculates, will be more successful because it closely replicates natural breastfeeding.
Photo: Emulait
The Beakfasteur is a doctor and a mother. She makes anatomical models out of Playdough and other materials to show her little boy (and the rest of us) how surgery is done. In the video above, she does a Lichtenstein tension-free mesh repair on an inguinal hernia. No bleeding and no stitches, because it's Playdough! Still, it may be disturbing for the squeamish. If you'd rather see a cochlear implant, thyroidectomy, cesarian section, gallbladder removal, cleft palate repair, or coronary artery bypass, she has those videos, too, all using homemade anatomy. In fact, you can find a very wide range of the Breakasteur's Playdough surgeries at both YouTube and Instagram. Those who know will warn you that the knee replacement surgery is the most likely to squick you out. The lumpectomy video shows a Playdough breast, but if you aren't at work, it's worth watching for the child's comments at the beginning. -via Metafilter
Origami artist Chris Conrad is known for creating intricate sculptures made from a single piece of paper. His newest artwork depicts a dragon slayer with a lot of incredible details.
Conrad used a 70-centimeter painted Wenzhou paper to make this figure. The hunter has a creature-shaped helmet, wings, and patterned armor. According to the artist, he did a lot of modifications to bring the sculpture to life.
“I made a ton of modifications while shaping, including adding a face, adding the sheath, shaped scales, totally changed the torso armor, plus minor tweaks to the dragon's head, wings, sword, arms, and legs,” he wrote on Instagram.
Check out more of the cool details of the dragon slayer sculpture below!
Image credit: Chris Conrad
Rihanna’s Super Bowl halftime performance changed lives. If that’s a bit too exaggerated, well, we can also say that it certainly had us glued to the screens, and made people on the Internet post a lot of reactions to her iconic performance.
From memes about how her stage looked like a Super Smash Bros arena to people recreating the dance break in the show, fans have certainly been inspired by the choreography and aesthetics seen that day. One of the groups inspired by Rihanna was the residents of Arcadia Senior Living Bowling Green, an assisted-living facility in Kentucky.
Posted on the establishment’s official TikTok account, the now-viral video shows the residents who were wearing white ensembles (to resemble Rihanna’s dancers from the performance) dancing while the remix of the singer’s “Rude Boy” played. Following the original dance break, the ladies broke out to reveal one final person who was wearing something similar to Rihanna’s red ensemble.
Image credit: Arcadia Senior Living Bowling Green
We've posted about the fear of being buried alive, and the schemes people went through to ensure that it wouldn't happen to them. It seems like an irrational fear, but the possibility is there. We can assume that most cases will never be found out about, but there have been a few instances of someone surviving a burial.
Angelo Hays was 19 years old when he wrecked his motorcycle, crashing face-first into a brick wall. This was in 1937; today this would be a case of prime organ donation. Hays' face was so mangled he had a closed casket funeral three days later. However, his insurance company investigated his death, and requested that his body be exhumed for examination. His casket was dug up two days after the funeral. But his body was warm- Hays was still alive, five days after the accident!
Read what happened to Angelo Hays and three other cases of premature funerals at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: Antoine Wiertz)
You're going to love this anime short from Corridor Digital. Someone call John Farrier!
We have the unlikely scenario of an old king dying on the throne without a clear line of succession. While that may be acceptable in a fantasy, this story gets even crazier as it goes along. The king has two sons, who are twins, good and evil of course. They don't look much alike, but since they are twins, it only stands to reason that they have a telepathic link. The evil twin challenges the good twin for the throne by throwing hands, but not in the way you'd expect. His choice of weapon is a game of rock, paper, scissors. It turns into the most dramatically over-the-top game you've ever seen, with twists and turns leading to an astounding climax with all the action-packed spcial effects that anime is all about. Even while you are giggling, you have to admit it's a pretty good story. -via Geeks Are Sexy
New Mexico's Chaco Canyon holds the ruins of many pueblos and great houses built by Chacoans more than a thousand years ago. These houses had up to 700 rooms, and were built with stone and timbers that were brought in from up to 70 miles away. How did they transport those logs without draft animals or even wheels? Rodger Kram and James Wilson theorized that they might have used tumplines that enabled humans to carry larger loads for further distances than we would normally consider possible.
To test the theory, the two scientists "put their money where their mouth is," or rather, put their time and effort where their scientific theory is. They spent the summer of 2020 getting into shape and then carrying logs over miles of landscape using tumplines. First they trained for 45 days, then they went for distance. Kram and Wilson managed to walk in sync with each other up to 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) in a day carrying a 60-kilogram (132 pound) log together. Their conclusions, reported in the Journal of Archaeological Science, state that this method was entirely feasible for a sizable community to build these huge constructions. Read about their ordeal in testing that feasibility at Ars Technica. It includes a video so we can see how they did it. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: National Park Service)
Laurence Brown usually makes videos comparing British and American language, customs, and geography. But so much has happened to him suddenly over the past few months that his slice-of-life videos are even more compelling. He has become an American citizen, bought his first house, and his father died. All these things crashed into each other and Brown had to get a passport in a hurry. This could have been a nightmare, but the worst part of it was Brown's anxiety. A couple of months after the fact, Brown explains the procedures and the trepidation he felt in obtaining his first US passport in order to attend his father's funeral. It wasn't so long ago that we were told to get passports at least six months before travel, so it could have been much worse.
Railroad crews were doing maintenance work on the Staplehurst Bridge in Kent, England, on June 9, 1865, and had taken up some of the rails. A train wasn't warned in time to stop, and only partially crossed the rail-less bridge when the middle cars of the train plunged to the river below. Renowned author Charles Dickens was in the third car, which was being pulled downward by the car behind it. However, the coupling snapped and left Dickens' car hanging precipitously.
Dickens ran to the fallen cars to help the injured and the dying. The bridge wasn't high, but the fallen cars were smashed. Ten people died, and more than 40 others were injured. Dickens had come very close to dying himself, and the experience horrified him. He was probably also at least somewhat concerned about the publicity, since he was traveling with his mistress. Dickens hated riding trains for the rest of his life, and he died five years later to the day. Read about the Staplehurst rail crash and what it did to Charles Dickens at Mental Floss.
Daredevil repair workers can worm their way out the access hatch, loop ropes over the apex and rappel down the monument. https://t.co/1SBpfmCMDd
— Atlas Obscura (@atlasobscura) February 24, 2023
The Washington Monument measures 555 feet and 5.125 inches tall. When it was finished in 1884, it was the tallest building on Earth.
Scaffolding was used to slowly bring the design erect, jutting into the sky over the city likewise named in George Washington's honor. Then the scaffolding was removed.
So how do people access the top of the structure when it's necessary to do maintenance? When an earthquake struck the D.C. area in 2011, master climbers rappelled down the monument, not up it. They started from a door hidden at the top.
Atlas Obscura tells us that the door is on the eastern side of the monument, which faces the Capitol building. From the photos, I'd estimate that it's about 18 inches across.
Leaving aside electric pencil sharpeners, how do these machines work? The simplest modern pencil sharpner, in which you twist the pencil, uses what I've learned is called a manual prism. If you turn a crank, then you're usually operating helical blades to grind off graphite and wood.
This pencil sharpener from the 1890s is quite different. As far as I can tell, the machine positions the pencil against a grinding plate at just the right angle. YouTuber Resuce and Restore brought this antique back into service. It's one of several fascinating old pencil sharpeners illustrated in a playlist.
-via Steampunk Tendencies
I turned my bed into a sled. Please don't try this at home haha - we planned things as safe as possible! What a wild ride! #mnwx #minnesota #Minneapolis #snow #snowstorm #bedsled pic.twitter.com/5YlrXuiKGr
— Tanner Charles 🌪 (@TannerCharlesMN) February 24, 2023
It looks like Tanner Charles misunderstood the phrase "sleigh bed" as an activity instead of a style. While the streets of Minneapolis were quiet due to lots of snow, he took a ride behind a truck without even getting out of bed! Charles took his bed outside, set it on four snow discs, and attached two nightstands. He even rigged up the lamp to light up for more bedroom authenticity.
You can see this stunt from another angle at Instagram. Charles managed to finish the escapade without being arrested, but was at one point followed by a snow plow. His ride ended after about a mile when the bed frame broke. -via Fark
