Newly-discovered ancient statues show King Amenhotep III memorialized as a sphinx. The statues were excavated through the Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project, a 24-year-old project that aims to restore, build, and preserve the ancient temples. The sculptures are 26 feet high, which earns them their moniker as colossal statues. According to Egypt’s Ministery of Tourism and Antiquities, the artworks were made of limestone, and have undergone careful cleaning, strengthening, and restoration.
It’s the perfect mobile for a small group of people!
The Tiny Honda N-Van Compo is a Kei Van Camper, a Japan-exclusive vehicle under the Kei car classification. Kei cars are the smallesthighway-legal passenger cars that are built with restricted dimensions and engine capacity. This means that cars under this category, including the newest Honda model, pack a lot of features in such a tiny space.
The N-Van Compo can hold four people with the help of an expandable roof. It can be easily transformed into a sleeping space when needed. Passengers can turn the driver’s seat of the car around and spread the mattress modules in line for two people. See more photos of the vehicle here!
An important artifact from a pre-Hispanic civilization has been recovered by archaeologists from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) in Mexico. The statue is a coyote-headed figure on a throne. It was first unearthed 30 years ago in the Llanos de Canícuaro neighborhood in Tacámbaro, Mexico. The artifact was in a private collection until a Mexican federal law was employed to take it away under the premise of preserving a national cultural property.
According to archaeologist José Luis Punzo, “one of the hypotheses is that the coyote-man sculptures could represent a dynasty that ruled this place, even before the Uacúsecha history was written.”
Oh, dear. Don’t worry, the gas won’t necessarily blow your entire house off. A study from Stanford University discovered that gas stoves constantly leak methane into the air, even if they are switched off. According to Eric Lebel, the lead author of the paper, “the leaks we’re measuring are not going to be in concentrations that would normally be detected by a human nose.”
This is because the recorded leaks were slow and constant, and did not reach the threshold where we can detect it by scent. It won’t be harmful to indoor air and human health. However, the recorded methane leaks can be harmful to the environment via global warming. Read more about the discovery here.
Since we are animals ourselves, we understand the seasonal movements of animals, as well as the refugee species that move into new territories for food or safety. Plants do the same, but on a different time scale and by a different method. Trees cannot just walk to a new place (ents notwithstanding), but instead disperse massive numbers of seeds. Those that fall into a better-suited area will take hold and thrive, while their parents may succumb to declining conditions. In this way, forests themselves move. We have records of tree species that have moved thousands of miles, whether they came from the fossil record or eyewitness testimony.
Trees die out in places where the soil is dry or depleted, the climate changes, or invasive species attack. In the last few decades, climate change has accelerated so much that the natural rhythm of forest movement itself is stressed. Logging has contributed to poor forest conditions, as well as the encroachment of farmland and human settlement. Global trade has fueled invasive species.
Emergence magazine has a multimedia article explaining natural forest movement, and how human activity and climate change have affected various trees' ability to find new homes. After the intro, scroll down to find text, videos, links, and charts explaining what's happening to our forests. The example of the black ash tree (also called the basket tree) is explored in depth, and there are links to the migration stories of sugar maple, paper birch, and red spruce trees, too. -via Damn Interesting
"When tweedle beetles fight, it's called a tweedle beetle battle..." *
Watching two massive insects fighting each other is interesting, but it's much better when set to the soundtrack of the Black Knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The two beetles are obviously mismatched from the beginning, both in size and in fighting skill. You'll be glad to know that in this version, neither combatant is left limbless and bleeding. It's just funny. Redditor moistobviously made this a long time ago, but only today posted it on the forum.
🐱 Like many other restaurants have lost customers due to the pandemic, an eatery in Osaka, Japan, was in the verge of closing down when unlikely saviors appeared: stray cats. Here's a heartwarming story of how a stray cat and his family that moved into the cafe saved the Railway Cats Diorama Restaurant.
🩸 Not having watched any sci-fi horror flick in the past decade, scientists in Siberia have managed to extract the oldest liquid blood in the world from the heart of a 42,000-year-old mummified foal preserved in the permafrost. Oh, and they're planning to clone the animal - what could possibly go wrong?
💀 In a 1986 Twilight Zone episode called "Button, Button", a man was given the choice of pressing a button which would cause a stranger to die in exchange of receiving a lot of money. Well, how would that moral dilemma work today? Funny or Die explores the story in a short comedy clip called "The Button."
Jay Ohrberg is the master designer of extreme cars. He was the one who built Kit, the car featured in Knight Rider, the Ghostbusters ambulance, the car in Robocop, and several iterations of the Batmobile. Oh yeah, and the Pink Panther car you see above. Somewhere along the way, he began to obsess about the limits of extreme cars: the widest, the longest, the most massive. And that's the origin of that limousine you saw on the early internet that you were sure was the result of image manipulation.
The limousine was real, held 72 passengers, and was 30.5-meters (100 feet) long. It sported a pool, a hot tub, a mini golf course, and a helipad, among other features. The limo made it into the Guinness Book of World Records. That was decades ago- what happened to the world's longest car since then? Find out where the limousine has been, and see plenty more of Jay Ohrberg automobile designs at Messy Messy Chic.
Look, we’ve been through a lot of video games. So much so that if you ask me the specific names of weapons I know from all of the games I’ve played, I probably could only name one or two. The master sword from the Legend of Zelda series is one of them. Video game developers have done their best when it comes to making weapons for players to play around with, each having their own name, use, stats, etc. all to make the gaming experience more fun. IGN’s Destin Legarie lists the top ten iconic, memorable weapons of all time (spoiler alert: the master sword is in the list). Read the full article here!
Giant Letter is an annual art installation that was launched in 2012 by Chicago-based artists Caro D’Offay and Laura Gilmore. Each year, a massive construction that stands between eight and 12-feet high is displayed in different spots around Chicago. The art installations featured in Giant Letter are messages between an imaginary 100-foot-tall boy named Bobby and those who matter most in his life (aka his mother Lucinda, cat Mr. McFluffins, and Santa). The most recent installation can be found at the intersection of Glenwood and Albion avenues in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood. Organizers of the Giant Letter hope to be able to transfer the project to a museum or gallery in the future.
The Lost Forty, located in Minnesota, is the largest surviving patch of old-growth forest in the state. The 144-acre land, officially known as theLost Forty Scientific and Natural Area, contains pine trees that are between 300 to 400 years old, which is close to the trees’ maximum natural life span of 500 years.
The forest managed to avoid deforestation thanks to a surveying error in 1882. It turns out that the three-man survey team sent to chart the area between Moose and Coddington Lakes stretched the Coddington Lake half a mile further northwest than it actually exists. This mistake, which was embedded into maps until the 1960s caused the forest to be overlooked. Learn more about the forest here!
Image credit: Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
The Antikythera mechanism was an ancient analog device built to capture the known celestial objects, sort of like an ancient computer, which records and targets known heavenly bodies. Experts believe that this mechanism was a collaboration between an astronomer-mathematician and a master craftsman.
Made of bronze and stored in a wooden box, the artifact was sent for investigation to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. They discovered Greek writing and intermeshed gears. Learn more about the Antikythera mechanism here.
Italian studio noa has done their magic to bring life to a flat in Paris. The designers completely revitalized this flat to form aParisian pied-à-terre for a young family that requested them to provide a feeling of being at home. The apartment, called ‘Nicolai Paris,’ showcases a curved line that symbolizes domestic comfort and yields a refined and timeless character. Learn more about this flat here!
This song comes across as rather silly at first, but once you get into it, it's a wonderful story. A cowboy, who also happens to be a pumpkin, is dedicated to his cattle. He's a pacifist yet still a hero, seeking neither revenge nor accolade. He just does what a man's gotta do. Or what a pumpkin's gotta do, in this case. You'll also enjoy the villain, Cowboy Cat. "Pumpkin Cowboy" by Brian David Gilbert (previously at Neatorama) and performed by Jonah Scott was inspired by the purchase of a somewhat-smiling pumpkin toy at a flea market. But you already figured that part out, didn't you? -via reddit
Country music singer, actor, and national treasure Dolly Parton grew up in Sevierville, Tennessee, in a big family, so she learned to cook a long, long time ago. Now Duncan Hines has teamed up with Parton to bring you a line of her Southern-style cakes in mix form, with frosting, too! In March, you'll be able to find the Dolly Parton Baking Collection, including her Southern-style Banana Cake mix, Southern-style Coconut Cake mix, Creamy Buttercream Frosting, and Creamy Chocolate Buttercream Frosting at your local grocery store. Yeah, if it's Southern, you can expect plenty of butter.
Once the mixes are available, use them as ingredients for Dolly's recipes. Duncan Hines has posted a recipe for Dolly's Favorite Coconut Cake, which appears to be just the instructions from the box, and Dolly's Favorite Banana Puddin' Cake, which is a souped up version of the Banana cake mix, in which you add pudding and bananas to make it taste like Southern-style banana pudding. Why you would want to do this instead of just making banana pudding is your own business. -via Mental Floss
