If you don’t have a good PC or a PS5 to play FromSoftware’s latest Souls game, Elden Ring, worry no longer– you can now play a section of the game for free on any kind of computer.
The only downside (if you call it that), is that the widely-playable version is a Game Boy remake of Elden Ring. Made by Shin and posted on itch.io, the game is turned into a top-down adventure, kind of like playing an old Zelda title.
Check out the game here!
Image screenshot via Shin /itch.io
The Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella, or in English, the Perfume and Pharmaceutical Officine of Santa Maria Novella in Florance, Italy, is the oldest pharmacy still in business. It was established by the monks of the city who were growing and experimenting with medicinal herbs in the 13th century. One grateful and wealthy patient built them a chapel which became their laboratory for making medicines. In 1612, it opened to the public to sell concoctions like Seven Thieves Vinegar to ward off plague, ladybug liqueur, and the world's first alcohol-base perfumes.
The apothecary is still open to the public, but it's also a museum because it has changed little since the 16th century. You can still buy Seven Thieves Vinegar under the name Aceto Aromatico. The pharmacy has other locations, too, and even a website to sell their products. Read a short history of the Santa Maria Novella pharmacy at Messy Nessy Chic.
We knew that Auralnauts was planning a series about Larry, a previously obscure Star Wars character who looks a lot like Ewan McGregor. It appears they made their fundraising goal, because episode one is here! The first three minutes are a less-than explanatory montage setting up the story. Then Larry explains his party background to Luke Skywalker. They managed to take clips from many different Star Wars films plus Obi-Wan Kenobi and make it a lot of fun. The first episode mainly deals with Larry trying to borrow some cash. Auralnauts say there will be six episodes in all, just like Disney+'s Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries. -via reddit
We have regular banks for storing our money. We have blood banks and milk banks to distribute life saving bodily fluids. We have sperm banks. The latest idea for storage that might be of benefit to one's health is a poop bank. It has become more common to treat digestive problems caused by the bacteria Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) by cleaning out a patient's digestive biome with antibiotics, and then performing a fecal transplant to establish a new colony of digestive bacteria. But there's the possibility that another person's bacterial colony might not be best for our bodies. A new science paper from researchers at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital posit that it may be time to establish the option of storing one's own poop when they are young and healthy for possible autologous transplant is and when they ever need it. They call it a stool bank. In fact, there's already one in the US.
Yeah, there are quite a few unknowns. What conditions should a, er, stool deposit be kept under for years? Would the essential bacteria survive freezing, drying, or long term storage at all? How much energy would such a project require? And would it be only available to the wealthy, like umbilical cord blood, eggs, or frozen heads? Read more about the concept of a stool bank at Gizmodo.
(Image credit: Flickr user mary hodder)
In Altoona, Pennsylvania, they serve pizza in squares with each portion holding a slice of salami and a square of American cheese. St. Louis pizza is made on unleavened bread and topped with Provel cheese instead of mozzarella. Colorado's giant pizzas are sweetened with honey. We hear a lot about New York style and Chicago style pizzas, but many places have their own pizza traditions, which you might think are weird or which you might want to plan a road trip around. Each style has a story behind it, even if that story is lost to time. Check out six different pizza styles that go against the grain of the chains, and where to get them, at Atlas Obscura.
We don't know which is the "last" of anything until quite a bit of time passes afterward. The last human born will be someone we will never know about, because that means the human race will die out. Kurzgesagt doesn't have all the answers, but presents some important ideas in a thought experiment. There are a lot of variables in even speculating about a species dying out, especially the one species doing the speculating. We are currently doing our best to destroy our earth, but we are also exploring the idea of living on other worlds. We may slowly (or quickly) evolve into something that is a bit different, but more likely to survive.
While it may be depressing to think about the end of humanity, the best case scenarios are unimaginably far into the future. Kurzgesagt is actually quite optimistic about our future, if we can make it through the next couple hundred years. The subject is only ten and a half minutes long, the rest is promotional.
Wow, there are a lot of superhero movies if you can rank a list of the 50 best! Besides the two dozen or so Marvel Cinematic Universe films of the last 15 years or so, there are plenty of Batman, Superman, and other DC comics films. And then there are superhero movies you didn't think of right off, like Robocop and The Incredibles. Yes, animation is represented in this list, too, and some films from outside the US. And more of them are based on comic books than you may even know. You might agree, or more likely, disagree with the rankings, but after you calm down you'll have fun reading about some movies you haven't seen in a ranked list from Rolling Stone. While I can't argue about the ranking myself, I'm happy to say that I have actually seen four of the top ten. -via Digg
(Photo illustration by Matt Cooley)
Tigger of North Vancouver is a Bengal, which is a beautiful but not necessarily ferocious cat breed. Nonetheless, Tigger is known in his neighborhood for courage and aggressiveness. He’ll chase away dogs who give him too much trouble. And, from a cat’s point of view, a bear is just a very large and odd smelling dog.
Tigger’s resident human, a pair of brothers, saw their cat staring down the intruding bear. But, CTV News reports, when Tigger wouldn’t back away, the brothers decided to record the incident. Tigger knows how to play for his audience, which is now worldwide.
-via Dave Barry
If you don’t have enough funds to build yourself a genuine bat cave in the middle of nowhere, worry not as you can still feel like the rich justice-driven vigilante of Gotham with a mobile version!
Australian company Bruder has produced a camper trailer inspired by the bat cave featured in popular media. Called the Bruder EXP-4, it can be attached to a vehicle and can handle off-road terrain. It certainly isn’t as big as Batman’s cave, but it can definitely do its job!
Read more about the camper trailer here.
Image credit: Bruder
Next thing we know, these insects will solve algebraic expressions or something.
Experts have successfully trained bees to actually determine if a number is odd or even, although it’s not as straightforward as you think it will be. The act of identifying these numerals is under the concept of parity classification. Experts have taught these insects to actually associate odd numbers with sugar water until they learned how to categorize properly.
Learn more about the bee-autiful experiment here!
Image credit: Pixabay
Decades later after her late husband lost his ring, Ann Kendrick finally found the piece of jewelry while clearing the garden. The 90-year-old Cornwall resident shared that the piece of metal “popped out of the ground” as she pulled some grass. "It didn't look at all like a wedding ring - it looked like a dirty piece of bent metal," she said. "I looked at it and thought 'no, it couldn't be'.”
Her late husband, who died 22 years ago, was working in the same garden back in 1987 when he lost the ring. Happy about her discovery, Mrs. Kendrick will get the ring repaired and wear it as a necklace in remembrance of her late husband.
Image credit: Bob Kendrick
We went from rickrolling a town to actual schools. While the scope definitely got smaller, we can all commend the effort done by a single teenager in hacking a school system. The 14-year-old white-hat hacker caused all schools in the Township Highschool District 214 to play Rick Astley’s 1980s hit “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
Every school projector played the music video. In addition, every speaker in the schools blasted the popular song. The hacker, who goes by the name WhiteHoodHacker explained in a post on their website how they managed to pull the prank.
Check out more about what he did here!
Image credit: Tom Tran
Two weeks later, our emu is still carefully sitting atop his nest of adopted goose, duck, and chicken eggs.. he may actually hatch something. In emus, only the males incubate eggs and care for babies, the females lay eggs and bounce; that's the end of parenting for them. pic.twitter.com/hQsgnn03SZ
— Foxfeather Zenkova (@foxfeather) May 27, 2022
Foxfeather Zenkova is a wildlife rehabilitator and educator, and has a coop. In this coop are chickens, geese, turkeys, ducks, and now an emu. The male emu is just doing what comes natural, as emu females lay eggs and then take off, leaving the male to warm the eggs and then raise the young. This guy takes his responsibilities seriously, even though they aren't his eggs, or even his species. On June 23rd, the eggs began to hatch!
The best dad and his tiny child. pic.twitter.com/teggWmFwxq
— Foxfeather Zenkova (@foxfeather) June 24, 2022
He seems to be quite a patient and caring father. The chicks that have hatched so far are chickens; the other species will take longer. Before this is all over, this one emu dad could have his own menagerie!
Good morning from BB-8 and too many tiny emus!
— Foxfeather Zenkova (@foxfeather) June 28, 2022
You can hear him hissing and growling, the babies hiding behind him because the dogs were with me as I was doing morning chores.
Any dog could be a dingo and is not to be trusted (if you're a new emu dad, anyway). pic.twitter.com/RrxzGcTIaj
There are more pictures of this family you can see in the Twitter thread. -via Metafilter
Considering this True Facts video is about beavers, Ze Frank plows through it with an astonishing lack of sexual innuendo. Maybe he wants to be sure it will be picked up by external sites. Works for me. That said, it's quite interesting. Beavers are rodents, but you'd never know it by their behavior. They swim, eat trees, and build dams. Here we find out why and how they do those things, which includes taking a deep dive into the structure and composition of teeth. I now know more about horses' teeth because I watched a video about beavers. Yeah, there are jokes, but even without them, this would be interesting. There is a one-minute ad in the middle.
You most likely never heard about monkeypox until last month when an outbreak was reported in Europe and America, but the disease has been around a long time. It was first identified as a distinct disease in 1958, when a band of monkeys in Copenhagen, Denmark, were found to have it. The first human ascertained to suffer from monkeypox was a baby in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 1970. The disease is believed to be endemic in some nations of Africa, and has probably been around for thousands of years. It's not even particular to monkeys. The first person in the US to be infected was a three-year-old who was bitten by her pet prairie dog in 2003, and the virus has been found in a variety of animals.
Monkeypox is somewhat similar to smallpox, although not as deadly. There is some evidence that a smallpox vaccine will give some protection against the virus that causes monkeypox. And that's caused a run on smallpox vaccine in the northern countries, leaving Africa with fewer reserves. In fact, some experts relate the current fuss about monkeypox to the AIDS scare or the smallpox eradication program. Read what we need to know about monkeypox in a short history here.
(Image credit: NIAID)
