2D Beat ‘Em Up games have become less popular. Over the years, the genre has been overshadowed by hack and slash games. But it seems that we’re going to see a rebirth of the beat em up genre. This new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, Shredder’s Revenge, is set to release some time next year, and it looks and feels like it came from the 90s, but much cleaner.

Check out the trailer!

(Image Credit: IGN via YouTube)

When Reddit user Beefball1010 asked people on Reddit about facts they know that could make another person ask them “why do you know that?”, he was not expecting his post to blow up. A mere 3 days have passed, and the post already has over 34,000 upvotes. But of course, it is not the upvotes that make Beefball1010’s post intriguing — it is the answers. Some answers are straight-up horrifying, while others are just plain weird. But there are interesting ones, too!

Bored Panda has collected 40 of these comments. Here are some of them.

You can also go over at the original Reddit thread, too, if you like.

(Image Credit: Bored Panda)

Non-line-of-sight, or NLOS imaging, is a technique that allows a device (such as a camera) to see objects that are not visible to its line of sight. This is made possible through the use of light pulses, which will bounce off from surfaces, and then go back to the camera’s sources. Algorithms will then analyze the length of time it took these reflections to go back to the camera, and then proceed to create an image based on the information.

Scientists have been refining this technique over the years, but it had one weakness: it needed large reflective surfaces. However, researchers at the Stanford Computational Imaging Lab, may have overcome this weakness with their keyhole imaging technique. The results are worse than previous NLOS techniques, though, but the images generated are still enough in order for a person to make an educated guess on what the object is.

The research could one day provide a way for police or the military to assess the risks of entering a room before actually breaking down the door and storming their way inside, using nothing but a small crack in the wall or a gap around a window or doorway. The new technique could also provide new techniques for autonomous navigation systems to spot hidden hazards long before they become a threat in situations where the previous NLOS techniques weren’t practical given the environment.

(Image Credit: Stanford Computational Engineering Lab)

Back during the Tokugawa Shogunate, when Edo (now Tokyo) became the most populous place on Earth (with about 1 million people), the demae (which means “delivery men”) — men of great strength, flexibility, and endurance — roamed the streets of the city. On their shoulders were dozens of hot meals which they would have to deliver to the hungry people of Edo before the meals got cold.

“Basically, you had a lot of urban density and an extremely developed capitalist economy,” says Nick Kapur, an associate professor of history of Japan and East Asia and the author of Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise After Anpo. “People had commutes, much like today. They would walk across the city, so they didn’t have time to go back for lunch. A whole restaurant industry evolved to serve these workers.”

Cheap, filling, and nutritious, soba and udon noodles were the preferred foodstuff of the proletariat. A skilled demae could carry dozens of packed soba lunches at once. “Bicycles hadn’t been invented yet, so they would carry these soba trays and bowls in baskets that were hanging down from a pole that they would carry on their shoulders,” Kapur says. “These guys were fast. They would jog through the streets to get the food where it was going while it was still hot.”

When bicycles came into the picture, the demae industry was revolutionized. No longer did the men have to jog. However, because the city was thriving more than ever at that time, there was also more demand for hot noodles.

“You want the noodles to still be hot when you arrive, so speed is of the essence,” says Kapur. “In a lot of cases, they would be carrying lunch to one entire company, so that’s why they’re carrying maybe 20 or 30 portions together.”

In the 1950s, however, automobiles became popular in Japan, and the roads became less friendly toward the demae. Accidents frequently happened with the delivery men. And, in 1961, the government finally intervened by officially banning the use of delivery bikes in the streets of Tokyo. However, the demae carried on with their business, and the police did very little to stop them, as the latter stated that the former “will lose half of their customers” if they became stricter.

Learn more about the story of these legendary men over at Atlas Obscura.

(Image Credit: RIDER GVNG via YouTube)

Can you hold your beer? No, I am not asking if you can chug a brew and not throw up. I mean can you physically hold a full glass stein of beer with your arm fully extended in front of you? That's the task involved in the sport of steinholding. If you're good, then you can complete with the US Steinholding Association. The rules are rigorous. Takeout highlights the most important requirements:

If any amount of beer spills or drips off of the stein, the competitor is disqualified. (During outdoor competitions or humid conditions, judges should be sure to differentiate between dripping resulting from condensation or sweat, and dripping resulting from beer spillage.)

Athletic compression clothing is acceptable, however stiff or supportive clothing (such as a bench press shirt) may not be worn.

The thumb may not rest on top of the stein handle; it must rest on the other fingers.

Limited arching of the back is tolerable, however only minimal leaning is acceptable. In the vertical plane, the competitor’s elbow must never cross behind the front of the hips or the front of the ankle of either foot.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: US Steinholding Association

The Ig Nobel prizes for 2021 were awarded in a virtual ceremony Thursday night by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. The awards honor and highlight research that may look ridiculous on the surface, but almost always has some underlying purpose in advancing the field of science. In other words, "Research that makes people laugh and then think." We can't all get grants to develop life-saving drugs, after all. The winners this year range from checking out how orgasms may clear one's sinuses to an analysis of movie theater smells to correlating a nation's level of corruption with the obesity of its politicians. Researchers from the US won two awards (but also collaborated on others): one on controlling cockroaches on submarines and the other on whether humans developed beards to avoid being punched in the face. Continue reading for the full list of winners and their research papers.

Game development is difficult. It’s a long and tedious process, and there are some cases where the games that developers pour their heart and soul into won’t even be put on the shelves for consumption. For Fast Company tech editor Harry McCracken however, things were a little different. The once teenage TRS-80 enthusiast and hobbyist created a text adventure called Arctic Adventure published in The Captain ‘80 Book of Basic Adventures. His game got published, which was great! Unfortunately, the code was broken. McCracken only took 40 years to find and fix the error: 

Having never received a copy of the book his code was published in and not having kept a copy of the code for himself, McCracken spent the next four decades or so doing non-Arctic Adventure related things.

Thanks to internet archivists, however, he recently acquired a copy of The Captain ‘80 Book of Basic Adventures, and with the help of a TRS-80 emulator for his iPad, managed to type in his code and get the game up and running. Only it wasn’t quite running.

After five or six tedious typing sessions on my iPad, I had Arctic Adventure restored to digital form. That was when I made an alarming discovery: As printed in the Captain ‘80 book, the game wasn’t just unwinnable but unplayable. It turned out that it had a 1981 typo that consisted of a single missing “0" in a character string. It was so fundamental a glitch that it rendered the game’s command of the English language inoperable. You couldn’t GET SHOVEL, let alone complete the adventure (The object is to get back to your base).

McCracken has no idea how the typo occurred. Maybe it was something he did that the book editors didn’t catch. Maybe it was a printing error. Whatever the case, it doesn’t matter now. Arctic Adventure is restored and playable in your web browser via a browser-based TRS-80 emulator on McCracken’s website.

Image credit: Harry McCracken

Researchers managed to finally determine the famous artist’s height. Well, an approximation at least. While his artworks are huge and gigantic (in terms of both impact and actual height), his stature can only compare. I’m short too, so that’s totally fine! A new study published in the September 2021 issue of the Anthropologie examined footwear believed to have belonged to Michelangelo. 

From the pair of leather shoes and a single leather slipper, researchers from the Forensic Anthropology, Paleopathology, and Bioarchaeology Research Center in Italy determined that Michelangelo was five feet two inches tall: 

It’s worth pointing out, of course, that by the standards of his day—the 15th and 16th centuries—Michelangelo’s height would not have been out of the norm. And, according to the article’s authors, forensic anthropologist Elena Varotto and paleopathologist ​​Francesco Galassi, the measurement squares, roughly, with Giorgio Vasari’s own account of the artist in his indispensable series of Renaissance-era biographies The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550).

Vasari describes Michelangelo as being of “middle height, wide across the shoulders, but the rest of his body in good proportion.” He was a “very healthy man, thin and muscular,” Vasari wrote. 

Varotto and Galassi’s speculation is just that, though. Michelangelo’s remains, located at the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, have never been exhumed and studied. There’s also the possibility that the three shoes belonged to a relative of Michelangelo’s rather than to the artist himself.

image credit: the Casa Buonarroti Museum

Can I finally play Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones on my Switch? Who knows! Nintendo is rumored to start providing GameBoy and Game Boy Color titles to the Nintendo Switch Online, its subscription service for the latest console. There are no specific number of new titles that will be added to the 100-plus NES and SNES games, as the Verge details: 

But it makes a lot of sense that Nintendo would ramp up more classic content, particularly now that the Switch is well into its life and Nintendo is watching its competitors capitalize on remakes, remasters and next-gen patches that make older games look better and give their new consoles some extra life.

For a while, we were wondering if Nintendo would continue going down the NES Classic and SNES Classic route, releasing cute limited-edition miniature USB versions of its Game Boy or Nintendo 64 with preloaded games on board, too. But the Game Boy’s 30th anniversary came and went without a miniature Game Boy, and now we’re in the midst of a global chip shortage. I’d love to see more opportunities to let new gamers in on old classics, and not just in terms of remakes like Link’s Awakening (originally on Game Boy, Game Boy Color).

Here’s hoping for Game Boy Advance, too, because folks playing the new Metroid Dread deserve to play its amazing prequel Metroid Fusion, and some of the best Fire Emblem games ever made came out there. Oh, and Golden Sun. Eurogamer does say other consoles beyond Game Boy and Game Boy Color may be “on the cards.”

Amusingly, Nintendo offered this official statement: “We have nothing to announce on this topic.”

Image credit: Ravi Palwe

Paleontologist Lisa Buckley is fascinated with birds. So in addition to her scientific research, she applies makeup to match the fashions of the world's most beautiful birds. Buckley calls her art "Bird Glamour".

When an artist renders three-dimensional objects in two dimensions, they normally give it perspective, so that it appears realistic to the eye. However, since the two-dimensional medium (a computer screen or a canvas) has no depth, you can mess around with the perspective part and really have fun. M.C. Escher was a master at such shenanigans. His use of confusing perspective inspired Macedonian artist Fleta Selmani to create the font she calls Impossible Type. Letters are three-dimensional, but their perspective defies reality.

The font is not difficult to read, as our brains perceive basic shapes in total at the speed we read, but if you stop and look closely at the letters, they are mind-bending. You can purchase and download Impossible Type (upper case, numbers, and punctuation) here.

-via Kottke

When you see a flock of birds fly up in the sky, have you ever wondered how they know where they are going? If humans have difficulty in navigating short distances on foot, what more if they were on air and without the aid of technology? The lack of technological assistance makes bird flight much more interesting. AmazeLab looks into the avian’s sky navigation and the established explanation for their flight. 

-via Flipboard 

Image credit: Alvaro Pinot

Benjamin was the last thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, in captivity and as far as we know, the last thylacine in existence. He died in 1936, and the species has been considered extinct since then. Now all that's left are some lifeless anatomical specimens and a few photos and film footage. We posted this video of Benjamin before, although it was quite a few years ago. But through the miracle of technology, it's been brought to life in color. The National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) of Australia commissioned a restoration of the film with added color.

The NFSA created a 4K scan of the original 33-mm negative of a 77-second video, shot by naturalist David Fleay in 1933. This was then sent to Composite Films in Paris, where Samuel François-Steininger and his team recreated the creature’s color in painstaking detail.

Unfortunately, no true color photos or video of the thylacine exist, so the team studied specimens preserved in museum collections, consulted sketches, paintings, scientific drawings and written descriptions from the time, as well as more recent 3D renderings.

“Because of the resolution and quality of the picture, there were a lot of details – the fur was dense and a lot of hair had to be detailed and animated,” says François-Steininger. “From a technological point of view, we did everything digitally – combining digital restoration, rotoscoping and 2D animation, lighting, AI algorithms for the movement and the noise, compositing and digital grading. More than 200 hours of work were needed to achieve this result.”

To be honest, the realistic depiction of the thylacine only underscores how sad it is that they are extinct. -via Damn Interesting

Here's another clever yet dreadful mashup from the YouTuber known as There I Ruined It. He combined the classic Queen "Another One Bites the Dust" and laid it over the instrumentation of "Tequila" by The Champs. Since the song was necessary for the Pee-wee Herman dance, that's who stars in the video. -via reddit

Can you guess the metro area with the highest number of college degrees per capita in the United States? My first guess was Raleigh-Durham, but I was wrong. Not very wrong, however, because this list divides the metro areas differently, and both Durham-Chapel Hill and Raleigh-Cary did pretty well. As the joke goes, North Carolina's biggest exports are tobacco and college graduates, even though some of them stick around to contribute to the work of the Research Triangle. The most educated metro area is Ann Arbor, Michigan, where you'll find the University of Michigan. WalletHub compiled the statistics to come up with the educational rankings of the 150 biggest metro areas of the US. They crunched 11 metrics, including degree attainment, quality of local schools, and equity in race, gender, and economic status. The top 20 metro areas are:

1. Ann Arbor, MI
2. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
3. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV
4. San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA
5. Madison, WI
6. Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH
7. Durham-Chapel Hill, NC
8. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA
9. Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, TX
10. Provo-Orem, UT
11. Raleigh-Cary, NC
12. Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT
13. Colorado Springs, CO
14. Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO
15. Trenton-Princeton, NJ
16. Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA
17. Portland-South Portland, ME
18. Tallahassee, FL
19. Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI
20. San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA

See the rankings of all 150 metro areas and top rankings in various categories, plus methodology and additional statistics at WalletHub. 

-via Mental Floss

(Image credit: Kit)