Corporations, ugh. Universal Music Group (UMG) has blocked the video of British filmmaker Philip Bloom, claiming copyright to his shots of the Moon. Bloom filmed the Moon during sunset in Greece. When he uploaded his video on the Internet, he was sent a  copyright infringement claim by UMG, with the notice that his footage matched 30 seconds of video owned by the company. What in the world? Does UMG own the Moon now? PetaPixel has the details: 

Bloom says he’s baffled by the fact that a simple shot of the Moon could be flagged for copyright infringement.

“It’s utterly ludicrous, I mean it’s a shot of the moon!” he says. “I hadn’t realized they owned the licensing rights to it. I dare not upload a sunset shot as they’ve probably bought the sun too!

“It doesn’t affect me in any way other than it being annoying and ridiculous, but it does raise questions about the AI being used on Facebook… unless they actually have bought the moon? If so I bet that wasn’t cheap!”

Update on 8/27/21: Philip Bloom says that after the publication of this story, UMB has released the claims on his video along with several others.

Image via PetaPixel 

In grade school, you probably mixed vinegar and baking soda to make a papier-mâché volcano erupt. Cool when you're six, but lame afterward. The guy from The Action Lab has an alternative that is more realistic. Using amonium dichromate produces heat and ash like a real volcano, and actually builds a volcanic cone and crater out of its own spent material. The weird thing is that amonium dichromate becomes safer as it erupts! The experiment is only three minutes long, the rest is an ad. Oh yeah, in case you haven't figured it out, the "cooler" in the title refers to desirability, not temperature. -via Digg

Storm the dog is interested in both the weather and treats. He strolled across the set while Anthony Farnell of Global News reported on the weather in the Toronto area. Farnell kept on this game, though.

Don't be alarmed by the seemingly low temperatures. The broadcast is using Celsius, not Freedom Units. 20°C is quite comfortable.

-via Amanda Brennan

Some of the video from this afternoon's goings on in Little Albro Lake #dartmouth @chronicleherald pic.twitter.com/wvluxC9EMa

— Halifax NewsP.J. (@HNewspj) August 27, 2021

Content warning: foul language

Police in Halifax, Nova Scotia responded to a report of a robbery at a restaurant. They soon found that the suspect was attempting to flee by swimming across Little Albro Lake. Look at a map to see what an ingenious escape plan this might have been.

An official police boat soon arrived on the scene. But additional naval assets were necessary to trap the suspect. Police improvised with a paddleboat, a canoe, and a paddleboard that were at hand. They soon surrounded and captured the amphibious suspect.

-via Super Punch

If you've never tasted Blue Moon ice cream, then you're not from Wisconsin, Michigan, or the adjacent areas. The frozen confection is a Midwest staple, with an unlikely color and a flavor that pleases but defies description. Let's try anyway.

Native to the Midwestern United States and little known elsewhere, Blue Moon’s flavor dances on the tip of your tongue, taunting you into another guess, at turns familiar and elusive. It’s bright, mildly citrusy, and almost fruity, but not in a cloying way. It’s the aftertaste in particular that is, frankly, somewhat infuriating, a flavor layer that seems to say, “you know what this is,” but you don’t—and in fact, very few people do. The Blue Moon ice cream flavoring recipe is proprietary information, and those close to it are tight-lipped.

The flavor of Blue Moon ice cream must be a blend, but a blend of what? Atlas Obscura went so far as to conduct a taste test with a New York ice cream expert. They also looked into the murky origins of the flavor. They also posted a recipe for homemade ice cream that may or may not come close to the flavor of the secret patented flavor formula of Blue Moon ice cream.

It's a classic prank some people refer to as "pulling a Bart Simpson", as that cartoon character similarly pranked Moe Szyslak.

Henrico County Public Schools in Virginia held a board meeting and invited public comment. Many people signed up, but did not show up to speak. The first was Phil McCracken, followed by other names that are racy when read out loud.

-via David Burge

食べたスイカの種を発芽させて、ここまで来たけど、身が割れてしまったので収穫。
直径は5センチ弱。
味はしっかり甘くて美味しかった👍
そして種までちゃんとあることに感動。
また、来年やってみよう。 pic.twitter.com/kGmtVfEWEZ

— サンノジ（sannoji） (@sannoji30) August 30, 2021

Twitter user @sannoji30 nurtured some watermelon seeds to life and produced an impressive pair of melons. Although they measure only 2 inches across, they are at least sweet.

As early as 1929, airline executives were arguing about the benefits of seatbelts on airplanes. While air travel was being promoted as a luxury experience, many scoffed at the idea of buckling passengers into their seats. Over time, the safety benefits of seatbelts were considered, particularly after the experience of World War II. But it took until 1972 to have seatbelts mandated on all passenger planes! The biggest stumbling block to universal adoption of seatbelts on planes was a particularly horrific plane crash on Halloween night of 1950. A Vickers VC-1 aircraft hauling passengers from Paris to London crashed on arrival and killed 28 people.

Four hundred yards out, the captain radioed the tower that he was overshooting the landing. But the craft was too low to pull out. Undercarriage retracted, the airplane touched down at a 20-degree angle with an estimated speed between 80 and 120 knots. It skidded over 100 feet, bounced, was airborne again for a half-mile, and finally thudded back to earth before catching fire. Only one flight attendant and one passenger survived.

When official inquiries began, Dr. Donald Teare, the go-to guy for autopsy examinations in celebrity deaths and high-profile transportation accidents, was asked to lead the team. His report to the public, in the September 22, 1951 issue of the British Medical Journal, included a statement that astonished the scientific community and fueled public skepticism over passenger restraints. “The immediate cause of death,” Teare wrote, “in more than half of the victims was acute flexion of the body over the safety belt.”

Suddenly, the seatbelt was considered not just dangerous, but deadly. Read how aviation experts reacted and turned things around at Air & Space magazine.

(Image:DarkStarFTW)

We all recall our parents telling us not to get a tattoo, because it's permanent and we'll regret it some day. But often, tattoo regret is less about the act of getting a tattoo and more about the art of one's ink. Tattoos that are faded, out of style, unfinished, or just plain ugly may haunt you. Tattoos that present something or someone you no longer care for are sad, too. Luckily, there are plenty of clever and talented tattoo artists who can help you out by putting something much better over top of that tattoo you got years ago when you were broke and unwise.

(Image: whitestainedwood)

See a roundup of 30 impressive tattoo fixes at Bored Panda gleaned from the subreddit Fixed Tattoos.

If you'd like to try something a little different for your next getaway weekend or vacation, maybe you should stay in some place that out of this world! Check out accommodations that will take you to outer space in one way or another: maybe a bedroom with a skylight and a working telescope, or sleep in a replica NASA space capsule, or you can indulge your fantasies about living in a science fiction universe! For example, you can inhabit the worlds of Star Wars at Twelve Parsecs in Florida.

For a fully immersive Star Wars experience, look no further than this nine-bedroom galactic detour. Guests can enjoy themed rooms that capture the spirit of the Millennium Falcon, Hoth, or Cloud City. Best of all, you’re just 15 minutes from Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Walt Disney World.

Besides, it couldn't possibly be as expensive as staying at Disney's Galactic Starcruiser at Galaxy's Edge. Read about eight space-themed travel accommodations at Mental Floss.

TikTok user spacecaptainz should prepare his pet rat for a life of fame and fortune. With his tiny harmonica, this rat can entertain millions, drawing in ticket and MP3 sales. All he needs is a bass as accompaniment.

-via Nag on the Lake

Art Blocks is taking the NFT market by storm! The collection has generated a whopping $403 million in trading volume so far since it was launched in November 2020. That’s a lot of money. True to its trading worth, a single Art Blocks NFT was sold for $3.3 million worth of cryptocurrency. What’s up with the artworks in this collection to warrant this huge amount of hype and money? Decrypt has the details: 

An NFT is a blockchain-verified deed of ownership to a unique digital item, whether it’s an image, video file, or something else entirely. Art Blocks is a generative art collection that spans a wide array of different drops by varying artists—some are flat images or interactive 3D compositions—but they’re all united by a similar origin story: every final, one-of-a-kind image is generated by the Ethereum blockchain.

The artist creates an algorithm or script and deploys it on Ethereum, experimenting with compositional elements to develop the project’s unique style before locking the code. During the minting process, the final image is generated from the script via the hash string or “seed” provided by the token

Each resulting image is different and created on the spot, sight unseen by the buyer, but there are consistent elements and repeating motifs that join them all into a cohesive project.

It’s a marriage of traditional art aesthetics and blockchain

data that yields something that is undeniably crypto-native. The look and feel of each drop varies widely across the different Art Blocks projects, but some have been celebrated and hailed as fine art—and they’re selling for similarly towering prices, accordingly.

Image credit: Art Blocks

Books have been around for centuries, printed and written in different languages around the world. Only a small number actually get an English translation -- whether it’s because of the work’s popularity or other factors. If you’re curious to find out the books that are most translated, Preply has compiled a list of the most translated books by country and presented the data in a cool infographic: 

the most translated book in the world? It’s The Little Prince, which has been translated to more than 380 different languages! Following after that is The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. These are both considered classics that have had many decades to accumulate translations.

Preply excluded from these numbers religious texts that couldn’t be easily attributed to a single author or country.

Image credit: Preply 

Damn, should I start selling some pixel art NFTs too? Benyamin Ahmed has managed to sell pixelated doodles to thousands of crypto enthusiasts. The 12-year-old is now sitting on nearly $400,000 in Ethereum cryptocurrency after his NFT collection sold out overnight! He has sold over 3,350 NFTs from his collection called ‘Weird Whales,’ as Futurism details: 

But that ethereality hasn’t stopped buyers. CNBC reports that the Weird Whales all sold out in nine hours. Ahmed, who spent $300 on the entire project, raked up 80 ether on those initial sales. That’s worth about $250,000 as of this article’s publication. Since that initial sale in July, Ahmed has collected another 30 ether — about $94,000 — in royalties when some of his buyers decided to sell their whales to someone else.

By the end of the month, CNBC projects that he’ll have over $400,000 in Ethereum — and Ahmed says he doesn’t plan to cash out.

“I plan to keep all my ether and not convert it to fiat money,” Ahmed told CNBC. “It might be early proof that, in the future, maybe everyone doesn’t [need] a bank account and just has an ether address and a wallet.”

Image credit: Imran and Benyamin Ahmed via CNBC

I can't find any concrete information about them, but internet rumor says that a notary's office in St. Petersburg, Russia has three chairs that look like huge cans of caviar or sardines. They look both expensive and comfortable.