Measuring scales go back into antiquity. The act of balancing an unknown quantity with a known quantity of weight is the simplest way to measure weight and assign value to goods for sale. Archaeologists have found evidence of these known quantities all over the world. One such find in Jerusalem appears to have quite a story.

Found in the northern part of the City of David in Jerusalem's Old City and dating back to 2,700 years ago during the First Temple period, the weight in question is just 14 mm. in diameter and 12 mm. in height, and is only the second one of its kind to have been found in Israel. Made of hard limestone, the it contained engravings indicating it has a weight of two gerah, which equals 0.944 grams.

Despite this, however, the weight does not weigh two gerah. Rather, the researchers found that it weighed at least 3.61 grams, over three times as much.

Researchers believe traders used the weight to scam people. For example, if someone brought in their gold jewelry to sell, they could set six gerah of gold on the scale and be paid for only two gerah. This was apparently a problem in the ancient world, as several places in the Bible warn against the sin of using misleading weights and measures. Read more about the find at The Jerusalem Post.  -via Strange Company

This holds major Studio Ghibli vibes! Indonesian wildlife photographer Ajar Setiadi takes photographs of frogs that live in his garden. His images reveal the fascinating behavior these amphibians exhibit. Setiadi treats the animals as pets, letting them frolic in his garden as he watches them play with the flowers. According to the photographer, capturing their small moments on camera is a miracle: 

In one image, a frog in the rain holds up a leaf like an umbrella, and in another, two frogs appear to dance together. There’s one image in particular that stands out as the most charming, though: Setiadi managed to capture two frogs huddling together, sheltering from the rain under a flower umbrella. Frogs are social creatures, and this emotional image looks just like a loved-up couple or two friends who are looking out for one another during the rainstorm. Setiadi commented on the sweet scene: “I could only get a few frames because this moment can't be repeated.”

Check out Setiadi’s frog images below and find more from his portfolio on Instagram. When he’s not photographing frogs, he’s capturing the intimate lives of insects, birds, and reptiles.

Image credit: Ajar Setiadi 

Time to sharpen up your Smash Bros. skills! Zen Family Dental in Ashland, Massachusetts is offering a rare promotion that lets Smash Bros. players claim a ‘free dental clean’ if they beat its resident dentist, Dr. Tej A. Shah in a match. I wonder who Dr. Shah mains? Is it Dr. Mario? Maybe it’s one of the newest DLC additions, Sephiroth! According to NintendoLife, the dentist’s favorite game is Final Fantasy. 

Image credit: Nintendo 

Look, animals are cute. They’re also in a league of their own. Animals have their own thing, and sometimes we humans cannot understand or comprehend what they’re doing, and you know what, that’s okay. We can just laugh it off or take a photo and post it on the Internet for fun. That is exactly what Doggo Taxi does! The Instagram account shares random animal photos with no context at all. Some of them are funny, and some of them just make you ask: ‘what in the world happened here?’ Bored Panda compiled 50 photos from that account. Check it here! 

Image credit: doggo_taxi

I wish this existed when I was required to memorize the periodic table of elements! Software engineer Keith Enevoldsen designed a periodic table that illustrates how we see or interact with the different elements in our everyday lives. The new table, called “The Periodic Table of Elements, in Pictures,” manages to provide a lot of information without overwhelming its viewer: 

“The table is color-coded to show the chemical groupings,” he explains. “Small symbols pack in additional information: solid/liquid/gas, color of element, common in the human body, common in the earth’s crust, magnetic metals, noble metals, radioactive, and rare or never found in nature.”

Image credit: Keith Enevoldsen

No, this is not a weird euphemism. It’s an aircraft shaped like a behind, or a peach if you’re feeling ...conservative. The concept is definitely bizarre, though. Meet the Airlander 10, an airship that is designated for commercial use with Swedish air travel company OceanSky. The company aims to use this bootyful aircraft for recreating Roald Amundsen's airship expedition to the North Pole. 

Aside from its current purpose, people on the Internet are having fun with this plane, noticing that the world’s largest aircraft resembles a giant backside. Can’t unsee it? You’re welcome! 

See the Airlander 10 in all its glory below. 

image credit: Associated Press

Image credit: Hybrid Air Vehicles

Mike Ryan decided to use his lockdown time to catch up on old movies he'd always meant to watch. He thought he would see twenty movies, but as the pandemic dragged on, he caught up on 602 movies! One of the things he noticed is how movies in the 21st century end very differently from older films. Before 2000, the movie went to credits when the plot was resolved. What happened to the characters after that was left to our imaginations. Modern movies can resolve the main plot and spend another 40 minutes tying up every loose end and explaining where the characters then went. Talking to screenwriters and filmmakers, he came up with several reasons for this.

“Well, I think it has a lot to do with CinemaScore and the testing process,” says a screenwriter. “Movies are looking for that little boost at the end to get that final impression up a bit right as people leave the theater. That’s why post-credit sequences work. You can see that movies that end ambiguously score lower in testing and on CinemaScore. So the longer endings remove all ambiguity.”

He continues, “There is a screenwriter guru person. She says people don’t care about victories; they respond to people celebrating the victories. That’s what makes audiences happy. Hence the medal scene at the end of Star Wars. That’s what gives people joy, not the Death Star exploding. I think maybe we’ve overlearned that lesson.”

And that medal ceremony scene at the end of Star Wars? Do you know how long that scene is? It’s one minute and forty seconds long. That’s it. Luke Skywalker blows up the Death Star and they wrap everything up in a tidy scene less that two minutes long. It’s perfect. Compare that to the ending of The Rise Of Skywalker that I think is still going. Every little thing had to be resolved, even Chewbacca finally getting a medal from this aforementioned medal ceremony. Think about watching the first Star Wars in a vacuum in 1977, without all the sequels that would come later. Do we think Han will stick around? Darth Vader got away, what’s he up to? What happened to Ben, why did he just disappear? This created discussion and it created a more satisfying experience because, we, the viewer, could think about those questions and it made us think about the movie more.

You know what they say: nothing succeeds like excess. There's more to be said about how movies have changed, which you can read at Uproxx.

Have you ever wondered about how film studios make a blockbuster movie trailer? Turns out, there is a secret formula for it, and it seems that most trailers today use the same formula. So if you want to make a fantastic movie trailer, just follow this formula, too!

Auralnauts breaks down for us the elements of a blockbuster movie trailer here in this video.

(Image Credit: Auralnauts via YouTube)

This is the Zero Emissions Utility Vehicle, or ZUV for short. It is an electric vehicle designed by the Viennese social enterprise EOOS Next, in collaboration with The New Raw. With it being an electric vehicle, and with its 3D printed chassis made from 70 kg of recycled plastic, the ZUV is very eco-friendly. But that’s not all, as it is also family-friendly.

ZUV seats two passengers at the back while the box at the front can either hold two small children or cargo. to reduce complexity and cost, the vehicle has no pedals and it’s driven by a rear hub motor. the two front wheels provide steering. ZUV has a top speed of 25 km/h in urban areas, classifying the vehicle as a bicycle, and can travel 50 km on a single battery charge. in total, ZUV weighs approximately 100 kg and can carry a payload of 200kg.

For some reason, the ZUV looks like a vintage vehicle, yet at the same time it looks modern. I’m confused. But one thing’s for sure: it looks gorgeous.

(Image Credit: Studio Theresa Bentz via DesignBoom)

Jean Jullien is known for his installations which feature cartoonish characters. Now, he has collaborated with surfboard manufacturer Fernand to create cartoonish surfboards. The four characters, which feature two grinning fish, a whale, and a seal, are all hand-drawn by Jullien on the foam boards. The boards are then glazed by Resin League, and then polished by Paul Hyde.

The playful and innocent designs on these surfboards seem to contrast with the “coolness” we generally associate with surfing, which is refreshing and perhaps encourages us all to take ourselves a little less seriously.

Jullien has also designed some tiny – yet very cool indeed – surfer dudes which have been embroidered upon sweatshirts and a T-shirt, which come in soothing ocean tones of deep blue, khaki and black.

Cute!

(Image Credit: Julien Binet/ Jean Jullien via Colossal)

Twenty years ago, YouTuber Studson Studio began his model-making journey through plastic Gundam kits. Now, he has become a full-fledged miniature model maker, and he has challenged himself to create models from Studio Ghibli films, such as Howl’s Moving Castle, the bathhouse from Spirited Away, and the house from Kiki’s Delivery Service. While at times, he deviates from the original design, the final result is still very much faithful to its source material. What’s even more impressive is that Studson Studio’s creations are made from trash.

Studson Studio’s videos range anywhere from 10 minutes to 50 minutes as the model-maker takes viewers through the entire process of creating his miniatures. Each video is a joy to watch because of the creator’s witty sense of humor, [emphasis] on each individual piece of trash used, and superb editing skills which help tie the videos together.

Now this is neat!

(Image Credit: Studson Studio)

To clarify, it is an imaginable scenario, if the cat was heavier, but the cat in question is still a 6-pound kitten.

Taylor Nelson was in a Zoom meeting when she suddenly heard a commotion in her apartment. As her cat Spike was sleeping near her, she figured out that it was her kitten, Faye. But Nelson tried her best to focus on the meeting and let her kitten be; Faye was “pretty much always zooming around” in her home, after all. But when she heard a huge crash from her bedroom, Taylor knew that it was time to investigate what happened, and she immediately left the meeting.

Nelson figured Faye had knocked some plants off the windowsill, something she and her brother both do a lot, so much so that Nelson has taken to keeping extra terra-cotta pots in the basement just in case. When she walked into the bedroom, though, she was shocked. It was so much more than just a few plants.

“She did, in fact, knock over a couple of plants like I assumed, but she also somehow knocked over a 30-inch TV and a humidifier along with the plants,” Nelson said. “It was like a perfect disaster sandwich, with the plants broken on the bottom, the TV face down on top of the plants and then the humidifier spilled over. This was also all on my rug, so the water from the humidifier made a nice muddy mess under the plants and TV.”

Within seconds, the bedroom had gone from peacefully put together to total disaster zone — and it was all thanks to the tiniest little offender.

“When I walked into the bedroom and saw the chaos, I wouldn’t have believed it was caused by this little 6-pound kitten if it wasn’t for her staring me down from under the bed right beside the mess,” Nelson said.

What a troublesome little kitten.

(Image Credit: Taylor Nelson via The Dodo)

Carl Koppelman put his art and tech skills to work in amateur forensics to help police connect seemingly unrelated crimes. Aware of how many dead bodies found in suspicious circumstances were unidentified, Koppelman recreated pictures of the deceased as a living person, hoping that they would be more recognizable by those who knew them. As a volunteer, he was instrumental in solving several cold cases. In 2009, he came across the 1999 case of an unidentified young woman found dead in Racine County, Wisconsin, where nobody knew her. Looking through missing persons reports, he saw the case of Aundria Bowman, who had been missing since 1989. Aundria was considered a runaway. Could she have been murdered ten years later?  

Aundria and the Racine County Jane Doe shared physical characteristics, and their ages aligned: Aundria would have been 25 in 1999, when the Jane Doe was killed. Holland, where Aundria disappeared, sits directly across Lake Michigan from where the Jane Doe was found—it’s just four hours by car from one location to the other, tracing the lake’s southern shoreline and passing through Chicago. To test the possible identification, Koppelman created a composite image, superimposing Aundria’s photo with ones from the Jane Doe’s autopsy. He marked the similarities in red.

Koppelman took his theory to law enforcement, who found it compelling enough to investigate. To determine whether the Jane Doe was Aundria, police would need to compare DNA from the body with that of someone in Aundria’s family. Because Aundria was adopted, authorities had to track down her birth mother. Koppelman knew that could take a while, or that it might never happen, forcing investigators to find other avenues for identification.

But Aundria's birth mother was found. Cathy Terkanian had no idea what had happened to the daughter she relinquished until someone called wanting DNA to identify a dead body. When she learned of the case, she teamed up with Koppelman to find Aundria's killer. Their investigation uncovered a lot of other crimes in a story that is disturbing, to say the least. Read how Aundria Bowman's murder was solved more than 30 years after she went missing at age 14 at Atavist magazine. -via Damn Interesting

When we say pickles, we often mean pickled cucumbers. But any number of vegetables (or meat, or eggs) can be preserved in a solution of vinegar or salt brine. While the process of pickling foods goes back into antiquity, it became very handy for sailors during the Age of Exploration.

Scottish doctor James Lind discussed how pickles could fight scurvy, noting how the “Dutch sailors are much less liable to the scurvy than the English, owing to this pickled vegetable carried out to sea.” The pickled vegetable in question was cabbage. And Captain James Cook was such a proponent of what he called Sour Krout that he gave his officers as much as they wanted, knowing that the crew would eat it as soon as they saw the officers liked it.

But not everyone was a fan. John Harvey Kellogg, who as we’ve previously discussed was deeply concerned about eating food with any known flavor, felt pickles were one of the "stimulating foods" that needed to be avoided.

The history of pickles is full of anecdotes like this, which you can see, or watch in a video, at Mental Floss.

We know that Thomas Jefferson was avid to equip his new country with viable agricultural products. He experimented with crops in his garden, bottled his own wine, and imported livestock. That included a ram that Jefferson thought would improve the bloodline -and the wool- of American sheep.

This was no ordinary ram. Gifted to Jefferson by a DC businessman named James D. Barry, the ram was a Shetland – a small, usually docile breed that has either two horns or no horns. This Shetland had the distinction of having four horns, and two of them pointed forward.

At this point the United States was in the middle of the Embargo Act barring trade with Britain and France, so Jefferson was keen on anything that could boost the country’s manufacturing from within. Since at least 1790, Jefferson had been told that Shetland wool was “reckoned the finest produced in any part of the British Dominions” and he hoped this many-horned ram’s wool would produce “the famous Shetland stockings” which sold for a guinea a pair and were “soft as fur.” He clung his hopes on this ram to bring that fine wool to America, and his hopes caused him to overlook this ram’s less desirable qualities. That negligence proved deadly in February 1808.

Those "less desirable qualities" led to the death of 9-year-old Alexander Kerr, when the ram attacked him as he was walking home from school. Jefferson had owned the ram for eight months by then, and the first thing he did was to write to the boy's father, insinuating that he had ordered the ram to be secured before the attack. Was that an attempted at CYA? It turned out that the ram had attacked someone else already that same month! In fact, there were accounts of the ram being dangerous for months by then. But Jefferson went to great lengths to keep the ram from being put down -and keep himself from blame. Read (or listen to) the story of Jefferson and his killer ram at Plodding Through the Presidents. -via Strange Company