I didn’t even know Facebook was making smart glasses! 

The social media company teamed up with Ray-Ban to produce a pair of smart glasses that can easily connect with Facebook’s products and services. While that seems promising for Facebook’s customers, the actual product has run into some issues with the European Union already. Yikes. 

Garante, an Italian consumer privacy watchdog group, and Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) have questioned the design’s LED lights that let others know a user is taking pictures or filming them. According to the DPC, “With the glasses, there is a very small indicator light that comes on when recording is occurring. It has not been demonstrated to the DPC and Garante that comprehensive testing in the field was done by Facebook or Ray-Ban to ensure the indicator LED light is an effective means of giving notice.”

Image credit: Ray-Ban 

The amount of multiverse content we’re getting from Marvel makes us ask the question: is there, by any chance, a possibility, that an identical parallel universe exists in real life? 

The concept of a parallel universe has remained in physicists’ curiosity for a long time. While there is no compelling evidence that supports the existence of the multiverse, the predictions of its possible existence are rooted in theoretical physics phenomena. Take for example the Big Bang theory (not the show, people), which gave rise to the observable universe, can open up a realm of possibilities that can prove parallel universes. 

Learn more about parallel universes here! 

Image credit: Bryan Goff/Unsplash 

Absolutely breathtaking. Weather – A Force of Nature: Spectacular images from Weather Photographer of the Year is a compilation of the best photos from the Royal Meteorological Society’s competition on diverse weather conditions. This is the first photobook that contains the most powerful and dramatic images from the competition.  

The book also contains introductions written by experts at the Society. Since the compilation is split into five categories, there are five different introductions that convey the underlying impact of climate change. 

Image credit: Neil Partridge 

This house in southern California has been turned into a cinematic experience for Halloween! Enjoy Ghostbusters all over again, with familiar characters, multiple settings, special effects, and the theme song sung by jack-o-lanterns.  

Projection holiday decorations mean that you don't have to risk your neck hanging strings of lights, but getting it to look this good requires some serious programming. This Halloween light display is way more than anything you'll find in a discount store projection kit. The YouTube account is called Seasoned Projections, so I assumed it was a company that you could hire to do this. But no, from the comments it seems like the guy who did it is a projection enthusiast who produced this light show on his own home.

The short version, you draw a map of your house w/ a laptop and a projector. You bring the map file into software (I use Adobe After Effects and Photoshop) and you create various layers and masks based on your mapping. Creativity proceeds from there. You can do almost anything you dream up in Adobe After Effects. Once done, your finished rendered video is played on your house using a suitable bright projector and media player. Thats the quick version!

He directs people to a public Facebook group called Holiday Projection Mapping to learn more about doing this kind of thing yourself. -via reddit  

Many traditional martial arts of eastern Asia have spread outside of that region and become very popular. But one martial art that has not gained much traction outside of Japan is jukendo, the art of bayonet fighting.

The bayonet has fallen out of priority in recent years. But its use was once viewed as an essential skill for an infantryman. In the 1840s, inspired by watching Dutch soldiers drilling, Japanese soldiers began training in it. During the Meiji Era, the Japanese armed forces required formal instruction for soldiers. It grew into a martial art called jukendo or juken-jutsu, which means “the way of the bayonet.”

As the Japanese Empire expanded during the early Twentieth Century, so did the prominence of jukendo. During World War II, the Japanese government systemized the mass training of the students in jukendo.

The Allied occupiers banned jukendo after 1945, but the ban was lifted in 1950. Perhaps 40,000 people in Japan practice jukendo under the governance of the All Japan Jukendo Federation. Most are members or veterans of the Japanese Self Defense Forces. Jukendo still carries an association with Japan’s militarism of a past era, making it controversial in modern times.

In the above video, you can watch a demonstration of this unique martial art with training implements that are shaped to resemble rifles with fixed bayonets.

Sources:

Bennett, Alexander C.. Kendo : Culture of the Sword, University of California Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central.

“Children Learn Ancient Art of the Bayonet.” Dominion Post, 15 Apr. 2017, p. B3. EBSCOhost.

“Roundup: Japan’s New Education Guidelines Condemned for Adding Wartime Military Training Item.” Philippines News Agency, 3 Apr. 2017. EBSCOhost.

-via reddit

Many of us learned in grade school that Christopher Columbus discovered America. We now know that's not true. How many people knew about the continents of the Western Hemisphere before Columbus landed in 1492? Well, there were the 60 million or so people who lived here. And Leif Erickson, who sailed to various parts of Canada, which he named Helluland, Markland, and Vinland. There is Greenland, which was known to Northern Europeans from antiquity but is only technically part of North America. And it turns out that the lands beyond the Atlantic were known to southern Europeans as well, as documented by a friar in Milan named Galvaneus Flamma. His unfinished written work Cronica universalis references "terra que dicitur Marckalada," in English, "the land that is called Markalada." The book is date to around the year 1345.

Galvaneus’s reference, probably derived by oral sources heard in Genoa, is the first mention of the American continent in the Mediterranean region, and gives evidence of the circulation (out of the Nordic area and 150 years before Columbus) of narratives about lands beyond Greenland. This article provides a transcription of the passage, explains its context in the Cronica universalis, compares it to the other (Nordic) references of Markland, and discusses the possible origin of Galvaneus’s mention of Markland in light of Galvaneus’s biography and working method.

Yeah, sailors talk, and it stands to reason that a lot of that talk would be about exotic faraway places they've either been to or heard about. Did Columbus know about Galvaneus’s document? Probably not, as it was never published. But did he know about Markland? Columbus was a sailor from Genoa, Italy, so he might have heard those same legendary stories from other sailors, or after an extra century, maybe not. Read the full paper at Terrae Incognitae, or the shorter excerpted version at TYWKIWDBI.

I don't know if they still do it, but those paint flinging contraptions were pretty popular at school carnivals when I was a teenager. For a quarter, you could take home your own original piece of psychedelic art. I suppose they aren't as common as they once were, because Gav and Dan, the Slow Mo Guys, made their own. They also put the paper under the disc instead of on top, and added paint before the flinging begins. What's the fun in that? The fun is in their slow-motion videography, as we can see how paint moves and creates gloriously colorful swirls, globs, and messes. They way they spun the background to stabilize the view of the disc makes it much easier to see what's really happening with the paint. Cosmic.

🐱 This cute permanently startled cat looks like it's always surprised ... and no surprise, it's a social media star!

🚗 Imagine driving down the highway and seeing the truck in front of you start twirling its hydraulic truck bed around.

👀 Psst! Here's the secret to having a more engaging conversation: it's all how you make and break eye contact.

😵 In the world's biggest pinball machine, you are the ball.

🍙 Now you can make a real life monster rice balls from The Legend of Zelda

⚡ Someone has re-created the lightning mushroom from Disney's Ratatouille. Hmmm, lighting-y!

🐼 Who will win the cleaning war between panda cubs and their nanny?

💀 Skullpot is a toilet shaped like skulls. For real.

Image above: @fedja_kot/Instagram

This neat-o post is brought to you by our new sites Supa Fluffy, Laughosaurus, Pictojam, Infinite 1UP, Pop Culturista and Homes & Hues. Thank you for taking a look!

YouTuber Not Just Bikes is really excited about the Dutch approach to urban design. In this video, he explains why the way that sidewalks in the Netherlands are optimal for pedestrian and bicyclist safety.

The key feature is called “continuous sidewalks.” In the United States, the most common design for an intersection between pedestrian and motorized traffic is a crosswalk in which the sidewalk lowers and then disappears into the road. People walking across a street are entering the territory of cars.

In the Netherlands, it’s far more common for the sidewalk to remain at the same level and for the road to rise to the sidewalk. Cars crossing are entering the territory of pedestrians. Because there’s a rise, the sidewalk acts as a speedbump so that drivers are encouraged to slow down.

-via Nag on the Lake

The origins of many property regulations come about because someone pushed the limits of common sense long ago. And we still see examples of someone flouting those regulations because the resulting buildings were grandfathered in, or may even be the cause of a certain regulation. We've read tales of spite houses, but there are more of these than you might know, as Mental Floss' latest collection shows. The grander a spite construction, the more likely it is to have survived, and the stories behind them can be fascinating. Mess with someone's property, and feel their wrath. A typical spite building is one built on a piece of land thought too small, due to government seizure of part of a plot or by a seemingly unfair inheritance. Or, in the case of the Montlake House, shown above, a divorce settlement.    

Whatever the origins of the wedge-shaped Montlake House in Seattle, Washington, built in 1925, spite is baked into its blueprint. According to one story, a woman walked away from a nasty divorce with an awkwardly-laid-out piece of land. Instead of leaving it empty like her ex-husband must have hoped for, she built a pie-slice-shaped home that fit perfectly onto the property. Another legend says that the structure went up when someone down the road offered to buy the land for an insultingly low amount. The owner got their revenge by erecting the odd building to block their neighbor's view. Today, the spite house—which is 15 feet wide on one end and 55 inches at the other, just wide enough for a door—is a treasured Seattle landmark. In 2018, it hit the market for $600,000. —M.D.

But it's not just houses. Or even hotels or castles, although those are included. There have been entire manufacturing companies founded out of spite, some that are now household names. There's also a sad tale that may be the origin of the phrase "cut off your nose to spite your face" in this mega-list at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Joe Mabel)

In the 18th and 19th centuries, children died of diphtheria in astonishing numbers. Adults contracted the disease, too, but were less likely to die. The name of the disease is based on the Greek word for leather, because those infected developed a tough leathery buildup of dead cells in the throat that obstructed swallowing and ultimately, breathing. There was nothing anyone could do about the disease, until 1883 when a unique bacterium (Corynebacterium diphtheriae) was discovered in a victim's throat tissue. That discovery began a fascinating chain of event involving doctors and scientists living in far-flung nations. Years later, another doctor found that the bacterium did not cause the disease, but it produced a poison that did. Others used the toxin to create antibodies against the toxin, a trick learned from research on tetanus. This antitoxin would not stimulate a victim's immune system, but it could treat diphtheria, which is why Balto and many other sled dogs ran through Alaska in 1925. Eventually, a vaccine was developed by refining the antitoxin to stimulate a child's own immune system.

Today, diphtheria is almost unknown in the US, with only six cases recorded since 2000. There are only a few thousand cases worldwide every year, mainly in countries where the vaccine program has been disrupted. Read the amazing story of the 40-or-so year period when the race to defeat diphtheria brought the world of medical science together at Smithsonian.  

Recently, Dane Hirst, a cameraman with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, gathered crocodile footage at a crocodile park in northern Australia.

Nota bene: crocodile parks are a thing in Australia. Don’t ask me why.

Anyway, he piloted a drone over the surface of the water of a lagoon when one of the crocodiles leaped out of the water and snatched the crunchy drone out of the air.

The crew was able to recover the drone. It will not be serviceable again, but the video card was fine. The footage is invigorating to watch and a reminder to stay out of Australia.

-via Dave Barry

There’s something otherworldly about the pottery of Keiko Masumoto. This Japanese artist, who studied and worked in Kyoto, has become famous around the world for her groundbreaking ceramic sculptures that break out of traditional forms for pots and plates. Other creatures and structures erupt from them, often showing entire tiny worlds within inanimate pots.

This sign, simply saying "Tom McCleod Slept Here," appears on Interest 5 near Bakersfield in California. There are no buildings nearby, and no people to ask about it. It's been there since at least 2009, when it was captured on Google Street View. People have written about the sign, but everyone has the same question. Who is Tom McCleod? SFGate looked into the mystery, and found an urban legend with no evidence to support it -which may have been made up on the spot. They also found four men named Tom McCleod. The four Toms had heard about the sign, and have seen it, but none ever slept near that patch of highway.   

The fourth Tom McCleod they got hold of lives in Texas, and provided about the only intriguing piece of information they ever got.

While he’s familiar with the sign on I-5, living on the border of Texas and Arkansas means he’s seen stretches of road that few Californians have driven.

And “Tom McCleod slept here” signs are in Texas and Arkansas, too, he says. Louisiana and Mississippi, as well.

But he has no idea who the guy is.

From that information, I have to believe that Tom McCleod is a sign maker. Or the pseudonym of a sign maker. Is this a "social experiment" or some kind of art? Could it possibly be advertising? It might just be a prank, one that others have emulated in other parts of the country. Read about the sign and the search for Tom McCleod at SFGate. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Flickr user Joe Mud)

When the British came to America, the explorers paved the way, and settlers came afterward, but the categories were blurred for a while. The earliest settlers were almost all men looking for adventure and possible riches in the New World. The Virginia Tobacco Company supported settlements in the Chesapeake Bay area while their crops were being developed. The men there suffered from a lack of women, so the company brought some over from England. The first shipment of brides was a disaster, as the woman who volunteered had little to offer, and apparently traveled to America out of desperation. The company needed to impose some standards, but still attract women ready for the unknown.

The Virginia Tobacco Company began to recruit women who knew how to make alcoholic beverages: beer, cider, and liquor. After all, it was an honest skill, and the settlers were suffering from a lack of grog. They didn't know how to make it because that was women's work. The women who were brought to the colonies in the 1600s were in high demand, not only as wives, but as providers of a stiff drink. It wasn't easy, as the materials available in the New World were different from what they were used to, but the women found a way to make it work. Read their story at Atlas Obscura.