The title of this post is the caption beneath the Instagram picture of two boys who look very much alike. Are they twins? Sort of. Mirriam-Webster defines "quaternary" as "of, relating to, or consisting of four units or members." Which brings us to an explanation of these's babies' relationship.
Identical twins Brittany and Briana met identical twins Josh and Jeremy at a twin festival in 2017. A year later, Brittany married Josh and Briana married Jeremy in a double wedding ceremony. Now they are all named Salyers. The sisters became pregnant a couple of months apart. Jett Salyers was born to Brittany and Josh in January of 2021. Jax Salyers was born to Briana and Jeremy in April of 2021. The two boys were produced by different couples, but each couple has DNA identical to the other couple.
So the two boys are listed as cousins on the family tree. Double cousins, to be precise. But since their parent are identical twins on both sides, any genetic analysis would identify the boys as siblings. Their closeness in age, and the fact that they all live in the same house, would lead any future classmates who see them to consider them as twins. Read more about the four Salyers twins and their sons at the New York Post. -via Boing Boing
How towns are founded depends on when and where they started. Many communities in the US were just neighborhoods, and when enough people were clustered there to need a post office, the USPS named the post office, which became the town name. Then city limits, governance, and services grew up around the community as needed. But today, the process is way more formalized. It's almost impossible to start a new town outside the US, and within the US, it depends greatly on which state laws govern the land. Half as Interesting explains how those laws vary.
But why in the world would you want to start a town? Towns are still subject to state and federal laws, and if you want to establish city services (utilities, policing, schools, etc.), you have to tax people and raise money to get those projects off the ground. It's much easier to just join an already-established town nearby instead of starting from scratch, as they can just expand their existing services instead. This video is not as long as you'd think, because the last two minutes are an ad.
🐦 It's a chilling scene that lasted just a few seconds: a grainy security video camera footage showed how hundreds of birds fell out of the sky and smacked onto a neighborhood street in the city of Cuauhtémoc in northern Mexico. While most of the birds seemed to be able to fly away, scores of dead birds were left on the ground. But what caused the birds to plummet from the sky like that?
🙀 In the 1960s, the CIA trained cats to spy on the Soviets and, needless to say, it went just as well as trying to herd cats.
⚡ Our first glimpse of Natalie Portman as the Mighty Thor (from the upcoming Marvel movie Thor: Love and Thunder) comes from ... an action figure.
🎬 It's got everything: Jack Black as a runaway astronaut and Owen Wilson as a talking motorcycle. Ron Wilson plays the villain (as himself). Oh, and the rest of NASA are the bad guys, too. Here's the best TV pilot that never got picked up but became a cult favorite: Heat Vision and Jack, as directed by Ben Stiller.
🦌 Stuck in your car because of a traffic jam? That's bad but how about being stuck in your automobile because a moose calf is eating snow off the car's hood? It's Internet gold.
🏂 Dad attached a microphone to his young daughter to get a glimpse into her thought process while she zooms down on her snowboard, and we all can learn from how this four-year-old thinks. "I won't fall. Maybe I will. That's okay, 'cause we all fall." Life lessons!
🤣 Who's cuter than Timothée Chalamet? Elmo, that's who. Here's the Sesame Street muppet replacing him as the protagonist in Dune during the intense Gom Jabbar scene. F is for Fear!
🪑 Weebles wobble but they don't fall down. The Virén Chair, on the other hand, falls down, but it always gets back up.
⚗️ Scientists are usually long-winded, but not clinical psychologist Dennis Upper. He wrote the shortest scientific paper ever published.
Featured art: Cute Cat Love St. Patrick's Day by indie artist S Cube Design
See also: St Patrick's Day T-Shirts
The idea that the Bermuda Triangle is a supernaturally dangerous area for ships and aircraft began in the 1950s. It has been reported that the area between Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico had an anomalous number of shipwrecks or disappearances without any explanation that could be gleaned from the evidence. There are plenty of natural reasons for the area's reputation offered- the triangle has an inordinate amount of boat traffic, it has unique and dangerous weather, and some stories are inaccurate in their details, their location, or in their mysteriousness. Some are pretty well documented, though, like the 1921 case of the Carroll A. Deering.
Maybe this vessel was doomed from the start. The captain got sick and had to abandon ship at a port in Delaware. This was apparently considered a bad omen. After delivering its cargo to Rio, the ship started to turn home and stopped in Barbados for supplies. Afterward, it was sighted near North Carolina, and observers noted that the crew was acting strange; the ship wasn't seen again until its wreckage washed up off the coast of Cape Hatteras. The ship's log, navigation equipment, the crew's personal belongings, and lifeboats were gone.
Read more stories of unexplained transportation tragedies in the Bermuda Triangle in a list at Mental Floss.
(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)
A permanent immersive exhibition space will be launched in New York in the summer. French production company Culturespaces will be setting up shows every ten to 12 months in the landmark Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank in downtown Manhattan. The first show will be dedicated to Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klim in “Gustav Klimt: Gold in Motion.” The company’s first venture in North America will also be New York’s first-ever permanent immersive experience venue.
Image credit: Culturespaces Eric Spiller
This is amazing! A giant mural that covers an entire neighborhood was inaugurated in Peru. Located in a residential area in San Cristobal hill, the artwork was inspired by “Chakanas,” a Peruvian mythological symbol that represents a connection between different worlds and pre-Inca motifs.
The artists involved in the massive project, called “Project Rainbow”, spent nine months painting more than 1,000 houses to complete the artwork.
Image screenshots via Euronews
A team of researchers used supercomputers to simulate a black hole to find more details about this cosmic phenomenon. The experts found out the cause behind the flares these holes emit. The flares, which are intense bursts of light have plagued scientists for a long time. Dr. Bart Ripperda from the Flatiron Institute and Princeton University and his colleagues learned that the flares formed when magnetic fields broke apart then rejoined back together. Learn more about the discovery here.
Image credit: B. Ripperda et al., AJL, 2022
Ashley Montagu once said, “The idea is to die young as late as possible.” Rocketman Robert Maddox built a go-kart with a triple valveless pulsejet engine. He named this vehicle the Beast. Then he took it for a ride out in the desert, at speeds up to 90 miles per hour. Okay, what about this video is the scariest? Would it be the red-hot jet engines or the propane tank between Maddox and the engines? How about the fact that he's driving with one hand, so he can record himself with the other? Or could it be the absence of goggles, where one insect could blind him? Well, maybe there aren't too many bugs in the desert in February. Despite all this, it's great to see the sheer joy of a wild man in his 70s getting his speed fix on. If you like this go-kart (and have the bucks), he will build one for you. -via Jalopnik
A webcomic led me down an internet rabbit hole, to an article about the world's deadliest disease: malaria. The mosquito-borne disease is estimated to have killed half the people who ever lived, although that flies under the radar for most of us because 1. It's been around for thousands of years, and 2. Most of the fatalities are in young children. I learned about malaria's role in the rise of sickle-cell anemia, a far-from-perfect evolutionary adaptation to malaria. Malaria had a role in establishing slavery in colonial America. And in 1943, it was the agent of biological warfare. The Pontine Marshes outside of Rome were a historical hotbed of malaria until 1922, when the new prime minister Benito Mussolini ordered a plan to drain the marshes.
That reduced Italian malarial fatalities by 99.8 per cent between 1932 and 1939, and inspired the occupying Germans to carry out the only known example of biological warfare in 20th-century Europe: in late 1943, the Nazis seized supplies of the anti-malarial medicine quinine, reversed the draining pumps and opened the dikes. Anopheles mosquitoes returned, Allied (and German) soldiers became sick, and Italian civilians began dying. Malarial deaths spiked from 33 in 1939 to 55,000 in 1944.
I had to know more about that, so I went to Wikipedia.
The Battle of Anzio left the marsh in state of devastation; nearly everything Mussolini had accomplished was reversed. The cities were in ruins, the houses blown up, the marshes full of brackish water, the channels filled in, the plain depopulated, the mosquitos flourishing, and malaria on the rise. The major structures for water control survived, and in a few years, the Agro Pontino was restored. In 1947, the province of Littoria, created by Mussolini, was renamed to Latina. The last of the malaria was conquered in the 1950s, with the aid of DDT.
Today, the land is managed by the drainage system without DDT. There are towns, farms, and tourist attractions as well as lakes and canals.
#lesEnquêtesANFR 🕵️♂️
— ANFR (@anfr) February 10, 2022
« Les dents, le brouilleur et au lit ! », c’est la nouvelle enquête de l'@anfr sur un brouillage qui affectait les services de téléphonie et d’internet dans toutes les bandes de fréquences mobiles, mais uniquement la nuit 🌙… https://t.co/Jqpg5YKjBp pic.twitter.com/RLmOV7iMG5
What do you do when your children stay on social media all night long? You could take their devices, but that's a fight, and there are always more devices. You could try parental controls, but they are often limited and/or confusing, and children find their way around them. And many places have multiple sources for internet- wifi, the neighbor's wifi, the phone company, etc. To boot his teenagers offline, one man went for the nuclear option.
A mobile phone company in Messanges, France, was getting daily complaints about an outage between midnight and 3 AM. They enlisted the National Frequency Agency to investigate, which sent out a mobile lab truck out to investigate and found the problem was coming from one house. A father was using a multi-band wave jammer to interrupt his children's internet use at midnight so they would go to sleep. He was unaware that he had disrupted all telecommunications in an area that covered two towns!
The use of wave jammers is illegal in France (and the US). The agency put a notice on their website that the range of such devices often far exceeds their claims. The man who used the jammer could get a fine of €30,000 and six months in jail. He will also have to pay the agency €450 for the investigation. Jail time is unlikely in this case, but be warned: trying this can come back to bite you. -via Gizmodo
Since we all know the plot to the 1979 movie Alien, we don't need to waste a whole lot of time with buildup, exposition, or reveal, so this Sweded version from Folks Films gives us just the action parts. The genius in this one-minute version is the use of everyday objects to recreate the terror. A baseball mitt. A stapler. A mess of noodles. Cantaloupe. And lots of ketchup. You will have to watch it two or three times to catch them all. But nothing is more clever than blowing up the Nostromo by putting silverware in a microwave. That even gives you a proper countdown! Ripley and Jonesy are fine, and most likely are making plans for a sequel. -via reddit
The Associated Press reports that Zurich, Switzerland, is opening a new jail and wants to make sure that everything is in order before the grand opening. So it's recruiting volunteers who would be willing to stay locked up for three days in March, living in cells and eating jail food just like real inmates. Participants will get to experience the regular prisoner intake process experience as the new staff trains to supervise real inmates.
Bear in mind that it is a simulation and not an actual jail experience. So attacking the biggest inmate in the yard on your first day is probably unnecessary.
Photo: Pixabay
⛸️ Here's the fascinating life story of Lyubov Morekhodova, an 80-year-old Russian babushka who became an icon of Lake Baikal. Morekhodova lives alone next to the Siberian lake, where the temperatures can dip to -50 °C (-58 °F - don't miss that negative sign) in the winter. She tends to her little farm, where she has cows and hens in addition to her pets, but what makes the woman famous in Russia is the fact that she skates on the frozen lake with such grace. With homemade skates that her father made for her not long after World War II, no less.
💸 Former Disney cast member Abelina Sabrina explains the mistakes that parents make at Disneyland and Disney World to ruin the expensive magical experience for their children.
🗡️ Need to persuade your colleagues or partners during a complicated business meeting? Just remind them that there is a sword in the corporate conference room that can come in handy when it comes to deciding business matters in a swift manner. Remind them that leaders aren't afraid of making heads roll in order to move the company forward.
🎪 I can't even twirl a hoop more than twice around my waist, so please excuse me while I pick up my jaw from the floor after watching the stunts that these acrobats can do with the hula hoop.
🏠 A group of anarchists from Portland has McGyvered a tent-safe DIY heater for the homeless out of a terra cotta pot, some fencing wire and a metal lid jar with isopropyl alcohol fuel. And it's cheap: the Heater Bloc costs just $7 to build.
🦘 When you think of wallabies, Australia comes to mind. Not Scotland. But there are actually wild wallabies on Inchconnachan, an island in Loch Lomond. The story of how the wallabies got there and what to do about them now includes a power boating racer and a countess, and a TV personality and a hotelier who planned to cull the animals. Needless to say, some Scots are (ahem) hopping mad.
🚑 It's a good thing that there was no patient in this ambulance when it forgot to close its back door.
🕹️ First, it was checkers, then chess, and now Grand Turismo: AI is now capable of beating even the most skilled humans players. Here's a story of how Sony built the artificial intelligence GT Sophy that can race its car with millimeter precision to beat last year's human eSport champs.
🐦This is what 80 escaped ostriches racing through the streets in China looked like.
More neat posts over at our new sites: Pictojam, Laughosaurus, Pop Culturista, Supa Fluffy, Homes & Hues, and Spooky Daily.
Featured art: Sleeping Sushi by indie artist Fernando Sala
Current special from the NeatoShop: Save up to 20% on all Sci-Fi T-shirts, Fantasy T-shirts and Horror T-Shirts. This limited time special ends soon.
The human immune system is so complicated that it doesn't take a new disease to spark consequential research and discoveries. It has been known for a long time that while a case of measles will confer lifetime immunity against catching measles again, you are then more likely to suffer and even die of some other infectious disease. Public health records show that children who survive a bout of measles (and the overwhelming majority do) lose their ability to fight off different diseases afterward. In 2012, this phenomena was named "Immune amnesia."
Essentially, when you're infected with measles, your immune system abruptly forgets every pathogen it's ever encountered before – every cold, every bout of flu, every exposure to bacteria or viruses in the environment, every vaccination. The loss is near-total and permanent. Once the measles infection is over, current evidence suggests that your body has to re-learn what's good and what's bad almost from scratch.
On average, it takes about three years for children to re-develop the immunity to diseases that they had before they contracted measles. Children who are vaccinated against measles apparently don't suffer from immune amnesia. Studies show that the measles vaccine reduces a child's chance of death from all diseases in the next few years by a degree that greatly exceeds the chance of dying from measles itself. And in the years since the discovery of the effect, scientists have found out a lot about how the measles virus rewires our immune systems.
This discovery will interest those of us who contracted measles before there was a vaccine against it. Did the illness negate the effects of the vaccines we got before? It should cause even more concern for parents who opt not to vaccinate their children against measles. Read about measles and immune amnesia at BBC Future. -via Kottke
We've heard a lot of music made by reprogramming odd machines, but it's so much cuter when they are anthropomorphized with googly eyes! The Device Orchestra (previously at Neatorama) is looking altogether goofy as designed. This video features seven devices: two electric toothbrushes, two credit card machines, two typewriters, and one steam iron play the White Stripes' song "Seven Nation Army." There's also a pair of pliers dancing along with a toothbrush, both controlled by a credit card reader. That's what you call multitasking. -via Laughing Squid
